Quotes about year
page 77

“I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year,
"Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown."
And he replied, "Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way."”

Minnie Haskins (1875–1957) British poet and sociologist

Poem, "God Knows" (1908) as quoted by George VI

God, Way, Light

“A Gurkha subaltern whom I met later told me that commanding a platoon of them was like leading a group of perfectly-disciplined ten-year-olds, and I believed him.”

George MacDonald Fraser book Quartered Safe Out Here

Source: Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), p. 195.

“You are the elayaraja (crown prince) of Travancore?' She then recollected our first meeting years back in England. I was amazed when she asked if Travancore was in the southern tip of India?”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

After exchanging pleasantries with the Queen, quoted in "When 'Maharaja of Travancore' met Queen Elizabeth II (8 July 2012)".

“Tsenov comes out of a detailed source-check which many of his predecessors have hardly ever seen. It facilitates the reader by printing these sources in the original … From the same sources it can be seen that the Bulgarians were south of the Danube for 350 years, so they did not come until 679. from the Volga, but not only before the Slavs, but before the Huns in Illyria and Thrace, that the Bulgarians lived in 350 AD. along the lower Danube in the Byzantine Empire, i. south of the lower Danube, and that they were a mighty people, not only in Moesia but also in Thrace and Illyria.”

Gancho Tsenov (1870–1949) Bulgarian historian

quotations for him Source: Hans Filipp, рецензия на "Die Abstammung der Bulgaren..." http://stahlhelm-wse.narod.ru/PHILOLOGISCHEWOCHENSCHRIFT.htm, “Philologishe Wochenschrift”, Heft 10/11, 14 März 1931

People

“A good book on the subject of the customs union has for long been wanted; and now it is provided by Professor Viner's study, which it is difficult to praise too highly…. Professor Viner's study on the economic aspects of customs unions will be of central interest to economists. Indeed for many years this is likely to remain the locus classicus for the economic analysis of customs-union problems.”

James Meade (1907–1995) British economist

James Meade, "The Removal of Trade Barriers: The Regional versus the Universal Approach." Economica (1951). p. 186-7. Cited in: Jacob Viner, ‎Paul Oslington (2014) The Customs Union Issue. p. xxxi

Books, Problem, Study

“But while at the bottom of the national life the slime was thus constantly accumulating more and more deleteriously and deeply, so much the more smooth and glittering was the surface, overlaid with the varnish of polished manners and universal friendship. All the world interchanged visits; so that in the houses of quality it was necessary to admit the persons presenting themselves every morning for the levee in a certain order fixed by the master or occasionally by the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only to the more notable one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted partly in groups, partly en masse at the close—a distinction which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy, is said to have introduced. The interchange of letters of courtesy was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy; "friendly" letters flew over land and sea between persons who had neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter is addressed to a corporation. In like manner invitations to dinner, the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials; even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions to his countless "neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake. Just as in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes which had lost all meaning, and thus by degrees the reality came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of "friendship," which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 2, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
On Roman Friendship in the last ages of the Republic.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life, Death, Friendship, War

“There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter — if not a paragraph or a name — in the history of philosophy.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)
Variant: There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

Exercises, History, Universe

“We will rule by ourselves. In two years or in six years. Patiently, substantially, at ease.”

Roman Giertych (1971) Polish politician

Gazeta Wyborcza, June 2003

“Plastic surgery is a way for people to buy themselves a few years before they have to truly confront what ageing is, which of course is not that your looks are falling apart, but that you are falling apart and some-day you will have fallen apart and ceased to exist.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Quoted in Christopher Goodwin, "Get real – ageing’s not all Helen Mirren," Times Online (UK) (4 March 2007)

People, Age, Way

“The scope of time ahead which inﬂuences present behavior, and is therefore to be regarded as part of the present life-space, increases during development. This change in time perspective is one of the most fundamental facts of development. Adolescence seems to be a period of particularly deep change in respect to time perspective. The change can be partly described as a shift in scope. Instead of days, weeks, or months, now years ahead are considered in certain goals. Even more important is the way in which these future events influence present behavior. The ideas of a child of six or eight in regard to his occupation as an adult are not likely to be based on sufficient knowledge of the factors which might help or interfere with the realization of these ideas. They might be based on relatively narrow but definite expectations or might have a dream or playlike character. In other words, "ideal goals" and "real goals" for the distant future are not much distinguished, and this future has more the fluid character of the level of irreality. In adolescence a definite differentiation in regard to the time perspective is likely to occur. Within those parts of the life-space which represent the future, levels of reality and irreality are gradually being differentiated.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin (1939) "Field theory and experiments in social psychology" in: American Journal of Sociology. Vol 44. p. 879.
1930s

Life, Dreams, Way, Behavior

“"We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim…" Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away."”

Evelyn Waugh book Black Mischief

First lines
Black Mischief (1932)

Life, Wisdom, God, People

“The absolutely inaudible is rejected from music during the period of Viennese Classicism in which every musical line is potentially or imaginatively audible, but it makes a dramatic reappearance in the music of Schumann. The most striking of many examples is one of the episodes in the Humoresk, the last of the great piano works of Schumann's early years. … There are three staves: the uppermost for the right hand; the lowest for the left; the middle, which contains the melody, is not to be played. Note that the melody is no more to be imagined as a specific sound than it is to be played: nothing tells us that the melody is to be heard as vocal or instrumental. This melody, however, is embodied in the upper and lower parts as a kind of after-resonance-out of phase, delicate, and shadowy.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 1 : Music and Sound

Music, Imagination, Parting

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace - and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Graham Greene book The Third Man

The Third Man (1949)

Love, Peace, Democracy

“In 1850 Mr. Calhoun said, 'Let us be done with compromises. Let us go back and stand upon the Constitution'. Four years afterwards, the most Christian and most democratic statesman we have had in our history since Washington, Mr. Seward, accepted the challenge thrown out by Mr. Calhoun, solemnly saying, 'The sands of compromise are sliding from beneath my feet, and they are taking hold once more of the rock of the Constitution'.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

History

“The education of Peter III was undermined by a clash of unfortunate circumstances. I will relate what I have seen and heard, and that in itself will clarify many things. I saw Peter III for the first time when he was eleven years old, in Eutin at the home of his guardian, the Prince Bishop of Lübeck. Some months after the death of Duke Karl Friedrich, Peter III’s father, the Prince Bishop had in 1739 assembled all of his family at his home in Eutin to have his ward brought there. My grandmother, mother of the Prince Bishop, and my mother, sister of this same Prince, had come there from Hamburg with me. I was ten years old at the time…. It was then that I heard it said among this assembled family that the young duke was inclined to drink, that his attendants found it difficult to prevent him from getting drunk at meals, that he was restive and hotheaded, did not like his attendants and especially Brümmer, and that otherwise he showed vivacity, but had a delicate and sickly appearance. In truth, his face was pale in color and he seemed to be thin and of a delicate constitution. His attendants wanted to give this child the appearance of a mature man, and to this end they hampered and restrained him, which could only inculcate falseness in his conduct as well as his character.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Memoirs

Death, Truth, Education, Family

“My father worked from ten to fourteen hours a day and sometimes during the night, for which he never received any extra pay. Every year that passed only increased the wretchedness of his condition and our way of living. Work as hard as he would, there seemed to be no way out for us.”

