Quotes about year
page 95

“It is necessary to restore the dignity of the presidential office and cut it off decisively from non-transparent connections… For the first time in many years, I see a chance in Poland for major change. The presidential office can guarantee that these changes are carried out without undermining the social equilibrium.”

Lech Kaczyński (1949–2010) Polish politician, president of Poland

Rzeczpospolita interview (March 2005)

Decision, Change, Chance, Time

“They pay for their ticket, let them do what they want to do. I get mad. One of these days, I’ll leave my uniform on the field and keep on walking. If I don’t hustle or something like that, I’d say that it would be good for me to be booed. The problem with me is hitting. You hit.280, it’s a pretty good average. But I used to hit.350, so.280 is not good enough. A lot of times in my career, I play when I shouldn’t play. I say as long as I can run and swing a bat, I play. That was my biggest mistake. One time I play with a shoulder – it hurts so bad, I can’t lift it. I hit into a double play. Then they hit a ball to the outfield and I can’t bend down to pick it up, so they boo me. The season start, I hurt my finger the last weekend of spring training. I couldn’t grip the bat right and I was trying to pull everything. They would like for you to start every year from the beginning, right on top, boom, boom, boom. Now I start a season a little bit slowly, so they boo.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in ".280 Not Good Enough: Clemente's Bat Answers Boos" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TpcuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kKEFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2309%2C1919830 by Ian McDonald, in The Montreal Gazette (Friday, May 21, 1971), p. 17 Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Spring, Problem, Time, Hurt

“[To] me naturalization is just an obvious extension of what somebody in my position would desire anyway — the right to vote and to legally participate in society the same as any other citizen. I am already as entrenched as any other citizen: I have a house and land with a debt of a quarter-million dollars; with a thirty-year loan I really cannot leave Japan… Moreover, naturalization has knock-on benefits that suit a person with my personality. It will enable me to stand on my rights (yes, more than I do now!) with renewed vigor — because I will indeed have more rights, as well as a firmer ground to demand even more (I can except myself from, say, this 'as a foreigner, you are a guest in our country so shut up' bullshit). And — dare I say it?”

Debito Arudou (1965) Author/activist with Japanese citizenship born in the USA

I would be able to participate in politics as a candidate if I so choose). Debito Arudou, " A Bit More Personal Background on Arudou Debito/Dave Aldwinckle http://www.debito.org/morebackground.html," Debito.Org

Nature, Housing, Personality, Country

“Today we are coming to realise that an epoch in history is over…For more than forty years that Iron Curtain remained in place. Few of us expected to see it lifted in our life-time. Yet with great suddenness the impossible has happened. Communism is broken, utterly broken…We do not see this new Soviet Union as an enemy, but as a country groping its way towards freedom. We no longer have to view the world through a prism of East-West relations. The Cold War is over.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Aspen Institute ("Shaping a New Global Community") (5 August 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108174 Third term as Prime Minister

Life, War, World, Way

“Mendelssohn is the inventor of religious kitsch in music. His first essay in this genre is a masterpiece, the Fugue in E Minor, published in 1837 but written ten years earlier, when the composer was eighteen …”

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

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 10 : Mendelssohn and the Invention of Religious Kitsch

Music

“The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said, in future what are you going to tax when you will want more money? He also not merely assumed but stated that you could not depend upon any economy in armaments. I think that is not so. I think he will find that next year there will be substantial economy without interfering in the slightest degree with the efficiency of the Navy. The expenditure of the last few years has been very largely for the purpose of meeting what is recognised to be a temporary emergency. … It is very difficult for one nation to arrest this very terrible development. You cannot do it. You cannot when other nations are spending huge sums of money which are not merely weapons of defence, but are equally weapons of attack. I realise that, but the encouraging symptom which I observe is that the movement against it is a cosmopolitan one and an international one. Whether it will bear fruit this year or next year, that I am not sure of, but I am certain that it will come. I can see signs, distinct signs, of reaction throughout the world. Take a neighbour of ours. Our relations are very much better than they were a few years ago. There is none of that snarling which we used to see, more especially in the Press of those two great, I will not say rival nations, but two great Empires. The feeling is better altogether between them. They begin to realise they can co-operate for common ends, and that the points of co-operation are greater and more numerous and more important than the points of possible controversy.”

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

Speech in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1914/jul/23/finance-bill on the day the Austrian ultimatum was sent to Serbia (23 July 1914); The "neighbour" mentioned is Germany. Chancellor of the Exchequer

Money, World, Feeling, Thinking

“For the time being I am enjoying my chance to enjoy civilian life off the road. If I combined all the months that I have lived out of a van or tour bus it would amount to twelve solid years. That would be twelve years of driving or flying an average of 100 to 400 miles per day and sleeping in a different city every night. It was a very unique lifestyle that I adapted to and even enjoyed with it’s surreal pace. It’s also a lifestyle that can take a toll on the body and relationships with the people that you are constantly leaving behind.”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Quotes from NatalieMerchant.com

Life, People, Sleep, Chance

“Today, I would like to provide the American people with an update on the White House transition and our policy plans for the first 100 days. Our transition team is working very smoothly, efficiently, and effectively. Truly great and talented men and women, patriots indeed are being brought in and many will soon be a part of our government, helping us to Make America Great Again. My agenda will be based on a simple core principle: putting America First. Whether it's producing steel, building cars, or curing disease, I want the next generation of production and innovation to happen right here, in our great homeland: America – creating wealth and jobs for American workers. As part of this plan, I've asked my transition team to develop a list of executive actions we can take on day one to restore our laws and bring back our jobs. It's about time. These include the following: On trade, I am going to issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country. Instead, we will negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores. On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy – including shale energy and clean coal – creating many millions of high-paying jobs. That's what we want, that's what we've been waiting for. On regulation, I will formulate a rule which says that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated, it's so important. On national security, I will ask the Department of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a comprehensive plan to protect America's vital infrastructure from cyber-attacks, and all other form of attacks. On immigration, I will direct the Department of Labor to investigate all abuses of visa programs that undercut the American worker. On ethics reform, as part of our plan to Drain the Swamp, we will impose a five-year ban on executive officials becoming lobbyists after they leave the Administration – and a lifetime ban on executive officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government. These are just a few of the steps we will take to reform Washington and rebuild our middle class. I will provide more updates in the coming days, as we work together to Make America Great Again for everyone.”

