Quotes about year
page 84

“I was vegetarian for about 10 years, decided within that 10 years to just go full vegan … It's been 15 years of no flesh. What inspired me was as I learned more about the abuses to animals and the way meat was brought to the table and everything that these creatures were going through. It was just another motivation and reason for me to live the lifestyle that felt true to my soul and my spirit. … You don't realize what food tastes like until you stop eating meat. It's like something happens to your palate, it just gets cleansed and the simplest thing—a tomato—tastes like the most vibrant, amazing thing on the planet. My energy is fantastic.”

Kimberly Elise (1967) actress

“Kimberly Elise's Vegan Testimonial,” video interview with PETA (21 August 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-ZUAmo7dLg.

Food, Way, Soul, Motivation

“If you had told me 28 years ago that the largest organization in the world touching the lives of gays and lesbians would be a church, I would not have believed you. So many members of the lesbian and gay community feel they have had violence done to them by religious groups that it is very difficult to evangelize any members of our community. But we do evangelize.”

Troy Perry (1940) American activist and clergy

Quoted in the Christian Century in 1996.

World, Feeling, Communication

“Robert Hughes (Labour MP for Aberdeen North): With regard to the Prime Minister's desire for a classless society and social mobility, will he explain why there are no women in his Cabinet, or is the only woman in his Cabinet the back-seat driver?
John Major: In recent years, in all aspects of life in this country, women have been taking a higher profile: in the law, in commerce, in the civil service, in industry and in politics - and that will continue. As those women would wish it to be, they will reach the top on merit - oh yes, and if the hon. Gentleman is patient, he will find women aplenty in top positions in my Government. Indeed, if he had waited awhile, perhaps even to the end of today, he would not have asked that question.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Hansard, 6ser, vol 181 col 1015 (29 November 1990) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199091/cmhansrd/1990-11-29/Orals-2.html The phrase 'Oh yes' was a remark said several times at the first Prime Minister's Question Time in which Major answered questions. 1990s, 1990

Life, Women, Law, Question

“I had an upright — it took me years and years to get enough bread to get it… I'm from Florida, so one morning I woke up, go in the corner and the bass is in a hundred pieces, cause the humidity is so bad, I mean, the upright just blew up. I said forget it, man, I can't afford this any more. So I went out, got a knife and took all the frets out of my Fender. That was it.”

Jaco Pastorius (1951–1987) Musician, producer, educator

Quoted in Michele Norris, "Jaco Pastorius: 20 Years Later," http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14578299&sc=nl&cc=mn-20071007 NPR: All Things Considered (2007-09-21)

Forgetting

“God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith. … and afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. … From that day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

"In God We Trust" (1985)

God, Faith, Hell, Swine

“Seven years Jacob served as a shepherd
for Laban, lovely Rachel's father,
laboring not for the father but
anxious only for her as his reward.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Sete anos de pastor Jacob servia
Labão, pai de Raquel, serrana bela;
Mas não servia o pai, servia a ela,
E a ela só por prémio pretendia.
tr. Landeg White
Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Sete anos de pastor Jacob servia

Love

“We seek the freedom to compete without the undue burden of high taxes and bureaucratic regulations, which make us less competitive. We seek opportunities to build better communities, better businesses, and better lives for ourselves, our children, and our children's children. And most of all, we cherish both the freedom and opportunity to decide our future. And today, we celebrate that freedom and opportunity. What I envision for Maryland is not just an economic and fiscal recovery, but a rebirth of our spirit, and a renewed commitment to our common purpose. … One hundred years from now, I want Marylanders to say, "This was when Maryland's renaissance began."”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

… Let us appeal to the better angels of our nature so that we can achieve the great and shining promise of Maryland. " Inaugural Address http://governor.maryland.gov/2015/01/21/inaugural-address-governor-larry-hogan/" (21 January 2015)

Children, Angels, Communication, Business

“Jim Dilley, the father of the Laguna Greenbelt, used to take roses to the secretaries of the county Board of Supervisors when he'd go to do battle over open space with the secretaries' bosses. Jim Dilley was a nice man, kind and gentle. He smoked a pipe. His eyes twinkled as though he knew a joke the rest of us didn't. But he's dead, and the Board is still alive, and that is a joke on us of monstrous proportions. I'm not nice, kind or gentle. The Board keeps rubber-stamping building permits, and this is my goodbye to these shores. After 36 years, my wife and I will soon leave Orange County for Costa Rica, to join the Peace Corps, and that, too, is a joke. We traipse off to bring peace to Costa Rica, which hasn't had an army since 1948.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "OC Forum: O.C. Can You Say?" https://books.google.com/books?id=FhEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8 in Orange Coast Magazine (July 1991), p. 8 Other Topics

Peace, Dead

“Four decades after the mullahs created the Khomeinist republic their revolution has not produced a single poet worth the name. Khomeini and Khamenei, both amateur poets, have produced nothing but frankly embarrassing imitations of classical ghazal without its charm. The last remaining great poets of the pre-revolution era are all in exile, among them Hushang Ebtehaj, Manuchehr Yektai, Yadollah Roya’i, Esmail Khoi, Muhammad Jalali, and Hadi Khorsandi. Inside Iran, some promising younger poets such as Sa’id Sultanpour, Heydar Mehregan, and, more recently, Hashem Shaabani were executed by the regime but gained posthumous popularity greater than any officially endorsed poet. At the same time, almost all of Iran’s poets, from the 9th century to this day, are either censored or, in rare cases, totally banned by the mullahs. Most poets of the past 100 years are on various blacklists established by the oxymoronically named Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture. And, yet, Khamenei calls on the government to prepare a plan, and allocate resources, to increase the production of poetry as if it were the same as centrifuges churning out enriched uranium.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

When the Ayatollah Dictates Poetry http://www.aawsat.net/2015/07/article55344336/when-the-ayatollah-dictates-poetry, Ashraq Al-Awsat (Jul 11, 2015).

Time, Past

“We spend the vast bulk of money in the health, welfare, and education systems in the later years of life. Yet it is in the earliest years that life chances are moulded and set.”

Bob Rae (1948) Canadian politician

Source: The Three Questions - Prosperity and the Public Good (1998), Chapter Six, The Second Question: Health, Education, and the Democratic Economy, p. 124

Life, Money, Health, Education

“Some years ago, the planning group at Shell surveyed 30 companies that had been in business for more than 75 years. What impressed us most was their ability to live in harmony with the business environment, to switch from a survival mode when times were turbulent to a self-development mode when the pace of change was slow. And this pattern rang a familiar bell because Shell’s history is similarly replete with switches from expansion to self-preservation and back again to growth.”

