689 quotes found
"There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience."
"We are the masters at the moment and shall be for some considerable time."
"Let us not foist this humbug on the world."
"All my moves were designed to promote the happiness and wellbeing of my family, rather than fame."
"I know that in my public life I fell below the standards that I had set myself... I have seen what is wrong but not done enough to put it right. I have been more critical than correct. I have had opportunities of great positions in the service of the state, but I have put them aside. I know that I have not devoted myself enough to promoting the good of others."
"I feel that I've had a happy life, not a very useful life, but a happy one."
"Getting up and criticising the other fellow because he's in and you are not seems to me a futile waste of time. Especially as you know in your heart that you would be doing more or less the same thing if you were in his place."
"The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave."
"I am glad we have been bombed. Now we can look the East End in the eye."
"Tinkety tonk old fruit, and down with the Nazis."
"At the dinner table, the talk turned to politics. It was in the days before the 'Gang of Four' had allied themselves to the Liberal Party [early 1981]. Queen Elizabeth [The Queen Mother]: I dislike this new socialist party of Woy's [sic]. Host: They're called the Social Democrats, ma'am. Queen Elizabeth: Yes. Well, you don't change socialist just by leaving ist off the end. I say, it's a cheat to start something called the Social Party. I liked the old Labour Party. The best thing is a good old Tory government with a strong Labour opposition."
"Queen Elizabeth: I thought the girls . . . you see, they were marooned in Windsor Castle for most of the war, and I was not sure that they were having a very good education and kind Sachie and Osbert [Sitwell] said they would arrange a poetry evening for us. Such an embarrassment. Osbert was wonderful, as you would expect, and Edith, of course, but then we had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem . . . I think it was called "The Desert". And first the girls got the giggles, and then I did and then even the King. Self: "The Desert", ma'am? Are you sure it wasn't called "The Waste Land? Queen Elizabeth: That's it. I'm afraid we all giggled. Such a gloomy man, looked as though he worked in a bank, and we didn't understand a word. Self: I believe he did once work in a bank."
"Never trust them, never trust them. They can't be trusted."
"He is the only man, since my dear husband died, to have had the effrontery to kiss me on the lips.”"
"We'd have to go self-service."
"We loved him."
"Whilst playing cards, Elizabeth: How are you getting on? You don't look very happy. Lord Salisbury: Oh, Ma'am, I've been left with a horrible queen. Elizabeth: I don't think that's a very good of way of putting it, do you?"
"Was this yours? Oh, could you take it?"
"But I love communists!"
"Wouldn't it be terrible if you'd spent all your life doing everything you were supposed to do, didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't eat things, took lots of exercise, all the things you didn't want to do, and suddenly one day you were run over by a big red bus, and as the wheels were crunching into you you'd say 'Oh my god, I could have got so drunk last night!' That's the way you should live your life, as if tomorrow you'll be run over by a big red bus."
"That's mine!"
"Dear Edwina, she always liked to make a splash."
"I wouldn't if I were you, Noël; they count them before they put them out."
"I'll polish it off myself."
"That is the most dangerous woman in Europe."
"When I was young I was called a rugged individualist. When I was in my fifties I was considered eccentric. Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then and I'm labeled senile."
"I've had worried parents come up to me and ask me for advice. They'll say "I don't know what to do. My teenage son won't cut his hair, he drives too fast, and I don't know what that stuff is he listens to, but it sure isn't music." I'll just say to them "I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. By the time he's my age, I don't think you'll need to worry about him anymore.""
"Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair."
"If I paid $3 or $4 for a cigar, first I'd sleep with it."
"At my age, all my friends, doctors, and attorneys are dead. The good thing about this is that there's no one left who can refute my stories."
"Happiness is having a loving, close knit family in another city."
"I feel healthy! I feel happy I feel terrific"
"Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity."
"Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them."
"All I want to do is change the world!"
"Be generous! Give to those whom you love; give to those who love you; give to the fortunate; give to the unfortunate; yes — give especially to those to whom you don’t want to give."
"Your most precious, valued possessions and your greatest powers are invisible and intangible. No one can take them. You, and you alone, can give them. You will receive abundance for your giving. The more you give — the more you will have!"
"Give a smile to everyone you meet (smile with your eyes) — and you’ll smile and receive smiles..."
"Give a kind word (with a kindly thought behind the word) — you will be kind and receive kind words."
"Give time for a worthy cause (with eagerness) — you will be worthy and richly rewarded."
"Give hope (the magic ingredient for success) — you will have hope and be made hopeful."
"Give encouragement (the incentive to action) — you will have courage and be encouraged."
"Give a pleasant response (the neutralizer of irritants) — you will be pleasant and receive pleasant responses."
"Give good thoughts (nature’s character builder) — you will be good and the world will have good thoughts for you."
"Be generous! Give!"
"Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."
"Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star."
"Never grow weary of protesting. In this sensitive business of dealing with the public which depends on faith and good will, protest is a most effective weapon. Therefore protest."
"The failure of a free press in most countries is usually blamed on the readers. Every nation gets the government—and the press—it deserves. This is too facile a remark. The people deserve better in most governments and press. Readers, in millions of cases, have no way of finding out whether their newspapers are fair or not, honest or distorted, truthful or colored...."
"There are less than a dozen independent newspapers in the whole country, and even that small number is dependent on advertisers and other things, and all these other things which revolve around money and profit make real independence impossible. No newspaper which is supporting one class of society is independent."
"One of the biggest pieces of bunkum shoved down the American throat was the story of the 1929 Italian election. For this I cannot blame my colleagues."
"Forbidden to write anything critical of the Fascist regime, they could only report what the hierarchy wanted them to report. The clever and honest American and British journalists, however, did insinuate startling facts in their stories; these insinuations, unfortunately, were between the lines and not for those who read as they run, and the American public is mostly a running reading public."
"Of course there are boob and bad reporters who bring in boob and bad items which are printed, and which make so many papers what they are. But there are more intelligent men who try to bring in intelligent items, only to see them changed into imbecile items, with the result that they may easily give up trying, and accustom themselves instead to the spirit of the office...."
"We scent the air of the office. We realize that certain things are wanted, certain things unwanted. There is an atmosphere favorable to Fascism. We find that out when some little pro-Mussolini item is played up, some big item, not so pleasant to the hero of our era, played down, or left out. In the future we send pro-Mussolini stuff only. We get a cable of congratulations."
"I am merely trying to illustrate one of the fundamental facts about American journalism today, the fact that the servants of the press lords are slaves very much as they have always been, and that any attempt at revolt is immediately punished with the economic weapon."
"But much more vicious than these cases is the majority of foreign correspondents who never have to be placed against the wall, who are never told what to write and how to write it, but who know from contact with the great minds of the press lords or from the simple deduction that the bosses are in big business and the news must be slanted accordingly, or from the general intangible atmosphere which prevails everywhere, what they can do and what they must never do. The most stupid boast in the history of present-day journalism is that of the writer who says, "I have never been given orders; I am free to do as I like.""
"Only in democratic countries is there the beginning of a suspicion that the old axioms about the press being the bulwark of liberty is something that affects the daily life of the people—that it is a living warning rather than an ancient wisecrack. A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press."
"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, Just like the ones I used to know."
"It's February the 22nd And I can't tell a lie."
"Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music."
"As a result of these [trade union] disputes, many innocent persons are injured and many lose work and wages without any fault on their part. The whole community is struck at. It is all very well to talk of the right to strike, but I know of no law which gives any man, or group of men, the right to strike at the community at large. It is nothing more than a claim to the right to inflict suffering on innocent persons in order to achieve their own ends. That is the state of affairs which cannot be tolerated in any civilized community."
"Freedom of speech means not only freedom for the views with which you agree but also freedom for the views which you hate and deplore."
"I have always held that a case in a court of justice should be open for all and for newspapers to report."
"Our laws are being disregarded right and left. The mobs are out. The police are being subjected to violence. Intimidation and violence are contrary to the law of the land. It should be condemned by every responsible citizen. We have the finest police force in the world. It is under the Queen that they defend our laws, and it is under the Queen that we should support them."
"The English are no longer a homogeneous race. They are white and black, coloured and brown. They no longer share the same standards of conduct. Some of them come from countries where bribery and graft are accepted as an integral part of life and where stealing is a virtue so long as you are not found out... They will never accept the word of a policeman against one of their own."
"The perpetrators of the bombing at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, could be hanged for high treason. ... They are just as guilty as Guy Fawkes was 380 years ago."
"Fundamental to our constitution is the supremacy of the Queen in Parliament and that our laws should be enacted by Parliament, by its authority in regulations, or indeed by judges in declaring the common law. That is what I understand is meant by the supremacy and sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament. I hope to show you in the course of my observations that that sovereignty is being eroded and that we are coming under another sovereignty—that of Europe and of the Council of Ministers. That is the challenge we face today."
"Denning said that while hanging was seen as uncivilized, he believed most people would like to see it restored for the premeditated, deliberate killing carried out by IRA bombers. He believed Parliament would never vote to bring it back."
"The House of Commons starts its proceedings with a prayer. The chaplain looks at the assembled members with their varied intelligence and then prays for the country."
"People say I am eccentric and frail. Well, I may be frail in body and hearing, but I hope my state of mind is as alert as ever it was and I am going to speak my mind as freely as I have ever done. I am a common man and I speak for the common people of England and from the letters I receive, the great majority agree with me."
"Our sovereignty has been taken away by the European Court of Justice...Our courts must no longer enforce our national laws. They must enforce Community law...No longer is European law an incoming tide flowing up the estuaries of England. It is now like a tidal wave bringing down our sea walls and flowing inland over our fields and houses—to the dismay of all."
"[The European Court of Justice is impudent and] a French court, dominated by continental thinking. The judicial thinking in the European court is entirely contrary to the English system of justice. It was started by the French and the court thinks in continental ideas; the Germans are coming in too. It is dominated by continental thinking."
"We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten, and the whole community would be satisfied... [On the Guildford Four:] They'd probably have hanged the right men. Not proved against them, that's all."
"Our English Parliament says that Spaniards fish in our waters by quota. The Europeans say that's illegal by their law. It's no longer English waters, if you please ... It's European waters. All can come into your European waters. They've got to reverse an Act of Parliament to do that and I say they have no right whatsoever to do it. They were never given the right by treaty to overrule our sovereignty. That's only done by the courts themselves who are manned by pan-Europeans. Their decisions are all influenced by their ideology. ... It's quite plain that these pan-Europeans do not go by the words of the treaty. That's why I don't think there's much chance of altering things. I'd rather go with John of Gaunt — England, "This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,/Dear for her reputation through the world,/Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,/Like to a tenement or pelting farm". That's what I feel like now. I'm getting old. That's what we are, a tenement of Europe. I die pronouncing it."
"What is the argument on the other side? Only this, that no case has been found in which it has been done before. That argument does not appeal to me in the least. If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand still whilst the rest of the world goes on; and that will be bad for both."
"[On company law], a company may in many ways be likened to a human body. It has a brain and nerve centre which control what it does. It also has hands which hold the tools and act in accordance with directions from the centre. Some of the people in the company are mere servants and agents who are nothing more than hands to do the work... Others are directors and managers who represent toe directing mind and will of the company, and control what it does."
""The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail—its roof may shake—the wind may blow through it—the storm may enter—the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter—all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement." So be it—unless he has justification by law."
"Limitation is not a matter of justice. It is a rule of public policy which has its origin in history and its justification in convenience."