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

A Message from President-Elect Donald J. Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xX_KaStFT8 (21 November 2016) 2010s, 2016, November

Women, Men, People, Disease

“[St. Josemaría’s] words, seventy years ago, anticipated the Vatican Council’s decree on the place and the role of the laity in the world.… It is my conviction that it’s only slowly that we’re coming to understand what the Spirit was trying to say to us through the Council. But the Spirit goes on calling.… And surely the Holy Spirit is calling us in our day to a greater degree of holiness, to deepen our spiritual lives. And it has been the role of the movements [and] of Opus Dei to provide support and guidance on that road to holiness.”

Basil Hume (1923–1999) Catholic cardinal

Basil Cardinal Hume, From a homily on October 2, 1998, at a Mass of thanksgiving in London to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of Opus Dei.

World, Understanding, Support

“[F]or more than three years this Congress, which has been given the name “The Do-Nothing Congress,” has turned a blind eye to the intractable war in Iraq, ignoring the Administration’s many mistakes, allowing it to stay a failed course. Here we are with six days left in the 109th Congress, and the Republicans, which control the House and the Senate and the White House, have not held one hearing, not one, into the President’s wartime failures.”

Harry Reid (1939) American politician

"Reid: America Deserves Accountability for Iraq Contracting Abuses" http://democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=263222&, Senate Democratic Caucus website, September 18, 2006 (accessed 2006-09-21)

War, Failure, Housing

“On 30 Rock and Studio 60 and the Sunset Strip airing in the same year: "We’ll probably end up doing a terrible crossover, where the Matthew Perry character on the drama rapes my character on the comedy—and then the ‘Law & Order’ team solves the crime."”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/24/060424ta_talk_friend
On 30 Rock

Law

“Classmate 1: Count Dashkov is close to the tsar…a minister at the court no less…
Classmate 2: Ha…that Mathieu Golovinski is a clever one. Meanwile he has a job…working as a clerk for the state police…
Classmate 3: He plays both sides……rumor has it that he organized a street protest last month!
Court clerk: You’re late again Golovinski…the judge is about to give a verdict on the evidence you provided in court!
Judge: The defendant will be brought forward!
Judge: This court convicts you as a rebel plotter!
Defense attorney: As his lawyer I protest…my client is being framed with false evidence!
Judge: These documents were provided by the state police… a responsible source…as his lawyer you were given an opportunity to examine them!
Defense attorney: Yes, I did! And they were clearly faked!. This police clerk creates and provides their evidence!
Judge: Ten years hard labor!
Defense attorney: You Golovinski, you fabricated them…you!
Golivinski: I only work for the police! So accuse them!
Defense attorney: One day you will be exposed!
Everyone knows what you are. The police hire you to fabricate evidence. It will come out’’’sooner or later!
Golovinski: Ha, ha, I’ll not be there long! Count Dashkov will find me another place!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp.36-39

Falseness

“The next president will appoint and delegate over 5,000 people in government who will fill positions in 500 agencies, and will spend 18 trillion pesos over a six-year term.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2015, Speech: Declaration as Vice Presidential Candidate

People

“Probably there is no department of science, no form o humanity, in which greater advances have been made of late years, than in the medical and moral management of the insane. When we contrast the spacious and airy apartments of the insane. When we contrast the spacious and airy apartments and the grounds of our asylums, with the dark, and narrow, and dirty cells, in which, twenty years ago, the best accommodated of these poor creatures were immured - their neat and confortable dress, with their former rags and nakedness - their wholesome food, with their former rags and nakedness - their wholesome food, their former rations - and abovel all, the kindness and affection which is shown to them noew, with their ulter neglect in the days when they were executed from the privileges and society of men, we find ourselves shuddering at the thought of what we have seen, and lost in admiration of what we now see.
Wherever the Christian religion exists, we find the same rapid advances making towards the accomplishment of the great purposes of humanity. It seems as if the miracles of our Saviour were meant as protoypes of what his religion was to accomplish. It is by the influence of this religion of the march of science and philosophical discovery, that, by all Christian nations, the winds and the waves have been rebuked - that man is enabled to ride out the storm upon the ocean, as if it were hushed, and, like Peter of old, to walk upon the sea as on dry land.”

Daniel Drake (1785–1852) American physician and writer

Daniel Drake (1834). The Western Journal of the Medical & Physical Sciences http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=gtpXAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Volume 7, p. 618

Men, Religion, Food, Science

“We were laboring under a dropsical fulness of circulating medium. Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks, who have the regulation of the safety-valves of our fortunes, and who condense and explode them at their will. Lands in this State cannot now be sold for a year’s rent; and unless our Legislature have wisdom enough to effect a remedy by a gradual diminution only of the medium, there will be a general revolution of property in this state.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Adams (7 November 1819) http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0054.12#hd_lf054-12_head_057 ME 15:224 : The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 15, p. 224 1810s

Wisdom

“The day after Pearl Harbor our Navy's position in the Pacific was extremely grave. The bulk of our major ships had been put out of commission for a year; only our small Asiatic Fleet under Admiral Hart in the Philippines and portions of the Pacific Fleet that had been absent from Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack were in fighting condition in the Pacific. Even Hawaii might be attacked and overrun at any moment. And in the Atlantic the Axis submarines were destroying a tremendous tonnage of our shipping within sight of our very shores. Then, even at the lowest of the war tide, the decision was made, and correctly: first fight for time, especially in the Pacific- and then assemble the might to conquer first Italy and then Germany, and then inevitably Japan must succumb.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

From King's Foreword in Battle Stations! Your Navy In Action (1946) by Admirals of the U.S. Navy, p. 10

War, Decision, Time, Fight

“So about 80 years after the Constitution is ratified, the slaves are freed. Not so you'd really notice it of course; just kinda on paper. And that of course was at the end of the Civil War. Now there is another phrase I dearly love. That is a true oxymoron if I've ever heard one — civil war. D'you think anybody in this country could ever really have a civil war? "Say, pardon me…*machinegun sounds*… I'm awfully sorry! Awfully sorry."
Now of course the Civil War has been over for about 120 years. But… not so you'd really notice it. Because you see we have these people called "Civil War buffs"… in fact some of these people actually get dressed up once a year and then go out and re-fight these battles. D'you know what I say to these people? USE LIVE AMMUNITION ASSHOLES, WOULD YA PLEASE?! You might just raise the intelligence level of the American gene pool!”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

What Am I Doing in New Jersey? (1988)

Love, War, People, Intelligence

“June 9, 1907 (April 29, lunar calendar), 9:00am
[…]
I am fully satisfied. The Seki is satisfied, is satisfied. At this moment, as the Seki's position becomes critical, all of you have gathered to seek the resolution for his illness, and united your hearts in spite of your problems, to pray for his recovery once again for ten more years of life. I commend your sincerity. It is a sincerity deserving of My free and unlimited workings. You need not worry whether he will recover or not. Firmly calm your minds. All of you take heart and rejoice, take heart and rejoice.”

