Quotes about year (10000 quotes, page 75)

“Q: I have read that you also, at least sometimes, had a chain around your neck, and you were tied to a tree?
A: M-hm. Most of the time, I would say.
Q: Were you tortured?
A: There are things that I don't want to talk about.
Q: Were there any other women among the hostages?
A: There were more women among the hostages, but the last four years of my captivity I was the only woman on the camp, so it was very difficult.”

Íngrid Betancourt (1961) Colombian-French politician

Reference http://svtplay.se/v/1416302/rakt_pa_med_kg_bergstrom/1_av_10?cb,a1364145,1,f,103521/pb,a1364142,1,f,103521/pl,v,,1430389/sb,p103521,1,f,-1
Interview with KG Bergström for Sveriges Television

Women , Tree , Time , Reading

“It boggles the mind that nearly two centuries after Darwin, and 80 years after John Scopes was put on trial, this country is still debating the validity of evolution.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.nysun.com/article/33432
Faith Based Science

Country

“According to current birthrate projections, France will be a majority Muslim country anyway in about 50 years… I get a lot of e-mails from Americans who think that Europeans are spineless. And I think they're right.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Islam in Europe" (17 August 2007) http://youtube.com/watch?v=nI5WoXpmPiM· transcript http://dotsub.com/view/efa020f5-1243-4fbe-b8af-3a4bb2ab0fb9/viewTranscript/eng
2007

Thinking , Country

“A man spends the first year of his life learning that he ends at his own skin, and the rest of his life learning that he doesn't.”

Saul Gorn (1912–1992) computer scientist

"The Individual and Political Life of Information Systems", in Heilprin, Markuson, and Goodman, ed., Proceedings of the Symposium on Education for Information Science, Warrenton, Virginia, September 7-10, 1965 (Washington, DC: Spartan Books, 1965)

Life , Learning

“We have been troubled about the world, and had almost lost faith in man; it helps to think about the long history of the earth, and of how life came to be. And when we think in terms of millions of years, we are not so impatient that our own problems be solved tomorrow.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Speech accepting the John Burroughs Medal (April 1952); also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 96

Life , World , Faith , History

“Years ago I heard such a nice saying that the soul travels at the speed of horseback riding. At the moment, of course, nobody travels on a horse, but it seems to me that I am always somewhere in the middle of my travels between Poland and the Netherlands. As soon as I reach one destination, my soul still has not left the other place for good, and then back again – everything is mixed up. Of course, I'm formed in Kraków. For me, Kraków is the source of all inspiration. But my home, my family is in Utrecht.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

There is no threat. Weapons and colour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqfjr78Pyfs, video, Galeria Olympia, 23 November 2017 (in Polish)

Family , Travel , Home , Soul

“In the years when I was trying to get my work shown and accepted and so forth, I went to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad and that was my formal art school. You can learn a hell of a lot about sculpture, working in a railroad. The thing about getting a job outside of art is the fact that you can finds out whole areas of materials. I don't mean new ones. I mean old ones like scrap iron. A railroad is essentially a big collection of scrap iron, and that’s why it's great. You get out and beyond the art confine.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 27

School , Art , Hell , Learning

“Fifty years ago the legal injustice imposed upon women was appalling. Wives, widows and mothers seemed to have been hunted out by the law on purpose to see in how many ways they could be wronged and made helpless. A wife by her marriage lost all right to any personal property she might have. The income of her land went to her husband, so that she was made absolutely penniless. If a woman earned a dollar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar. If a woman wrote a book the copyright of the same belonged to her husband and not to her. The law counted out in many states how many cups and saucers, spoons and knives and chairs a widow might have when her husband died. I have seen many a widow who took the cups she had bought before she was married and bought them again after her husband died, so as to have them legally. The law gave no right to a married woman to any legal existence at all. Her legal existence was suspended during marriage. She could neither sue nor be sued. If she had a child born alive the law gave her husband the use of all her real estate as long as he should live, and called it by the pleasant name of "the estate by courtesy."”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

When the husband died the law gave the widow the use of one-third of the real estate belonging to him, and it was called the "widow's encumbrance."
The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

Women , Marriage , Books , Law

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.

The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race'. The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...

In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.

We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.

Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.

Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 36-37.
1970s

Pain , People , World , Education

“From the beginning, I knew the public reaction to my decisions would be colored by whether there was another attack. If none happened, whatever I did would probably look like an overreaction. If we were attacked again, people would demand to know why I hadn't done more. That is the nature of the presidency. Perceptions are shaped by the clarity of hindsight. In the moment of decision, you don't have that advantage. On 9/11, I vowed that I would do what it took to protect America, within the Constitution and laws of our nation. History can debate the decisions I made, the policies I chose, and the tools I left behind. But there can be no debate about one fact: After the nightmare of September 11, America went seven and a half years without another successful terrorist attack on our soil. If I had to summarize my most meaningful accomplishment as president in one sentence, that would be it.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. 181

People , Law , Color , History

“In 1945, the war ended and I was chosen to be the first director of the newly-established Department of Applied Economics in Cambridge. Between leaving the government service and taking up my new post, I had a break of about three months which I spent at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. I intended to use my time there writing up my ideas on a social accounting system for the measurement of economic flows, a thing I had wanted to do for years but had not had time for during the war. What happened was that, in Princeton, I met Alexander Loveday, the Director of Intelligence at the League of Nations, who wanted a paper on the problems of defining and measuring the national income and related totals for consideration by the League's Committee of Statistical Experts. He asked me if I would undertake the work and naturally I accepted. I soon had a memorandum ready and it was discussed in Princeton while I was still there by a subcommittee convened by Loveday. Their report was eventually published by the United Nations in Geneva in 1947 under the title, Measurement of National Income and the Construction of Social Accounts, with my memorandum as an appendix.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

"Richard Stone - Biographical," 1984

War , Intelligence , Idea , Nature

“Yes, he does indeed and again this is very positive. Our movement has defended this thesis for 55 years and was therefore labelled as counterrevolutionary. Today people, both in the Soviet Union and in a large part of the international communist movement, understand better where the real counterrevolutionaries were.”