"Old Peter Beswick was a coal merchant in Eccles, Lancashire. He had no business premises. All he had was a lorry, scales, and weights. He used to take the lorry to the yard of the National Coal Board, where he bagged coal and took it round to his customers in the neighbourhood. His nephew, John Joseph Beswick, helped him in his business. In March 1962, old Peter Beswick and his wife were both over 70. He had had his leg amputated and was not in good health. The nephew was anxious to get hold of the business before the old man died. So they went to a solicitor, Mr. Ashcroft, who drew up an agreement for them."
"There are many things in life more worth while than money. One of these things is to be brought up in this our England, which is still "the envy of less happier lands". I do not believe it is for the benefit of children to be uprooted from England and transported to another country simply to avoid tax... Many a child has been ruined by being given too much. The avoidance of tax may be lawful, but it is not yet a virtue."
"It happened on April 19, 1964. It was bluebell time in Kent."
"In June 1970, a big earth-moving machine got stuck in the mud. It sank so far as to be out of sight. It cost much money to get it out. Who is to pay the cost?"
"Mr Thornton was a freelance trumpeter of the highest quality."
"The customer pays his money and gets a ticket. He cannot refuse it. He cannot get the money back. He may protest to the machine, even swear at it. But it will remain unmoved."
"So there was Mr. Jarvis, in the second week, in this hotel with no house party at all, and no one could speak English, except himself. He was very disappointed, too, with the skiing. [...] There were no ordinary length skis. There were only mini-skis about 3 ft. long. So he did not get his skiing as he wanted to. [...] He did not have the nice Swiss cakes which he was hoping for. The only cakes for tea were potato crisps and little dry nut cakes. The yodler evening consisted of one man from the locality who came in his working clothes for a little while, and sang four or five songs very quickly. [...] Mr. Jarvis has only a fortnight's holiday in the year. He books it far ahead, and looks forward to it all that time. He ought to be compensated for the loss of it."
"The Treaty [of Rome] does not touch any of the matters which concern solely England and the people in it. These are still governed by English law. They are not affected by the Treaty. But when we come to matters with a European element, the Treaty is like an incoming tide. It flows into the estuaries and up the rivers. It cannot be held back, Parliament has decreed that the Treaty is henceforward to be part of our law. It is equal in force to any statute."
"Mr. Kavanagh wants to have a gun, perhaps many guns. To do so, he has to get the permission of the chief officer of police for his area."
"This is the first case in which in this court we have had to consider the Treaty of Rome. It comes about because of a tin can. If you should go for a picnic or camping, you will be likely nowadays to take with you something to boil water. One of the most useful is a tin can containing butane gas in liquid form. It is a small round tin, 3½ inches high and 3½ inches in diameter, with a domed top. The tin is completely airtight. When you want to use it, you fit it into a holder, pierce the top, and light the flame. It is a very ordinary sort of tin, but the first one of its shape was made by a French company called Application des Gaz S.A. I will call the company the "French Gaz" company, and the tin the "Gaz" tin. There is no copyright in the tin. But there is, or may be, copyright in a drawing of it which was made beforehand. The drawing was made by M. Robert Faure, a French citizen. He made it 18 years ago. France is, of course, a member of the Copyright Convention. French citizens are entitled to the protection of our copyright law, just as our own citizens."
"In 1966 there was a Scripture Rally in Trafalgar Square. A widower, Mr. Honick, went to it. He was about 63. A widow, Mrs. Rawnsley, also went. She was about 60. He went up to her and introduced himself. He was not much to look at. "He looked like a tramp," she said. "He has been picking up fag ends." They got on well enough, however, to exchange addresses. His was 36 Queen's Road, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. Hers was 74 Downton Avenue, Streatham Hill, London, S.W.2. Next day he went to her house with a gift for her. It was a rose wrapped in a newspaper. Afterwards their friendship grew apace. She was sorry for him, she said. She smartened him up with better clothes. She had him to meals. She went to his house: he went to hers. They wrote to one another in terms of endearment. We were not shown the letters, but counsel described them as love letters."
"Broadchalke is one of the most pleasing villages in England. Old Herbert Bundy, the defendant, was a farmer there. His home was at Yew Tree Farm. It went back for 300 years. His family had been there for generations. It was his only asset. But he did a very foolish thing. He mortgaged it to the bank. Up to the very hilt. Not to borrow money for himself, but for the sake of his son. Now the bank have come down on him. They have foreclosed. They want to get him out of Yew Tree Farm and to sell it. They have brought this action against him for possession. Going out means ruin for him. He was granted legal aid. His lawyers put in a defence. They said that, when he executed the charge to the bank he did not know what he was doing: or at any rate that the circumstances were such that he ought not to be bound by it. At the trial his plight was plain. The judge was sorry for him. He said he was a "poor old gentleman." He was so obviously incapacitated that the judge admitted his proof in evidence. He had a heart attack in the witness-box. Yet the judge felt he could do nothing for him. There is nothing, he said, "which takes this out of the vast range of commercial transactions." He ordered Herbert Bundy to give up possession of Yew Tree Farm to the bank. Now there is an appeal to this court. The ground is that the circumstances were so exceptional that Herbert Bundy should not be held bound."
"To some this may appear to be a small matter, but to Mr. Harry Hook, it is very important. He is a street trader in the Barnsley Market. He has been trading there for some six years without any complaint being made against him; but, nevertheless, he has now been banned from trading in the market for life. All because of a trifling incident. On Wednesday, October 16, 1974, the market was closed at 5:30. So were all the lavatories, or 'toilets' as they are now called. They were locked up. Three quarters of an hour later, at 6:20, Harry Hook had an urgent call of nature. He wanted to relieve himself. He went into a side street near the market and there made water, or 'urinated' as it is now said. No one was about except one or two employees of the council, who were cleaning up. They rebuked him. He said: 'I can do it here if I like'. They reported him to a security officer who came up. The security officer reprimanded Harry Hook. We are not told the words used by the security officer. I expect they were in language which street traders understand. Harry Hook made an appropriate reply. Again, we are not told the actual words, but it is not difficult to guess. I expect it was an emphatic version of 'You be off'. At any rate, the security officer described them as words of abuse. Touchstone would say that the security officer gave the 'reproof valiant' and Harry Hook gave the 'counter-check quarrelsome'; As You Like It, Act V, Scene IV. On Thursday morning the security officer reported the incident. The market manager thought it was a serious matter. So he saw Mr. Hook the next day, Friday, October 18. Mr. Hook admitted it and said he was sorry for what had happened. The market manager was not satisfied to leave it there. He reported the incident to the chairman of the amenity services committee of the Council. He says that the chairman agreed that 'staff should be protected from such abuse'. That very day the market manager wrote a letter to Mr. Hook, banning him from trading in the market."
"In summertime village cricket is a delight to everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in the County of Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last 70 years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short. It has a good clubhouse for the players and seats for the onlookers. The village team plays there on Saturdays and Sundays. They belong to a league, competing with the neighbouring villages. On other evenings they practice while the light lasts. Yet now after these 70 years a judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play anymore. He has issued an injunction to stop them. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket. This newcomer has built, or has had built for him, a house on the edge of the cricket ground which four years ago was a field where cattle grazed. The animals did not mind the cricket, but now this adjoining field has been turned into a housing estate. The newcomer bought one of the houses on the edge of the cricket field. No doubt the open space was a selling point. Now he complains that when a batsman hits a six the ball has been known to land in his garden or on or near his house. His wife has got so upset about it that they always go out at weekends. They do not go into the garden when cricket is being played. They say that this is intolerable. So they asked the judge to stop the cricket being played. And the judge, much against his will, has felt that he must order the cricket to be stopped: with the consequence, I suppose, that the Lintz Cricket Club will disappear. The cricket ground will be turned to some other use. I expect for houses or a factory. The young men will turn to other things instead of cricket. The whole village will be much poorer. And all this because of a newcomer who has just bought a house there next to the cricket ground."
"This is a case of a barmaid who was badly bitten by a big dog."
"The statute in section 3(1) contains a definition of a “racial group”. It means a “group of persons defined by reference to colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins.” That definition is very carefully framed. Most interesting is that it does not include religion or politics or culture. You can discriminate for or against Roman Catholics as much as you like without being in breach of the law. You can discriminate for or against Communists as much as you please, without being in breach of the law. You can discriminate for or against the “hippies” as much as you like, without being in breach of the law. But you must not discriminate against a man because of his colour or of his race or of his nationality, or of “his ethnic or national origins.” … You must remember that it is perfectly lawful to discriminate against groups of people to whom you object - so long as they are not a racial group. You can discriminate against the Moonies or the Skinheads or any other group which you dislike or to which you take objection. No matter whether your objection to them is reasonable or unreasonable, you can discriminate against them - without being in breach of the law.’}}"
"In 1977 the black-out was lifted. It was done by R.S.C., Ord. 53. The curtains were drawn back. The light was let in. Our administrative law became well-organised and comprehensive. It enabled the High Court to review the decisions of all inferior courts and tribunals and to quash them when they went wrong. And what is more, it enabled the High Court to award damages and grant declarations. No longer is it necessary to bring an ordinary action to obtain damages or declarations. It can all be done by judicial review. This new remedy (by judicial review) has made the old remedy (by action at law) superfluous."
"At one time there was a black-out of any development of administrative law. The curtains were drawn across to prevent the light coming in. The remedy of certiorari was hedged about with all sorts of technical limitations. It did not give a remedy when inferior tribunals went wrong, but only when they went outside their jurisdiction altogether. The black-out started in 1841 with Reg. v. Bolton (1841) 1 Q.B. 66 and became darkest in 1922, Rex v. Nat Bell Liquors Ltd. [1922] 2 A.C. 128. It was not relieved until 1952, Rex v. Northumberland Compensation Appeal Tribunal, Ex parte Shaw [1952] 1 K.B. 338. Whilst the darkness still prevailed, we let in some light by means of a declaration. The most notable cases were Barnard v. National Dock Labour Board [1953] 2 Q.B. 18 and Anisminic Ltd. v. Foreign Compensation Commission [1969] 2 A.C. 147. I sat in the preliminary hearings of both of them. We allowed each of those cases to go forward. It was because otherwise persons would be without a remedy for an injustice: see Barnard v. National Dock Labour Board [1953] 2 Q.B. 18, 43 and the Anisminic case [1969] 2 A.C. 147, 231B-C In effect it was only by leave that the action for a declaration was allowed to proceed."
"Lord Denning was the best known and best loved judge of this, or perhaps any, generation. He was a legend in his own lifetime."
"A St George of the law courts."
"Our common law owes its strength to the creative genius of judges who, by obeying their own doctrines and principles, have generally proved more competent to untie the knots of human conflict than has Parliament. The greatest recent example of this creative genius – Lord Denning – did not read law at university, and displays in his judgments the broad education and culture which, by helping him to enter imaginatively into the conflict before him, have given substance and direction to his strikingly novel interpretations of the law."
"[Denning is] certainly the most interesting and possibly the most important English judge of the twentieth century."
"Lord Denning was probably the greatest English judge of modern times. He combined a love of liberty with a passion for justice. His life and work will provide inspiration for generations to come."
"A poet knows war without objective war in the world; it was conflict at the root of his mind that impelled him to the masking of these conflicts in the apparent resolution and order of works of art.In a dialectical sense, all poetry is war."
"The war may present or force a subject; it may bring out a poet, or shock him onto a sensibility of silence. It may kill him. Or germinate the best war poems for exfoliation years after the event."
"I felt the ruthfulness and senselessness of war so acutlely that I wrote the first three stanzas of which, are in effect a prayer."
"Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity? Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all? Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?"
"Poems in a way are spells against death. They are milestones, to see where you were then from where you are now. To perpetuate your feelings, to establish them. If you have in any way touched the central heart of mankind's feelings, you'll survive."