Iburi Izō (1833–1907)

Osashizu entry, translated in An Anthology of Osashizu Translations p. 433.
Last words recorded in the Osashizu.

Life, Problem, Heart, Sincerity

“I kind of wonder if people who are outraged at the movie saw the originals when they were 13-years-olds and didn’t realize that "cheesy" was registering as "awesome."”

Mark Rosenfelder American language inventor

About http://zompist.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/indiana-jones-and-the-synopsis-of-dread/ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

People

“For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year's nest!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

It is not always May, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Truth, Bird, Time

“[While her father was a political prisoner in Cuba] I was always singing and dancing and reciting poems -- that was how I used to do my crying over my father. There were a lot of negotiations between the US and Cuban governments over the next couple of years [1961 - 1963]. [Castro proposed an exchange of prisoners for food, medicine and building machinery], and eventually my dad was released. It was wonderful to have him home -- it was probably the happiest time in my life. For once, the whole family was together, living a normal life. That was when my sister, Becky, was born [1964], and it was also when I started guitar lessons. I would lock myself away in my room for days, learning how to play. Even then I was beginning to work out that music was a way to cut throught all the BS.”

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

he [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life, Family, Food, Music

“During the course of many years of investigation into the plant life of the world, creating new forms, modifying old ones, adapting others to new conditions, and blending still others, I have constantly been impressed with the similarity between the organization and development of plant and human life.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Life, World

“This is an existential conflict. It is the kind of conflict that's going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. We have to prevail and we have to have the stomach for the fight long term.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

On Fox News Sunday http://web.archive.org/web/20070114221322/http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/14/US.iraq.ap/index.html responding to the opposition against sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq (January 14, 2007) 2000s, 2007

Fight

“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932)

Women, Age, World, Dreams

“When returns on capital are ordinary, an earn-more-by-putting-up-more record is no great managerial achievement. You can get the same result personally while operating from your rocking chair. Just quadruple the capital you commit to a savings account and you will quadruple your earnings. You would hardly expect hosannas for that particular accomplishment. Yet, retirement announcements regularly sing the praises of CEOs who have, say, quadrupled earnings of their widget company during their reign — with no one examining whether this gain was attributable simply to many years of retained earnings and the workings of compound interest.”

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

1985 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1985.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Singing, Personality

“To be a successful father … there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Pt. 2, Ch. 5
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Success

“When talking about what his Father was doing at the age of 23
I said to him last year, or the year before, ‘Yeah, well…something…something.’ You know, I’d done my degree and I was like ‘You know, well, I’ve got a degree…you know, I’m this age.’ and he, he, laughed and he was just like ‘What was I doing when I was 23?’ and I said, ‘Dunno’ and he was like, ‘What was I doing?…Oh yeah, Sgt. Pepper.’ and I was just instantly just like oh.”

Dhani Harrison (1978) English musician

Dhani Harrison " Jeff Lynne & Dhani Harrison interview Part three https://youtube.com/watch?v=B48tHi-l4PQ" at Youtube.com, 2002: Interview with Jeff Lynne & Dhani Harrison about George Harrison and his Brainwashed album.2002

Age

“Australia became a full-blooded democracy in the late 1850s, achieving it with lightning speed. Only 30 years previously it had consisted of two convict colonies, ruled by governors whose personal power was magnified because most of their subjects were prisoners or ex-prisoners. Moreover, the governors were so remote geographically that Britain’s control of them and their decisions was loose. One year might elapse between the governor writing an urgent dispatch to London, and the arrival of an official reply. And yet, from this prison-like regime, democracy speedily emerged. This was an exceptional outcome.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

"After the gold rush, the colonial cradle of democracy," http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/after-the-gold-rush-the-colonial-cradle-of-democracy/news-story/5cf7a3bd7dd077c91a282b4a8c0efa65, The Australian (August 27, 2016)

Democracy, Decision, Personality, Speed

“I'm singing the hardest song [the national anthem] you could possibly sing at this hour of the morning [8 a. m. ]. [I came from Cuba] when I was sixteen months old, although I didn't become a citizen until I was actually about 9 or 10 years old [1966-67]. I had to leave the country to become a citizen, because we had to go to Canada -- and I'll never forget that trip as long as I live. But it was very important for me then, and for them [new citizens] today, What more special day can you have: July 4th in the American Mecca. It doesn't get better than that for them. Well, I'll tell you this -- and I can base it on my own feelings. The beauty of this country is that you can become a citizen of this wonderful nation, and still keep who you are: your culture, your lifestyle. It's a melting pot that allows you not to melt if you don't want to. And it's a wonderful place. I love this country. I really admire it: its ideals, the freedom, the things it stands for. As an immigrant that came from a country that doesn't have those freedoms and still doesn't have them -- which is Cuba -- it's much more special to me: To be able to live here and to be able to have the life that I do in this country.”

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

interview with Sam Champion on Good Morning America television progam before ceremony at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida to swear in 1,000 new U.S. citizens (July 4, 2007)
2007, 2008

Love, Life, Beauty, Feeling

“When my looks are shot—which I reckon will be in about six years—I’ll have plastic surgery here on my chin, and they can pull my cheeks back, but I’m not ready for that. And because of the smoking, the mouth is starting to give.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On plastic surgery, The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity/the-11-most-courtney-love-things-courtney-love-said-in-her-latest-interview-20140811-102qxd.html (11 August 2014) 2014–2017

“The continental drift theory is designed to avoid two problems for the evolutionists. One, the magnetic field is getting weaker. Number two, there is very little sediment in the ocean. And another explanation for that might be that the Bible is right and the Earth is not billions of years old.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Problem

“Multilateral organizations have responsibilities. For 8 years, the nations in this assembly have worked together to confront the extremist threat. We've witnessed successes and setbacks, and through it all a clear lesson has emerged: The United Nations and other multilateral organizations are needed more urgently than ever. To be successful, we must be focused and resolute and effective. Instead of only passing resolutions decrying terrorist attacks after they occur, we must cooperate more closely to keep terrorist attacks from happening in the first place. Instead of treating all forms of government as equally tolerable, we must actively challenge the conditions of tyranny and despair that allow terror and extremism to thrive. By acting together to meet the fundamental challenge of our time, we can lead toward a world that is more secure and more prosperous and more hopeful.”