Angelo Herndon (1913–1997) African American communist

Source: Let Me Live (1937), p. 8

Way, Night

“Do not be surprised that many things which I have said do not apply to your at your present age. For I also have not overlooked this fact, but I have deliberately chosen to employ this one treatise, not only to convey to you advice for your life now, but also to leave with you precepts for the years to come; for you will then readily perceive the application of my precepts, but you will not easily find a man who will give you friendly counsel. In order, therefore, that you may not seek the rest from another source, but that you may draw from this as from a treasure-house, I thought that I ought not to omit any of the counsels which I have to give you.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verse 44.
To Demonicus

Life, Age, Drawing, Housing

“That’s behind me. Same as with everything else in my life, though, I approached what I learned with eyes and ears half-closed. It’s only now I realise how dangerous and destructive Christian culture has become. If there was ever any love in it, it’s been bled out. Three major religions preach Holy War: Shintoism, Islam, and Christianity. Christianity is the only one hypocritical enough simultaneously to enjoin its followers to turn the other cheek and suffer fools gladly and the rest of it. Look at the record. Germany was a Christian country almost exactly one hundred times as long as it was Nazi. Did the Nazis undo in twelve years all the church had done in twelve centuries? No, they built on it. Hitler was a baptised Catholic and never excommunicated. When he was enlisting the support of the bishops in 1933 he promised to do nothing to the Jews that the church had not already, and kept his promise.”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 16 (p. 124)

Love, Life, War, Religion

“The whole system of the Foreign Enlistment Act is, I may add, only 200 years old. The ancients did not know the meaning of the word "neutrality" as we know it at the present day. In the Middle Ages people were hardly aware of such a thing as neutrality; the first Foreign Enlistment Act is hardly 200 years old, and since that time that system of legislation has grown up. It has been a code of legislation that has gradually grown up, and is now looked to by the nations to assist in keeping the peace and preventing the catastrophe of a general war. Shall we be the first to roll back the tide of civilization, and thus practically go back to barbarism and the Middle Ages, by virtually repealing this international code by which we preserve the rights and interests of neutrality? I cannot but think that this House and the country, when they reflect on the facts of the case, will consider that if they in any way lend their sanction to such a retrograde policy, they would be unworthy of themselves, and would be guilty of a great crime against humanity.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1863/apr/24/observations in the House of Commons (24 April 1863). 1860s

War, People, Age, Peace

“I wanted to look young in this role, it was a needed thing. She’s 14. This role I really needed to feel 14, I had to be 14 in every way possible, so I hung out with my 14 year-old cousin for a month. She had a retainer and pigtails and all that. There’s something in their eyes, between age 10 and 15 I think, it’s just that sort of ‘anything is possible’ look. For me, the most beautiful thing you could ever see is like a child’s eyes. I wanted to really make sure that I captured her spirit, that youthful spirit. For me it’s all about dreaming. What does she look like when she walks? What’s the look in her eye? It’s not about, ‘Oh, on this move, I’m going to put my arm like that.’ It’s just the whole spirit, so that any way that I would move would be right.”

Alison Lohman (1979) American actress

On her role in Matchstick Men.
Interview with Rebecca Murray

Youth, Age, Beauty, Dreams

“I entertain no doubts as to the truths of the transfinites, which I recognized with God’s help and which, in their diversity, I have studied for more than twenty years; every year, and almost every day brings me further in this science.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

As quoted in Modern Mathematicians, (1995) by Harry Henderson. ~ ISBN 0816032351

God, Truth, Study, Science

“Under the same circumstances — and the key words are "the same circumstances" — yes, I would do it again. We were in a war for five years. We were fighting an enemy that had a reputation for never surrendering, never accepting defeat. It's really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence. In a war, there are so many questionable things done. Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? I believe that when you're in a war, a nation must have the courage to do what it must to win the war with a minimum loss of lives.”

Theodore Van Kirk (1921–2014) Recipient of the Silver Star

As quoted in "HIROSHIMA - Enola Gay's Crew Recalls The Flight Into a New Era" https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/06/world/hiroshima-enola-gay-s-crew-recalls-the-flight-into-a-new-era.html?pagewanted=all (1995), The New York Times

Death, War, Courage, Question

“It has been my strategy, believing passionately as I do in what we stand for, to take a different direction, to make people see that was the better direction; for us to stay in power long enough to make the Labour Party realise that their policies will never be re-elected and they must do a fundamental reappraisal of their policies and start two generations later what Gaitskell wanted to do but failed…I myself do not think one more push will be quite enough…I think you are likely to have it much more up nearer towards the year 2000, then you will have the fundamental realignment that should have been brought about half a century before.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Interview for The Standard (13 March 1987) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106595 Second term as Prime Minister

People, Thinking, Passion

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History Vol 3 1837 translated by ES Haldane and Francis H. Simson) first translated 1896 P. 91-92
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 3

Life, God, Justice, Way

“I'm gonna do four or five of these movies, and it's going to become my career. I'll have to keep expanding the bat suit, because I get fatter every year. I'll be bankrupt. I'll be out opening shopping malls, going from appearance to appearance in a cheesy van.”

Michael Keaton (1951) American actor

Reported in Bill Zehme, " Michael Keaton's Batman http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/batman-19890629", Rolling Stone (June 29, 1989).

Appearance

“Up to eight feet long and as heavy as a lioness, the adult Komodo dragon brandishes steak-knifelike teeth - sharp, recurved blades with serrated cutting edges. Showing the same sagacity found in veteran Nile crocodiles, fully adult dragons know their hunting territory from years of experience. They know where to lie along hilly game trails, awaiting the light footsteps of a deer. Attacks are instant successes or failures because the ora has no stamina, and if it misses on the first short rush, it has little sustained speed for a long pursuit. When an attack succeeds, the cruel rows of slashing teeth cut fearful wounds on the rump and thigh of ambushed animals and the stricken prey may die of massive infection days later even if it manages to break free from the dragon's mouth. Tethered livestock suffer truly terrible cuts across the legs when an ora slinks into the compound under cover of the warm Indonesian nights. Several humans, both native and European visitors, have died in savage daylight attacks. The victims simply had no warning sign that the ora was waiting patiently a few feet from the trail's edge.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 62-63
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Lie, Fear, Game, Failure

“We don’t like to try to guess what’s going to happen in the future, but I’ve got to tell you, I think people were very engaged in this election, and I think will be very engaged as time goes forward. The key is to hold people accountable. The hobbits, or the deplorables, had a great run in ’16. Everybody mocked them and ridiculed them, and now they’ve spoken. I think ’17 is going to be a very exciting year”

Steve Bannon (1953) American media executive and former White House Chief Strategist for Donald Trump

Steve Bannon: ‘Hobbits and Deplorables Had a Great Run in 2016,’ but It’s Only ‘Top of the First Inning’ http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/12/30/bannon-hobbits-deplorables-great-run-2016-top-first-inning/ (December 30, 2016)