"Poetry is a natural energy resource of our country. It has no energy crisis, possessing a potential that will last as long as the country. Its power is equal to that of any country in the world."
"He had never disagreed with anyone in his life, no matter how unfairly they may have treated him. He preferred to swallow his tears, suppress his anger and bitterness; he would bear anything rather than oppose a person directly. Nor did it ever occur to him to wonder whether this forbearance might not be harmful to others."
"In the past several years, my hard work, my books which I wrote through blood and tears, and the purpose of my life all has been focused on: helping everyone to have a spring, so that everyone's heart will be bright, everyone will have a happy life, and everyone will have the freedom to develop in any way they want. I aroused people to have thirst for, thirst for brightness; I put a cause in front of people, a cause which is worthy of people's devotion. But all of my hard work was destroyed by another power. After arousing a young soul, it only made him or her suffer more unbearable trampling torment."
"The unreasonable social system, the marriage without freedom, the yoke of traditional ideas, and the family autocracy, destroyed we don't know how many young souls. In my twenty eight years, I already had it accumulated so many, so many shadows. In that autumn smile, in that smiling which was the same as crying, I saw the young people's corpses in the whole past generation. It was as if I heard a painful sound saying: "This must be ended.""
"Victory is for them, not for us. We have not made profit out of our country's misfortune. Victory does not bring us luck."
"I felt a joy in my heart, which seemed filled with love, love for the sun, the snow, the wind and the hills, love for everything around me. It was in this mood that I walked down the snow-covered path dotted with black footprints. Further down the footprints mingled and made dirty little puddles. I picked my way over the thickest snow because I loved the crunching of snow underfoot. With the sunlight pouring down and a breeze in my face I felt that balmy spring was coming to meet me."
"You have your thoughts and I have mine. This is the fact and you can't change it even if you kill me."
"I've lived on royalties all my life. It is the readers who have supported me."
"I write just because the fire of my emotion is burning. Had I not, I would not have been able to find peace."
"Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing."
"Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future."
"I am a person always full of contradictions... It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer."
"Loving truth and living honestly is my attitude to life. Be true to yourself and be true to others, thus you can be the judge of your behavior."
"I believe in the future a new Dante will write a new Divine Comedy."
"Nobody would say the cowshed was heaven and nobody would say the inhuman torture of so many victims be called a revolution of the proletariat. … A museum should be established to remind China of the follies and disasters that had fallen from 1966 to 1976. We cannot forget what had happened and history should not repeat itself."
"Every town in China should establish a museum about the Cultural Revolution."
"I have spent myself on all kinds of things … I have advanced much politically but I have written little and moreover have written it badly."
"Now my education, life and consciousness are talked about by those who cannot understand what I wrote, what I think, what is my life. They make me up from their subjective imagination and attack me publicly as well as secretly. Because my novels completely obscure my behaviour and ideas, and result in a lot of misunderstandings, my name is related to nihilism or humanism, although I have written a book of over three hundred pages to explain my ideas (this book is very easy to understand and without a metaphysical term). Those who talk about me never read it. They judged my ideas according to one of my short stories, then deduced a variety of strange conclusions and decided which doctrine I belong to. I have been caught in this predicament all these years and cannot get rid of it..."
"Today I read your autobiography in two volumes, Living My Life. These two books full of life, shocked me greatly. Your roaring of forty years like spring thunder, knocked at the door of my living grave throughout the whole book. At this time, silence lost its effect, the fire of my life was lit, I want to come to life and go through great anguish, immeasurable joy, dark despair and enthusiastic hope, throughout the peak and the abyss of life. I will calmly go on living with an attitude you taught me until I spend my whole life."
"According to the world's highest medical authorities, burns extending over 75 per cent of a person's body are regarded as likely to prove fatal. The burns of these two patients were not only extensive but also deep, even involving their muscles in many places. Therefore all the experienced surgeons frowned, shook their heads, and expressed their utter inability to save the lives of these men. One of them said, "It is only a matter of three or four days." Another suggested, "At most three days." Still a third one said, "Whether medicine is used or not is immaterial, for in spite of all efforts the patients will die." Everybody seemed to agree on one conclusion "death." In this way the joint consultation was concluded in a very pessimistic and hopeless atmosphere. On the basis of mortality statistics in international medical literature it seemed that these badly burned patients were doomed to die. But the Party organization of the hospital would not agree to such a pessimistic view. The secretary of the general Party branch and the assistant secretary of the medical department branch immediately summoned the doctors treating the patients for a talk, and following that a meeting of all the responsible doctors was convened. The problem was analysed from a class viewpoint, and it was stressed that in capitalist countries it was impossible to obtain the full use of all resources to save the lives of burned workers, but that in our socialist country it was possible to mobilize everything available to save them. For this reason we should not always accept the medical statistics of capitalist countries and allow them to influence us. The Party secretary called the attention of the doctors specially to the following points: First, that they must try to rid themselves of their blind reliance on established bourgeois medical experience, and they must try to think, speak and act in bold new ways. Secondly, they must follow the mass line and depend more upon the power of the people. Finally he said, "The Party will do everything possible to save these steel workers who have created vast wealth for the nation.""
"When they accepted their assignments they were not very confident, especially the assistant head surgeon who simply believed in his own past experience, in the statistics of international medical literature, and in the medical equipment and resources of the hospitals in capitalist countries. Therefore when he first heard the talk of the vice-superintendent, who was the secretary of the general Party branch, he had some inner feeling of resistance. He thought to himself, "This is simply coercing people to try and do the impossible! But since I have accepted the assignment I'll do what I can. At any rate, the patients will die either in the shock stage or later." With such downhearted feelings he entered the ward to see his patients."
"Looking at this immensely swollen face in front of him the doctor gently consoled the patient, "Comrade, don't worry and you will recover." As a matter of fact, he was thinking quite the opposite, "You will die. I can be of no more help.""
"Later the assistant chief surgeon told people that he had been a surgeon for eleven years, had seen not a few patients die and consequently had become quite cold and indifferent. He was interested only in diseases as such and had no feelings for his patients as people. But what Chiu Tsai-kang had said impressed him deeply. Even after he left the patient's room he thought it over for quite a long while. Here was a man awaiting death who had to clench his teeth to endure the searing pain of his whole body, but who constantly had the nation's steel production on his mind and who wholeheartedly desired to return to his furnace. In the past, he had read of people with such public spirit and unselfish character only in novels. He had regarded them as nothing but ideal, imaginary creations of literary writers. Now he has seen such a hero in the flesh with his own eyes."
"When alone he secretly shook his head. But suddenly he recalled the analysis made by the Party secretary regarding "two kinds of social system, two attitudes, and therefore two different results." He felt as if he had seen a ray of light in the darkness. He said to himself, "Lao Chiu can endure pain of such magnitude, and in spite of his burns he is always thinking of going back to the furnace. He wants to live. Why should he not be able to live?" That moment, suddenly the doctor and the patient were drawn closely together. From then on, the doctor thought of the patient often and also tried to compare himself with Lao Chiu. The more he compared the more he felt ashamed of himself and the more eager he was to do his best for this worker. So, from the very first day the assistant surgeon learned something from his patient."
"The doctors realized very clearly that their minds and emotions were changing from day to day. On the one hand they were healing the patient, and on the other it looked as if they were healing themselves too. It was this chief surgeon who first volunteered to offer his skin when grafting began."
"This was a good beginning. All the outmoded rules of the hospital were broken. Minds which had been tied down by subservience to foreign experience were now set in motion. People began to speak, to think and to act boldly. A new world opened in front of them. They knew that what they were doing now was something unprecedented which doctors in capitalist countries had not been able to do. They were engaged in a battle to save lives and as the scope of the battle became wider an increasing number of people were drawn in. Later on when a difficulty occurred in the course of treatment they solicited the opinions of many doctors both within and without the hospital, depending on the wisdom of the many to tide over one crisis after another."
"The changes in the chief and the assistant chief surgeon were most noticeable. At first they felt that they were just fulfilling their duty to the injured worker but were very dubious about the result. But then, full of confidence they really began doing their best."
"Lao Chiu's burns were so extensive that, with the exception of his scalp, two shoulders, the waist where his leather belt was worn and the soles of his feet, pratically his whole body was affected. His back and hips were burned deeply and his right leg was even worse. Every time it was necessary to turn him over and change his dressings ten doctors and five nurses were required and the process took several hours. Moreover, the patient suffered very much and was short of breath for a long while."
"During all these days Lao Chiu was lying on the bed suffering continual pain. The doctors and nurses did their utmost to reduce his suffering to the minimum, but they could not completely relieve it. Even the chief surgeon said once, "When we were healing him I often thought that if another person was in his place he certainly would not have stood it so long, but Lao DChiu endured everything. When I saw him grinding his teeth to suppress his groans, I felt so touched that the tears feel from my eyes." Indeed he suffered great pain for a long period. While changing the dressings even laughing gas anaesthesia could not keep him quiet. Sometimes these pains were so intense that his whole body trembled uncontrollably."
"The battle to save life is still going on. Up till now Lao Chiu has already lived for forty-four days. He lives on stubbornly and endures all suffering. Already he has become a banner, a fresh red banner. Many people regard him as a source of encouragement and as a model for them. Many consider him as a personification of the noble qualities of the working class and as a shining example of the great spirit of communism. This battle to save life will eventually be won. The fact that Lao Chiu has lived until now is already a medical marvel. He has passed through one crisis after another and later he may face still more. But he will certainly live. Blind faith in established experience has been shattered, outmoded regulations have been smashed."
"He wrote that the main mistake of his generation was having "said too many empty words" in the Maoist age to please the cultural bureaucrats."
"Swanee! How I love you, how I love you, My dear ol' Swanee! I'd give the world to be Among the folks in D-I-X-I-E"
"Picture you upon my knee, Just tea for two and two for tea"
"Sometimes I'm happy sometimes I'm blue my disposition depends on you."
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
"I don't allow anyone to talk to me like that. So you're lucky — you're a teacher."
"The clerical work is par for the course. "Keep on file in numerical order" means throw in wastebasket. You'll soon learn the language. "Let it be a challenge to you" means you're stuck with it; "interpersonal relationships" is a fight between kids; "ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline" means call the cops; "Language Arts Dept." is the English office; "literature based on child's reading level and experiential background" means that's all they've got in the Book Room; "non-academic-minded" is a delinquent; and "It has come to my attention" means you're in trouble."
"When I had asked why they were taking English, a boy said: "To help us in real life.""
"The building itself is hostile: cracked plaster, broken windows, splintered doors and carved up desks, gloomy corridors and metal stairways, dingy cafeteria (they can eat sitting down only in 20 minute shifts) and an auditorium which has no windows. It does have murals, however, depicting mute, muscular harvesters, faded and immobile under a mustard sun."
"During what was presumably my lunch period, Admiral Ass (a Mr. McHabe, who signs himself Adm. Asst.) appeared in my room with Joe Ferone. "This boy is on probation," he said. "Did he show up in homeroom this morning?" "Yes," I said. "Any trouble?" the Admiral asked. There we stood, the three of us, taking each other's measure. Ferone was watching through narrowed eyes. "No. No trouble," I said."
"The cardinal sin, strange as it may seem in an institution of learning, is talking. There are others, of course — sins, I mean, and I seem to have committed a good number. Yesterday I was playing my record of Gielgud reading Shakespeare. I had brought my own phonograph to school (no one could find the Requisition Forms for "Audio-Visual Aids" — that's the name for the school record player) and I had succeeded, I thought, in establishing a mood. I mean, I got them to be quiet, when — enter Admiral Ass, in full regalia, epaulettes quivering with indignation. He snapped his fingers for me to stop the phonograph, waited for the turntable to stop turning, and pronounced: "There will be a series of three bells rung three times indicating Emergency Shelter Drill. Playing records does not encourage the orderly evacuation of the class.""