Ernest Mandel (1923–1995) Belgian economist and Marxist philosopher

Mandel answering the question Is it not true that Mikhail Gorbachev stated that Perestroika is a true new revolution? in an interview in New Times, no. 38/1990, French edition. Quote from Harpal Brar's Trotskyism or Leninism?, pp. 56.

People , Understanding , Parting

“And coincidence convinces the credulous. Two things happen at the same time, or one after another, and we assume there must be a link; well, we sacrificed a virgin last year, and there was a good harvest. Of course the ceremony to raise the sun works—it comes up every morning, doesn’t it? I say my prayers each night and the world hasn’t ended yet…
Dung beetle thinking. Life is too complicated for there not to be continual coincidences, and we just have to come to terms with the fact that they merely happen and aren’t ordained, that some things occur for no real reason whatsoever, and that this is not a punishment and that is not a reward. Good grief; the most copper-bottomed, platinum-card proof of divine intervention, of some holy masterplan, would be if there were no coincidences at all! That really would look suspicious.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“Piece” (p. 75)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

Life , World , Thinking , Time

“I see the situation of man in the world of planetary technicity not as an inexitricable and inescapable destiny, but I see the task of thought precisely in this, that within its own limits it helps man as such achieve a satisfactory relationship to the essence of technicity. National Socialism did indeed go in this direction. Those people, however, were far too poorly equipped for thought to arrive at a really explicit relationship to what is happening today and has been underway for the past 300 years.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Interview (23 September 1966), published posthumously in Der Spiegel (31 May 1976), as translated by William Richardson in Risk and Meaning, Nicolas Bouleau (translated by Dené Oglesby and Martin Crossley), ed. Springer, 2011 ISBN 978-3-642-17646-3, page 102.

People , World , Past , Help

“That gems the starry girdle of the year.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Part II, line 194
Pleasures of Hope (1799)

“He was moderately sure that a thirteen-year-old boy who'd load up four other children and set out in a steamcrawler across the Korunnai Highland at night-a boy who'd rather die than leave an unconscious girl behind-had guts enough for just about anything.”

Matthew Stover book Shatterpoint

Mace Windu, p. 146
Shatterpoint (2004)

Children , Girl , Boy , Night

“Consider our development aid record. Last year, the nations of the world spent over $1 trillion on armaments. But we contributed less than 10 per cent of that amount — a mere $80 billion — as official development assistance to the developing parts of the world, where 850 million people suffer from hunger.”

Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …

Nobel lecture (2005)

Hunger , People , World , Suffering

“Stop trying to impress some art-school teacher with a stick up his butt whose opinions you never respected from the time you entered his class until you left it 10 years ago. Draw like you.”

Dave Sim (1956) Canadian cartoonist, creator of Cerebus

Source: Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing (1997), p. 27

School , Art , Teachers , Time

“It is certain that Ram Mandir will be constructed under the BJP rule. If it is not built today, it will be built tomorrow or the day after. We have completed just one year in power, four more years are to go.”

Sakshi Maharaj (1956) Indian politician

On the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, as quoted in " Ram temple will be built during BJP rule, says Sakshi Maharaj http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ram-temple-will-be-built-during-bjp-rule-says-sakshi-maharaj/article7291611.ece", The Hindu (7 June 2015)

“The combined efforts of Government policy since 1979 have been not to improve but substantially to worsen our competitive position. We have gone from a huge manufacturing surplus of £5.5 billion in 1980 to a 1986 third quarter deficit of £8 billion a year…Even with oil production continuing for some time, the current account has gone from a £3 billion surplus to a deficit predicted by the Chancellor of £1.5 billion…Sadly, the Government's great contribution, having refused to stimulate the economy by more respectable means, is a roaring consumer boom, which there is not the slightest chance of their moderating before an election. A roaring consumer boom does not, to any significant extent, mean more employment. In our competitive position, worsening under the Government, it means overwhelmingly higher imports, a still worse balance of payments position and a classic path to perdition. To have produced, after seven and a half years, the combination of total monetary muddle, a worsened competitive position, a widespread doubt in other countries as to how we are to pay our way in the future, a desperately vulnerable currency and the prospect of an unending plateau of the highest unemployment in a major country in the industrialised world is a unique achievement over which the Chancellor is an appropriate deputy acting presiding officer.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/nov/06/economic-policy in the House of Commons (6 November 1986)
1980s

World , Way , Effort , Chance

“Both Abrams and Westmoreland would have been judged as authentic military "heroes" at a different time in history. Both men were outstanding leaders in their own right and in their own way. They offered sharply contrasting examples of military leadership, something akin to the distinct differences between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant of our Civil War period. They entered the United States Military Academy at the same time in 1932- Westmoreland from a distinguished South Carolina family, and Abrams from a simpler family background in Massachusetts- and graduated together with the Class of 1936. Whereas Westmoreland became the First Captain (the senior cadet in the corps) during their senior year, Abrams was a somewhat nondescript cadet whose major claim to fame was as a loud, boisterous guard on the second-string varsity football squad. Both rose to high rank through outstanding performance in combat command jobs in World War II and the Korean War, as well as through equally commendable work in various staff positions. But as leaders they were vastly different. Abrams was the bold, flamboyant charger who wanted to cut to the heart of the matter quickly and decisively, while Westmoreland was the more shrewdly calculating, prudent commander who chose the more conservative course. Faultlessly attired, Westmoreland constantly worried about his public image and assiduously courted the press. Abrams, on the other hand, usually looked rumpled, as though he might have slept in his uniform, and was indifferent about his appearance, acting as though he could care less about the press. The sharply differing results were startling; Abrams rarely receiving a bad press report, Westmoreland struggling to get a favorable one.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 134