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

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

World, Hope, Time, Success

“I know I will never be happy but I know I can be gay! Remember I told you Kazan said I was the gayest girl he ever knew and, believe me, he has known many. But he loved me for one year and once rocked me to sleep one night when I was in great anguish. He also suggested that I go into analysis and later wanted me to work with Lee Strasberg. Was it Milton who wrote: "The happy ones were never born?"”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

I know at least two psychiatrists who are looking for a more positive approach.
In a letter to her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, in 1961, quoted in Marilyn's Last Sessions (2010) by Michel Schneider

Love, Happiness, Girl, Sleep

“Unless we plan our resources purposefully, unless we are prepared to accept the disciplines that are necessary, we shall not be able to meet the challenge of the Communist world. As the years go by, and the people see us languishing behind, trying to prevent the evils of inflation by industrial stagnation, trying all the time to catch up with things because we have not acted soon enough—when they see the Communist world, planned, organised, publicly-owned and flaunting its achievements to the rest of the world—they will come to be educated by what they will experience. They will realise that Western democracy is falling behind in the race because it is not prepared to read intelligently the lessons of the twentieth century.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1959/nov/03/debate-on-the-address in the House of Commons (3 November 1959) 1950s

People, World, Education, Democracy

“Over the years, historians have tried to discern grand patterns, perhaps one grand pattern, that explain everything.”

Margaret MacMillan (1943) Canadian historian

p.15

“The only diet for a peacemaker, for an environmentalist, is a vegetarian diet. … I became a vegetarian thirty-five years ago, after reading Frances Moore Lappé's book Diet for a Small Planet, which makes an unassailable case that vegetarianism is the best way to eliminate world hunger as well as to sustain the environment.”

John Dear (1959) Catholic priest from the United States

They Will Inherit the Earth (2018)

Hunger, Books, World, Way

“For 5 years Mr. T disappeared. Fools went unpitied and Jibba-Jabba went unchallenged!”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

On his fight with cancer
Attributed

Fools

“If you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Slate, 6 February 1997; as cited by Orrin Judd at brothersjuddblog http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/014839.html, 14 August 2004

God, Error

“Rao Mandalik saw that his fate was sealed. He fled at night to the fort and gave him a battle. When the warfare continued for some time provisions in the fort became scarce. He requested the Sultan in all humility to save his life. The Sultan agreed on condition of his accepting Islam. Rao Mandalik came down from the fort, surrendered the fort’s keys to the Sultan. The Sultan offered recitation of the word of Unity to him to repeat. He instantly recited it. The fort was conquered in the year 877, eight hundred and seventy-seven… In a few days, he populated a city which can be called Ahmedabad and named it Mustafabad. Rao Mandalik was given the title of Khan Jahan with a grant of jagir. He gave away as presents the gold idols brought from the temple of Rao Mandalik to all soldiers…”

Mahmud Begada (1458–1511) Sultan of Gujarat

Junagadh (Gujarat) Mirat-i-Ahmdi, translated into English by M.F. Lokhandwala, Baroda, 1965,pp 47-52

Life, Fate, Time, Night

“Meanwhile, from our federal government, there was a plan of the National Council of Public Security to resolve the worst and most urgent problem, which is the number of homicides in Brazil, for which we are already in the first place. The first place belonged to Russia, but we are now, with our 50,000 homicides a year, first. Russia has whatever, 42. Russia still was a little bit ahead, but we've got 50. Not saying it's 50, it is 49,999. So we are record-breakers. I already told you, our students take the last places on international tests, and we practice more homicides. Then it is not wrong to conclude: The Brazilian is the dumbest and most murderous of people in the universe!”

Olavo de Carvalho (1947) Brazilian journalist, essayist and professor of philosophy

True Outspeak - 7m58s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_KCwlovX0Y#t=7m58s (4 January 2012)

People, Problem, Universe

“What appears spectral today will be natural tomorrow. Where are such signs and works? How do we recognize the genuine ones? Like everything genuine, its inner life guarantees its truth. All works of art created by truthful minds without regard for the work's conventional exterior remain genuine for all times... The present isolation of the rare, genuine artist is absolutely unavoidable for the moment... This fact leads us to the idea that we are standing today at the turning point of two long epochs, similar to the state of the world fifteen hundred years ago, when there was also a transitional period without art and religion - a period in which great and traditional ideas died and new and unexpected ones took their place.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

1911 - 1914, The 'Savages' of Germany' (1912)

Life, Truth, World, Religion

“To one who had never made more than five thousand a year himself, it was inspiring to explain before dozens of popeyed and admiring morons how they could make ten thousand—fifty thousand—a million a year, and all this by the Wonder Power of Suggestion, by Aggressive Personality, by the Divine Rhythm, in fact by merely releasing the Inner Self-shine.”

Sinclair Lewis book Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry (1927)

Personality

“He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 30
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

Peace, Passion

“There are men who cry out, 'We must sacrifice'. Well, let us rather ask them: Who will they sacrifice? Are they going to sacrifice the children who seek the learning, or the sick who need medical care, or the families who dwell in squalor now brightened by the hope of home? Will they sacrifice opportunity for the distressed, the beauty of our land, the hope of our poor? Time may require further sacrifices. And if it does, then we will make them. But we will not heed those who wring it from the hopes of the unfortunate here in a land of plenty. I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam. But if there are some who do not believe this, then, in the name of justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the fullness of our blessing, rather than try to strip it from the hands of those that are most in need. And let no one think that the unfortunate and the oppressed of this land sit stifled and alone in their hope tonight. Hundreds of their servants and their protectors sit before me tonight here in this great chamber. The Great Society leads us along three roads—growth and justice and liberation. First is growth—the national prosperity which supports the well-being of our people and which provides the tools of our progress. I can report to you tonight what you have seen for yourselves already—in every city and countryside. This nation is flourishing. Workers are making more money than ever—with after-tax income in the past five years up 33 percent; in the last year alone, up 8 percent. More people are working than ever before in our history—an increase last year of two and a half million jobs. Corporations have greater after-tax earnings than ever in history. For the past five years those earnings have been up over 65 percent, and last year alone they had a rise of 20 percent. Average farm income is higher than ever. Over the past five years it is up 40 percent, and over the past year it is up 22 percent alone.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Men, Money, Children, People

“The panic over public health care is funny and sad, since America has had death panels and sinister bureaucrats for years. They're called Aetna, Humana, and Wellpoint, they make a killing, figuratively and literally.”