People, Thinking, Time, Future

“It appeared that most of the men and boys had died of starvation; they had not been executed. But the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald. God alone knows how many men and boys have died there during the last twelve years.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Broadcast from Buchenwald (1945)

Death, Men, God, Boy

“Bin Laden's real audience is the Middle East, his other Muslims. I think he thought that, by this act, he would win large numbers of converts to his cause … [to] bring Arab regimes down. He would perhaps even take power in this or that country, preferably Saudi Arabia. That is where he is looking to; that is who is the audience. That is who his symbols are directed towards. So this is unlike anything else in the history of Islam. Early Muslims, when they left the Arabian Peninsula and entered the [Fertile Crescent], were conquerors. They converted peoples, and they gave them time to convert. So they didn't force them sometimes, and they were perfectly happy ruling over them. They were setting up a state, and then people converted over time. Syria remained Christian for hundreds of years after the Muslim conquest. So something different is going on here. The obvious sense in which the United States is evil is in the cultural icons that are seen everywhere. They are seemingly trivial things, the influence of the America culture, which is everywhere: TV, how women dress, the lack of importance of religion. So these are the senses in which they are rejecting the United States. But you're right; they don't see Americans as people. … They block that out. They only see as people the Muslims they want to convert to their side, and that's terrifying.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Women, People, Religion, History

“What has happened to the monastery? There it was planted in the hills, not merely looking after the spiritual needs of the people, but also their temporal needs…They have all gone. One of these parishes I find to-day with a tithe, and probably the land was owned by gentlemen who, when I was down there twenty years ago, was the anti-disestablishment candidate for that district. What is the good of talking about it? Whoever else has got a right to complain of Parliament not being authorised to deal with this trust; the present Establishment has no right, and the present House of Lords has no right. Property which was used for the sick, for the lame, for the poor, and for education, where has it gone to? …the bulk of it went to the founders of great families. It is one of the most disgraceful and discreditable records in the history of this country.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1912/may/16/second-reading-fourth-days-debate in the House of Commons (12 May 1912) on the Bill to disestablish the Anglican church in Wales Chancellor of the Exchequer

People, Education, Family, History

“When facing “scientific” arguments for God like these, ask yourself three questions. First, what’s more likely: that these are puzzles only because we refuse to see God as an answer, or simply because science hasn’t yet provided a naturalistic answer? In other words, is the religious explanation so compelling that we can tell scientists to stop working on the evolution and mechanics of consciousness, or on the origin of life, because there can never be a naturalistic explanation? Given the remarkable ability of science to solve problems once considered intractable, and the number of scientific phenomena that weren’t even known a hundred years ago, it’s probably more judicious to admit ignorance than to tout divinity.
Second, if invoking God seems more appealing than admitting scientific ignorance, ask yourself if religious explanations do anything more than rationalize our ignorance. That is, does the God hypothesis provide independent and novel predictions or clarify things once seen as puzzling—as truly scientific hypotheses do? Or are religious explanations simply stop-gaps that lead nowhere?…Does invoking God to explain the fine-tuning of the universe explain anything else about the universe? If not, then that brand of natural theology isn’t really science, but special pleading.
Finally, even if you attribute scientifically unexplained phenomena to God, ask yourself if the explanation gives evidence for your God—the God who undergirds your religion and your morality. If we do find evidence for, say, a supernatural origin of morality, can it be ascribed to the Christian God, or to Allah, Brahma, or any one god among the thousands worshipped on Earth? I’ve never seen advocates of natural theology address this question.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 156-157

Life, God, Religion, Question

“I've been struggling for years to get a fur coat. How did you get yours?"
"I left off struggling.”

Donald McGill (1875–1962) British artist

George Orwell "The Art of Donald McGill"

“Quoyle with regards to Petal, his wife, "There was a month of fiery happiness. Then six kinked years of suffering…In another time, in another sex, she would have been Genghis Khan.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 13

Sex, Suffering, Time, Happiness

“I actually think it will be interesting to listen to the President tonight. What I'd like him to do is report on his promises but there are forgotten promises and forgotten people. Over the last four years, the President has said that he was going to create jobs for the American people and that hasn't happened. He said he would cut the deficit in half and that hasn't happened. He said that incomes would rise and instead incomes have gone down. And I think this is a time not for him not to start restating new promises but to report on the promises he made. I think he wants a promises reset. We want a report on the promises he made. And that means let's hear some numbers. Let's hear 16. Sixteen trillion dollars of debt. This is very different than the promise he made. Let's hear the number 47. 47 million people in this country on food stamps. When he took office, 33 million people were on food stamps. Let's understand why it was he's been unsuccessful in helping alleviate poverty in this country. Why so many people have fallen from the middle class into poverty under this president. Let's have him explain to the American people the 50% number. Why 50% of college graduates can't find work or work that is consistent with their college degree. The President needs to report tonight on his promises rather than try and reset a whole series of new promises that he also won't be able to keep.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-09-06
http://mittromneycentral.com/2012/09/06/romney-on-obamas-speech-tonight-americans-want-a-report-on-presidents-promises/
Romney on Obama’s Speech Tonight: Americans Want A Report On President’s Promises
Mitt Romney Central
2012

People, Food, Understanding, Thinking

“Should we stick with the Goth Detectives from when we won last year? Where's our trophy?”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Big Fat Quiz of the Year (2007)

“Recently I asked three corporate executives what decisions they had made in the last year that they would not have made were it not for their corporate plans. All had difficulty in identifying one such decision. Since each of their plans were marked 'secret' or 'confidential', I asked them how their competitors might benefit from the possession of their plans. Each answered with embarrassment that their competitors would not benefit. Yet these executives were strong advocates of corporate planning.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1960s, A concept of corporate planning, 1969, p. 1 as cited in: Henry Mintzberg (1994) Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. p. 98.

Secret, Decision, Strong

“…that Chancellor of the Exchequer is the very man who comes down to corrupt whatever there is of financial virtue in us, and to instil into our minds those seductive and poisonous ideas that it does not, after all, matter very much if there is a deficit, and that it is extremely disagreeable when commerce is not in the most flourishing state to call upon the people to pay. Was that the practice of Sir Robert Peel? … he came to Parliament and stood at his place in the House of Commons, pointed out the figures as they stood, and said to them—I ask you, will you resort to the "miserable expedient" of tolerating deficit, and of making provision by loans from year to year? That which he denounced as the "miserable expedient" has become the standing law, has become almost the financial gospel of the Government that is now in power.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Edinburgh (29 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 152.
1870s

People, Law, Idea, Housing

“Grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated then ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 7).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Age, Imagination, Strong, Country

“The reviewers of fifty years ago knew that their primary loyalty must lie not with their fellow poets or publishers but with the reader. Consequently they reported their reactions with scrupulous honesty even when their opinions might lose them literary allies and writing assignments. In discussing new poetry they addressed a wide community of educated readers. Without talking down to their audience, they cultivated a public idiom. Prizing clarity and accessibility they avoided specialist jargon and pedantic displays of scholarship. They also tried, as serious intellectuals should but specialists often do not, to relate what was happening in poetry to social, political, and artistic trends. They charged modern poetry with cultural importance and made it the focal point of their intellectual discourse.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991)