"Like most chairmen, he teaches only one class of Seniors; the most experienced teachers are frequently promoted right out of the classroom!"
"Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did."
"You teachers are all alike, dishing out crap and expecting us to swallow it and then give it back to you, nice and neat, with a place in it for the mark to go in. But you're even phonier than the others because you put on this act — being a dame you know how — and you stand there pretending that you give a damn. Who you kidding? We're dirt to you, just like you're dirt to the fatheads and whistle-blowers who run this jail, and they're dirt to the swindlers and horn-tooters who run the school system."
"In Memory of Those Who Died Waiting for the Bell"
"The ceiling fell? The ink ran dry? A student dared to smile? Of every new disaster I prove myself the master By sending out more circulars, more circulars to file! A missing kid? A kissing kid? A paper on the floor? For every major crisis One remedy suffices: More circulars, more circulars, to put into a drawer!A crowded cafeteria? A substitute's hysteria? A visitor from Syria? A missing Book Receipt?I merely send out circulars To add to other circulars To add to other circulars Numerical and neat!"
"Your lesson plan is excellent — except for the Emily Dickinson line: "There is no frigate like a book." The sentiment is lovely, the quotation is apt — only trouble is the word "frigate." Just try to say it in class — and your lesson is over."
"Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it."
"How can I take seriously such mimeographed absurdities as "Lateness due to absence," "High under-achiever," and "Polio consent slips"? —SylDear Syl, I'll match yours any day with "Please disregard the following." —Bea"
"If a teacher wants to know something why doesn't she look it up herself instead of making we students do it? We benefit ourselves more by listening to her, after all she's the teacher!"
"Frances Egan, the school nurse, left her nutrition charts long enough to tell me there was nothing that could have been done. "Evelyn had a rough time with her father," she said. "Once she came in beaten black and blue." "What did you do for her?" "I gave her a cup of tea." "Tea? Why tea, for heaven's sake?" "Why? Because I know all about it," she said, shaking with anger. "I know more than anyone here what goes on outside — poverty, disease, dope, degeneracy — yet I'm not supposed to give them even a band-aid. I used to plead, bang on my desk, talk myself hoarse arguing with kids, parents, welfare, administration, social agencies. Nobody really heard me. Now I give them tea. At least, that's something." "But you're a nurse," I said helplessly. She showed me the Directive from the Board posted on her wall: THE SCHOOL NURSE MAY NOT TOUCH WOUNDS, GIVE MEDICATION, REMOVE FOREIGN PARTICLES FROM THE EYE... Are we, none of us, then, allowed to touch wounds? What is the teacher's responsibility? And if it begins at all, where does it end?"
"With me they get a solid foundation, the disciplines of learning. In my class they don't get away with hot air discussions and exchanging their opinions and describing their experiences. What opinions can they have? What have they experienced? What do they know? That's an affront! They learn what I know."
"When I tried to tell McHabe that it would have been more valuable to let Ferone keep his appointment with me than to kick him out, he let me have it: "When you're in the system as long as I," he said (They all say that!) "you'll realize it isn't understanding they need. I understand them all right — they're no good.""
"A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil's environment who treats him with respect."
"Being a female, she spurns him on."
"Paul asks how I would have handled a love letter from a student. I don't know — by talking, maybe, by listening. I don't know. How sad that we don't hear each other — any of us. Major issues are submerged by minor ones; catastrophes by absurdities."
"Why did you fail me? I didn't do nothing!" The reply, of course, is: "That's just it."
"One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them.""
"My words never reached him; I could almost hear them drop, one by one, like so many pebbles against a closed window."
"I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance."
"We got this jerky sub. she don't know a thing and she's trying to teach it."
"Teaching here isn't so bad. Once you accept as one of the ineluctable laws of nature that kids will continue to say "Silas Mariner" and "Ancient Marner" and "between you and I" and "mischievious" and that the administration will continue to use phrases like "egregious conduct" and "ethnic background" you can go on from there."
"I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned campsites over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go and every stone on the road precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: "Live in the layers, not on the litter." Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes."
"In the best painting as in authentic poetry one is aware of moral pressures exerted... choices are important, moral pressure exists to make right and wrong choices."
"I love what the poet Stanley Kunitz said about dreaming of “an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.” That pretty much sums up what I most admire in a work of literature."
"I remember something Stanley Kunitz once told me. He said, "Poetry explores depths of thought and feeling that civilization requires for its survival.""
"Things come to me, they speak to me. Stanley Kunitz has had an enormous impact on my life. He once said that poetry is only half language, the other half is a quality of perception, a function of the imagination, a particular form of paying attention. For me, it's a stilling of the self, waiting for this language to speak to me before I utter it."
"It is a mistake to assume that diplomacy can always settle international disputes if there is "good faith" and "willingness to come to an agreement". For in a revolutionary international order, each power will seem to its opponents to lack precisely these qualities. [...] In the absence of an agreement on what constitutes a reasonable demand, diplomatic conferences are occupied with sterile repetitions of basic positions and accusations of bad faith, or allegations of "unreasonableness" and "subversion". They become elaborate stage plays which attempt to attach as yet uncommitted powers to one of the opposing systems."
"[T]he most fundamental problem of politics, which is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness."
"In some respects the intellectual has never been more in demand; that he makes such a relatively small contribution is not because he is rejected but because his function is misunderstood. He is sought after enthusiastically but for the wrong reasons and in pursuit of the wrong purposes.... All too often what the policymaker wants from the intellectual is not ideas but endorsement."
"I...was a little puzzled by your suggestion that we should return to a diplomacy like Bismarck's. Having once planned to write a book on Bismarck's diplomacy and, indeed, having finished half of it, I could think of few policies more likely to lead to catastrophe in present circumstances."
"[T]hat it is unable to relate man to the forces outside himself whose makings he sees but whose motives he can grasp only by analogy. Conservatives have always insisted that the balance between these two sides aspects of human conduct is derived from a sense of reverence, a recognition of forces transcending man and WHICH IS THE REVERSE SIDE OF A RECOGNITION of the limitations of the individual apprehension of reality. The great rebels have denied this and insisted on finding in their own demoniac nature a sufficient motive for commitment. To the conservative the bond of society is a myth which reconciles the point of view which treats man as a means and his experience of himself by an analogy superior to analytical truth."
"Thus, the more Bismarck preached his doctrine the more humanly remote he grew; the more rigorous he was in applying his lessons the more incomprehensible he became to his contemporaries. Nor was it strange that the conservatives gradually came to see in him the voice of the devil. For the devil is a fallen angel using the categories of piety to destroy it. And however brilliant Bismarck’s analysis, societies are incapable of the courage of cynicism. The insistence on men as atoms, on societies as forces has always led to a tour de force evading ERODING all self-restraint. Because societies operate by approximations and because they are incapable of fine distinctions, a doctrine of power as a means may end up by making power an end. And for this reason, although Bismarck had the better of the intellectual argument, it may well be that the conservatives embodied the greater social truth."
"The frequently voiced view that we should conduct our diplomacy so as to bring about a rift between Communist China and the USSR."
"If Communist China agrees to renounce the use of force in the formosa strait, we could consider opening up channels of non-official contact... journalists, students, tourists, etc."
"The Metternich system had been inspired by the eighteenth century notion of the universe as a great clockwork: Its parts were intricately intermeshed, and a disturbance of one upset the equilibrium of the others. Bismarck represented a new age. Equilibrium was seen not as harmony and mechanical balance, but as a statistical balance of forces in flux. Its appropriate philosophy was Darwin's concept of the survival of the fittest. Bismarck marked the change from the rationalist to the empiricist conception of politics.... Bismarck declared the relativity of all beliefs; he translated them into forces to be evaluated in terms of the power they could generate."
"What has come to be called the balance of terror may seem less frightful to fanatics leading a country with a population of 600 millions. Even a war directed explicitly against centers of population may seem to it tolerable and perhaps the best means of dominating the world. Chou En-lai is reported to have told a Yugoslav diplomat that an all-out nuclear war would leave 10 million Americans, 20 million Russians, and 350 million Chinese."
"Where eminence must be reached by endless struggle, leaders may collapse at the top, drained of creativity, or they may be inclined to use in high office the methods by which they reached it. When political leaders are characterized primarily by their quest for power, when they decide to seek office first and search for issues later, then their technique to maintain power is necessarily short-range and manipulative."
"We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape — to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance."
"There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."
"[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves."
"Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral."
"Power is the great aphrodisiac."
"It is barely conceivable that there are people who like war."
"[Referring to the people of India] They are superb flatterers, Mr. President. They are masters at flattery. They are masters at subtle flattery. That’s how they survived 600 years. They suck up — their great skill is to suck up to people in key positions. (June 17, 1971)"
"I tell you, the Pakistanis are fine people, but they are primitive in their mental structure. [...] They just don't have the subtlety of the Indians. (August 10, 1971)"
"I've always acted alone. Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol, since he doesn't shoot. He acts, that's all, by being in the right place at the right time. In short, a Western. … This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique."
"The accumulation of nuclear arms has to be constrained if mankind is not to destroy itself."
"If we do not get a recognition of our interdependence, the Western civilization that we now have is almost certain to disintegrate. (October 1974)"
"Adapted from Niall Ferguson, THE SQUARE AND THE TOWER: Networks and Power, from Freemasons to Facebook, Penguin Press, 2017. As quoted in Niall Ferguson, The Secret to Henry Kissinger's success (January 20, 2018)"
"I think of myself as a historian more than as a statesman. As a historian, you have to be conscious of the fact that every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, of aspirations that weren't realized, of wishes that were fulfilled and then turned out to be different from what one expected. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy. As a statesman, one has to act on the assumption that problems must be solved."
"I think that any attempt at domination in a nuclear age is going to involve risks that are catastrophic and would not be tolerated. If we remain strong enough to prevent the imposition of Communist hegemony, then I believe that transformations of the Communist societies are inevitable. I believe that the imposition of the kind of state control that communism demands is totally incompatible with the requirements of human organization at this moment. The pressure of this realization on Communist systems is going to bring about a transformation apart from any conscious policy the United States pursues, so long as there is not a constant foreign danger that can be invoked to impose regimentation. What inherent reason is there that keeps the Communist societies in Eastern Europe from achieving the standard of living of those of Western Europe? The resources are about the same, the industrial organization is there. I think the reason is inherent in the type of society that has been created, and that I believe must inevitably change."
"Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced birth rates can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resource supplies and to the economic interests of the United States."
"If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be anti-Semitic."
"Any people [Jews] who have been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong."
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."
"How many people did (Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary) kill? ... Tens of thousands?"
"You should tell the Cambodians (i.e., Khmer Rouge) that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in the way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before."
"In the 1950s and 1960s we put several thousand nuclear weapons into Europe. To be sure, we had no precise idea of what to do with them."
"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."
"Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."
"The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously."
"Ever since the secret trip to China, my own relationship with Nixon had grown complicated. Until then I had been an essentially anonymous White House assistant. But now his associates were unhappy, and not without reason, that some journalists were giving me perhaps excessive credit for the more appealing aspects of our foreign policy while blaming Nixon for the unpopular moves. These tendencies were given impetus by an interview I granted to the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, without doubt the single most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press. I saw her briefly on Nov. 2 and 4, 1972, in my office. I did so largely out of vanity. She had interviewed leading personalities all over the world. Fame was sufficiently novel for me to be flattered by the company I would be keeping. I had not bothered to read her writings; her evisceration of other victims was thus unknown to me."