Men , War , World , Family

“The year 1967 gave us the feeling of the one-ness of Canada, until it was rudely jolted by de Gaulle and his insensate call for a "free" Quebec. That visit robbed the Centennial year of its high shine and made the people of the other nine provinces aware as never before of the crisis of Confederation.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 6, The crisis of Confederation, p. 128

People , Feeling

“If we are correct in placing the beginning of the Time of the End at 1799, we should expect that there the falling into the error of church and state union would measurably cease, though it might require long years for the full recovery out of that snare of the devil. Looking back, we find that facts exactly correspond with this. Since that date there have been separations between empires and churches, but no new unions. Really, this date marks a new reformation on a more substantial basis. The influence of the Papacy over the kingdoms of Europe had previously been so great that its curses were dreaded by the nations as a withering blight, and its blessings desired for national prosperity. When Protestants separated from Papacy, they were received by the world as being merely a less corrupt substitute for the Papacy; and their favor, advice or sanction was often very similarly sought. But when Napoleon boldly ignored both the blessings and the curses of Papacy, and yet prospered phenomenally, his course not only greatly weakened the Papal influence of the various Protestant systems, in matters civil and political - which influence has grown very strong in two and a half centuries.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 49.

World , Error , Strong , Time

“The demand for equality and identity arises precisely in order to avoid that fear, that feeling of inferiority. Nobody is better, nobody is superior, nobody feels challenged, everybody is "safe." Furthermore, if identity, if sameness has been achieved, then the other person's actions and reactions can be forecast. With no (disagreeable) surprises, a warm herd feeling of brotherhood emerges. These sentiments -- this rejection of quality (which ineluctably differs from person to person) -- explain much concerning the spirit of the mass movements of the last two hundred years. Simone Weil has told us that the "I" comes from the flesh, but "we" comes from the devil.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 5

Fear , Feeling , Personality

“The old theory that [the Great Pyramid] was built as a vault or tomb for an Egyptian king is unworthy of credence; for, as we shall see, it required more than the wisdom of the present day, to say nothing of that of Egypt four thousand years ago, to design such a structure. Besides, it contains nothing in the way of a casket, mummy or inscription. It was not until we had come into the time called in Daniel's prophecy "the Time of the End", when knowledge should be increased, and the wise should understand God's plan (Dan. 12:4, 9, 10), that the secrets of the Great Pyramid began to be understood, and our questions began to have a reasonable answer.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 319.

Wisdom , God , Secret , Way

“I have some hopes for the future. One of the things I hope the new leader will address is an integrated energy policy, because we need to take advantage of the tremendous brainpower that we have amassed over the years relative to conventional and oil-sands oil and gas, and funnel those energies into alternate forms of energy for the future. By that I mean coal, coal gasification, coalbed methane, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, hydro power, all forms of energy other than conventional and oil-sands gas and oil.”

Ralph Klein (1942–2013) Canadian politician

Source: [Will The Real Alberta Please Stand Up, University of Alberta Press, 2010, 312, Geo Takach]

Hope , Future

“More and more it seemed to Ed that there was a vicious downside of American life, a greased skid of opportunism, cut corners, easy drugs, easy sex, a morality that grew cloudier each year.”

Stephen King book Apt Pupil

Different Seasons (1982), Apt Pupil

Life , Sex

“Like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life's mundane matters. "Who are the best musicians for these songs?" "Am I recording in the right studio?" "Is this song in the right key?" Some things never change, even in 400 years. Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, "Are my songs literature?" So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Nobel Banquet Speech

Life , Literature , Question , Change

“We may be a small island. We're not a small people…For the last six years the Government of this country…have let us be treated as second rate. They even plan for us to stay second rate. Because that's what Labour policies mean…Now I don't intend to stand by and see this happen…Do you want a better tomorrow? …That's what I will work for with all my strength and with all my heart. I give you my word and I will keep my word.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Television broadcast (15 June 1970), quoted in John Campbell, Edward Heath (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), p. 278.
Leader of the Opposition

People , Heart , Country

“It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be commander-in-chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation's peril.”

Joe Lieberman (1942) politician from the United States

http://lieberman.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=249522

War , Time

“Dialogue in Hell:
finally comes the liquidation which adds 15, 20, or 30 millions. In short, in the general reckoning, the total of the unforeseen expenses forms one-third of the estimated expenditures. It is upon this last figure that the legislative vote of the Chambers falls as a form of confirmation. In this way, at the end of ten years the budget can be doubles and even tripled….

Monsesquieu:… It is certain that there are few governments who are not obliged to have recourse to borrowing; but it is also certain that they are obliged to make use of them sparingly; they could not, without immorality and danger, encumber future generations with exorbitant burdens, out of all proportion to”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Way , Hell , Future

“I put everything I had into it — all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.”

Gregory Peck (1916–2003) American actor

On his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, in a 1989 CNN interview, quoted in "Oscar-winner Gregory Peck dies at age 87" in USA Today (12 June 2003) http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-06-12-peck-obit_x.htm

Life , Children , Family , Justice

“The food you put into your body is the single most powerful factor that determines your health and well-being. … I was transformed from a chronically ill young man to a person who could be considered the picture of health. At fifty-nine years of age (I was born in 1947), I continue to reap the benefits of fueling my body with the right foods. How many grandpas do you know who regularly windsurf in the deep blue ocean or strap their grandson into a backpack to carry him on a mountainous hiking adventure? Because of proper diet, this is the kind of health I enjoy today.”

John A. McDougall (1947) American physician

Digestive Tune-Up (Healthy Living Publications, 2006), Introduction, pp. x https://books.google.it/books?id=EVql0RH7LwwC&pg=PR10-xi.