Laura Penny (1975) Canadian journalist

Source: More Money than Brains (2010), Chapter Five, Bully vs. Nerd, p. 139

Death, Health, Sadness

“We have discovered that what a year ago seemed to be a neglected house is essentially a ruin.
This is not a pleasant fact, and it is not surprising that all of us are rather annoyed and disappointed about it.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

Disappointment, Housing

“In return for the costliness and inconvenience, the squalor and discomfort of our lives, we get to participate in whatever is the latest. We are never left out of anything: we know what's happening, especially since so many of us practice what Paul Valéry called the "delirious professions." As Valéry wrote, "This is the name I give to all those trades whose main tool is one's opinion of oneself, and whose raw material is the opinion others have of you." Although Valéry was writing eighty years ago of Paris, he anticipated the excruciating position of those gay (and straight) New York "creative people" who must be perpetually original in a "population of uniques." The cruel contradiction of such a position is that the creative "live for nothing but to have, and make durable, the illusion of being the only one — for superiority is only a solitude situated at the present limits of a species."”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

The exigencies of the drive to originality can, as Valéry understood, promote a deep uncertainty about one's personal value. If one is a product, is it new enough? Perfect? One of a kind?
New York City (p. 259).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

People, Solitude, Personality, Perfection

“One event has been adduced in evidence of the uncertainty of his condition, which ought to excite interest in his behalf. He parted from his wife in 1779, because she would not agree to join him in converting some landed property into money, for the sale of which her consent was required by law. The property was worth, it is said, little more than four hundred pounds. Mrs. Arkwright entertained a high esteem for her husband, and always spoke of him with respect; yet she preferred separating from him, to the chance of being beggared by placing her dowry in so precarious a concern as she then thought the water-spinning frame to be. For some years after this event she lived altogether upon her own means. Mr. Arkwright was justly indignant at this want of sympathy in one so nearly related to him, and in consequence allowed her only thirty pounds a year, out of his own pocket, even when he had realized great opulence. These particulars are given by Mr. Guest on the authority of Sir Richard Arkwright’s niece, probably a disappointed and prejudiced person”

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist

Source: The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, 1836, p. 234

Money, Law, Disappointment, Water

“I had a concussion nine years ago, and that changed things. I had always been sensitive musically, but now, since the concussion, I ﬁnd the emotion is there immediately. There is no build. I hear several chord changes — it could be three or four chord changes from a string orchestra — and, man, I’m just gushing tears. I don’t take it as a weakness. Sometimes it might get slightly embarrassing to observers. On the other hand, I’m not putting it on. I’m in no way trying to exaggerate feeling. My feelings are exactly the opposite. Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t be quite as sensitive because then I wouldn’t have to go through this thing when I write.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "Meet Clare Fischer" http://cdassassin.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/1999-interview-at-allaboutjazz-com/

Music, Way, Feeling, Tear

“In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the supor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there):
"Can you describe this?"
And I answered: "Yes, I can."
Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Leningrad, 1 April 1957
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Instead of a Preface

Smile

“Yes, this is Europe. The Europe that did not respond to the Serb shelling of Dubrovnik. Or the three-year siege of Sarajevo. The Europe that let Bosnia die.
A new definition of Europe: the place where tragedies don't take place. Wars, genocides — that happened here once, but no longer. It's something that happens in Africa. (Or places in Europe that are not "really" Europe. That is, the Balkans.) Again, perhaps I exaggerate. But having spent a good part of three years, from 1993 to 1996, in Sarajevo, it does not seem to me like an exaggeration at all.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"Why Are We In Kosovo?" inThe New York Times Magazine http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E1DA163DF931A35756C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all (2 May 1999)

War, Parting

“We believe that the developing crisis in the capitalist system, by which we mean both economic stagnation, and the social and political conflicts to which it gives rise, makes it possible to think in terms of developing a sizeable and serious revolutionary socialist party in a way that was not possible 20 or even 10 years ago.”

Anthony Crosland (1918–1977) British politician

The Times (8 September 1977).

Way, Thinking

“I don't want to become the kind of writer who's putting out a book every two years. Money is not my primary concern. I've been broke before and I'll do it again.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

Notes from a library bar (2006)

Money, Books

“How can a governing party propose to its people a referendum that won't be binding? Is that a serious political programme? No it is not. It's the final option that will end up with upset, at a dead end, reflecting the last 4 years of the Ibarretxe Plan”

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

April 2005, regarding Juan José Ibarretxe's plan to propose a referendum regarding whether to approve his plan to reform the aunomomy of the Basque Country.
As President, 2005
Source: El Correo, Saturday 9th April 2005, p. 23

People, Dead

“A beautiful 35-year old ain't as good-looking as an ugly 19-year old.”

Patrice O'Neal (1969–2011) American stand-up comedian, radio personality, and actor

September 24, 2008
The Opie and Anthony Radio show

Beauty

“Not only did life originate on earth very early in its history as a planet, but for the first two billion years, Earth was inhabited solely by bacteria.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors (1986)

Life, History

“I set off in yoga 70 years ago when ridicule, rejection and outright condemnation were the lot of a seeker through yoga even in its native land of India,” he wrote. “Indeed, if I had become a sadhu, a mendicant holy man, wandering the great trunk roads of British India, begging bowl in hand, I would have met with less derision and won more respect.””