Arie de Geus (1930) Dutch businessman

Arie P. de Geus, " Planning as learning https://hbr.org/1988/03/planning-as-learning/ar/1." Harvard Business Review, March/April 1988: 70-74.

History, Business, Change, Time

“Heroes, while it was cancelled last year for low ratings on the network, ironically was the number one downloaded show in the world that year above shows like Lost and 24 and that kind of thing. For a show like Heroes that had all of these illegal downloading, pirating, I wore that as a badge of honour. That's exactly the kind of fan that you want! The kind that actively goes out and find your show.”

Tim Kring

Series Addicts, 2011 documentary by Oliver Joyard.

World

“The feminazis gathered in Washington on Sunday, about a half-million of them, it says here, and it was the first big pro-abortion rally in 12 years.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

2004: Limbaugh Referred To Abortion-Rights Activists As "Feminazis." On the April 26, 2004, broadcast of his radio show, Limbaugh said of a rally in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 2004 "Feminazi": The History Of Limbaugh's Trademark Slur Against Women https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2012/03/12/feminazi-the-history-of-limbaughs-trademark-slu/186336

“When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans. Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Deficits Make You Poorer http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul238.html (March 15, 2005). 2000s, 2001-2005

Money, Future

““Aren’t you even curious?” he asked. “A million worlds out there with more wonders than I could tell you in a million years, and you don’t even want to ask a question?””

Leigh Brackett (1915–1978) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: The Ginger Star (1974), Chapter 15 (p. 128)

World, Question

“I know of people living in this country right now who think that white people came from Adam and Eve, and that there are all these other races that are separate creations and that aren't related at all. And I know from prior research that many different religious groups have believed this sort of thing for thousands of years, but the idea that any seemingly educated official would believe that during my lifetime is rather disturbing.”

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

Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

People, Education, Idea, Thinking

“Besides, [Saint] George pointed out, dragons burn towns and demand princesses as ransom.
The dragons, referring to the Siege of Jerusalem, the Sack of Constantinople and a thousand years of dynastic marriages, said, Look who's talking.”

Tom Holt book Paint Your Dragon

c. 4
Paint Your Dragon (1996)

Marriage, Princess

“You know, friends, so many people have wished me congratulations on a 67-year career in baseball, and they've wished me a wonderful retirement with my family, and now, all I can do is tell you what I wish for you. May God give you, for every storm, a rainbow; for every tear, a smile; for every care, a promise; and a blessing in each trial. For every problem life seems, a faithful friend to share; for every sigh, a sweet song, and an answer for each prayer. You and I have been friends for a long time, but I know, in my heart, I've always needed you more than you've ever needed me, and I'll miss our time together more than I can say. But, you know what, there will be a new day, and, eventually, a new year, and when the upcoming winter gives way to spring, ooh, rest assured, once again, it will be time for Dodger baseball. So, this is Vin Scully wishing you a pleasant good afternoon, wherever you may be.”

Vin Scully (1927) American sports broadcaster

Scully's final sign-off as a Dodger broadcaster.

Life, God, People, Family

“Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 1.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Mountain, Spring, Water, Winter

“The last thirty years [1925 to 1955] have seen an enormous improvement in the position of geometry as a branch of mathematics, or, rather, have seen the re-integration of geometry into the main fabric of mathematics. Indeed, one can go further and say that with the restoration of geometry to its rightful place in the mathematical scheme the process of fragmentation which had been doing so much harm to mathematics has been reversed, and we may look forward to the day in which there are no longer analysts, algebraists, geometers and so on, but simply mathematicians. Mathematical research has two aspects, motivation and technique, and when the latter gains control the result is apt to be excessive specialisation. The revolution of geometrical thought, and the reinstatement of geometry as one of the major mathematical disciplines, have helped to bring about a unification of mathematics which we may justly regard as one of the major contributions of the last quarter century to the subject.”

W. V. D. Hodge (1903–1975) British mathematician

W. V. D. Hodge, Changing Views of Geometry. Presidential Address to the Mathematical Association, 14th April, 1955, The Mathematical Gazette 39 (329) (1955), 177-183.

Mathematics, Motivation, Help

“Next, we must help parents protect their children from the gravest health threat that they face -- an epidemic of teen smoking, spread by multimillion dollar marketing campaigns. I challenge Congress -- let's pass bipartisan, comprehensive legislation that will improve public health, protect our tobacco farmers and change the way tobacco companies do business forever. Let's do what it takes to bring teen smoking down. Let's raise the price of cigarettes by up to $1.50 a pack over the next 10 years with penalties on the tobacco industry if it keeps marketing to our children.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

1998 State of the Union Address (January 27, 1998)
1990s

Children, Health, Penalty, Way

“The invention of the printing press probably marks the beginning of the decline of civilization. Once you have it, science follows close behind. Next thing you know the idiots have better weaponry. Then atom bombs. Meantime, social organization becomes increasingly dependent on technology, which becomes increasingly vulnerable to error or sabotage. If we can judge by our own experience, it looks as if you get the printing press, then about a thousand years. After that it’s back to the trees.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 27 (p. 243)

Error, Tree, Science, Dependency

“The Bible says God gave herb for the service of man and bread to strengthen man's heart. Did you know bread used to strengthen your heart? But keep in mind, you know, "the love of money, the root of all evil." They learned years ago, if they take out the vitamin E, the lecithin, and the omega-3 fatty acids (they take them out of the wheat; and make the bread with white flour), the bread lasts for months. But the people started dying of heart attacks and strokes and circulation problems. See, it's a simple formula: the whiter the bread, the quicker you're dead. Now it's not the white bread that's killing you. It's what's not in the bread that's killing you. See, God made bread to strengthen your heart. Remember the Bible talked about "our daily bread." But people who are making bread to sell, got tired of having half of it go bad on the shelf where they couldn't sell it. So they had to figure out a way to make their bread last longer to increase profits.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Love, Money, God, People

“There is widespread belief throughout the free world that, but for American nuclear superiority, Europe would already have been reduced to satellite status and the Iron Curtain would have reached the Atlantic and the Channel. Unless a trustworthy and universal agreement upon disarmament, conventional and nuclear alike, can be reached and an effective system of inspection is established and is actually working, there is only one sane policy for the free world in the next few years. That is what we call defence through deterrents. This we have already adopted and proclaimed. These deterrents may at any time become the parents of disarmament, provided that they deter. To make our contribution to the deterrent we must ourselves possess the most up-to-date nuclear weapons, and the means of delivering them.”