"The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise, and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet each tends to ascribe to the other a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room."
"Nelson Rockefeller, I am certain, would have made a great President. He possessed in abundance the qualities of courage and vision that are the touchstones of leadership. But at the moments when his goal might have been realized, in 1960 and again in 1968, he uncharacteristically hesitated. In the service of his beliefs he could be cold-blooded and ruthless; he was incredibly persistent. Yet there was in him a profound ambivalence."
"In contemporary America, power increasingly gravitates to those with an almost obsessive desire to win it. Whoever does not devote himself monomaniacally to the nominating process, whoever is afraid of it or disdains it, will always be pursuing a mirage, however remarkable his other qualifications. With candidates for the highest office, as with athletes, everything depends upon timing, upon an intuitive ability to seize the opportunity."
"As Kissinger complained to the president, “We are the ones who have been operating against our public opinion, against our bureaucracy, at the very edge of legality.”"
"We are the ones who have been operating against our public opinion, against our bureaucracy, at the very edge of legality."
"If the President had his way, we’d have a nuclear war every week."
"The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples."
"Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God."
"If you believe that their real intention is to kill you, it isn't unreasonable to believe that they would lie to you."
"Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation."
"I was working for Kennedy in those days, and Truman] said what I had learned from Kennedy, and I said, "I've learned that the president can't do everything he wants because the bureaucracy is the fourth branch of government." ... He said, "The trouble with Kennedy is he has too many opinions. A president has to know what he wants to do.""
"A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security."
"Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system. Empires have no need for a balance of power. That is how the United States has conducted its foreign policy in the Americas, and China through most of its history in Asia."
"The study of history offers no manual of instructions that can be applied automatically; history teaches by analogy, shedding light on the likely consequences of comparable situations."
"[T]he bargaining position of the victor always diminishes with time. Whatever is not exacted during the shock of defeat becomes increasingly difficult to attain later — a lesson America had to learn with respect to Iraq at the end of the 1991 Gulf War."
"For centuries, the Middle Kingdom had assured its security by playing off distant barbarians against immediate neighbors. Deeply worried about Soviet expansionism, Mao adopted the same strategy in his opening to the United States."
"For nearly twenty years, Bismarck preserved the peace and eased international tension with his moderation and flexibility. But he paid the price of misunderstood greatness, for his successors and would-be imitators could draw no better lesson from his example than multiplying arms and waging a war which would cause the suicide of European civilization."
"Richard Milhous Nixon had inherited near-civil war conditions. Deeply suspicious of the Establishment, and in return mistrusted by many of its representatives, he nevertheless held fast to the conviction that the world's leading democracy could neither abdicate its responsibilities nor resign from its destiny. Few presidents have been as complex as Nixon: shy, yet determined; insecure, yet resolute; distrustful of intellectuals, yet privately deeply reflective; occasionally impetuous in his pronouncements, yet patient and farsighted in his strategic design, Nixon found himself in the position of having to guide America through the transition from dominance to leadership."
"Since the time America entered the arena of world politics in 1917, it has been so preponderant in strength and so convinced of the rightness of its ideals that this century's major international agreements have been embodiments of American values — from the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact to the United Nations Charter and the Helsinki Final Act. The collapse of Soviet communism marked the intellectual vindication of American ideals and, ironically, brought America face to face with the kind of world it had been seeking to escape throughout its history. In the emerging international order, nationalism has gained a new lease on life. Nations have pursued self-interest more frequently than high-minded principle, and have competed more than they have cooperated. There is little evidence to suggest that this age-old mode of behavior has changed, or that it is likely to change in the decades ahead."
"Gorbachev knew what his problems were but he acted both too fast and too slowly: too fast for the tolerance of his system, and too slowly to arrest the accelerating collapse."
"In my dual role of National Security Adviser and Secretary of State, my constant nightmare as Watergate accelerated was that, sooner or later, some foreign adversary might be tempted to test what remained of Nixon's authority and discover that the emperor had no clothes. Probably the greatest service rendered by the Nixon Administration in those strange and turbulent final months was to have prevented any such overt challenge. For even as it approached dissolution, the Nixon Administration managed to navigate the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, diminish the Soviet position in the Middle East by sponsoring two disengagement agreements, and conduct successfully a complicated triangular diplomacy with Moscow and Beijing."
"As the impeachment proceedings gathered momentum, Nixon's personal conduct began to mirror his political decline. He kept fully abreast of the various foreign policy issues and at no point failed to make the key decisions. But, as time went on, Watergate absorbed more and more of Nixon's intellectual and emotional capital. As day-to-day business became trivialized by the increasingly apparent inevitability of his downfall, I felt enormous sympathy for this tormented man whose suffering was compounded by his knowledge that his tragedy was largely self-inflicted. Yet by early July 1974, I, like the other few survivors of Nixon's entourage, was so drained by the emotional roller coaster that I was half hoping for some merciful end to it all."
"Nixon was one of the most gifted of American Presidents, prepared to make tough decisions and courageous in doing so. But he needed solitude for such an act. Face-to-face, Nixon was obsessively incapable of overruling an interlocutor or even disagreeing with him."
"The Nixon Administration had systematically sought to change the context of the Cold War. This was not because we had become blind to Soviet ideology; rather we had concluded that the Soviets' ideological reach was collapsing. In two generations of Communist history, no Communist Party had ever won a free election. The only allies of the Soviet Union were in Eastern Europe, and they were being held in line by what amounted to Soviet military occupation. Once our opening to China was completed, the Soviet Union faced a coalition of all the industrial nations in the world in tacit alliance with the most populous nation. Sooner or later this equation would work in favor of the democracies, provided they could contain Soviet adventures by deterrence and give the Soviets a chance to reduce confrontation by opportunities for cooperation."
"The domestic divisions that grew out of Vietnam were generally treated in the public discourse as a clash between those who were "for" the war and those who were "against" it. That, however, was not the fundamental issue. Every administration in office during the Vietnam war sought to end it - nearly desperately. The daunting and heartrending question was how to define this goal."
"Nixon feared for our alliances if America abdicated in Indochina; he was concerned about the impact on Soviet restraint if the United States simply abandoned what four administrations had affirmed, and he believed that a demonstration of American weakness in Asia would destroy the opening to China based in part on America's role in thwarting Soviet moves toward hegemony in Asia. But as he entered office, he found that by the end of the Johnson administration, the goal of victory had been abandoned and a commitment had been made to end the bombing of North Vietnam and to seek a negotiated compromise solution. These objectives had been affirmed by both candidates in the presidential campaign. No significant American political or intellectual leader opposed them. When a negotiated solution proved unattainable, Nixon proceeded unilaterally to implement his concept of an honorable withdrawal."
"I was intellectually convinced that Hanoi would settle only if deprived of all hope of victory by a determined military strategy. But I was emotionally close to many of the more moderate of the protesters who had been my contemporaries at university; therefore I was also the principal advocate in the administration for negotiations for a political solution to give the people of Indochina a genuine opportunity to choose this future. It turned out to be a rough ride, rougher by far than I imagined when I started on the task. Since then, the categories of our national debate on Vietnam have remained largely unchanged, compounded with the passage of time by an amnesia that suppresses events but remembers encrusted hatreds. A balanced judgment on Vietnam continues to elude us - and therefore the ability to draw lessons from a national tragedy which America inflicted on itself."
"Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed... History is a tale of efforts that failed, of aspirations that weren’t realized.... So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy."
"If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America — and, indeed, with its negotiating partners of the Six — is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world."
"If you mean by "military victory" an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible."
"The great contribution of President Ford was that he managed to strike a balance between the American temptation toward perfectionism and the absolute, and the temptation to abandon everything because one cannot have the perfect and the absolute. He brought about an approach that I believe is essential to the conduct of a continuing foreign policy that works toward the maximum one can achieve but does not go beyond what the American people can sustain or what the international community can comprehend."
"The issue before us is whether the 21st century belongs to China. And I would say that China will be preoccupied with enormous problems internally, domestically with its immediate environment, and that I have enormous difficulty imagining it will be dominated by China, and indeed, as I will conclude, I believe that the concept that some country will dominate the world, is in itself a misunderstanding of the world in which we now live...In the geopolitical situation, China historically has been surrounded by a group of smaller countries, which themselves were not individually able to threaten China, but which united, could cause a threat to China, and therefore historically, Chinese foreign policy can be described as "barbarian management". So China had never had to deal in a world of countries of approximately equal strength, and so to adjust to such a world, is in itself a profound challenge to China, which now has 14 countries on its borders, some of which are small, but can project their nationality into China, some of which are large, and historically significant, so that any attempt by Chinese to dominate the world, would evoke a counter-reaction that would be disastrous for the peace of the world."
"American exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world. China's exceptionalism is cultural. China does not proselytize; it does not claim that its contemporary institutions are relevant outside China. But it is the heir of the Middle Kingdom tradition, which formally graded all other states as various levels of tributaries based on their approximation to Chinese cultural and political forms; in other words, a kind of cultural universality."
"Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance, analysis, and interpretation—at least in the foreign policy world—depend on context and relevance."
"Rarely has a diplomatic document so missed its objective as the Treaty of Versailles. Too punitive for conciliation, too lenient to keep Germany from recovering, the Treaty of Versailles condemned the exhausted democracies to constant vigilance against an irreconcilable and revanchist Germany as well as a revolutionary Soviet Union."
"Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them. Russia must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status, and thereby move Russia’s borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its history of self-fulfilling cycles of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the United States. The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then."
"In recent decades, Europe has retreated to the conduct of soft power. But besieged as it is on almost all frontiers by upheavals and migration, Europe, including Britain, can avoid turning into a victim of circumstance only by assuming a more active role."
"Here, according to the mythology of the liberals, was a peaceful little country that Nixon attacked. The fact that there were four North Vietnamese divisions within 30 miles of Saigon coming across the border killing Americans—killing 500 a week starting within two weeks of Nixon’s inauguration—was ignored in the debate on Cambodia by protesters emphasizing the technical neutrality of Cambodia and ignoring that its ruler had invited our response."
"For 400 years, world history was made by Europeans. Many of the great ideas by which we live — constitutional government, freedom of the individual, the ideas of the Enlightenment — originated in Europe and were spread by Europe around the world. Now this region, which was dynamic and built the world, has become too preoccupied with itself. It confines itself basically to the exercise of soft power. At present, no European government has the capacity to ask its people for sacrifices on behalf of foreign policy. Unless Europe can recover some of its historic dynamism, there will be a big hole in the world system as it has until now manifested itself."
"Few countries in history have started more wars or caused more turmoil than Russia in its eternal quest for security and status. It is also true, however, that at critical junctures Russia has saved the world’s equilibrium from forces that sought to overwhelm it: from the Mongols in the 16th century, from Sweden in the 18th century, from Napoleon in the 19th century, and from Hitler in the 20th century. In the contemporary period, Russia will be important in overcoming radical Islam, partly because it is home to some 20 million Muslims, particularly in the Caucasus and along Russia’s southern border. Russia will also be a factor in the equilibrium of Asia."
"Both countries [the United States and China] consider themselves exceptional. The United States believes that our exceptionalism entitles us to educate others because if they adopt our principles, the world will be more peaceful. The Chinese do not strive for conversion. In their view, if you do not belong to Chinese culture, you can never become fully Chinese. Thus, they feel America has no moral right to intervene in their domestic affairs. Their analogy to conversion is that the majesty of their performance will so awe other societies that they will follow enough of the Chinese pattern to become cultural and political tributaries."