Health , Age , Food , Mountain

“Fifty years is a very long period. The first 30–35 years – we could call this period as one when India equipped itself to face important problems. For example, we built institutions such as the IITs and the National Laboratories…We need much better infrastructure facilities and we must work on more difficult problems. Unfortunately, we have been used to working on problems that are somewhat repetitive. If we want to be at the cutting edge, we have to be innovators and originators.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Quoted in pdf, In Conversation, 22 December 2013, Indian Institute of Science http://www.iisc.ernet.in/currsci/apr102002/788.pdf,

Problem

“The new government of Sri Lanka is now carrying out the program [to improve Sri Lanka's economy] to build the coexistence and reconciliation in the country by fulfilling the responsibilities of a post-war period, after ending the 26 years long terrorism in Sri Lanka”

Maithripala Sirisena (1951) Sri Lankan politician, 7th President of Sri Lanka

Sirisena on improving Sri Lankan reconciliation after the post-war period, quoted on defence.lk, "Austria - Sri Lanka agree to enhance economic cooperation" http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=Austria_Sri_Lanka_agree_to_enhance_economic_cooperation_20160220_02, March 3, 2016.

War , Country

“Man is a creature whose evolutionary environment has been the open air. His nerves, muscles, and senses have developed across three million years in contiguity with natural earth, crude stone, live wood, wind, and rain. Now this creature is suddenly--on the geologic scale, instantaneously--shifted to an unnatural environment of metal and glass, plastic and plywood, to which his psychic substrata lack all compatibility. The wonder is not that we have so much mental instability but so little.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Section 5 (p. 177)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)

Nature , Sense

“For fourteen years [1966 to 1980] [my father] suffered a debilitating disease [multiple schlerosis]. I took care of him for most of that time, until he was no longer able to be taken care of at home... So, in essence, I was caring for [my father] and my younger sister [Becky], six years younger than I. It was difficult for me. It was a tough time. Music was my escape -- my catharsis. My way of just getting my emotions out. Music has always been a beautiful force in my life.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

BBC radio interview (December 13, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life , Disease , Beauty , Music

“I would give ten years off the beginning of my life to see, only once, Tyrannosaurus rex come rearing up from the elms of Central Park, a Morgan police horse screaming in its jaws. We can never have enough of nature.”

Edward Abbey book Down the River

Down the River (1982)

Life , Nature , Horse

“All these actions will require sacrifice on the part of every one of us if we are to get over this dangerous period without intolerable risk. The simplest form of this sacrifice would be the payment of more taxes to support a larger defense budget. It is difficult to estimate how much money will be required to close the gap of our inferiority at the maximum possible rate, but I would suggest that we are talking in terms of a budget between $50 and $55 billion a year for the next five years. Once the gap is closed, subsequent budgets will not need be so high. This requirement for a bigger budget will exist regardless of any transitory shift in Soviet attitude and behavior. There is no living with communism as an inferior.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: The Uncertain Trumpet (1960), p. 178-179

Money , Behavior , Communication , Support

“We brought ten thousand head of cattle to the Sierra one day and said to the peasants, simply, "Eat". And the peasants, for the first time in years and years, some for the first time in their lives, ate beef.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)

Time

“Again in the year AH 716 Sultãn Alãuddîn sent Malik Nãib towards Dhor Samundar (Dvar Samudra) and M’abar… they then advanced with their troops to M’abar, and conquered it also, and having demolished the temples there, and broken the golden and jewelled idols, sent the gold into the treasury…”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn ‘Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî (AD 1296-1316) M‘abar (Tamil Nadu)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

“Indeed at times we feel tempted to think that they had finished with their seriously meant philosophical investigations ever before their twelfth year and that at that age they had for the rest of their lives settled their view on the nature of the world and on everything pertaining thereto. We feel so tempted because after all the philosophical discussions and dangerous deviations, … they always come back to what is usually made plausible to us at that tender age and appear to accept this even as the criterion of truth. All heterodox philosophical doctrines, with which they must at times be concerned in the course of their lives, appear to them to exist merely to be refuted and this to establish those others the more firmly.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Ja, bisweilen fühlt man sich versucht zu glauben, daß sie ihre ernstlich gemeinten philosophischen Forschungen schon vor ihrem zwölften Jahre abgethan und bereits damals ihre Ansicht vom Wesen der Welt, und was dem anhängt, auf immer festgestellt hätten; weil sie, nach allen philosophischen Diskussionen und halsbrechenden Abwegen, unter verwegenen Führern, doch immer wieder bei Dem anlangen, was uns in jenem Alter plausibel gemacht zu werden pflegt, und es sogar als Kriterium der Wahrheit zu nehmen scheinen. Alle die heterodoren philosophischen Lehren, mit welchen sie dazwischen, im Laufe ihres Lebens, sich haben beschäftigen müssen, scheinen ihnen nur dazu- seyn, um widerlegt zu werben und dadurch jene ersteren desto fester zu etabliren.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 156, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 143-144
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Truth , Age , World , Feeling

“Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 1

“In the 1950s, industrial workers had become the largest single group in every developed country, and unionized industrial workers in mass-production industry (which was then dominant everywhere) had attained upper-middle-class income levels. They had extensive job security, pensions, long paid vacations, and comprehensive unemployment insurance or "lifetime employment." Above all, they had achieved political power… Thirty-five years later, in 1990, industrial workers and their unions were in retreat. They had become marginal in numbers. Whereas industrial workers who make or move things had accounted for two fifths of the American work force in the 1950s, they accounted for less than one fifth in the early 1990s--that is, for no more than they had accounted for in 1900, when their meteoric rise began… By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast… By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

About the rise and fall of the blue-collar worker
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

Country

“He (President Obama) should mind his own business. Two million Hindus who are working there (in the US) are not allowed to build their temples; they are not allowed to celebrate Diwali. He only gives lectures here. He says in America they have worked out a harmony. In America, the majority was brutalising the minority. In India, for 800 years, the Islamic minority was brutalising the majority Hindus.”