Lie, Education, Communication, Loyalty

“[S]ome went through the whole disrupting experience of national indignity as early as 1933, others after June 1934, still others in 1938 during the Jewish pogroms, many in the years since 1942, when defeat became probable, or since 1943 when it because certain, and some not until it actually happened in 1945.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

The Question of German Guilt (1947)

“Ireland stands at your bar expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant. Her words are the words of truth and soberness. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is deeper than even hers. …She asks also a boon for the future; and that boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon to us in respect of honour, no less than a boon to her in respect of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Such, Sir, is her prayer. Think, I beseech you, think well, think wisely, think, not for the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject this Bill.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1886/jun/07/second-reading-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (7 June 1886) introducing the Home Rule Bill 1880s

Truth, Peace, Hope, Thinking

“We have a lot of fun every year, and I really enjoy being part of junior golf and the development of these players.”

Tiger Woods (1975) American professional golfer

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0971329/bio

Parting

“Does the Minister agree that now is the time to repeal the emergency legislation and give the right to a jury trial to everyone in Northern Ireland—a right that has been denied to them for nearly 15 years or more? Does he agree that it is a fundamental right of all citizens that they should have an opportunity, if they are indicted on a serious charge, to appear before a jury, not before the fundamentally unfair system of a judge sitting with no jury and making decisions?”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1995/feb/16/jury-trials in the House of Commons (16 February 1995). 1990s

Decision, Appearance, Time

“On the Indian front, [the Hindutva movement] should spearhead the revival, rejuvenation and resurgence of Hinduism, which includes not only religious, spiritual and cultural practices springing from Vedic or Sanskritic sources, but from all other Indian sources independently of these: the practices of the Andaman islanders and the (pre-Christian) Nagas are as Hindu in the territorial sense, and Sanâtana in the spiritual sense, as classical Sanskritic Hinduism. (…) A true Hindutvavadi should feel a pang of pain, and a desire to take positive action, not only when he hears that the percentage of Hindus in the Indian population is falling due to a coordination of various factors, or that Hindus are being discriminated against in almost every respect, but also when he hears that the Andamanese races and languages are becoming extinct; that vast tracts of forests, millions of years old, are being wiped out forever; that ancient and mediaeval Hindu architectural monuments are being vandalised, looted or fatally neglected; that priceless ancient documents are being destroyed or left to rot and decay; that innumerable forms of arts and handicrafts, architectural styles, plant and animal species, musical forms and musical instruments, etc. are becoming extinct; that our sacred rivers and environment are being irreversibly polluted and destroyed…”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

Talageri in S.R. Goel (ed.): Time for Stock-Taking, p.227-228.

Pain, Art, Music, Feeling

“…the inexorable duty which has come upon you to use your political power to help our Island out of the rotten state which it has now fallen. When I think of the way in which we poured out blood and money to take Contalmaison or to hold Ypres, I cannot understand why it is we should now throw away our conquests and our inheritance with both hands, through sheer helplessness and pusillanimity. In this disastrous year we have written ourselves down as a second Naval Power, squandered our authority in Egypt, and brought India to a position when the miserable public take it as an open question whether we should not clear out of the country altogether. Currently with all this, we have so reduced our reputation abroad and among our own dominions, that as you said the other night, 'they all think we are down and out.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

My interest in politics is to see this position retrieved.
Letter to Lord Beaverbook (23 September 1930), quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Volume 12: The Wilderness Years, 1929–1935 (Michigan: Hillsdale Press, 2012), p. 185
The 1930s

Money, Way, Understanding, Question

“I would tell you that my first priority as a president of the United States is to repeal Barack Obama's healthcare plan. I think it's the most dangerous piece of legislation, well, in many generations. It is the reason that I'm running for office. Because I believe Obamacare is a game changer. I believe Obamacare will rob America, the best way I can put it is, rob America of its soul. I say that without any kind of fear of being discredited, I really believe that. That the reason the left for a hundred years has been trying to get a national healthcare plan done is because they realize that once they have you dependent on the government for your health, freedom as we know it in America is forfeit.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Health, Fear, Way, Soul

“I usually put on 6 or 8 public lectures a year and as long as no paid admissions were asked I could easily get out an audience of 1,000. In time, however, we decided that a lot of these people who occupied chairs in my audiences were what is called in New York simply floaters. They drifted in and out of every free lecture, no matter what the subject was, and never really benefited from anything they heard. The time, therefore, came when we decided to charge admission to my lectures even if it was only 25 cents. The audiences immediately dropped about half and this pleased us greatly. Those who came did so because they wanted to hear and learn and it was worth while talking to them.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter V - Part 2

People, Learning, Time

“In one of the most outrageous appeasement gestures in a year full of them, the Empire State Building was illuminated in green to celebrate the Islamic holiday of Eid… New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg … apparently believes that the best response to terrorists is to celebrate diversity.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

December 8, 2007 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28204_Bloomberg-_Diversity_the_Best_Response_to_Terrorism&only

Holiday

“If you conclude, as I do, that the only hope of a permanent peace and happiness for humanity on this planet is an increased expression of love, and that women are the primary carriers of this great force, one of the problems we face is to provide women with more opportunity for using their love powers. The last six thousand years have demonstrated quite conclusively, I believe, that woman under the domination of man can increase but meagerly the world's total love supply. Our obvious goal, than must be to devise social mechanisms whereby man is brought under the love domination of woman.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

Women: Servants for Civilization (1941), p. 44, as quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joseph J. Darowski, p. 9; in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda", by Michelle R. Finn.

Love, Women, World, Peace

“The annual payment [of German reparations] will very likely spread over some thirty years at least. It would therefore be fair and logical for the military occupation of the left bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads to last for the same length of time…There is, moreover, something quite unusual in the idea of renouncing a security before the amount secured has been completely paid…After the war of 1870, the Germans occupied various French provinces until they received the last centime of the indemnity imposed on France…It is argued that even when the occupation ceased, it could be resumed in the event of non-payment. This option to renew occupation may look tempting to-day on paper. But its bristling with drawbacks and risk. Let us imagine ourselves sixteen or seventeen years ahead. Germany has paid regularly for fifteen years. We have evacuated the whole left bank of the Rhine. We have returned to our side of the political frontiers which afford no military security. Imagine Germany again prey to Imperialism or imagine that she simply breaks faith. She suspends payment and we are obliged to reoccupy. We give the necessary orders, but who will vouch for our being able to carry them out without difficulty?”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Memorandum to Clemenceau (28 April 1919), quoted in David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties. Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), p. 428.

War, Faith, Imagination, Idea

“I am very proud not just of my connection with Calcutta but my connection with India which is approaching 50 years now. I do not like being called an expat. That's why I do hope to become an Overseas Citizen of India. That will mean I will be acknowledged as a citizen of the two countries I feel I belong to, India and Britain. I will bring together the two nationalities which were separated during my childhood.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

Why Mark Tully needs a Calcutta birth certificate at 78, 2013

Hope, Feeling, Childhood, Country

“…reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention where they could be held for years without any representation or charges is distressing.”