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

Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1955-03-01/debates/ae81a20b-68e7-42d0-8cbb-d9589f53fc0d/Defence#1896 in the House of Commons (1 March 1955) Post-war years (1945–1955)

World, Parent, Universe, Time

“A wise economy- without avaricious meanness, or dirty rapacity will in a few years render you decently independent.”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 13: 29 Nov 1778, to Mr S___ in Madras) [this Mr S___ was Julius Soubise, former London playboy, who slowly made a new life for himself in India after fleeing England in 1777 due to a rape accusation]

“The withdrawal symptoms from opiates are not severe and never dangerous, though of course they do exist. Insofar as they are genuinely feared, there has been a campaign of exaggeration about them for nearly 200 years.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

C-SPAN: Romancing Opiates https://www.c-span.org/video/?191384-1/romancing-opiates (May 30, 2006)

Fear

“In 1918 Hitler was in a military hospital blinded from a British poison gas attack. He was just a corporal, he had no family, a limited education, no friends, no connections, no political status, nothing. He decides that he will lead Germany in redressing the grievous wrongs that had been done to it after the First World War and straightening out some of the mistakes that were being made in German society. And fifteen years later he is Chancellor of Germany and he did what he said he was going to do. A wounded war veteran with nobody to help him, and he pulled it up just through his own willpower. That is an amazing story.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

The Fame of a Dead Man's deeds, 2001
2000s, 2001
Source: [Griffin, 2001, 68]

War, World, Education, Family

“The hard part is discriminating between factual reporting and journalistic fiction. Last year at the National Press Club I said out loud and in public [C-SPAN was there] that the difference between me and a lot of reporters is that I do good fiction. Some were polite enough to chuckle.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

"Clancy Speaks Again, Briefly" (12 February 2000) http://www.clancyfaq.com/Clancy%20Speaks%20Again%20Briefly.htm 2000s

Parting

“Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Pt. I, ch. 1
Confession (1882)

Imagination, Time, Childhood

“[M]any quite frankly fought to protect slavery, which laid on the survivors of the rebel armies an incubus to which few were willing to admit in alter years. More than just one out of three Confederates whose campfires dotted South Mountain in the June dusk owned slaves… [T]hey brought slaves with them on campaign to tend to the menial jobs… The slave system had invested them with an instinctive impulse for domestic dictatorship; they could brawl, stab, and shoot, in and out of race tracks and saloons, and still assume that they were God's natural aristocrats.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

Source: 2010s, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (2013), p. 15

God, Mountain, Nature

“It used to be said, that in places like this, nature eventually failed to support man, the truth is exactly the reverse, here man failed to support nature. Ten thousand years ago man regarded the natural world as divine, but as he domesticated animals and plants so nature lost some of its mystery and appeared to be little more than a larder that could be raided with impunity.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

52 min 20 sec
The First Eden (1987)

Truth, World, Support, Nature

“That the people of America should be severed from Great Britain, even your fellow Congressionalists from the North would not be hardy enough yet to avow; but that this will certainly follow from the measures you have been induced by them to adopt, is obvious to every man who is permitted yet to think for himself. … see ye not that after some few years of civil broils all the fair settlements in the middle and southern colonies will be seized on by our more enterprising and restless fellow-colonists of the North? At first and for a while perhaps they may be contented to be the Dutch of America, i. e. to be our carriers and fishmongers, for which no doubt, as their sensible historian [Edmund Burke] has observed, they seem to be destined by their situation, soil, and climate: but had so sagacious an observer foreseen that a time might come when all North America should be independent, he would, it is probable, have added to his other remark, that those his Northern brethren would then become also the Goths and Vandals of America.”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

[from a letter to the deputies in Congress representing the Southern Provinces, 1774 or 1775, appended to "Reminiscences"]
"Reminiscences of an American Loyalist" (first published serially in "Notes and Queries", 1874-)

People, Thinking, Time

“Wow, look at all the places you can park,” he said, as if for all these years he had been cruising endlessly, unable to terminate a journey. For about a year the most dangerous place to drive in Des Moines was the parking lot of Merle Hay Mall because of all the cars speeding at joyous random angles across its boundless blacktop without reflecting that other happy souls might be doing likewise.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 182

Happiness, Cars, Soul, Speed

“Or because of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country, it is occupied, around one hundred thousand people killed, its water sources, agriculture and industry destroyed, close to 180,000 foreign troops put on the ground, sanctity of private homes of citizens broken, and the country pushed back perhaps fifty years. At what price?… On the pretext of the existence of WMDs, this great tragedy came to engulf both the peoples of the occupied and the occupying country. Later it was revealed that no WMDs existed to begin with.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Paragraphs 3-4
2006, Letter to George W. Bush, 2006

People, Home, Water, Country

“We have to give the American people a referendum. We will win this referendum if we have it now. If we wait and delay five or six years we will lose this referendum. The public is way ahead of the political class. They get that things are broken. They get that we're spending their kids' inheritance and mortgaging their future. They are ready to be talked to like adults and not like children. So when they see the demagoguery that is directed toward people or ideas that are sincere and are real, it doesn't work anymore. The Democrats are going to come at us with their old playbook. They're going to tap into the emotions of fear, anger, and envy. But that's not aspirational. That's not hope and change, and I don't think it's going to work anymore.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

Source: Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (2010), p. 15

Children, People, Fear, Hope

“Twenty is in hot haste to become a year older and cast its first vote, which Forty will know was cast like the legendary pearls.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 58

“I am the entertainer, I've come to do my show
You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio
It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life
It was a beautiful song but it ran too long
If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit
So they cut it down to 3:05.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

The Entertainer.
Song lyrics, Streetlife Serenade (1974)

Life, Beauty

“Given the results of the government's War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, we can assume that a War on Abortion will lead within five years to men having abortions.”

Harry Browne (1933–2006) American politician and writer

" The Libertarian stand on abortion http://www.harrybrowne.org/articles/Abortion.htm. 2000s

Men, War

“One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect [upon me] that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, "Autobiographical Notes" (1949)

Problem

“When… in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 1, Chapter 7 (page 20)
Notes from Underground (1864)

“The search for the curvature K indicates that, after making all known corrections, the number N seems to increase faster with d than the third power, which would be expected in a Euclidean space, hence K is positive. The space implied thereby is therefore bounded, of finite total volume, and of a present "radius of curvature" R = \frac{1}{K^\frac{1}{2}} which is found to be of the order of 500 million light years. Other observations, on the "red shift" of light from these distant objects, enable us to conclude with perhaps more assurance that this radius is increasing…”

Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist

Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)

Search, Light, Distant

“For a number of years there has been a righteous discontent, a burning zeal to go forward in His name among the Baptist women of our churches and it will be the dynamic force in the religious campaign at the opening of the 20th century.”

Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961) American activist

How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping September 1900 National Baptist Convention.
Speech given at 1900 National Baptist Convention, Richmond Virginia.

Women

“Time seems cold, each day we grey away. Believe the lines that we’ve been told, 'Lose our way lose yesterday’, they say, but who are they? Who are they anyway? They didn’t hear us play at eight years old.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"Eight Years Old"
Out Seeing The Fields (2007)

Way, Time

“When the women of the country come in and sit with you, though there may be but very few in the next few years, I pledge you that you will get ability, you will get integrity of purpose, you will get exalted patriotism, and you will get unstinted usefulness.”

Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930) American politician

Address to the Senate, November 21, 1922

Women, Country

“Dialogue in Hell:
probable resources. How are loans made? By the issue of bonds containing an obligation on the part of the government to pay a yearly interest proportionate to the capital which has been depleted. If the loan is at 5 percent, for instance, the state, at the end of twenty years, has paid a sum equal to the capital borrowed; at the end of forty years, a double amount; at the end of sixty years, a triple amount, and yet it always remains debtor for the total of the same capital. The modern states wished to put a necessary”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

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

Hell, Parting

“We now know that bin Laden's terrorists had been planning their outrages for years. The propagation of their mad, bad ideology – decency forbids calling it a religion – had been taking place before our eyes. We were just too blind to see it. In short, the world had never ceased to be dangerous. But the West had ceased to be vigilant. Surely that is the most important lesson of this tragedy, and we must learn it if our civilisation is to survive.”

Margaret Thatcher book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World

Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. xxv

World, Religion, Learning, Madness

“I prefer to live in South Africa because it's a wonderful country; because I've been there for 300 years.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

On The Washington Journal of C-SPAN https://www.c-span.org/video/?124979-1/the-trek-beginning (11 June 1999) 1990s, 1999

Country

“Lemurs are close to the ancestral stock from which all primates arose, and I am happy to think that one of my own ancestors, 50 million years ago, was a little tree-dwelling creature not so dissimilar to the lemurs of today. I love their leaping vitality, their inquisitive nature.”

Oliver Sacks (1933–2015) British neurologist and writer

My Periodic Table, New York Times, 24 July 2015

Love, Happiness, Nature, Thinking

“Over 17 years I have played hockey, learned to row, I've been a dog, got blown up… It satisfies the 5 year-old intellectual curiosity, you know? Where I can do anything I want for six months and then move on.”

Joshua Jackson (1978) Canadian actor

As quoted in Entertainment Weekly (September 2nd, 2005)

Dogs, Learning, Hockey

“Perhaps the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will attain the enduring status of the Social Security Act or the Taft-Hartley Act; perhaps not. But this Court’s two decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through the years. The somersaults of statutory interpretation they have performed (“penalty” means tax, “further [Medicaid] payments to the State” means only incremental Medicaid payments to the State, “established by the State” means not established by the State) will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence. And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, King v, Burwell, 576 U.S. ___ (2015) ; decided June 25, 2015.
2010s

Truth, Law, Penalty, Decision

“If somebody says, ‘Oh Evolution is not a religion. It’s a part of Science.’ Well, I’ve had a long time standing offer. For about ten years now, I’ve been offering ten thousand dollars to anybody with any scientific evidence for Evolution.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Age of the Earth

Religion, Science, Time, Parting

“This is the last programme in this natural history, and it's very different from all the others because it's been devoted to just one animal: ourselves. And that may have been a very misleading thing to have done. It may have given the impression that somehow man was the ultimate triumph of evolution, that all those thousands of millions of years of development had no purpose other than to put man on Earth. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever for such a belief. No reason to suppose that man's stay on Earth should be any longer than that of the dinosaurs. He may have learned how to control his environment, how to pass on information from one generation to another, but the very forces of evolution that brought him into existence here on these African plains are still at work elsewhere in the world, and if man were to disappear, for whatever reason, there is doubtless somewhere some small, unobtrusive creature that would seize the opportunity and, with a spurt of evolution, take man's place. But although denying a special place in the world may be becomingly modest, the fact remains that man has an unprecedented control over the world and everything in it. And so, whether he likes it or not, what happens next is very largely up to him.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
Life on Earth (1979)

World, History, Nature, Learning

“Let me remind you that science is not necessarily wisdom. To know, is not the sole nor even the highest office of the intellect; and it loses all its glory unless it act in furtherance of the great end of man's life. That end is, as both reason and revelation unite in telling us, to acquire the feelings and habits that will lead us to love and seek what is good in all its forms, and guide us by following its traces to the first Great Cause of all, where only we find it pure and unclouded.
If science be cultivated in congruity with this, it is the most precious possession we can have— the most divine endowment. But if it be perverted to minister to any wicked or ignoble purpose — if it even be permitted to take too absolute a hold of the mind, or overshadow that which should be paramount over all, the perception of right, the sense of Duty — if it does not increase in us the consciousness of an Almighty and All-beneficent presence, — it lowers instead of raising us in the great scale of existence.
This, however, it can never do but by our fault. All its tendencies are heavenward; every new fact which it reveals is a ray from the origin of light, which leads us to its source. If any think otherwise, their knowledge is imperfect, or their understanding warped, or darkened by their passions. The book of nature is, like that of revelation, written by God, and therefore cannot contradict it; both we are unable to read through all their extent, and therefore should neither wonder nor be alarmed if at times we miss the pages which reconcile any seeming inconsistence. In both, too, we may fail to interpret rightly that which is recorded; but be assured, if we search them in quest of truth alone, each will bear witness to the other, — and physical knowledge, instead of being hostile to religion, will be found its most powerful ally, its most useful servant. Many, I know, think otherwise; and because attempts have occasionally been made to draw from astronomy, from geology, from the modes of the growth and formation of animals and plants, arguments against the divine origin of the sacred Scripture, or even to substitute for the creative will of an intelligent first cause the blind and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, they would reject their study as fraught with danger. In this I must express my deep conviction that they do injury to that very cause which they think they are serving.
Time will not let me touch further on the cavils and errors in question; and besides they have been often fully answered. I will only say, that I am here surrounded by many, matchless in the sciences which are supposed so dangerous, and not less conspicuous for truth and piety. If they find no discord between faith and knowledge, why should you or any suppose it to exist? On the contrary, they cannot be well separated. We must know that God is, before we can confess Him; we must know that He is wise and powerful before we can trust in Him, — that He is good before we can love Him. All these attributes, the study of His works had made known before He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splendour, and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical knowledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point out to you a few examples.
What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than men. If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge of infinity, it brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twilight of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the most finished perfection, — that the most marvellous contrivances minister to their preservation and their enjoyment, — that as nothing is too vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man's Creator is also his Father, — things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his happiness : but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them. That it should. be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, — and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be the most abundant of all, — must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coalfields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till He had placed on earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their civilization and energy migbt be wasted or abused.
But I must conclude with this summary of all which I would wish to impress on your minds—* that the more we know His works the nearer we are to Him. Such knowledge pleases Him; it is bright and holy, it is our purest happiness here, and will assuredly follow us into another life if rightly sought in this. May He guide us in its pursuit; and in particular, may this meeting which I have attempted to open in His name, be successful and prosperous, so that in future years they who follow me in this high office may refer to it as one to be remembered with unmixed satisfaction.”