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95

“I felt a real Christian satisfaction in the fact that, if there were no other, there was one man who (several years before existence set the race another lesson to learn) made a practical effort on a small scale to learn the lesson of loving one’s neighbor and alas! Got at the same time a frightful insight into what an illusion Christendom is, and (a little later, to be sure) an insight also into what a situation the simpler classes suffered themselves to be seduced by paltry-newspaper writers, whose struggle or fight for equality (since it is in the service of a lie) cannot lead to any other result but to prompt the privileged classes in self-defence to stand proudly aloof from the common man, and to make the common man insolent in his forwardness.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, The Point of View for My Work as an Author (1848), p. 49

Love, Lie, Effort, Suffering

“I'm not buying this. If, if you're eleven years old, or twelve years old, thirteen, and you have a strong bond with your family, OK. Even if the guy [kidnapper] threatens you - this and that. … If you can get away, you get away.”

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

2007-01-15
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television

Family, Guy, Strong

“I went in a round of the Domain on Saturday morning in a rally car. At the start of it, I was asked if I felt scared. I said, 'certainly not, I have been working with Roger for years'.”

David Lange (1942–2005) New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand

Source: Gliding on the Lino: The Wit of David Lange, compiled by David Barber, 1987.

Cars

“a leader is only recognized when he can resolve all differences. My father had the veto power over all decisions and that veto power is mine. But in the last ten years, he never used his veto power. He would say, once you have fired you gun you no longer have the bullet with you…My father’s biggest legacy was his leadership. He used to say, a leader must have followers. Respect can not be demanded. I have to get others to say what I want to say.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Mukesh who followed his father’s principles quoted in page=56
Mukesh Dhirajlal Ambani, Anil Dhirajlal Ambani

Decision

“and all of the other regions. Norwegians have immigrated from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Poland, from Sweden, Somalia and Syria. My grandparents came here from Denmark and England 110 years ago.”

Harald V of Norway (1937) King of Norway

Garden party in the Palace Park: welcoming speech (September 1, 2016)

“Well, I don't know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different. We're in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They're holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundred of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years.”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

On the April 9, 2008 broadcast of CNN's "Situation Room", when asked to comment on the United States' relationship with China, Cafferty responded in reference to the Chinese Government and the Americans Government's political and business relationship.
2008

War, Food, Thinking, Change

“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 1, p. 9 : thoughts of 'Mattie Ross'

Life, Money, People, Age

“The graveyard of any industry is filled with the headstones of companies who decided to keep doing things the same old way. Playing only on the margin, making things just a little bit better. That strategy works…. for a while, but ultimately it's fatal. Over the years our industry has come to accept progress simply by what’s on the screen.”

Reggie Fils-Aimé (1961) American businessman

Source: E3 2006 Press Conference

Way

“The rapid deterioration of education has been recognized as a national problem for the past several years. Consequently, American businesses must meet the immediate challenge of poorly-educated people in today's workforce by strengthening employee training programs.”

Gregory Balestrero (1947) American industrial engineer

Public power (1990) Volume 48. American Public Power Association. p. 9
1990s

People, Education, Business, Problem

“We're going to see passengers in space stations in 15 years, who will be able to buy a ticket and spend a weekend in space.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

The Dallas Morning News staff (July 28, 1986) "People", The Dallas Morning News, p. 2A.

“One of our universities recently made a survey of the reading habits of the American public; it decided that forty-eight percent of all Americans read, during a year, no book at all. I picture to myself that reader — that non-reader, rather; one man out of every two — and I reflect, with shame: "Our poems are too hard for him." But so, too, are Treasure Island, Peter Rabbit, pornographic novels — any book whatsoever.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"The Obscurity of the Poet," Harvard University lecture (15 August 1950), published in Poetry and the Age (1953)
General sources

Books, Universe, Reading

“Our generation faces only one danger, that we might say to ourselves this is not our problem, and that we will pass it off to the distant future. That we might shrug and say to ourselves that a thousand years is a long time. That we will become complacent and conclude that this problem will take care of itself.
But I say to you, we should take no satisfaction in the fact that we ourselves are in no physical danger. This is a hazard to our world, to everything we hope to pass on to future generations. And it is clear that we should act now, while we have the time.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Introduction
Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Omega (2003)

World, Hope, Problem, Distant

“Carmelita Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was strewing rosemary leaves over Pilar Ternera's bed when the shot rang out. Aureliano Jose had been destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his chest had been directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), p. 153

Happiness, Children, Age, Water

“It took man thousands of years to put words down on paper, and his lawyers still wish he wouldn't.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years—and still are? Not even close.”

Robert A. Hall (1946) American politician

I'm Tired (February 19, 2009)

War

“I recently listened to a thoughtful big city police chief express his frustration with that lack of reliable data. He said he didn’t know whether the Ferguson police shot one person a week, one a year, or one a century, and that in the absence of good data, “all we get are ideological thunderbolts, when what we need are ideological agnostics who use information to try to solve problems.””

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

He’s right.
2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Problem, Personality

“My background in music came from me playing drums and piano as a young child. My grandmother was a pianist and I was influenced by her and my parents were playing rock records which influenced my drumming. I was a fan of film scores, rock, classical, jazz, and hip-hop in my early years and tried to learn as much about each of those genres as possible. I began writing music in a serious way in my teen years while I was playing in various bands and orchestras.”

Brian Tyler (1972) American composer, producer, conductor, and film producer

Interview with Brian Tyler https://8dio.com/2012/12/05/interview-with-brian-tyler/ (December 5, 2012)

Music, Way, Parent, Learning

“By the late eighteenth century, there is a sad and permanent decline in the quality of music written for young performers or beginners: one has only to compare Bach's Album for Anna Magdalena Bach and the Two-Part Inventions with anything that came later. No composer of importance between Bach and Schumann turned his hand to writing for children, and Schumann's essays came after his years of greatest inspiration for piano writing had gone. (Mozart is the odd exception, but then he was, in fact, almost incapable of writing really easy pieces: he no doubt believed that his Sonata in D Major, K.576, was easy, perhaps because all the hard passages in the first movement were in simple two-part counterpoint, one voice in each hand, but he was wrong.)”