Subramanian Swamy (1939) Indian politician

On Barack Obama's speech on religious tolerance in India, "Obama shouldn't lecture India on religious tolerance: Swamy" http://zeenews.india.com/news/india/obama-shouldnt-lecture-india-on-religious-tolerance-swamy_1537615.html, Zee News (28 Janauary 2015)
2015-Present

Business

“Effective foreign policymaking requires an understanding of not only international and transnational systems, but also the intricacies of domestic politics in multiple countries. It also demands recognition of just how little is known about “building nations,” particularly after revolutions – a process that should be viewed in terms of decades, not years.”

Joseph Nye (1937) American political scientist

"Obama the Pragmatist" http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/joseph-s--nye-defends-obama-s-approach-to-foreign-policy-against-critics-calling-for-a-more-muscular-approach, Project Syndicate (June 10, 2014).

Understanding , Country

“The phenomenal Celia Cruz [is missing]. But although she couln't be here physically [Cruz died in 2003], I felt her presence throughout the entire recording of the album. It's still impossible for me to feel like Celia's gone, simply because she is still so alive to me through her music and the friendship we shared for so many years. There were moments during this recording that felt to me like she was directing me to a degree or giving me ideas for where to go with the song.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Reuters (July 23, 2007)
2007, 2008

Friendship , Music , Feeling , Idea

“I saw a well-meaning policy statement that said ‘College begins in Kindergarten'. No it doesn’t, Kindergarten begins in Kindergarten. A friend of mine once said ‘A Three-Year old is not half a Six-Year old.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

TED Conference http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html (2010)

“It's the story of a very unfortunate colored man
Who got arrested down in Old Hong Kong
He got twenty years' privilege taken away from him
When he kicked old Buddha's gong.”

Hoagy Carmichael (1899–1981) American composer, pianist, singer, actor and bandleader

Song: Hong Kong Blues http://www.lyricsvault.eu/songs/19573.html (1939).

Color

“My mother, a woman, told me this, and I’ll tell you, mijo, that you will learn who you are and who you aren’t in the next four or five years, because not to learn who you are and who you aren’t in the next few years, my mother said, is to be missing the most important part of your whole life.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Life , Learning , Parting

“By almost universal agreement, the most vague and ineffectual of all [Presidents] was Millard Fillmore, who succeeded to the office in 1850 upon the death of Zachary Taylor, and spent the next three years demonstrating how the country would have been run if they had just propped Taylor up in a chair with cushions.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

Death , Universe , Country

“I have a lot of respect and admiration for Anthony Rapp as an actor. I'm beyond horrified to hear his story. I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years. This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life. I know that there are stories about me and that some have been fueled by the fact that I have been so protective of my privacy. As those closest to me know, in my life I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man. I want to deal with this honestly and openly and that starts with examining my own behavior.”

Kevin Spacey (1959) American actor, director and producer

official statement on Twitter https://twitter.com/kevinspacey?lang=en regarding Anthony Rapp's allegations of sexual assault, October 29, 2017

Love , Life , Women , Men

“For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

After February 22, 1846
Journals (1838-1859)

“The man of wisdom is the man of years.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 775.

Wisdom

“As the years pass, and we look back on something which, at the time, seemed unbelievably discouraging and unfair, we come to realize that, after all, God was at all times on our side. The eventual outcome was, we discover, by far the best solution for us, and what we thought should have been to our best advantage, would in reality have been quite detrimental.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Letter to his eldest son, Frank Joslyn Baum (September 1918)
Letters and essays

God , Reality , Time

“The likelihood is that, in 100,000 years time, we shall either have reverted to wild barbarism, or else civilisation will have advanced beyond all recognition – into colonies in outer space, for instance. In either case, evolutionary extrapolations from present conditions are likely to be highly misleading.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Evolutionary Future of Man (1993)

Time

“In China he had spoken good Mandarin, and in ten years this had become his first tongue. Here he found himself with a parish of Hokkien and Cantonese speakers and a few English people whose language he could hardly talk. His French, severed from its sources of nourishment, grown coarse through lack of use, halted and wavered, searching for the right word which Mandarin was always ready to supply.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

People , Search

“Demanding an “ape-man” is actually just as silly as asking to see a mammal-man, or a half-human, half-vertebrate. How about a half dachshund, half dog? It’s the same thing. One may as well insist on seeing a town half way between Los Angeles and California. Because the problem with bridging the gap between humans and apes is that there is no gap because humans are apes –definitely and definitively. The word, “ape” doesn’t refer to a species, but to a parent category of collective species, and we’re included. This is no arbitrary classification like the creationists use. It was first determined via meticulous physical analysis by Christian scientists a century before Darwin, and has been confirmed in recent years with new revelations in genetics. Furthermore, it is impossible to define all the characters exclusively indicative of every known member of the family of apes without describing our own genera as one among them. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"9th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU, Youtube (May 8, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Family , Dogs , Angels , Way

“Within a mere five months however, the mindless violence of 2002 had dealt us another unexpected blow. Innocents were killed. Families rendered helpless. Property built through years of toil destroyed. Still struggling to get back on its feet from the natural devastation, this was a crippling blow to an already shattered and hurting Gujarat.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2013, "Satyameva Jayate: Truth Alone Triumphs", 2013

Family , Nature , Hurt

“After years of work in both areas of study, I concluded that the social sciences were different, in many important ways, from the natural sciences, but that the same scientific methods were applicable in both areas, and, indeed, that no very useful work could be done in either area except by scientific methods.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 33

Way , Nature , Study , Science

“Like Eisenhower, Patton ordinarily messed with a group of inmates from his headquarters. Breakfast was spirited and talkative. Patton picked up the GI holster in which I carried my 30-year-old Colt.45. "Hell, Brad," he said, "what you need is a social gun. You can't carry that cannon with you everywhere you go."”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. 5-6.