Thomas Romney Robinson

Robinson in his 1849 adress, as quoted in the Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science https://archive.org/stream/report36sciegoog#page/n50/mode/2up, London, 1850.

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men

“In recent years a number of politicians have behaved disgracefully and then compounded their offences by trying to evade responsibility. We all know who they are. Let's face it, some of them have stood on this platform.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Conservative Party conference http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/oct/07/conservatives2002.conservatives1 (07 October 2002)

“In my years past I have argued that economic sabotage was an appropriate tactic for our time. Like all strategists I have also been forced to recognize that times have changed and it is now my belief that the movements to protect earth and animals have achieved enough with this strategy to now consider an approach that does not compromise objectives, but increases the likelihood of real social change. Let our opposition who believe in violence carry the burden for its justification, but let those who believe in peace and love practice a way of life that our society sorely needs now more than ever.”

Rod Coronado (1966) Native American eco-anarchist and animal rights activist

^ Message from Rod Coronado in Prison

Love, Life, Peace, Way

“Thus woman trusts in man down all the years and so, as always, is betrayed.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 19 (p. 446)

“This is not to deny for one moment either the enormous cultural changes undergone by the Greeks despite a surviving sense of common ethnicity or the cultural influence of surrounding peoples and civilizations over two thousand years. At the same time in terms of script and language, certain values, a particular environment and its nostalgia, continuous social interactions, and a sense of religious and cultural difference, even exclusion, a sense of Greek identity and common sentiments of ethnicity can be said to have persisted beneath the many social and political changes of the last two thousand years”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: National Identity (1991), p. 31: About Ethnic Change, Dissolution and Survival

People, Sense, Nostalgia, Change

“I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

On why he decided against writing proprietary software; quoted in Free as in Freedom : Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software' (2002) by Sam Williams http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/index.html 2000s

Life, Money, People, World

“I have huge respect for Sridevi ji as a flag-bearer of the southern film industries in Mumbai for many years. I wish her all the best. And I wish Mom a big success. The trailer looks very intriguing and promising.”

S. S. Rajamouli (1973) Indian film director

SS Rajamouli may work with Sridevi and Mohanlal in a new fantasy drama http://www.hindustantimes.com/regional-movies/ss-rajamouli-may-work-with-sridevi-and-mohanlal-in-a-new-fantasy-drama/story-bkM24KT8th5xukRWuPH7YP.html (19 July 2017), Hindustan Times. Retrieved 9 September 2017.

Moms, Success

“There has been an earth for a little more than a billion years. As for the question of the end of it I advise: Wait and see!”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

19 June 51, p. 34
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Question, Waiting

“So she might die here—well, she could have died anywhere, so who cared where? That didn’t interest her. Life and mystery, that interested her. Perhaps she would have been keener on death and its processes if she’d had a religious side, but to her the religions of the ages were all mixed up in her head, a ceaselessly overworked agglutination of thousands of years of responding to the fears she didn’t possess.”

Justina Robson book Natural History

Source: Natural History (2003), Chapter 30 “Communication Failure” (p. 301)

Life, Death, Age, Fear

“Last year a Dutch animal breeding centre sent me two chimpanzees as a gift. I killed one and cut its heart out. The other wept bitterly and was inconsolable. The sad chimp has long since happily mated again and lives with lots of other animals on a pleasant game farm near Villiersdorp. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures, but the memory of that weeping chimp has remained with me. It was taken for granted, of course, that he was weeping for his mate but I've since had some thoughts on the subject which made me wonder whether perhaps he was weeping for the human race. The idea is not as silly as it sounds. In our doings there is much to weep over and even a chimpanzee would never behave in some of the contradictory ways we think of as normal.”

Christiaan Barnard (1922–2001) South-African physician

The Best Medicine (Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers, 1979), p. 38.

Sadness, Way, Game, Idea

“Sir,
Having long deferred to make any report relating to the observations that were taken at sea by captain Campbell, in the year 1757, which you transmitted to me by order of the lords of the admiralty, I think it necessary to acquaint you, that, upon examining those observations, I perceived that they were not in all respects accompanied with such circumstances as are requisite for forming a right judgment of the accuracy and certainty with which observations proper for finding the longitude at sea by the moon can in fact be taken; for which reason I delayed giving my opinion upon this point till I could have an opportunity of comparing a greater variety of observations, made at different times, and with different instruments: such an opportunity having lately been given me by captain Campbell, who has favoured me with a copy of several observations that were made by him in 1758 and 1759, I now beg leave to lay before their lordships the result of the comparisons which I have made.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), To Mr. Cleveland Secretary of the Admiralty (April 14, 1760)

Thinking, Time, Sea

“The last act of Democratic domination in this Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and dramatic, perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic Party said to the Republicans, '; but the people of this country, refusing to be coerced by threats or violence, voted as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1870s, Speech (1879)

People, Country

“The third order, called Corinthian, is an imitation of the slenderness of a maiden; for the outlines and limbs of maidens, being more slender on account of their tender years, admit of prettier effects in the way of adornment.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book IV, Chapter I, Sec. 8

Way

“I have always felt rather badly for orchestra musicians, especially the stringed instrument player who certainly in his youth expected to be a virtuoso… I admire their patience and ability, and through the years have made the effort to show them my respect and – love in many instances.”