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

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 6 : Chopin: Virtuosity Transformed

Children, Sadness, Music, Parting

“Having been enslaved for 250 years, black people were not left to their own devices. They were terrorized. In the Deep South, a second slavery ruled. In the North, legislatures, mayors, civic associations, banks, and citizens all colluded to pin black people into ghettos, where they were overcrowded, overcharged, and undereducated. Businesses discriminated against them, awarding them the worst jobs and the worst wages. Police brutalized them in the streets. And the notion that black lives, black bodies, and black wealth were rightful targets remained deeply rooted in the broader society. Now we have half-stepped away from our long centuries of despoilment, promising, “Never again.” But still we are haunted. It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

" The Case for Reparations https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/" (June, 2014) The Atlantic

People, Business, Wealth

“It came upon me sometime in my fifteenth year that I no longer woke up with sudden excitements—“Today I will get the Clerici solution! Today I will read about Humphry Davy and electric fish! Today I will finally understand diamagnetism, perhaps!” I no longer seemed to get these sudden illuminations, these epiphanies, these excitements which Flaubert (whom I was now reading) called “erections of the mind.” Erections of the body, yes, this was a new, exotic part of life—but those sudden raptures of the mind, those sudden landscapes of glory and illumination, seemed to have deserted or abandoned me. Or had I, in fact, abandoned them?”

Oliver Sacks book Uncle Tungsten

Source: Uncle Tungsten (2001), p. 310

Life, Understanding, Fish, Reading

“The point is professionalization. Academics-in-training worry about whether they are yet, can ever be, or even want to be professional intellectuals of the kind they are changing themselves into. Second or third or fourth year graduate students have not taken binding vows. They may have second thoughts. Nor have they been finally chosen. They might flunk out. Their committee might turn their theses down. Who knows what might happen?”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Writing for Social Scientists (1986), p. 52.

Change, Training

“One trouble with living beyond your deserved number of years is that there's always some reason to live another year. And I'd like to live another year so that Nixon won't be President. If he's re-elected I'll have to live another four years.”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Nixon was re-elected in 1972, but Stout survived his August 1974 resignation from the Presidency by more than a year.
The New York Times, "Rex Stout, 85, Gives Clues on Good Writing"

“Around 16 or 17 years old, I started finding out about some of the animal cruelty things, and ethically it just didn't make sense to me to keep eating meat, so eventually I stopped. … I was watching an HBO special about eating habits and different cultures, and they actually showed in China how people eat cats, and I'm really fond of cats, and I just happened to be sitting on the couch with my cat, and once I saw that, it just put everything in perspective. If I wouldn't eat my cat what's the difference between eating a cat or a cow? If certain animals are considered lesser than, so are certain people and that's not really fair. And the root of that is to consider life on equal terms across the board.”

Ben Kenney (1977) American musician

“ Ben Kenney—Exclusive Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRVPQc6UmdI,” ad for PETA (10 July 2008).

Life, People, Cats, Sense

“For fifty years the women of this nation have tried to dam up this deadly stream that poisons all their lives, but thus far they have lacked the insight or courage to follow it back to its source and there strike the blow at the fountain of all tyranny, religious superstition, priestly power and the canon law.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

1896
September
The Degraded Status of Woman in the Bible
Free Thought Magazine
Chicago
14
542
http://books.google.com/books?id=TfOfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA542&dq=%22for+fifty+years+the+women%22

Women, Law, Courage

“…in the Executive, Grant and Boutwell were varieties of the type — political specimens — pathetic in their helplessness to do anything with power when it came to them. They knew not how to amuse themselves; they could not conceive how other people were amused. Work, whiskey, and cards were life. The atmosphere of political Washington was theirs — or was supposed by the outside world to be in their control — and this was the reason why the outside world judged that Washington was fatal even for a young man of thirty-two, who had passed through the whole variety of temptations, in every capital of Europe, for a dozen years; who never played cards, and who loathed whiskey.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life, People, World

“What the Soviet Constitution gives us no other state has been able to give in two hundred years.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 502–15, Third All-Russia Trade Union Congress http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/07.htm Collected Works

“The legend of Felix is ended, the toiling of Felix is done;
The Master has paid him his wages, the goal of his journey is won;
He rests, but he never is idle; a thousand years pass like a day,
In the glad surprise of Paradise where work is sweeter than play.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

The Toiling of Felix, Pt. III, st. 1 (1898).

“A trial in Westminster Hall, in July last, at a large expence, was the consequence; when, solely by not describing so fully and accurately the nature of his last complex machines as was strictly by law required, a verdict was found against him. Had he been at all aware of the consequences of such omission, he certainly would have been more careful and circumspect in his description. It cannot be supposed that he meant a fraud on his country: it is on the contrary, most evident that he was anxiously desirous of preserving to his native country the full benefit of his inventions. Yet he cannot but lament, that the advantages resulting from his own exertion and abilities alone, should be wrested from him by those who have no pretension to merit; that they should be permitted to rob him of his inventions before the expiration of the reasonable period of fourteen years, merely because he has unfortunately omitted to point out all the minutiae of his complicated machines. In short, Mr. Arkwright has chosen a subject in manufactures (that of spinning) of all others the most general, the most interesting, and the most difficult. He has, after near twenty years unparalleled diligence and application, by the force of natural genius, and an unbounded invention, (excellencies seldom united) brought to perfection machines on principles as new in theory, as they are regular and perfect in practice. He has induced men of property to engage with him to a large amount; from his important inventions united, he has produced better goods, of their different kinds, than were ever before produced in this country; and finally, he has established a business that already employs upwards of five thousand persons, and a capital, on the whole, of not less than £200,000, a business of the utmost importance and benefit to this kingdom.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

Source: The Case of Mr. Richard Arkwright and Co., 1781, p. 24

Men, Law, Business, Fraud

““A book,” says Vandos of Ur-Amakir, “is a fortress, a place of weeping, the key to a desert, a river that has no bridge, a garden of spears.” Fanlewas the Wise, the great theologian of Avalei, writes that Kuidva, the God of Words, is “a taskmaster with a lead whip.” Tala of Yenith is said to have kept her books in an iron chest that could not be opened in her presence, else she would lie on the floor, shrieking. She wrote: “Within the pages there are fires, which can rise up, singe the hair, and make the eyelids sting.” Ravhathos called the life of the poet “the fair and fatal road, of which even the dust and stones are dear to my heart,” and cautioned that those who spend long hours engaged in reading or writing should not be spoken to for seven hours afterward. “For they have gone into the Pit, into which they descend on Slopes of Fire, but when they rise they climb on a Ladder of Stone.” Hothra of Ur-Brome said that his books were “dearer than father or mother,” a sentiment echoed by thousands of other Olondrians through the ages, such as Elathuid the Voyager, who explored the Nissian coast and wrote: “I sat down in the wilderness with my books, and wept for joy.” And the mystic Leiya Tevorova, that brave and unfathomable soul, years before she met her tragic death by water, wrote: “When they put me into the Cold, above the white Lake, in the Loathsome Tower, and when Winter came with its cruel, hard, fierce, dark, sharp and horrible Spirit, my only solace was in my Books, wherein I walked like a Child, or shone in the Dark like a Moth which has its back to a sparkling Fire.””