Dana Perino (1972) Former White House Press Secretary

Press Briefing, referring to jailing of protesters and Buddhist monks in Myanmar, October 1, 2007 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071001-2.html

People

“Could I forget that the event [Mehmet Ali Ağca’s assassination attempt] in Saint Peter's Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ to the poor little peasants has been remembered for over sixty years at Fatima in Portugal? For, in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Source: [Pope John Paul II, 2005, Memory and identity: conversations at the dawn of a millennium, Rizzoli]

Appearance, Christ, Forgetting

“The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. It's a vast, sentimentalizing structure that reassures the reader, and at every point, offers the comfort of secure moral frameworks and recognizable characters. This whole notion was advanced by Mary McCarthy and many others years ago, that the main function of the novel was to carry out a kind of moral criticism of life. But the writer has no business making moral judgments or trying to set himself up as a one-man or one-woman magistrate's court. I think it's far better, as Burroughs did and I've tried to do in my small way, to tell the truth.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"J.G. Ballard on William S. Burrough's Naked Truth" by Richard Kadrey in Salon (2 September 1997) http://web.archive.org/web/20000511215816/http://www.salon.com/sept97/wsb2970902.html

Life, Truth, Way, Business

“The motives for conceiving modern systems engineering are to be found, at least in part, in past disasters. Arthur D. Hall III [1989] cites: the chemical plant leakage in Bhopal (1986); the explosion of the NASA Challenger space shuttle (1986) and the Apollo fire (1967); the sinking of the Titanic (1912); the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl (1986) and the disaster at Three Mile Island power plant (1979). He cites, too, the capture of markets by Japan from the U. S., the decline in US productivity and the failure of the US secondary school system. He identifies the millions of people dying of starvation every year while other nations stockpile surplus food, medical disasters such as heart disease, while governments subsidize grains used to produce high cholesterol meat, milk and eggs; and many more. One implication is clear: systems engineering faces challenges well beyond the sphere of engineering.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Source: Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management (2003), p. 75-76

People, Disease, School, Food

“Poor Felix Randal;
How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"Felix Randal", lines 11-14
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

“VIII. On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile--that the Rebellion, if crushed out tomorrow, would be renewed within a year if Slavery were left in full vigor--that Army officers who remain to this day devoted to Slavery can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union--and that every hour of deference to Slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union, I appeal to the testimony of your Ambassadors in Europe. It is freely at your service, not at mine. Ask them to tell you candidly whether the seeming subserviency of your policy to the slaveholding, slavery-upholding interest, is not the perplexity, the despair of statesmen of all parties, and be admonished by the general answer.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Way, Feeling, Intelligence, Time

“A certain type of outdoor activity has been much developed in recent years and calls great throngs together, which may properly be designated as exhibition games. Under this head comes first in importance baseball, which is often known as the national game. Football and polo come in the same class. These activities require such long and intensive training that participation in them is necessarily confined to a class and can not be said to be open to the general public. But for creating an interest which extends to every age and every class, for giving an opportunity for a few hours in the open air which will provide a change of scene, a new trend of thought, and the arousing of new enthusiasm for the great multitude of our people, these have no superior.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

People, Age, Game, Change

“Accept the shout or silence of your peers
As if a fabled legacy or loss;
Their praiseand blame are but the winds which toss
Your seed into the winter of the years.”

William Soutar (1898–1943) British poet

For any Artist, LXXXI,Brief Words, The Moray Press, Edinburgh 1935.

Silence, Winter, Loss

“Further, it should be clear that meat in itself as protein is not much superior to eggs or nuts and could not alter the evolution of the brain – if this were so, this miracle food would have continued to enlarge humans’ brain size in succeeding years when much greater amounts of meat were consumed.”

Colin Spencer (1933) British writer

The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1996), p. 16 https://books.google.it/books?id=rIjZo-cvifAC&pg=PA16.

Food

“Those who are weak don't fight.
Those who are stronger might fight
for an hour.
Those who are stronger still might fight
for many years.
The strongest fight
their whole life.
They are the indispensable ones.”

Bertolt Brecht The Mother

"In Praise of the Fighters" (song)
Variant translation: There are men who struggle for a day and they are good.
There are men who struggle for a year and they are better.
There are men who struggle many years, and they are better still.
But there are those who struggle all their lives:
These are the indispensable ones.
As quoted in Democracy Unbound : Progressive Challenges to the Two Party System (1997) by David Reynolds; also quoted by Cuban musician and poet Silvio Rodríguez before his song "Sueño con serpientes".
Also quoted by Eduardo Galeano (Uruguayan writer) to describe Nestor Kirchner as he received the notice of his death.
The Mother (1930)

Life, Fight

“I dealt with Gaddafi. I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn't let him use the land. That's what we should be doing. I don't want to use the word 'screwed,' but I screwed him. That's what we should be doing.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

As quoted in Donald Trump: In his own colourful words http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33619045 2010s, 2011

Night

“In point of material wealth and resources, we are greatly in advance of them. The taxable property of the Confederate States cannot be less than twenty-two hundred millions of dollars! This, I think I venture but little in saying, may be considered as five times more than the colonies possessed at the time they achieved their independence. Georgia, alone, possessed last year, according to the report of our comptroller-general, six hundred and seventy-two millions of taxable property. The debts of the seven confederate States sum up in the aggregate less than eighteen millions, while the existing debts of the other of the late United States sum up in the aggregate the enormous amount of one hundred and seventy-four millions of dollars. This is without taking into account the heavy city debts, corporation debts, and railroad debts, which press, and will continue to press, as a heavy incubus upon the resources of those States. These debts, added to others, make a sum total not much under five hundred millions of dollars. With such an area of territory as we have-with such an amount of population-with a climate and soil unsurpassed by any on the face of the earth-with such resources already at our command-with productions which control the commerce of the world-who can entertain any apprehensions as to our ability to succeed, whether others join us or not?”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

World, Thinking, Time, Wealth

“Last year was no easy ride for Hong Kong. Our society was rife with differences and conflicts. In the coming year I hope that all people in Hong Kong will take inspiration from the sheep’s character and pull together in an accommodating manner to work for Hong Kong’s future.”

Leung Chun-ying (1954) Hong Kong politician

2015 Source: Hong Kong leader calls on residents to be like 'mild and gentle' sheep, Associated Press, 18 February 2015, The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/18/hong-kong-leader-residents-mild-gentle-chinese-year-of-the-sheep, Source: Hong Kong's leader asks residents to be like 'sheep', Wilfred Chan, 18 February 2015, CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/18/asia/hong-kong-cy-leung-sheep/,

People, Hope, Future

“…The fortress of Badalgarh, which lies below the fortress of Gwaliar, a very lofty structure, was taken from Rai Man Singh and fell into the hands of the Muslims, and a brazen animal which was worshipped by the Hindus also fell into their hands, and was sent by them to Agra, whence it was sent by Sultan Ibrahim to Dihli, and was put over the city gate. The image was removed to Fathpur in the year AH 992 (AD 1584), ten years before the composition of this history, where it was seen by the author of this work. It was converted into gongs, and bells, and implements of all kinds.”

`Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni book Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh

Sultan Ibrahim Lodi (AD 1517-1526) Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh)
Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh

History, Animals

“Think of it this way. When I was in the Army, you didn't see me for years. Think of me that way now, like I'm away in the Army again, on an assignment for the military.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

To his mother (1997), as quoted in American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0060394072 (2001), by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, New York: ReganBooks (HarperCollins), p. 347. 1990s

Way, Thinking

“A few days ago in a Berlin theatre the audience burst into spontaneous applause merely because the orchestra began to play an old military march—not a German march, either, but an Austrian one, the Radetzky march. Do not think that this meant a demonstration in favour of a war of revenge—not a bit of it. But the army and all that goes with it has been in the tradition of the German people for a hundred years and it would betray a very poor knowledge of men to believe that such a tradition could be uprooted when people is bidden by the terms of a treaty to give up compulsory military service.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Remarks to representatives of the foreign press in Berlin (23 November 1923), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 341
1920s

Men, War, People, Revenge

“Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant King,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu wee, to witta woo!”

Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) English Elizabethan pamphleteer and poet

Source: Summer's Last Will and Testament http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/summ1.htm (1600), lines 161-164.

Spring, Bird, Singing, Dance

“This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible. Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there - with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way.”

David Vitter (1961) U.S. Senator from Louisiana

Douglass K. Daniel, "Senator's number on escort service list" http://web.archive.org/web/20070715094917/news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_go_co/vitter_dc_madam, Associated Press, July 10, 2007.

God, Marriage, Family, Disappointment

“When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

White Noise (1984)

Age, Thinking, Time, Reading

“On the pinhead front, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. The sister of Britney says she is shocked. I bet. Now most teens are pinheads in some ways. But here the blame falls primarily on the parents of the girl, who obviously have little control over her….”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2007-12-20
Time vs. 'The Factor'
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317577,00.html

Way, Girl, Parent, Sister

“Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

John Dingell (1926–2019) American politician

From the live telephone interview which he gave to Paul W. Smith on his show Monday morning (on Detroit WJR News/Talk 760), March 22, 2010 about universal health care legislation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvDwFQiSkBU&feature=player_embedded.

People, Way, Time

“I would warn against anyone marrying a person with more than a ten-year age difference. It almost never works. It is difficult to find things to talk about, to use similar reference points, and to operate at the same speed of life. Another problem is that both sides usually don't want the same things at the same time.”

James Brown (1933–2006) American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist

Brown, J. & Eliot, M. (2005). I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul , pp. 247-248. New American Library: New York. ISBN 0-45121-393-9

Life, Age, Problem, Time

“During the war years, it was my privilege to associate on a number of occasions with prominent personalities, such as Senator Harry S Truman, for whom my battalion staged an artillery demonstration when he visited Fort Bragg in 1941. When I invited him to fire, he did so with confidence. Shaking my hand as he departed, he said that as an old artilleryman he recognized that the fire mission was uncomplicated and that, even so, he suspected the crews had helped him hit the target. "I enjoyed it anyway," he said. When I was in Vietnam, a then former President Truman wrote me a letter of encouragement.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 20.

War, Confidence, Help, Personality

“Had India been completely converted to Muhammadanism during the thousand years of Muslim conquest and rule, its people would have taken pride in the victories and achievements of Islam and even organised panIslamic movements and Islamic revolutions. Conversely, had India possessed the determination of countries like France and Spain to repulse the Muslims for good, its people would have forgotten about Islam and its rule.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992)

People, Victory, Country

“No country offered more lucrative conditions than China: low taxes and tariffs, corruptible officials and, most of all, a plentiful low-wage workforce that, for many years, would be unwilling to risk demanding decent salaries or the most basic workplace protections for fear of the most violent reprisals.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

Fear, Country

“Eight-year-olds can switch into acquisition mode pretty quickly.”

John Scalzi book Zoe's Tale

Source: Zoe's Tale (2008), Chapter 4 (p. 53)

“Some of the bravest people in Australia are the men and women, mostly volunteers, who take on one of the deadliest enemies on this planet — bushfires. Even the word spells fear. It's only October, early for bushfires, and yet already firefighters have risked their lives in several states. And that's why I regard arsonists among the lowest of the low. Human rejects, cowards who deliberately light fires, that tear apart this tenderbox country, and put lives at risk. I want you to meet one of these serious criminals, because that's what they are. His name is Alex Gordon Noble. He lit at least ten fires, probably more, in country New South Wales over the past two months. Why did he do it? Because he was bored. And to make it even worse, he is a traitor, he was a volunteer firefighter, what firemen call the ultimate betrayal. Light a fire, sound the alarm, be a hero, helping to put it out. According to police, the 21-year-old crane driver called triple-0 seventeen times. One of his fires closed the Pacific Highway, and tied the helicopters, police and firemen for hours. He has pleaded guilty in court after turning himself into a Tronoto police station. But don't be impressed — he only did it after police visited him to question him about a fire he denied lighting. Alex Gordon Noble has been granted bail. He should not be out, he is a menace to society. I believe that fire bugs should have heavy jail sentences. They are sick, but give them treatment inside prison. This country is too vulnerable at this time of year for leniency. Ask any firefighter.”

Derryn Hinch (1944) New Zealand–Australian media personality

Today Tonight, 4 October 2013.

Women, Men, People, Fear

“Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 534

Disease

“I used to receive a hundred calls a year from people who wanted me to get into the Green Room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, because that's where the Air Force stored all the material gathered on UFOs. I once asked Curtis LeMay if I could get in that room, and he just gave me holy hell. He said, "Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again." Now, with the millions of planets that we know are up there, it's hard for me to believe that ours is the only goddam one that has things that can think walking around on it. So when people tell me they've seen UFOs, I don't say they haven't. In fifteen thousand hours of flying, I've never seen one, but I've talked to pilots who have. I talked to an airline crew that swore up and down that an object came alongside of them one night, and before they could do anything it vanished. We lost a military pilot who went up to intercept strange lights and never came back. His airplane disappeared, too. I won't argue for or against.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

As quoted in The New Yorker (25 April 1988), p. 70

People, Hell, Thinking, Light

“I have always paid great attention to natural forms, such as bones, shells, and pebbles, etc. Sometimes for several years running I have been to the same part of the seashore – but each year a new shape of pebble has caught my eye, which the year before, though it was there in hundreds, I never saw… Pebbles show Nature's way of working stone. Some of the pebbles I pick up have holes right through them... A piece of stone can have [for the sculptor] a hole through it and not be weakened – if the hole is of a studied size, shape and direction. On the principle of the arch, it can remain just as strong.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, The sculptor speaks' (1937), pp. 250-251

Way, Nature, Study, Strong

“Year by year, month by month, the plight of our fragmentary and precarious civilization becomes more serious. Fascism abroad grows more bold and ruthless in its foreign ventures, more tyrannical toward its own citizens, more barbarian in its contempt for the life of the mind. Even in our own country we have reason to fear a tendency toward militarization and the curtailment of civil liberty. Moreover, while the decades pass, no resolute step is taken to alleviate the injustice of our social order. Our outworn economic system dooms millions to frustration.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Preface (p. 3)
Star Maker (1937)

Life, Fear, Country

“Unlike the unfortunate practice or custom in Washington and in much of the country, the court is a model of civility. It's a wonderful place. Though there have been many contentious issues to come before the court during these initial years of my tenure, I have yet to hear the first unkind words exchanged among my colleagues. And quite frankly, I think that such civility is the sine qua non of conducting the affairs of the court and the business of the country.”