"An understanding between Washington and Beijing is the essential prerequisite for the denuclearization of Korea. By an ironic evolution, China at this point may have an even greater interest than the U.S. in forestalling the nuclearization of Asia. Beijing runs the risk of deteriorating relations with America if it gets blamed for insufficient pressure on Pyongyang. Since denuclearization requires sustained cooperation, it cannot be achieved by economic pressure. It requires a corollary U.S.-Chinese understanding on the aftermath, specifically about North Korea’s political evolution and deployment restraints on its territory."
"The world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values. A global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally."
"George left us at a moment when our national arguments are too often vindicated by passion rather than reason, by the debasement of the adversary rather than the uplifting of purposes. He also believed that if you were blessed with great gifts, you had a responsibility to apply yourself, and if you cared about your country, you had a duty to defend and improve it. He was skilled in presenting his convictions, but above all practiced the art of making controversy superfluous by encouraging mutual respect. Trust, George used to say, is the coin of the realm."
"Negotiations need to begin in the next two months ... before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome. Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante. Pursuing the war beyond that point would turn it into a war not be about the freedom of Ukraine ... but a new war against Russia itself. ... Parties should be brought to peace talks within the next two months. Ukraine should've been a bridge between Europe and Russia, but now, as the relationships are reshaped, we may enter a space where the dividing line is redrawn and Russia is entirely isolated. ... We are facing a situation now where Russia could alienate itself completely from Europe and seek a permanent alliance elsewhere. This may lead to Cold War-like diplomatic distances, which will set us back decades. We should strive for long-term peace..."
"If Putin uses the atomic bomb, Russia will be destroyed."
"It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts, because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that."
"Nixon should be told that it is probably an objective of Clifford to depose Thieu before Nixon is inaugurated. Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."
"The reason that university politics is so vicious is that the stakes are so small."
"Accept everything about yourself — I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end — no apologies, no regrets."
"Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?"
"Today, America would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the world government."
"Military men are "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy."
"America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests."
"I believe that Henry Kissinger acted immorally in Latin America. He supported a murderer and it’s very conflicted for me that a Jew should be supporting this evilness. For me, this is not the kind of good Jew who inspires better lives for our people. I feel very conflicted about [Kissinger] having so much power, even now."
"Nixon and Kissinger bear responsibility for a significant complicity in the slaughter of the Bengalis. This overlooked episode deserves to be a defining part of their historical reputations. But although Nixon and Kissinger have hardly been neglected by history, this major incident has largely been whitewashed out of their legacy—and not by accident. Kissinger began telling demonstrable falsehoods about the administration’s record just two weeks into the crisis, and has not stopped distorting since. Nixon and Kissinger, in their vigorous efforts after Watergate to rehabilitate their own respectability as foreign policy wizards, have left us a farrago of distortions, half-truths, and outright lies about their policy toward the Bengali atrocities... To this day, four decades after the massacres, the dead hand of Nixonian cover-up still prevents Americans from knowing the full record. The White House staff routinely sanitized their records of conversations, sometimes at Kissinger’s specific urging. Even now, mildewed and bogus claims of national security remain in place to bleep out particularly embarrassing portions of the White House tapes. Kissinger struck a deal with the Library of Congress that, until five years after his death, blocks researchers from seeing his papers there unless they have his written permission. Even if you could get in, according to the Library of Congress, many of Kissinger’s most important papers are still hidden from daylight by a thicket of high-level classifications, security clearances, and need-to-know permissions... For all the very real flaws of human rights politics, Nixon and Kissinger’s support of a military dictatorship engaged in mass murder is a reminder of what the world can easily look like without any concern for the pain of distant strangers."
"Kissinger’s memoirs are a lengthy masterpiece of omission. Although he devotes a long chapter to glossing up his record in South Asia, he says almost nothing about the slaughter of Bengalis, while still insisting that Pakistan’s atrocities were “clearly under its domestic jurisdiction.”... He sanitizes out Nixon’s racial animus toward Indians. No book has done more to bury the memory of the Bengalis."
"A very angry Senator John McCain denounced CODEPINK activists as “low-life scum” for holding up signs reading “Arrest Kissinger for War Crimes” and dangling handcuffs next to Henry Kissinger’s head during a Senate hearing on January 29. McCain called the demonstration “disgraceful, outrageous and despicable,” accused the protesters of “physically intimidating” Kissinger and apologized profusely to his friend for this “deeply troubling incident.” But if Senator McCain was really concerned about physical intimidation, perhaps he should have conjured up the memory of the gentle Chilean singer/songwriter Victor Jara. After Kissinger facilitated the September 11, 1973 coup against Salvador Allende that brought the ruthless Augusto Pinochet to power, Victor Jara and 5,000 others were rounded up in Chile’s National Stadium. Jara’s hands were smashed and his nails torn off; the sadistic guards then ordered him to play his guitar. Jara was later found dumped on the street, his dead body riddled with gunshot wounds and signs of torture... Rather than calling peaceful protesters “despicable”, perhaps Senator McCain should have used that term to describe Kissinger’s role in the brutal 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which took place just hours after Kissinger and President Ford visited Indonesia. They had given the Indonesian strongman the US green light — and the weapons — for an invasion that led to a 25-year occupation in which over 100,000 soldiers and civilians were killed or starved to death. The UN's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR) stated that U.S. "political and military support were fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and occupation" of East Timor."
"You might think that McCain, who suffered tremendously in Vietnam, might be more sensitive to Kissinger’s role in prolonging that war. From 1969 through 1973, it was Kissinger, along with President Nixon, who oversaw the slaughter in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos — killing perhaps one million during this period. He gave the order for the secret bombing of Cambodia. Kissinger is on tape saying, “[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.” Senator McCain could have...[read] the meticulously researched book by the late writer Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Writing as a prosecutor before an international court of law, Hitchens skewers Kissinger for ordering or sanctioning the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of “unfriendly” politicians and the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers, journalists and clerics who got in his way. He holds Kissinger responsible for war crimes... from the deliberate mass killings of civilian populations in Indochina, to collusion in mass murder and assassination in Bangladesh, the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile, and the incitement and enabling of genocide in East Timor. McCain could have also perused the warrant issued by French Judge Roger Le Loire to have Kissinger appear before his court. When the French served Kissinger with summons in 2001 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, Kissinger fled the country. More indictments followed from Spain, Argentina, Uruguay — even a civil suit in Washington DC."
"Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls & remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg."
"The military established a pattern during and after the Vietnam War of forcibly removing indigenous peoples from sites deemed strategic for the placement of military bases. The peoples of the Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific and Puerto Rico's Vieques Island are perhaps the best-known examples, but there were also the Inughuit of Thule, Greenland, and the thousands of Okinawans and Indigenous peoples of Micronesia. During the harsh deportation of the Micronesians in the 1970s, the press took some notice. In response to one reporter's question, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said of the Micronesians: "There are only ninety thousand people out there. Who gives a damn?" This is a statement of permissive genocide."
"Henry Kissinger. While many in the United States still see Nixon and Ford's former secretary of state as an elder statesman, the rest of the world sees him as a war criminal responsible for the deaths and suffering of millions in Chile, Vietnam, Laos, Argentina, East Timor, and Cambodia, to name a few."
"Reporter Nick Turse has revealed unreported mass killings, after examining formerly classified U.S. military documents and traveling to 12 remote Cambodian villages to interview more than 75 witnesses and survivors of the U.S. attacks. With this new piece, Nick Turse also publishes transcripts of Kissinger’s phone calls that show his key role in Cambodia, and CIA records connecting Kissinger’s actions to the growth of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, the regime that massacred 2 million people from 1975 to 1979."
"Kissinger, Griffel thought, had “a disdain for anyone on the subcontinent,” and had “the Lawrence of Arabia view of the locals. If they don’t ride horses, they’re no good.” He says, “He’s impressed by Pakistani men in uniform and he doesn’t like shopkeepers."
"In Gold’s conservative opinion, Kissinger would not be recalled in history as a Bismarck, Metternich or Castlereagh but as an odious schlump who made war gladly."
"A good liar must have a good memory: Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory. So perhaps some of this hysterical lying is explained by its context—by the need to enlist China’s anti-Soviet instincts. But the total of falsity is so impressive that it suggests something additional, something more like denial or delusion, or even a confession by other means."
"I think Henry Kissinger grew up with that odd mix of ego and insecurity that comes from being the smartest kid in the class. From really knowing you're more awesomely intelligent than anybody else, but also being the guy who got beaten up for being Jewish."
"Here we begin to see the outlines of the misconceived lesson that Henry Kissinger appears to have drawn from his study of international relations in the past. Secured by his own bureaucratic devices and habits of mind from having to respond to critics or other branches of government, though he could always get his opinion or policy echoed and supported by a well-placed article or interview or congressman, he indeed related to Richard Nixon much as did Metternich to the Emperor Francis II. An ambitious and intelligent courtier with the ear of an absolute ruler is in a position of unique influence, especially if he carries no responsibility for domestic affairs—this much history does indeed teach us. Moreover, although the courtier runs obvious risks if he incurs the ruler’s wrath, it is the ruler himself who is truly vulnerable in a crisis. The cleverest courtiers—Talleyrand comes to mind—will survive the fall of their masters, with some quick footwork and a recasting of the historical record; and Kissinger was among the cleverest of them all."
"Back in 1957, Henry Kissinger—then a brilliant, iconoclastic young Harvard scholar, with his eventual career as cynical political manipulator and, later, as crony capitalist still far in the future—published his doctoral dissertation, A World Restored. One wouldn't think that a book about the diplomatic efforts of Metternich and Castlereagh is relevant to U.S. politics in the twenty-first century. But the first three pages of Kissinger's book sent chills down my spine, because they seem all too relevant to current events. [...] It seems clear to me that one should regard America's right-wing movement--which now in effect controls the administration [...] as a revolutionary power in Kissinger's sense. That is, it is a movement whose leaders do not accept the legitimacy of our current political system."
"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."
"The opposition to Ford-Kissinger-the names became joined by a hyphen-was so deep in the Greek-American community that there would have been enthusiastic endorsement for whomever the Democrats nominated...The true measure of the Greek-American impact on the 1976 election was a more subtle one. Because the Kissinger policy in the eastern Mediterranean had alienated Greeks, Turks, and Cypriots all at the same time, the Cyprus issue became a test case in the fight for open government in American foreign policy. Greek Americans, that is, were the first to puncture the myth of Kissinger's infallibility, perhaps setting in motion enough erosion of the Republican position to make the difference in a close election. In Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, Greek Cypriots danced in the streets when Carter's victory became known. They praised Greeks in America for making the victory possible."
"Henry Kissinger is possessed of a truly superior intelligence, in addition to which he has two qualities which, unfortunately, many great men lack: he is able to listen and he has a very subtle sense of humour."
"Pride comes before a fall- although in his case it's more conceit than pride."
"Twenty-nine years ago, in Chile, on the 11th of September 1973, General Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in a CIA-backed coup. “Chile should not be allowed to go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible,” said Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Laureate, then the U.S. Secretary of State."
"I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country. I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. And, in fact, Kissinger’s actions in Cambodia, when the United States bombed that country, overthrew Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in, who then butchered some 3 million innocent people — one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So, count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger."
"In 2003, I did everything I could to prevent George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, a war that Clinton supported. In one debate, when Hillary Clinton cited Henry Kissinger as a friend and mentor, I suggested that he was a terrible secretary of state, a war criminal, and would play no role in a Sanders administration."