Pierre Monteux (1875–1964) French conductor

From Monteux, Doris G (1965). It's All in the Music: The Life and Work of Pierre Monteux. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. OCLC 604146, p. 197

Love, Youth, Effort, Patience

“Historically, "public administration" has grown in large part out of the wider field of inquiry, "political science." The history of American political science during the past fifty years is a story much too lengthy to be told here, but some important general characteristics and tendencies it has communicated to or shared with public administration must be noted.
The Secular Spirit Despite: the fact that "political science" in such forms as moral philosophy and political economy had been taught in America long before the Civil War, the present curriculum, practically in its entirety, is the product of the secular, practical, empirical, and "scientific" tendencies of the past sixty or seventy years. American students dismayed at the inadequacies of the ethical approach in the Gilded Age, stimulated by their pilgrimage to German universities, and led by such figures as J. W. Burgess, E. J. James, A. B. Hart, A. L. Lowell, and F. J. Goodnow have sought to recreate political science as a true science. To this end they set about observing and analyzing "actual government." At various times and according to circumstances, they have turned to public law, foreign institutions, rural, municipal, state, and federal institutions, political parties, public opinion and pressures, and to the administrative process, in the search for the "stuff" of government. They have borrowed both ideas and examples from the natural sciences and the other social disciplines. Frequently they have been inspired by a belief that a Science of Politics will emerge when enough facts of the proper kinds are accumulated and put in the proper juxtaposition, a Science that will enable man to "predict and control" his political life. So far did they advance from the old belief that the problem of good government is the problem of moral men that they arrived at the opposite position: that morality is irrelevant, that proper institutions and expert personnel are determining.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 22-23

Life, Men, War, Age

“"A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior" in Language, 35, No. 1 (1959), 26-58. Summation by Noam Chomsky: Rereading this review after eight years, I find little of substance that I would change if I were to write it today. I am not aware of any theoretical or experimental work that challenges its conclusions; nor, so far as I know, has there been any attempt to meet the criticisms that are raised in the review or to show that they are erroneous or ill-founded.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

" A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967----.htm," in Leon A. Jakobovits and Murray S. Miron (eds.), Readings in the Psychology of Language, Prentice-Hall, 1967, pp. 142-143. Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1960s

Behavior, Change

“As far as I can remember, it was before my twelfth year that I was sketching cows in the mornings before and afternoons after school, and because my brothers were 4 and 6 years older than me – naturally I got from them my first teachings in drawing and later in painting.”

Willem Maris (1844–1910) Dutch landscape painter of the Hague School (1844-1910)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018 version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Willem Maris: Voor zover ik mij herinneren kan, was ik voor mijn twaalfde jaar 's Morgens voor, en 's middags na schooltijd al in de weilanden aan 't teekenen van koeien en daar mijn broers 4 en 6 jaar ouder waren als ik - genoot ik natuurlijk van hen het eerste onderwijs in het teekenen en later in het schilderen. Quote of Willem Maris, in his letter in 1901; as cited in 'Zó Hollands - Het Hollandse landschap in de Nederlandse kunst sinds 1850', Antoon Erftemeijer https://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/zohollands_eindversie_def_1.pdf; Frans Hals museum | De Hallen, Haarlem 2011, p. 36

School, Nature, Drawing, Painting

“Nobody is going to be his successor, no one can replace Kumble. He is one of the finest leg-spinners in the world. Over the years he had developed variety in his bowling by working hard. I rate him very high. I do not think it was because of any sort of pressure. Media is going to be with you every time. If you play well they will praise you and they will criticise you if you play badly. And I think Kumble has taken it well in his stride. At the end of the day he is a gentleman.”

Anil Kumble (1970) Former Indian cricketer

By Madan Lal.
Kumble Calls it a Day: Quotes... For and By Kumble...

World, Thinking, Time

“The men of the Niagara Movement coming from the toil of the year's hard work and pausing a moment from the earning of their daily bread turn toward the nation and again ask in the name of ten million the privilege of a hearing. In the last year the work of the Negro hater has flourished in the land. Step by step the defenders of the rights of American citizens have retreated. The work of stealing the black man's ballot has progressed and the fifty and more representatives of stolen votes still sit in the nation's capital. Discrimination in travel and public accommodation has so spread the some of our weaker brethren are actually afraid to thunder against color discrimination as such and are simply whispering for ordinary decencies.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

The Niagara Movement, Address to the Country

Men, Color, Travel

“Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

Letter declining the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith

Art

“I really believe that the marijuana laws are a terrible injustice. They make no sense scientifically, ethically, legally, or any way. They cost a fortune to enforce and we incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people who have done nothing else, but possess or distribute marijuana. Maybe it's because I'm a child of the 60's and marijuana has been such a positive part of my life. I have never seen it as being addictive, having spent weeks, and months, and days of my life (and years) without using marijuana in any form. For me, it's a kind of a sacrament, something that should be used wisely and in the context of a loving family existence. […] There's a place for alcohol too, but there's no reason why adults shouldn't be allowed to do something which not only doesn't add harm to themselves or others, but is a way to enhance the beauty of life, the beauty of eating, of listening to music, of being with friends and family, of being with the one you love.”

Ann Druyan (1949) American author and producer

Ann Druyan – from her video podcast At Home in the Cosmos with Annie Druyan. — OVGuide. "Ann Druyan – A Plea for a Change in the Marijuana Laws Video" http://www.ovguide.com/ann-druyan-9202a8c04000641f8000000000008b85 (Podcast). published by Ann Druyan. Retrieved 2013-10-02.

Love, Life, People, Alcohol

“Elect me as your congressman today, I promise you an Ilocano president in 20 years.”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

Election speech as candidate for Congress, 1949
1949

“I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian. It was Shelley who first opened my eyes to the savagery of my diet.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Interview "Who I Am, and What I Think", in Frank Harris's periodical The Candid Friend (May 1901), reprinted in Sixteen Self Sketches, 1949, p. 53; quoted in Desmond King-Hele, Shelley: His Thought and Work, 1984, p. 42 https://books.google.it/books?id=V5KvCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA42 1900s

“But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability? Objections such as "these are not one-dimensional abilities" apply equally to cows, horses and dogs and never stopped anybody in practice. I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn't the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question?”