Hell

“I was born in the heart of the Great American Food Machine. From childhood on it was expected that I would someday take over and run what has become the world's largest ice cream company—Baskin-Robbins. Year after year I was groomed and prepared for the task, given an opportunity to live the Great American Dream… There is a sweeter and deeper American dream than the one I turned down. It is the dream of a success in which all beings share because it is founded on a reverence for life. A dream of a society at peace with its conscience because it respects and lives in harmony with all life forms. A dream of a people living in accord with the laws of Creation, cherishing and caring for the natural environment, conserving nature instead of destroying it. A dream of a society that is truly healthy, practicing a wise and compassionate stewardship of a balanced ecosystem.”

John Robbins book Diet for a New America

Introduction
Diet for a New America (1987)

Life , People , World , Peace

“The Bush boom is alive and well. It's finishing up its sixth splendid year with many more years to come.”

Lawrence Kudlow (1947) American economist

Article entitled "The Recession Debate Is Over" https://www.nationalreview.com/kudlows-money-politics/recession-debate-over-larry-kudlow/ published in National Review magazine, December 5, 2007.

“I didn't even try to penetrate the comics, though many years later I came, somewhat grudgingly, to admire Pogo.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Enigmas Of Chance (1985), Chapter 5, Cornell, p. 96.

“Perhaps the most remarkable property of living cells and organisms is their ability to reproduce themselves for countless generations with nearly perfect fidelity. This continuity of inherited traits implies constancy, over millions of years, in the structure of the molecules that contain the genetic information.”

Albert L. Lehninger (1917–1986) American biochemist

Principles of Biochemistry, Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Biochemistry

Perfection

“Numbers were a mystery to me. I was so far behind. It was only in Nairobi, at age ten, that I figured out anything at all about the way time is calculated: minutes, hours, years. In Saudi Arabia the calendar had been Islamic, based on lunar months; Ethiopia maintained an ancient solar calendar. The year was written 1399 in Saudi Arabia, 1972 in Ethiopia, and 1980 in Kenya and everywhere else. In Ethiopia we even had a different clock: sunrise was called one o'clock and noon was called six. (Even within Kenya, people used two systems for telling time, the British and the Swahili.) The months, the days--everything was conceived differently. Only in Juja Road Primary school did I begin to figure out what people meant when they referred to precise dates and times. Grandma never learned to tell time at all. All her life, noon was when shadows were short, and your age was measured by rainy seasons. She got by perfectly well with her system.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 5: Secret Rendezvous, Sex, and the Scent of Sukumawiki

Life , People , Age , School

“I've found during my almost twenty years in Washington that the tendency to personalize differences has grown to be an accepted way of doing business. One need not do the hard work of dissecting an argument. One need only attack and thus discredit the person making the argument. Though the matter being debated is not effectively resolved, the debate is reduced to unilateral pronouncements and glib but quotable cliches.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Way , Business , Personality

“I spent a couple of years between eleven and thirteen analysing the social evaluations that were taken for granted, also acquiring a thorough scepticism about processes regarded as causal, and the consistency of the physical world, as well as the reliability of my own mental processes. By the time I was thirteen I was running out of things to think about, so starting on a run of exam-taking seemed all the more appropriate, as I was finding it difficult to make use of spare time.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

Letters from Exile (2004)

World , Thinking , Time

“Europe's immigration policy is a disaster — and for reasons that transcend the idiocy of allowing the free influx of young male Muslims from a premodern, war-torn Middle East into a postmodern, pacifist, and post-Christian Europe. Europe has not been a continent of immigrants since the Middle Ages. It lacks the ingredients necessary to assimilate, integrate, and intermarry large numbers of newcomers each year: There is no dynamic and fluid economy, no confidence in its own values, no belief that class and race are incidental, not essential, to one's persona, no courage to assume that an immigrant made a choice to leave a worse place for a better one. And all this is in the context of a class-bound hierarchy masked and excused by boutique leftism.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, Europe at the Edge of the Abyss (2016)

War , Age , Confidence , Courage

“A great many people have tunnel vision. Now tunnel vision is when you have a problem with the eyes so that you can only see a little spot ahead of you. You don’t have a broad range of vision. It is a very sad kind of eye defect. But Ford Schwartz was telling me a while back how some years ago when he spent a while in Mexico he stayed with some people in a village, the only non Mexican there. He found them to be very kindly and gracious people, but very limited, because all they could see was to do things exactly as every one else did so that their daily food was limited, day after day, to tortilla and beans, but they were living on the edge of the ocean. And he said day after day he caught fish in a matter of minutes, excellent eating, tasty varieties. But the Mexicans rarely ever touched the fish. They did things only as they had done them generation after generation. Now that is tunnel vision. That is a lack of any real vision. And that is exceedingly common. We can see it in the Mexicans, but we don’t see it in ourselves.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Decadence and the New Age (March 10, 1989)

People , Sadness , Food , Problem

“The roots of defeat which were put down by some of the elements of our party in the two or three years after 1980 made victory difficult to achieve.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

The Times, 10 June, 1983, p. 1.
On the Labour Party's defeat in the 1983 general election.

Victory

“Do they believe that the aim of teaching English is to increase the exact and beautiful use of the language? Or that it is to inculcate and augment patriotism? Or that it is to diminish sorrow in the home? Or that it has some other end, cultural, economic, or military? … it was their verdict by a solemn referendum that the principal objective in teaching English was to make good spellers, and that after that came the breeding of good capitalizers. … I have maintained for years, sometimes perhaps with undue heat: that pedagogy in the United States is fast descending to the estate of a childish necromancy, and that the worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English. It is positively dreadful to think that the young of the American species are exposed day in and day out to the contamination of such dark minds. What can be expected of education that is carried on in the very sewers of the intellect? How can morons teach anything that is worth knowing?”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

On "teachers of English" in "The Schoolmarm's Goal" in The Lower Depths (1925)
1920s