"Nixon and Kissinger maintained a strategy of containment; they supported anti-communist governments where they could and were largely oblivious to considerations of democracy, the rule of law and human rights. But negotiations were also initiated for a Conference on Security and Co-Operation in Europe (CSCE). This initiative came from west European governments but Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford supported it. The result was the Helsinki Final Act, signed in August 1975, which guaranteed fundamental freedom to all people throughout the continent. President Carter, entering office in January 1976, used the Act’s clauses to press for a slackening of the persecution of citizens in the communist states. The main advantage to the USSR was its formal acceptance by the rival superpower as a legitimate participant in the contests of global politics. The world seemed divided for decades ahead between the two contending ‘camps’ led by America and the Soviet Union. A commitment to avoid a third world war appeared to have been guaranteed."
"Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, [historian] Richard Pipes and many other American politicians... are frozen... with unchanging blindness and stubbornness they keep repeating... this theory about the supposed age-old aggressiveness of Russia, without taking into consideration today's reality."
"Contrary to his self-cultivated image as the ultimate realist in international affairs, the newly declassified documents of the Nixon administration show that Henry Kissinger remained much more influenced by concepts of modernization and American mission that did the president. Cynical he could be, but when push came to shove Kissinger preferred the traditional means of aid, political and economic pressure, and – in the final instance – intervention to keep Third World countries in line with US Cold War strategies. While noting, in his crucial October 1969 report to Nixon on changes in international politics since World War II, that ‘‘the increased fragmentation of power, the greater diffusion of political activity, and the more complicated patterns of international conflict and alignment that have emerged over the past decade have limited the capacity of the US and the USSR to control the effects of their influence and have revealed the limits of their capacity to control the actions of other governments,’’ Kissinger ended his report by stressing the significance of America for the world: ‘‘The US exerts immense and growing influence in the world through a broad range of international activities conducted by nongovernmental individuals, enterprises, and organizations. While the direct influence of the US Government over its international environment has been restricted in one way or another, the scope and reach of American commercial, technical, and cultural influence has continued to expand.’’ A main problem, according to Kissinger, was that while the United States remained the model for the world, the Americans themselves were increasingly unwilling to take up the leadership role that naturally had fallen to them."
"On 24 March 1976, a right-wing coup backed by the US took place in Argentina, overthrowing populist Isabel Peron. The new military government stepped up Peron's war against radical workers and communists, murdering and "disappearing" tens of thousands. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised the junta to wipe out its opponents quickly before outcry over human rights abuses could grow."
"Kissinger is a stinking scholar. I have read the report about the meeting between comrade Xuan Thuy and Kissinger. The last part of it is very funny. Kissinger is a university professor who does not know anything about diplomacy."
"FBI: FBI terrorism tip line."
"I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene."
"I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live."
"Painting's not important. The important thing is keeping busy."
"I paint from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the houses, then the cattle, and then the people."
"A primitive artist is an amateur whose work sells."
"If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens."
"I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday, as I have thought of it, as I remember all the things from childhood on through the years, good ones, and unpleasant ones, that is how they come out and that is how we have to take them. I look back on my life like a good day's work, it was done and I am satisfied with it. I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be."
"The death of Grandma Moses removed a beloved figure from American life. The directness and vividness of her paintings restored a primitive freshness to our perception of the American scene. Both her work and her life helped our nation renew its pioneer heritage and recall its roots in the countryside and on the frontier. All Americans mourn her loss."
"There emanates from her paintings a light-hearted optimism; the world she shows us is beautiful and it is good. You feel at home in all these pictures, and you know their meaning. The unrest and the neurotic insecurity of the present day make us inclined to enjoy the simple and affirmative outlook of Grandma Moses."
"In person, Grandma Moses charmed wherever she went. A tiny, lively woman with mischievous gray eyes and a quick wit, she could be sharp-tongued with a sycophant and stern with an errant grandchild."
"The traditional approach has tended to obscure the nature of the choice that has to be made. The question is commonly thought of as one in which A inflicts harm on B and what has to be decided is: how should we restrain A? But this is wrong. We are dealing with a problem of a reciprocal nature. To avoid the harm to B would inflict harm on A. The real question that has to be decided is: should A be allowed to harm B or should B be allowed to harm A?"
"In my view, what is wanted in industrial organization is a direct approach to the problem. This would concentrate on what activities firms undertake, and would endeavor to discover the characteristics of the groupings of activities within firms. Which activities tend to be associated and which do not? The answer may well differ for different kinds of firm."
"American institutionalists were not theoretical but anti-theoretical.... Without a theory they had nothing to pass on except a mass of descriptive material waiting for a theory, or a fire."
"Transaction costs were used in the one case to show that if they are not included in the analysis, the firm has no purpose, while in the other I showed, as I thought, that if transaction costs were not introduced into the analysis, for the range of problems considered, the law had no purpose."
"In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics."
"I can't remember [of a good regulation]. Regulation of transport, regulation of agriculture—agriculture is a, zoning is z. You know, you go from a to z, they are all bad. There were so many studies, and the result was quite universal: The effects were bad."
"If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn't go and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, "what would I do if I were a horse?""
"Outside the firm, price movements direct production, which is co-ordinated through a series of exchange transactions on the market. Within a firm, these market transactions are eliminated and in place of the complicated market structure with exchange transactions is substituted the entrepreneur-coordinator, who directs production. It is clear that these are alternative methods of coordinating production. Yet, having regard to the fact that, if production is regulated by price movements, production could be carried on without any organization at all might we ask, why is there any organization?"
"A firm consist of the system of relationships which comes into existence when the direction of resources is dependent on an entrepreneur."
"Why... are there any market transactions at all? Why not all production carried on by one big firm?... First, as a firm gets larger, there may be decreasing returns to the entrepreneur function, that is, the costs of organizing additional transactions within the firm may rise... Second, it may be that as the transactions which are organized increase, the entrepreneur fails to place the factors of production in the uses where their value is greatest, that is, fails to make the best use of the factors of production... Finally, the supply price of one or more of the factors of production may rise, because the "other advantages" of a small firm are greater than those of a large firm."
"The question always is, will it pay to bring an extra exchange transaction under the organizing authority? At the margin, the costs of organizing within the firm will be equal either to the costs of organizing in another firm or to the costs involved in leaving the transaction to be “organised” by the price mechanism. Business men will be constantly experimenting, controlling more or less, and in this way equilibrium will be maintained. This gives the position of equilibrium for static analysis."
"But a theory is not like an airline or bus timetable. We are not interested simply in the accuracy of its predictions. A theory also serves as a base for thinking. It helps us to understand what is going on by enabling us to organize our thoughts. Faced with a choice between a theory which predicts well but gives us little insight into how the system works and one which gives us this insight but predicts badly, I would choose the latter, and I am inclined to think that most economists would do the same."
"If you torture the data enough, nature will always confess."
"In mainstream economic theory, the firm and the market are, for the most part, assumed to exist and are not themselves the subject of investigation. One result has been that the crucial role of the law in determining the activities carried out by the firm and in the market has been largely ignored."
"The limit to the size of the firm is set where its costs of organizing a transaction become equal to the cost of carrying it out through the market. This determines what the firm buys, produces, and sells. As the concept of transaction costs is not usually used by economists, it is not surprising that an approach which incorporates it will find some difficulty in getting itself accepted. We can best understand this attitude if we consider not the firm but the market."
"Markets are institutions that exist to facilitate exchange, that is, they exist in order to reduce the cost of carrying out exchange transactions. In an economic theory which assumes that transaction costs are nonexistent. markets have no function to perform, and it seems perfectly reasonable to develop the theory of exchange by an elaborate analysis of individuals exchanging nuts for apples on the edge of the forest or some similar fanciful example. This analysis certainly shows why there is a gain from trade, but it fails to deal with the factors which determine how much trade there is or what goods are traded."
"What I have done is to show the importance for the working of the economic system of what may be termed the institutional structure of production."
"Economists have uncovered the conditions necessary if Adam Smith’s results are to be achieved and where, in the real world, such conditions do not appear to be found, they have proposed changes which are designed to bring them about. It is what one finds in the textbooks. Harold Demsetz has said rightly that what this theory analyses is a system of extreme decentralisation. It has been a great intellectual achievement and it throws light on many aspects of the economic system. But it has not been by any means all gain."
"What is studied is a system which lives in the minds of economists but not on earth. I have called the result “blackboard economics.” The firm and the market appear by name but they lack any substance. The firm in mainstream economic theory has often been described as a “black box.” And so it is."
"Writers after Coase have referred to the authority structure of the firm as a "visible hand" that works in combination with Smith's invisible hand. The everyday fact that employers exercise power over their employees — not news to most employees — had been a central theme in Marx's economics, but it was (and generally continues to be) overlooked by most neoclassical economists. Early in his studies Coase noted the similarity between the hierarchical organization of capitalist firms, with their reliance on command relations, and the then-existing system of centralized economic planning in the Communist countries, where production was carried out in accordance with orders from higher authorities and where market competition played little role."
"In the early 1950s the now-famous British economist Ronald Coase announced his intention of going to the USA, and his colleagues at the LSE, myself included, gave him a farewell dinner. He explained how he became an economist. Not having been taught Latin from an early age, he was precluded from taking an Arts degree. His matriculation maths was not of the standard expected for entry to a science faculty. He found that his choice was narrowed to the taking of a B.Com. degree. 'In this mysterious way', said our honoured guest, 'the shade of Adam Smith beckoned me'. We have every reason to be grateful to the deficiencies in Coase's early education!"
"If I go up to Harlem or down to Sixth Street, and I’m not dressed up or I’m not wearing my jewelry, then the people feel I’m talking down to them."
"Money is like manure, it should be spread around."
"Today, we are all saddened by the loss of Brooke Astor, a quintessential New Yorker and one of the great philanthropists of our time. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers were the beneficiaries of Mrs Astor’s good will and kind nature, many unaware of the origins of the donations. Her contributions reached a wide variety of causes; The New York Public Library, and the entire city, would not be what they are today without her gracious support."
"I have lost my beloved mother, and New York and the world have lost a great lady. She was one of a kind in every way. Her tombstone will be inscribed with the words she specifically asked for: 'I had a wonderful life.'"
"Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded, not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering a high morale and cummunity propose... The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao's leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history."
"But this present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for long. Already there are powerful forces at work that threaten to destroy all of our hopes and efforts to erect an enduring structure of global interdependence."
"Courting Peggy McGrath provided me with a very pleasant diversion and eventually with the most important relationship of my life."
"If the disagreement was strong enough, we could end up pretty close to the borderline of incivility."
"I don't recall that I have said — and I don't think that I really feel — that we need a world government. We need governments of the world that work together and collaborate. But, I can't imagine that there would be any likelihood — or even that it would be desirable — to have a single government elected by the people of the world."
"There have been people — ever since I've had any kind of position in the world — who have accused me of being ruler of the world. I have to say that I think for the large part, I would have to decide to describe them as crack pots. It makes no sense whatsoever, and isn't true, and won't be true, and to raise it as a serious issue seems to me to be irresponsible."
"I think that one of the things that is needed is the fact that I don't think enough people in high positions in our country accept the importance of our world role with sufficient gravity. In other words, I think the tendency, because of politics and getting elected, is to stress local issues; and of course, they are important. But, I would like to see more of the leaders of our country spend more time traveling for one thing, getting to know the world, and studying history. To me, one of the sad things about our country is that our leadership — to a greater extent than I would like — is more concerned about very domestic issues than they are about our relations in the world."
"I think that that has to be related to the problems within our own country. I was reading in the papers today that there's a grave concern about what our role should be, how it should be handled, and how we should better manage our own domestic economy. And I think that this is becoming a serious issue. And it's gonna have to be addressed by any politicians who wish to be re-elected. They have to see that the issue of our economy and what influences it is better understood and more successfully addressed."