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

Richard Dawkins, From the Afterword, The Herald Scotland, (November 20, 2006) http://www.heraldscotland.com/from-the-afterword-1.836155

Death, Dogs, Music, Mathematics

“I experience the same sense of absurdity when I listen to a cosmologist like Stephen Hawking telling us that the universe began with a big bang fifteen billion years ago, and that physics will shortly create a 'theory of everything' that will answer every possible question about our universe; this entails the corollary that God is an unnecessary hypothesis. Then I think of the day when I suddenly realized that I did not know where space ended, and it becomes obvious that Hawking is also burying his head in the sand. God may be an unnecessary hypothesis for all I know, and I do not have the least objection to Hawking dispensing with him, but until we can understand why there is existence rather than nonexistence, then we simply have no right to make such statements. It is unscientific. The same applies to the biologist Richard Dawkins, with his belief that strict Darwinism can explain everything, and that life is an accidental product of matter. I feel that he is trying to answer the ultimate question by pretending it does not exist.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Alien Dawn (1998), pp. 301-302

Life, God, Feeling, Understanding

“Sanctions imposed can easily be rolled back. But unless they are imposed, President (Abdullah) Yameen will have no incentive to take further action. It is only a question of time before the Maldives witnesses an incident comparable to the tragedy that occurred on the beaches of Tunisia last year. I will definitely go to the Maldives. But only the question is how and when.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Mohamed Nasheed, Reuters (January 25, 2016), "Former Maldives' president calls for sanctions against government figures" http://www.reuters.com/article/britain-maldives-nasheed-idUSKCN0V3270

Question, Time

“In the twelfth year of his reign, when Edward was feasting at Windsor, where he often used to stay, his father-in-law, the traitor Godwine, was lying next to him, and said, "It has frequently been falsely reported to you, king, that I have been intent on your betrayal. But if the God of heaven is true and just, may He grant that this little piece of bread shall not pass my throat if I have ever thought of betraying you." But the true and just God heard the voice of the traitor, and in a short time he was choked by that very bread, and tasted endless death.”
Edwardus, duodecimo anno regni sui, cum pranderet apud Windlesore, ubi plurimum manere solebat, Godwinus gener suus et proditor, recumbens iuxta eum, dixit: "Sepe tibi rex falso delatum est me prodicioni tue inuigilasse. Sed si Deus celi uerax et iustus est, hoc panis frustrulum concedat ne michi guttur pertranseat, si umquam te prodere uel cogitauerim." Deus autem uerax et iustus audiuit uocem proditoris, et mox eodem pane strangulatus, mortem pregustauit eternam.

Henry of Huntingdon book Historia Anglorum

Edwardus, duodecimo anno regni sui, cum pranderet apud Windlesore, ubi plurimum manere solebat, Godwinus gener suus et proditor, recumbens iuxta eum, dixit: "Sepe tibi rex falso delatum est me prodicioni tue inuigilasse. Sed si Deus celi uerax et iustus est, hoc panis frustrulum concedat ne michi guttur pertranseat, si umquam te prodere uel cogitauerim."
Deus autem uerax et iustus audiuit uocem proditoris, et mox eodem pane strangulatus, mortem pregustauit eternam.
Book VI, §23, pp. 378-9
Historia Anglorum (The History of the English People)

Death, God, Law, Lying

“We're told that they were zealots fueled by religious fervour…religious fervour and if you live to be a thousand years old will that make any sense to you? Will that make any goddamn sense?”

David Letterman (1947) American comedian and actor

During his first show after the September 11th attacks (17 September 2001).

Sense

“The most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Post-Presidency, Nobel lecture (2002)

People, Problem, Universe, Time

“Many Christians base the belief of a soul and God upon the Bible. Strictly speaking, there is no such book. To make the Bible, sixty-six books are bound into one volume. These books are written by many people at different times, and no one knows the time or the identity of any author. Some of the books were written by several authors at various times. These books contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life and morals and the origin of things. Between the first and the last nearly a thousand years intervened, a longer time than has passed since the discovery of America by Columbus.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

Life, God, People, Books

“Never go to a public lavatory in London. I always pee in the street. You may be fined a few pounds for committing a nuisance, but in a public lavatory you risk two years in prison because a policeman in plain clothes says you smiled at him.”

Derek Jackson (1906–1982) British physicist

as quoted by [Diana Mosley, Loved ones: pen portraits, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985, 93]

Smile, Clothes

“Now the Disney Corporation could do this because that culture lived in a commons, an intellectual commons, a cultural commons, where people could freely take and build. It was a lawyer-free zone.
It was culture, which you didn't need the permission of someone else to take and build upon. That was the character of creativity at the birth of the last century. It was built upon a constitutional requirement that protection be for limited times, and it was originally limited. Fourteen years, if the author lived, then 28, then in 1831 it went to 42, then in 1909 it went to 56, and then magically, starting in 1962, look — no hands, the term expands.
Eleven times in the last 40 years it has been extended for existing works — not just for new works that are going to be created, but existing works. The most recent is the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act.”

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

OSCON 2002

People, Birth, Time

““It’s so old,” she said, “that, had life developed, it would be billions of years older than we are. Imagine what such a civilization might be like.”
Dead, thought MacAllister. That’s what it would be like. The fact that no technologically advanced species had been found in all these years made it pretty clear that the damned things have no staying power. You could see it at home, where, starting with the Cold War, there’d already been a few close calls.
It explained the Fermi Paradox. Nobody visits us because they blow themselves up before they get that far.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 27 (p. 248)

Life, War, Home, Imagination

“A honeymoon is wonderful, of course. It's the time two people go off alone and do their utmost to remain alone. Not only because they are so new and exciting to each other. But because it's their chance to draw closer and prepare for the intimacy of the every day married life which lies ahead of them. However, feverishly romantic though it may be, it's also apt to be something of a strain. Because the two people haven't yet learned to relax with each other. Because they haven't had time to become truly good friends. Because they don't know all the little things about each other which only the intimacy and affectionate understanding of years brings.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

[http://www.irenedunnesite.com/press/modern-screen-august-1935/ The Modern screen *August 1935).

Life, People, Understanding, Learning

“Jesus Christ was born in a stable; He was obliged to fly into Egypt; thirty years of His life were spent in a workshop; He suffered hunger, thirst, and weariness; He was poor, despised, and miserable; He taught the doctrines of heaven, and no one would listen. The great and the wise persecuted and took Him, subjected Him to frightful torments, treated Him as a slave, and put Him to death between two malefactors, having preferred to give liberty to a robber, rather than to suffer Him to escape. Such was the life which our Lord chose; while we are horrified at any kind of humiliation, and cannot bear the slightest appearance of contempt.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 60.

Life, Death, Hunger, Suffering

“How could this great land of plenty produce too few people in the last 30 years?”