Education , Beauty , Home , Thinking

“What I really want to do, it seems, is to paint a single form in the middle of a canvas... That's all a painter is, an image maker, is he not? And one would be a fool, some kind of fool, to want to paint a picture. The most powerful instinct is to paint a single form in its continuity, which is after all what a face is. This happens constantly on a picture. I remember last year I became so nervous about what I was doing that I finally reduce it down to the can on the palette with brushes in it. Well, that's real, tat can with brushes. And I painted the an with brushes sticking in it, and I couldn't tolerate it. I couldn't face it. It was as if it didn't contain enough of my thoughts or feelings about it.... I became signs. Exactly.... It seemed to become signs and symbols and I don't like signs.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1950 - 1960, Interview with David Sylvester, BBC (March 1960), pp. 95

Fools , Feeling , Painting

“The PP has spent 3 years thinking about the election (in 2008), but I think that one has to give them some advice: to prepare themselves to carry on thinking, but about the election in 2012.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

Meeting on the 14th August 2007 in Jerez, predicting another PSOE victory in the 2008 elections.
Source: ABC http://www.abc.es/20070815/nacional-politica/zapatero-advierte-sera-firme_200708150245.html
As President, 2007

Thinking

“The world "legendary" is much overused, but it certainly applies to the seventy-six-year-old Andreas Papandreou, whose life had encompassed so much Greek-American history. As a Greek-born American citizen, he earned a doctorate in economics from Harvard, served in the United States Navy during World War II, and then taught at Harvard, the University of Minnesota, and Berkeley (where he was chairman of the economics department). He was part of Adlai Stevenson's advisory team during his two runs for the presidency. Then he returned to Greece and fought his way into power, surviving a long period in the political wilderness after right-wing pressure forced the resignation of his father, Georgios Papandreou, in 1965, two years before the military coup. He won the prime ministership fifteen years after his father had been forced out of it, and then lost it following a series of corruption scandals - only to make another astonishing comeback, regaining it again in 1993. To conservative Americans, he was anathema, an American turncoat. To Greeks, both those who followed him and those who hated him, he was the dominant political figure of the era.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 124

Life , Hate , War , World

“With a tongue like a razor he will kiss
the mother, the child,
and we three will color the stars black
in memory of his mother
who kept him chained to the food tree
or turned him on and off like a water faucet
and made women through all these hazy years
the enemy with a heart of lies.”

Anne Sexton book The Book of Folly

"The Wifebeater"
The Book of Folly (1972)

Women , Food , Color , Star

“The Group was the best thing professionally that ever happened to me. I met two wonderful men. Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman, both of whom were around thirty years old. They were magnetic, fearless leaders. During the summer I was an apprentice, they were entertaining in a Jewish summer camp… At the end of the summer they said to me: "You may have talent for something, but it's certainly not acting.”

Elia Kazan (1909–2003) Greek-American film and theatre director, film and theatrical producer, screenwriter, novelist

Interview by Michel Ciment in Kazan on Kazan (Viking, 1974), pp. 15 ff. Originally published 1973 by Secker and Warburg, London.
Quote about the Group Theatre

Men , Summer

“If I was running $1 million today, or $10 million for that matter, I'd be fully invested. Anyone who says that size does not hurt investment performance is selling. The highest rates of return I've ever achieved were in the 1950s. I killed the Dow. You ought to see the numbers. But I was investing peanuts then. It's a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money. I think I could make you 50% a year on $1 million. No, I know I could. I guarantee that.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

As quoted in "Wisdom from the 'Oracle of Omaha'" by Amy Stone in BusinessWeek (5 June 1999)

Money , Thinking , Hurt

“We all endeavour, as Spinoza says, to persist in our own being; and that endeavour is, he adds, the very essence of our existence. When, therefore, we find that what delighted us once can still delight us: that though the objects of our admiration may be intermittent, yet they move in fixed orbits, and their return is certain, these reappearances will suggest that we have after all maintained something of our own integrity; that a sort of system lies beneath the apparent variability of our interests; that there is, so to speak, a continuity within ourselves, a core of meaning which has not disintegrated with the years.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Montaigne,” p. 2
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

“The Dead! the Dead! and sleep they here,
The lost of other years —
The Dead! the Dead! can they be here,
Where nought of Death appears?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(7th October 1826) The Tumuli
The London Literary Gazette, 1826

Death , Sleep , Appearance , Dead

“Gandhi has sound economic and cultural reasons for encouraging the revival of cottage industries, but he does not counsel a fanatical repudiation of all modern progress. Machinery, trains, automobiles, the telegraph have played important parts in his own colossal life! Fifty years of public service, in prison and out, wrestling daily with practical details and harsh realities in the political world, have only increased his balance, open-mindedness, sanity, and humorous appreciation of the quaint human spectacle.”

Paramahansa Yogananda book Autobiography of a Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 44 - "With Mahatma Gandhi At Wardha

Life , World , Reality , Parting

“We have attacked the traditional interpretation of the economics of slavery not in order to resurrect a defunct system, but in order to correct the perversion of the history of blacks — in order to strike down the view that black Americans were without culture, without achievement, and without development for their first two hundred and fifty years on American soil.”

Robert Fogel (1926–2013) American economist, historian

Robert William Fogel, ‎Stanley L. Engerman (1974). Time on the cross: the economics of American Negro slavery. p. 258

History

“Since the Persian monarchy began some 2550 years ago, Iran has had more than 350 kings. No fewer than half of them were either assassinated or killed in battle. Many went into exile to escape death. Iran's long history is full of fallen crowns and shattered imperial dreams. Of Mohammad-Reza Shah's five immediate predecessors, one was assassinated and three were forced into exile. What makes Mohammad-Reza Shah's tragedy special is that he was, perhaps, the first Iranian king in more than a century to have a real possibility of ending his reign peacefully and dying in his own country. That this was not the case was, to a large extent, the result of Iran's chronic political underdevelopment. But the Shah's own failure to operate within the realities of Iranian society - unpleasant as they undoubtedly were - contributed to his downfall and its dramatic consequences for the nation as a whole. The fall of the Shah was, in a since, the prelude to more than a decade of instability in the region, culminating in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent massacre of Kurds and shi'ites in Mesopotamia. It may take Iran and her region many more years before the shockwaves unleashed by the fall of the Shah are fully absorbed.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Death , Dreams , History , Failure