Sofia Samatar book A Stranger in Olondria

Source: A Stranger in Olondria (2013), Chapter 3, “Doorways” (p. 19; the first sentence is echoed on p. 273)

Life, Death, God, Lie

“I am always working on a number of canvases at one time, eight, ten.... I take years to finish them, but I look at them each day... You see the advantage of not working from real life – the apples would be rotten long before I completed my canvas... I find that it is important to work slowly. Anyone who looks at such a canvas will follow the same path the artist took, and he will experience that it is the path which counts more than the outcome of it, and that the route taken has been the most interesting part.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1946 - 1963, Cahiers d'art', 1954, p. 14

Life, Time, Parting

“His voice, like a malted milkshake marinated for more than seventy years, has a slightly monotonous lilt - rather like a Hindu chanting Bagavad Gita.”

Jani Allan (1952) South African columnist and broadcaster

Description of Walter Battiss from her interview with Battiss published in the Just Jani column of the Sunday Times, republished in Face Value by Jani Allan.
Sunday Times

“One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom. Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, "It was a good show," when the curtain falls.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 23-24

Wisdom, Fashion, Learning, Change

“Those who come a hundred or two hundred years after us will despise us for having lived our lives so stupidly and tastelessly. Perhaps they’ll find a means to be happy.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Act IV
Uncle Vanya (1897)

Happiness

“All my life I have been attracted by Catholicism. But what attracted me was not its Christianity, but its paganism. The Scholastic Philosophers entertained me not because they were apologists for Jesus but because they were refinements of Aristotle. The liturgical life of the Church moved me because it echoes the most ancient responses to the turning of the year and the changing seasons, and the rhythms of animal and human life. For me the Sacraments transfigured the rites of passage, the physical facts of the human condition — birth, adolescence, sexual intercourse, vocation, sickness and death, communion, penance. Catholicism still provides a structure of acts, individual and at the same time communal, physical responses to life.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

"Monastic Interlude" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/autobio/4.htm An Autobiographical Novel (1991)

Life, Death, Communication, Birth

“The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book The Conduct of Life

Culture http://books.google.com/books?id=uVYRAAAAYAAJ&q=&quot;The+measure+of+a+master+is+his+success+in+bringing+all+men+round+to+his+opinion+twenty+years+later&quot;&pg=PA157#v=onepage 1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Men, Success

“After us they’ll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they’ll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, “Oh! Life is so hard!””

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.
Act II
The Three Sisters (1901)

Life, Death, Happiness, Secret

“Even the discord of war is a detail on which the Abbey refuses to insist. Not till two centuries afterwards did the Mount take on the modern expression of war as a discord in God's providence. Then, in the early years of the fifteenth century, Abbot Pierre le Roy plastered the gate of the Châtelet as you now see it, over the sunny thirteenth-century entrance called Belle Chaise which had treated mere military construction with a sort of quiet contempt. You will know what a Châtelet is when you meet another; it frowns in a spirit quite alien to the twelfth century; it jars on the religion of the place; it forebodes wars of religion; dissolution of society; loss of unity; the end of a world. Nothing is sadder than the catastrophe of gothic art, religion and hope.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

God, War, World, Religion

“Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude… They took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

Quoted in The Empire's New Walls: Sovereignty, Neo-liberalism, and the Production of Space in Post-apartheid South Africa and Post-Oslo Palestine/Israel, by Andrew James Clarno, 2009. pp. 66–67

“Thirty or forty proprietors, with incomes answering to between one thousand and five thousand a year, would create a much more effectual demand for the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, than a single proprietor possessing a hundred thousand a year.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section VII, p. 374
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Life

“I’m not the biggest fan of long walks on the beach but I do love being on a boat, that fulfills the scenic water element right? In all seriousness, I’ve been acting since I was seven years old and I love it. I’ve been blessed to work with amazing people on wonderful projects and made great friends along the way. Besides acting, I love laughing, eating, being adventurous and I’m simply excited about what the future may hold.”

Danielle Savre (1988) actress

Danielle Savre Interview http://www.naludamagazine.com/danielle-savre/ (December 22, 2016)

Love, People, Way, Water

“He had a conspicuous individual talent, but it was interpretive, not directly creative. He could never have emulated Chaplin, Keaton or Jacques Tati and set up a whole project by himself, controlling its every detail even if the task took years. But there is no point carping. He had such a protean capacity that it would have been a miracle if he had been in full command of it.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006)

“I was never a mainstream bridal designer. I am all about prêt. But over the years, my clients have forced me to do their bridal wear so I said why not.”

Deepak Perwani (1973) Pakistani fashion designer

Response when asked about decision to create bridal dresses. http://www.scribd.com/doc/2257395/Interview-with-Deepak-Perwani

“Robert Brent Esqr.
Sir: I am happy to find my father has applied to you, as a friend, to procure me a berth as a midshipman in the navy. Should I succeed in my wishes, at your request, my greatest ambition shall at all times be to merit the confidence reposed in me and to prove thereby, Sir, my gratitude to you. Though sixteen years old, I already begin to think myself a man! And why not? Alexander, it is said, was a little man, yet fame gives him the credit and honor of possessing a great soul! May not, Sir, great feats be performed by a little David as well as by a Goliath? Methinks I already hear the roaring of the cannons, and my soul, impatient of delay, impetuously hurries me on to the scene of action! — there — there to prove the innate courage that characterized on the rolls of fame the immortal and intrepid Major Boarman on the first occupying this happy land. With many thanks for your kind offer, I am, dear Sir, your very obedient and greatly obliged humble servant, Charles Boarman.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

"Charley" Boarman's personal application sent along with his father's earlier letter
A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (1991)

Happiness, Soul, Confidence, Courage

Quotes about year page 95

Quotes about year
page 95