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

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

Business, Thinking, Country

“Hatred of the Jews has changed form but it still remains. If not racial superiority, then religious superiority is the order of the day. The world's indifference in light of this hatred has also remained. The world has very quickly become accustomed to hearing declarations only 65 years after the Holocaust, declarations of intent to annihilate millions of Jews – and the world continues to act in the same manner. The hesitancy of enlightened countries to act against extreme regimes which threaten us and threaten world peace – this too has not changed. The only thing that has truly changed is our ability and our determination to act to defend ourselves and prevent another Holocaust. This truth is a source of heavy and constant responsibility – to ensure by any means necessary the future and security of the State of Israel against those who seek our destruction. This is the last will and testament of the six million, our brothers and sisters who perished in the Holocaust and it is our duty – and we will carry it out.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Speech at the opening of the permanent exhibition in Block 27 at Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 2013 http://www.netanyahu.org.il/en/news/538-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-s-speech-at-the-opening-of-the-permanent-exhibition-in-block-27-at-auschwitz-birkenau. 2010s, 2013

Truth, World, Peace, Sister

“Samuel Hartlib, a celebrated writer on husbandry in the last century, a gentleman much beloved and esteemed by Milton, in his preface to the work, commonly called his Legacy, laments greatly that no public director of husbandry was established in England By Authority; and that we had not adopted the Flemish custom of letting farms upon improvement… Cromwell, in consequence of this admirable performance, allowed Hartlib a pension of 100l. a year; and Hartlib afterwards, the better to fulfil the intentions of his benefactor, procured Dr. Beati's excellent annotations on the Legacy, with other valuable pieces from bis numerous correspondents.”

Walter Harte (1709–1774) poet and historian

Source: Essays on Husbandry (1764), p. 3.

“You [ Katherine Sophie Dreier; director of the Art Center in New York City; she co-founded with Duchamp and Man Ray the 'Sociéte Anonyme' in Manhattan in 1920] must understand:
My attitude toward the book is based upon my attitude towards 'Art' since 1918 – so I am furious myself that you will accept only partly that attitude [in a new publication by Katherine Dreier]. It can be no more question of my life as an artist’s life: [because] I gave it up ten years ago; this period is long enough to prove that my intention to remain outside of any art manifestation is permanent... The third question is that I want to be alone as much as possible.
This abrupt way to speak of my 'hardening process' is not meant to be mean, but is the result of '42 years of age'....10 000 apologies for this rough letter and affectueusement
Dee”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from a letter to Katherine Sophie Dreier, Paris 11 September 1929; as cted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 158
Duchamp's quote is referring to a new publication of the 'Duchamp Book' and to his famous so-called Art-Silence.
1921 - 1950

Life, Books, Age, Art

“My first stop in Rome was a call on an old friend, Foreign Minister Susanna Agnelli. Universally known as Sunni, she had been appointed to the post by the government of Lamberto Dini in part because of her personal stature. A former mayor and senator, the sister of Italy's most famous businessman, Gianni Agnelli, and the author of a best-selling memoir with the delightful title We always wore sailor suits, Sunni Agnelli combined aristocratic bearing with casual informality. Her giant white mane of hair and her imposing height added to her presence. She approached her job as she had probably approached everything else: with a relaxed confidence in her own intuition. She conveyed an impression of great amusement at the passing parade of overly intense men formulating policy. We had known each other for years, but only socially.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 136

Men, Confidence, Sister, Universe

“Free Trade is a great pacificator. We have had many quarrels, many causes of quarrels, during the last fifty years, but we have not had a single war with any first-class Power. Free Trade is slowly but surely cleaving a path through the dense and dark thicket of armaments to the sunny land of brotherhood amongst nations.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Manchester (21 April 1908), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 43.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

War

“There’d been studies over the years supporting the proposition that groups composed exclusively of women usually made intelligent decisions, that exclusively male groups did a bit less well, and that mixed groups did most poorly of all, by a substantial margin. It appeared that, when women were present, testosterone got the upper hand and men took greater risks than they might otherwise. Correspondingly, women in the mixed group tended to revert to roles, becoming more passive, and going along with whatever misjudgment the males might perpetrate.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 24 (p. 335)

Women, Men, Intelligence, Support

“I myself have no doubt in the past tended to appear to many to be more concerned with the creation of wealth than with its distribution. I must confess that there is a degree of truth in this, but to the extent that it is true, it has been because of my conviction that the rapid growth of the economy, and the pressure that comes with it on demand for labour, both produces a rapid and substantial redistribution of income directly of itself and also makes it possible to assist more generously those who are not, from misfortune temporary or permanent, sharing in the general advance. The history of our last fifteen years or so demonstrates this conclusively.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 26, 1969, page 104.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Truth, History, Appearance, Past

“March 20th marks the 15th anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq which plunged the country into a brutal occupation leading to sectarian civil war, terrorism and a death toll of hundreds of thousands. Yet in Britain the anniversary marks another year of impunity for the ministers who authorised the invasion. This lack of accountability for crimes committed abroad is a British disease with a very long history.”

Mark Curtis (British author) British journalist and historian

For the British political elite, the invasion of Iraq never happened http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/british-political-elite-invasion-iraq-never-happened-435103022 (19 March 2018), Middle East Eye.

Death, War, Disease, History

“Your pa had seven years at sea, mostly in foreign parts.
You’ve heard him talk. He’s got a way about him, a way with words. He can make the temple bells tinkle for you, and you can just hear them big old elephants shuff-shuffling along, the priests callin’ folks to prayer and the like.
Your pa learned a sight of things most folks never even hear of. I’ve seen scholars back off an’ look at your pa, amazed.
You take these Injuns, now. You look at the way they live and you’ll say they don’t amount to much, but what are they thinkin’? What do they know? What memories do they have? They want different things, boy, and they consider different things important. Many a thing we’d give anything to know, they just take for granted.
Some of these Injuns, maybe all of them, they’re in tune with something. I don’t know what. But some of them have lost touch with it, and others are losin’ touch. Goin’ the white folks’ way might seem the likely thing to do, but maybe they lose as much as they gain.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Lonesome Gods (1983), Ch. 11

Way, Boy, Learning, Memory

“The churches became a major target for Communist-Socialist infiltration many years ago. These people were successful in capturing many key positions in a number of important religious organizations. Some religious leaders openly advocate and defend Communist principles. They are apologists for the Soviet Union and even advocate capitulation under threat of atomic war.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