“Democracy makes Rumanian citizens out of millions of Jews by making them the Rumanians' equals. By giving them the same legal rights. Equality? What for? We have been here for thousands of years. Plow and weapon in hand. With our labors and blood. Why equality with those who have been here for only one hundred, ten, or even five years? Let's look at the past: We created this state. Let's look at the future: We Rumanians are fully responsible for Greater Rumania. They have nothing to do with it. What could be the responsibility of Jews, in the history books, for the disappearance of the Rumanian state? Thus: no equality in labor, sacrifice, and struggle for the creation of the state and no equal responsibility for its future. Equality? According to an old maxim: Equality is to treat unequally the unequal. What are the reasons for the Jews' demanding equal treatment, equal political rights with the Rumanians?”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Books , Democracy , History , Past

“So let’s respect the pedophile’s right to have sex with a 2-year-old?”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

About the gay rights, in an interview to Time. Jair Bolsonaro Loves Trump, Hates Gay People and Admires Autocrats. He Could Be Brazil's Next President http://time.com/5375731/jair-bolsonaro/. Time (23 August 2018).

Sex

“In the year AH 819 (AD 1416), Ahmud Shah marched against Nagoor, on the road to which place he plundered the country, and destroyed the temples…”

Ahmad Shah I (1389–1442) Indian king who founded Ahmedabad city

On way to Nagaur (Rajasthan).Tãrîkh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol I, p.10-11

Country

“Oh, you don't wanna mess with the R-I-double-A
They'll sue you if you burn that CD-R
It doesn't matter if you're a grandma, or a seven-year-old girl
They'll treat you like the evil, hard-bitten, criminal scum you are”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

"Don't Download This Song", Straight Outta Lynwood (2006).
Song lyrics

Girl , Evil , Grandma

“You know, these things interested me before I became a businessman and I kind of neglected them during twenty, twenty-five years, while I was engaged in making money, because running a hedge fund takes, you know, a hundred percent of your attention on Saturday morning, and so I didn't get involved in these issues very much. It's only when I was rather successful at it and I've made enough money for my personal needs and to look after my family that we established this interest and, by now, it is more important to me than my business.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Interview with Mark Shapiro (2000)

Money , Family , Business , Success

“There is much to be said concerning retirement. Some men cannot survive it because they have not prepared themselves for it. For the man who has retained his curiosity, retirement in old age can be the most enjoyable period of his life; but he must be aware of the emptiness of public renown and desire the peace of obscurity; he must still have the wish to learn and understand; in his village, his garden, or his house, he must have some restricted personal occupation. The wise man, after having given all his time to his public activities, now devotes himself entirely to his personal affairs and development; and this will be easier for him if he has been able to interest himself in poetry and the beauties of nature, even during his busiest years. For myself, I cannot imagine a pleasanter old age than one spent in the not too remote country where I could reread and annotate my favorite books. "The mind," says Montaigne, "must thrive upon old age as the mistletoe upon a dead oak."”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Life , Men , Books , Age

“Today, as I stand here in this august House at 67 years of age, this last November 30th … culminates for me a journey and quest that has taken me most of my adult life, two decades in fact, to fulfil a vision and a dream that I, my mother and my maternal grandfather had regarding our entry into the Vola ni Kawa Bula (VKB) [1] and to be recognised finally by the Great Council of Chiefs.”

James Ah Koy (1936) Fijian politician

Maiden speech in the Senate http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID=165&viewtype=full, 8 December 2003 (excerpts)

Life , Age , Dreams , Maternity

“We keep looking for some good to come out of this. Maybe it might help in putting race relations back on the front burner after they’ve been subjugated so long as a result of the Reagan years.”

Bryant Gumbel (1948) American sportscaster

On the Los Angeles riots, April 30, 1992, Today. Real Video http://www.mediaresearch.org/rm/projects/99/Gumbel3/segment1.ram

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“I've come up through the ranks of this parliamentary party and let me tell you the principles that have guided me on that journey since my first election 25 years ago: Loyalty to the party, service to our country and a determination to always do my best for the people. They are principles that still guide me.”

Brian Cowen (1960) Irish politician

Loyalty to a fault over Molloy affair is costing Cowen dearly, Irish Independent, 26 September 2009, 2010-06-12 http://www.independent.ie/national-news/loyalty-to-a-fault-over-molloy-affair-is-costing-cowen-dearly-1897480.html,
address to the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting in Athlone on 14 September 2009.
2009

People , Loyalty , Country

“The vast number of titles which are published each year—all of them are to the good, even if some of them may annoy or even repel us for a time. For none of us would trade freedom of expression and of ideas for the narrowness of the public censor. America is a free market for people who have something to say, and need not fear to say it.”

Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978) Vice-President of the USA under Lyndon B. Johnson

Address to the National Book Awards ceremony in New York City (March 8, 1967), reported in The New York Times (March 9, 1967), p. 42.

People , Fear , Idea , Freedom

“Muhammad bin Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving captives, and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide… Ibn Battuta’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s arranging marriages of enslaved girls with Muslims on a large scale on the two Ids confirms the statement of Al Umri. “First of all,” writes he, “daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come, sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this the daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing… the Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives sons of Maliks etc. On the sixth day male and female slaves are married.” It was a general practice for Hindu girls of good families to learn the art of dancing. It was a sort of religious rite. They used to dance during weddings, festivals and Pujas at home and in temples. This art was turned ravenous under their Muslim captors or buyers.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Masalik-ul-Absar, E and D, III, p. 580. Ibn Battuta, p. 63, Hindi version by S.A.A. Rizvi in Tughlaq Kalin Bharat, Part I, Aligarh, p. 189. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Marriage , Family , Art , Home