Zell Miller (1932–2018) Politician and United States Marine Corps officer

Miller asked in March 2007 during a fund-raiser in Macon, Georgia, for Sav-A-Life Care Center, a crisis pregnancy center. Sav A Life Care Center > Home http://www.salmacon.com/

People

“If you don't know where you want to be in five years, how do you ever expect to get there?”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 47

“Carl Friedrich Gauss, often rated the greatest mathematician of all time, played the market. On a salary of 1,000 thalers a year, Euler left an estate of 170,587 thalers in cash and securities. Nothing is known of Gauss's investment methods.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part Three, Arbitrage, This Is Not the Time To Buy Stocks, p. 132
Fortune's Formula (2005)

Time

“For his Spiritual Church Joachim of Fiore foresaw the continuance of the Papacy (much modified), but the bishops were to disappear. If I think at all of the Church to come, then I hope and pray above all for a revival, indeed resurrection of the episcopal office. To my mind it is still a prisoner of its almost thousand-year long disastrous fusion with temporal power. Strange - only a few years ago I thought the Emperor Otto I just marvellous and was full of admiration for his genius in raising the bishops to Reichsfürsten - princes of the realm - thus securing an unshakeable foundation for his Empire. Politically it was a brilliant decision… Yet I can imagine no way in which a mortal enemy of the Church in all craft and cunning could have fastened a worse fate upon her… For how often was their charismatic office as pastors overshadowed, indeed frequently rendered impossible, by their temporal mission and worldly achievements..”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Fate, Hope, Way, Imagination

“I receive letters from people who’ve been cured with the ‘urine-therapy’…. Several years ago, a man called Lawrence Armstrong was suffering from TB. One day, he was reading the psalms from the Bible, he found the passage, ‘Drink from your own cistern when you’re in trouble.’ He wondered what it meant. It struck him that it was his own urine. And, he saw in the veterinary hospitals some animals given their own urine by his doctor friend. Nature has provided its own cures. What happens to the birds and animals in the forest? For 45 days, he consumed all the urine he passed and at the end of it, he was a young man. Then he wrote a book, "Waters of Life."”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

Morarji Desai speaks about life and celibacy

Life, People, Books, Drink

“The key to success for Sony, and to everything in Business, Science, and Technology for that matter, is never to follow the others. We bet the company on that basic technology (the Trinitron TV), and in 23 years nobody has been able to match it.”

Masaru Ibuka (1908–1997) Japanese businessman

Masaru Ibuka in: B. Schlender. "China Really is on the Move," Fortune, February 24, 1992. p. 23.

Business, Science, Success

“Even 50 years ago, the streets of Leningrad taught me one thing: if a fight is inevitable, go and fight first.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

2015-10-22, Valdai Forum. http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2015/10/putin-on-isis-when-a-fight-is-inevitable-you-hit-first/ 2011 - 2015

Fight

“This museum is a torpedo moving through time, its head the ever-advancing present, its tail the ever-receding past of 50 to 100 years ago.”

Alfred Barr (1902–1981) American art historian

On the Museum of Modern Art, Newsweek (June 1, 1964).

Time, Past

“Economists of the modern school will no doubt protest that I have said nothing of the use of budget deficits or surpluses for the control of the economy in general. I doubt if such techniques would ever be appropriate in Hong Kong's exposed economic position; and I think they are certainly not appropriate at present, when in strict orthodoxy they would suggest the need to plan for a very substantial surplus "to take the heat out of the economy". Although we have in fact run substantial surpluses in recent years we have not done so with deflationary effect because we have not removed them from the economy but have left them inside the Colony's banking system to continue to work for the economy. $500 million or 55% of reserves are so held at present.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 26, 1964, page 47.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

School, Thinking

“Every year the media comes up with something to describe my race … The first year it was "the comeback." Then it was the "the confirmation." I don't know what it was last year. This year, for me, it's "the year of the team." I can't say how I compare to the rider I was in 1999 or 2000 or 2001, but this team is much stronger than it has ever been. It has made it easier for me.”

Lance Armstrong (1971) professional cyclist from the USA

As quoted in "King of the Hill" by Kelli Anderson in Sports Illustrated (5 August 2002)

“Honest, I was never happier in my life. I've felt that I was facing a kind of all-round challenge—the challenge of 41 years, the challenge that comes from carrying 230 pounds for 21 seasons, the challenge from a bunch of National League pitchers who want to prove that I can't hit as well in this league as I did in the American and the doubt exists that I can be of any help to our team through another year. It's keyed me up and given me a fresh target. I feel better than I have felt in four years. My legs haven't bothered me a bit. Bill McKechnie is a great guy to work for, and I am going to give him and Boston everything I have.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "'Never Happier in My Life' Ruth Tells Grantland Rice; Babe Is Inspired by Challenge of National League Pitchers—Legs Feel Great" by Grantland Rice, in The Boston Globe (March 26, 1935), p. 21

Life, Guy, Feeling, Help

“In the year 1910 we were beset by an accumulation of grave issues—rapidly becoming graver. … It was becoming evident to discerning eyes that the Party and Parliamentary system was unequal to coping with them. … The shadow of unemployment was rising ominously above the horizon. Our international rivals were forging ahead at a great rate and jeopardising our hold on the foreign trade which had contributed to the phenomenal prosperity of the previous half-century, and of which we had made such a muddled and selfish use. Our working population, crushed into dingy and mean streets, with no assurance that they would not be deprived of their daily bread by ill-health or trade fluctuations, were becoming sullen with discontent. Whilst we were growing more dependent on overseas supplies for our food, our soil was gradually going out of cultivation. The life of the countryside was wilting away and we were becoming dangerously over-industrialised. Excessive indulgence in alcoholic drinks was undermining the health and efficiency of a considerable section of the population. The Irish controversy was poisoning our relations with the United States of America. A great Constitutional struggle over the House of Lords threatened revolution at home, another threatened civil war at our doors in Ireland. Great nations were arming feverishly for an apprehended struggle into which we might be drawn by some visible or invisible ties, interests, or sympathies. Were we prepared for all the terrifying contingencies?”

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

War Memoirs: Volume I (London: Odhams, 1938), p. 21.
War Memoirs

Life, War, Health, Alcohol

“For ten years I never left my books;
I went up … and won unmerited praise.
My high place I do not much prize;
The joy of my parents will first make me proud.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"After Passing the Examination" (A.D. 800)
Arthur Waley's translations

Books, Parent, Joy

Quotes about year page 84

Quotes about year
page 84