War, People, Success

“The Lord himself hath led him with his own Almighty hand.
He hath caused him to spring from a trunk without root, and planted him again in a distant and more delightful spot, and caused him to rise up to a considerable tree.
Inspired him with an inclination for science so passionate as to become the most gratifying of all others.
Given him all the means he could either wish for, or enjoy, of attaining the objects he had in view.
Favoured him in such a manner that even the not obtaining of what he wished for, ultimately turned out to his great advantage.
Caused him to be received into favour by the "Mœcenates Scientiarum"; by the greatest men in the kingdom; and by the Royal Family.
Given him an advantageous and honourable post, the very one that, above all others in the world, he had wished for.
Given him the wife for whom he most wished, and who managed his household affairs whilst he was engaged in laborious studies.
Given him children who have turned out good and virtuous.
Given him a son for his successor in office.
Given him the largest collection of plants that ever existed in the world, and his greatest delight.
Given him lands and other property, so that though there has been nothing superfluous, nothing has he wanted.
Honoured him with the titles of Archiater, Knight, Nobleman, and with Distinction in the learned world.
Protected him from fire.
Preserved his life above 60 years.
Permitted him to visit his secret council-chambers.
Permitted him to see more of the creation than any mortal before him. Given him greater knowledge of natural history than any one had hitherto acquired.
The Lord hath been with him whithersoever he hath walked, and hath cut off all his enemies from before him, and hath made him a name, like the name of the great men that are in the earth. 1 Chron. xvn. 8.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

As quoted in The Annual Review and History of Literature http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=hx0ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Lord%20himself%20hath%20led%20him%20with%20his%20own%20Almighty%20hand%22&f=false (1806), by Arthur Aikin, T. N. Longman and O. Rees, p. 472. Also found in Life of Linnaeus https://archive.org/stream/lifeoflinnaeus00brigiala#page/176/mode/2up/search/endeavoured (1858), by J. Van Voorst & Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, London. pp. 176-177. Linnaeus Diary

Life, Men, Children, Secret

“An earlier version of this volume was originally contracted for and produced as a monograph by Warner Modular Communications, Inc., a subsidiary member of the Warner communications and entertainment conglomerate. The publishing house had run a relatively independent operation up to the time of the controversy over this document. The editors and publisher were enthusiastic about the monograph and committed themselves to put it out quickly and to promote it with vigor. But just prior to publication, in the fall of 1973, officials of the parent company got wind of it, looked at it, and were horrified by its “unpatriotic” contents. Mr. William Sarnoff, a high officer of the parent company, for example, was deeply pained by our statement on page 7 of the original that the “leadership in the United States, as a result of its dominant position and wide-ranging counter-revolutionary efforts, has been the single most important instigator, administrator, and moral and material sustainer of serious bloodbaths in the years that followed World War II.” So pained were Sarnoff and his business associates, in fact, that they were quite prepared to violate a contractual obligation in order to assure that no such material would see the light of day. […] they decided to close down the publishing house […]. The history of the suppressed monograph is an authentic instance of private censorship of ideas per se. The uniqueness of the episode lies only in the manner of suppression. Usually, private intervention in the book market is anticipatory, with regrets that the manuscript is unacceptable, perhaps “unmarketable.””

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Sometimes the latter contention is only an excuse for unwillingness to market, although it may sometimes reflect an accurate assessment of how the media and journals will receive books that are strongly critical of the established order.
Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, pp. xiv-xvii.

Pain, War, Books, World

“I've been on my own for a number of years now, but I've also found myself very alone. My family looks at me differently now, and that's the hardest thing to deal with, because you want to go home and be the person that you used to be. Obviously, I'm 28 years old and I can't go home and just be my mum's little baby.”

Mark Wahlberg (1971) American actor, television producer and rap musician

Chris Heath, The making of Mark, The Observer, Sunday 27 February 2000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2000/feb/27/1

Family, Home, Baby, Personality

“When we talk of a resurgent Asia, people think of the great changes that have come about in Shanghai. I share this aspiration to transform Mumbai in the next five years in such a manner that people would forget about Shanghai and Mumbai will become a talking point.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

Comparing Mumbai and Shanghai, as quoted in "Mumbai struggles to catch up with Shanghai" http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GC16Df02.html, Asia Times (16 March 2005) 2001-2005

People, Thinking, Change, Forgetting

“The ever-changing display of plant forms, which I have followed for so many years, awakens increasingly within me the notion: The plant forms which surround us were not all created at some given point in time and then locked into the given form, they have been given… a felicitous mobility and plasticity that allows them to grow and adapt themselves to many different conditions in many different places. …How they can be brought together under one concept has slowly become clear to me and that this conception can be enlivened at a higher level [of consciousness]: thus I began to recognize, in the sense perceptible form, a supersensible archetype. Whoever has felt what a rich, saturated thought… has to say, will admit what a passionate movement comes to life in the spirit when we are enthused, and we anticipate the totality of what will evolve step by step…”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Goethe's Story of My Botanical Studies (1831) attributed by Frank Teichmann (tr. Jon McAlice) "The Emergence of the Idea of Evolution in the Time of Goethe" http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAIdeaEvolTeich.pdf Attributed

Life, Sense, Passion, Change

“Years ago, I had an experience with a playground bully. (…) This bully was after me and he was gonna do this, he was gonna do that, all the other kids were terrified of this bully. And he came to me one night, just before immediately the school was over, and he said to me "Icke, I'm beating you up tonight, you're gonna meet me here." And he expected me to run. And I said "alright", and I took him on. I never threw a punch! He was trying to hit me and trying to hit me, and I was just, you know, a bit like Neo in The Matrix, only at normal speed. Cause he was all front! He was all front! His power in that playground perception of his power. Look him in the eye, "come on then, let's have ya", gone. Finished! Over! And that night, his power of that playground disappeared, cause people realized he was a fraud as the word got out.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source: Icke's 2016 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkcqBQyCVD8 on the Richie Allen Show (starts at 01:39:49)

People, School, Fraud, Speed

“I fear that in a few years there may be a kind of 'panic', in this form: 'since Millet' we have sunk very low — the word decadence, now whispered or pronounced in veiled terms (see Herkomer), will then sound like an alarm bell. Many, like I myself, now keep quiet, because they already have the reputation of being awkward customers,5 and talking about it doesn't help. That — namely, talking — isn't what one needs to do — one must work, though with sorrow in the heart. Those who later cry out the loudest about decadence will themselves belong to it the most. I repeat: by this shall ye know them, [from: Matt. 7:16. ] by their work, and it won't be the most eloquent who say the truest things. See Millet himself, see Herkomer, they're certainly not orators, and speak almost reluctantly.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In his letter to Theo, from The Hague, 5 Nov. 1882 - original manuscript of letter no. 280 - at Van Gogh Museum, location Amsterdam - inv. b263 a-b V/1962, http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let280/letter.html 1880s, 1882

Fear, Help, Heart, Cry

Quotes about year page 77

Quotes about year
page 77