"I think that the best hope for peace and prosperity in the world is greater cooperation among nations, which in turn will be produced if both our governments and the people of our countries travel more and get to know each other better."
"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. The anti-Rockefeller focus of these otherwise incompatible political positions owes much to Populism. "Populists" believe in conspiracies and one of the most enduring is that a secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, control the world's economy. Because of my name and prominence as head of the Chase for many years, I have earned the distinction of "conspirator in chief" from some of these people. Populists and isolationists ignore the tangible benefits that have resulted in our active international role during the past half-century. Not only was the very real threat posed by Soviet Communism overcome, but there have been fundamental improvements in societies around the world, particularly in the United States, as a result of global trade, improved communications, and the heightened interaction of people from different cultures. Populists rarely mention these positive consequences, nor can they cogently explain how they would have sustained American economic growth and expansion of our political power without them."
"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. … It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
"I think without internationalists like you, the international system we have been trying to build, the international system we have today, wouldn't be here."
"Far from having an attachment to the past and to its codes, David Rockefeller, and really all the Rockefellers, were perpetually falling for everything that was new. They embraced every new educational theory, every new artistic style, every new architectural trend, every new business fad. And so when the 60's came along and seemed to represent yet another bright new future, many of the younger Rockefellers embraced that too, even if it meant the destruction of their place in society, and the older ones had nothing to say. … there never will be another person like David Rockefeller, a person who epitomized the Establishment and attracted conspiracy theories by the score. In the 60's, a new generation came up to destroy his world, and in response, he was willing to come pretty close to the borderline of incivility."
"Not armies, not nations, have advanced the race; but here and there, in the course of ages, an individual has stood up and cast his shadow over the world."
"The unelected if indisputable chairman of the American Establishment ...one of the most powerful, influential and richest men in America ...[he] sits at the hub of a vast network of financiers, industrialists and politicians whose reach encircles the globe"
"We now live in a world where we are related by economics, politics, the environment, technology and human nature. We can no longer think of the people and problems in other parts of the world as “foreign” to us. David certainly understood this early in the game, and has been a tireless and inspirational advocate in this regard. He wears the badge of "proud internationalist" openly, as do I."
"For David Rockefeller, the Presidency of the United States would be a demotion."
"the search for necessary truths, truths that are not only true, but they couldn’t have been false."
"Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme."
"My ultimate intuitive clue in philosophy is that "God is love" and that the idea of God is definable as that of the being worthy to be loved with all one’s heart, mind, soul, and entire being."
"I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song."
"Do you remember which way I was heading?"
"The secret of my success is longevity."
"All things, in all their aspects, consist exclusively of 'souls', that is, of various kinds of subjects, or units of experiencing, with their qualifications, relations, and groupings, or communities."
"God thus excludes the world; he is only its cause; in no sense is he effect, of himself or anything else. Pantheism (better, "pandeism," for again it is not really the theos that is described) means that God is the integral totality of ordinary cause-effects, and that there, is no super-cause independent of ordinary causes and effects."
"God thus includes the world; he is, in fact, the totality of world parts, which are indifferently causes and effects. Now AR [absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others] is equally far from either of these doctrines; thanks to its two-aspect view of God, it is able consistently to embrace all that is positive in either deism or pandeism. AR means that God is, in one aspect of himself, the integral totality of all ordinary causes and effects, but that in another aspect, his essence (which is A), he is conceivable in abstraction from any one or any group of particular, contingent beings (though not from the requirement and the power always to provide himself with some particulars or other, sufficient to constitute in their integrated totality the R aspect of himself at the given moment)."
"These distinctions make sense only when AR [absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others] is assumed (hence Spinoza's failure, who assumed mere A). Just as AR is the whole positive content of perfection, so CW, or the conception of the Creator-and-the-Whole-of-what-he-has-created as constituting one life, the super-whole which in its everlasting essence is uncreated (and does not necessitate just the parts which the whole has) but in its de facto concreteness is created – this panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations. Thus ARCW, or absolute-relative panentheism, is the one doctrine that really states the whole of what all theists, if not all atheists as well, are implicitly talking about."
"In Plato’s Republic one finds the proposition: God, being perfect, cannot change (not for the better, since "perfect" means that there can be no better; not for the worse, since ability to change for the worse, to decay, degenerate, or become corrupt, is a weakness, an imperfection). The argument may seem cogent, but it is so only if two assumptions are valid: that it is possible to conceive of a meaning for "perfect" that excludes change in any and every respect and that we must conceive God as perfect in just this sense."
"The idea of revelation is the idea of special knowledge of God, or of religious truth, possessed by some people and transmitted by them to others. In some form or other the idea is reasonable. In all other matters people differ in their degree of skill or insight. Why not in religion?"
"In all countries and in all historical times there have been individuals to whom multitudes have looked for guidance in religion. Buddha, Lao Tse, Confucius, Moses, Zoroaster, Shankara, Jesus, Muhammed, Joseph Smith, and Mary Baker Eddy were such individuals. New examples are to be found within the lives of many of us. Pure democracy or sheer equalitarianism in religious matters is not to be expected of our human nature. Some distinction between leaders or founders and followers or disciples seems to be our destiny. But there is a question of degree, or of qualification. To what extent, or under what conditions, are some individuals, or perhaps is some unique individual, worthy of trust in religious matters? It is in the answer to this question that mistakes can be made."
"[T]he traditional idea of divine perfection or infinity is hopelessly unclear or ambiguous and that persisting in that tradition is bound to cause increasing skepticism, confusion, and human suffering. It has long bred, and must evermore breed, atheism as a natural reaction."
"The reward for living is the living itself."
"No one in my family disbelieved in religion, and no one disbelieved in evolution, either."
"What we need is to make a renewed attempt to worship the objective of God, not our forefathers' doctrines about him."
"Musicians who have listened to birds believe [that birds derive pleasure from singing] much more than ornithologists, who are terrified of being accused of anthropomorphism... Having studied thousands of hours of birdsong from around the world, I am convinced some species possess an aesthetic sense, however limited compared to ours. It is part of human egotism to believe that only we have active minds."
"The world has too many automobiles and televisions. Now the standard is there should be one car and TV for every person. This is not healthy for the environment or our souls."
"Hitler made it impossible to keep believing in pacifism, which was one of the many terrible things he did to the world."
"[W]e live in a century in which everything has been said. The challenge today is to learn which statements to deny."
"I had a happy, idyllic, old-fashioned childhood. Go to the town where I spent that childhood, you will not find my happy hours there. Yet they remain definite constituents of a divine reality about which true statements can still be made. My happy childhood was a gift my parents and the world offered to God."
"Too many intellectuals look down on religion and think it will go away. God is not going to go away. There are far more religious people in the world today than when I was born."
"The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of mair use to the professors than the justice of it."
"Every tub must stand upon its bottom."
"It's funny, the power of beauty, to make us forget such injustice. É estranho o poder da beleza, que nos faz esquecer tanta injustiça."
"Humanity needs dreams to endure misery, even if just for an instant.A humanidade precisa de sonhos para suportar a miséria, nem que seja por um instante."
"First were the thick stone walls, the arches, then the domes and vaults — of the architect, searching out for wider spaces. Now it is concrete-reinforced that gives our imagination flight with its soaring spans and uncommon cantilevers. Concrete, to which architecture is integrated, through which it is able to discard the foregone conclusions of rationalism, with its monotony and repetitious solutions. A concern for beauty, a zest for fantasy, and an ever-present element of surprise bear witness that today's architecture is not a minor craft bound to straight-edge rules, but an architecture imbued with technology: light, creative and unfettered, seeking out its architectural scene."
"I have always accepted and respected all other schools of architecture, from the chill and elemental structures of Mies van der Rohe to the imagination and delirium of Gaudi. I must design what pleases me in a way that is naturally linked to my roots and the country of my origin."
"My work is not about "form follows function," but "form follows beauty" or, even better, "form follows feminine.""
"I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered by reinforced concrete.… This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge mountains, its old baroque churches, and the beautiful suntanned women."
"I was attracted by the curve — the liberated, sensual curve suggested by the possibilities of new technology yet so often recalled in venerable old baroque churches."
"Here, then, is what I wanted to tell you of my architecture. I created it with courage and idealism, but also with an awareness of the fact that what is important is life, friends and attempting to make this unjust world a better place in which to live."
"It is not the right angle that attracts me, nor the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve — the curve that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the body of the beloved woman."
"I had some good opportunities. I was lucky to have had the chance to do things differently. Architecture is about surprise."
"My ambition has always been to reduce a building’s support to a minimum. The more we diminish supporting structures, the more audacious and important the architecture is. That has been my life’s work."
"Architecture for me has always begun with drawing. When I was very little my mother said I used to draw in the air with my fingers. I needed a pencil. Once I could hold one, I have drawn every day since. The buildings do appear on paper the way you say, but they are not the result of gratuitous brushstrokes. The pencil is guided by so many thoughts stored away in my mental library. But, when I have looked at the site for a building, considered its budget and thought of how it might be built, and what it might be, the drawings come very quickly. I pick up my pen. It flows. A building appears. There it is. There is nothing more to say."
"Brasilia was a wonderful time [...] I designed a wooden cabin for us to live in - me, engineers, visiting friends and JK himself. We called it Catetinho [a national monument today]. JK flew out to join us in the savannah as we built his city. We went to the same dances and bars as the workers. This was a liberating time. It seemed as if a new society was being born, with all the traditional barriers cast aside. It didn't work. Now, Brasilia is too big. The developers, the capitalists are there, dividing society and spoiling the city. Brasilia should stop."
"When people ask me if I take pleasure in the idea of someone looking at my buildings in the future, I tell them that this person will vanish, too. Everything has a beginning and an end. You. Me. Architecture. We must try to do the best we can, but must remain modest. Nothing lasts for very long."
"Life is very fleeting. It’s important to be gentle and optimistic. We look behind and think what we’ve done in this life has been good. It was simple; it was modest. Everyone creates their own story and moves on. That’s it. I don’t feel particularly important. What we create is not important. We’re very insignificant."
"We hated Bauhaus. It was a bad time in architecture. They just didn’t have any talent. All they had were rules. Even for knives and forks they created rules. Picasso would never have accepted rules. The house is like a machine? No! The mechanical is ugly. The rule is the worst thing. You just want to break it."
"Architecture was my way of expressing my ideals: to be simple, to create a world equal to everyone, to look at people with optimism, that everyone has a gift. I don’t want anything but general happiness. Why is that bad?"
"I was nobody to make a pass to. I was very thin like a boy and I was very un-sexy."
"I was never proud of anything. I just did it like everything else. To do a film - let me explain to you - it's like having a baby. You labor, you labor, you labor, and then you have it. And then it grows up and it grows away from you. But to be proud of giving birth to a baby? Proud? No, every cow can do that."
"I don’t believe in acting. I think that people in life act, but when you are on the stage, or in my case also on screen, you have to be true."
"For my second and third pictures I won Academy Awards. Nothing worse could have happened to me."
"The secret of a long life is to never trust a doctor."
"I'll tell you a wonderful story. Coming with all of these ideas that I had, and still have, and still feel because I never change and still believe in the same things. Soon after I was there in Hollywood, for some reason I was at a luncheon with Robert Taylor sitting next to me, and I asked him, ‘Now, what are your ideas or what do you want to do,' and his answer was that he wanted to have 10 good suits to wear, elegant suits of all kinds, that was his idea. I practically fell under the table."
"I had a wonderful director, Sidney Franklin .... I worked from inside out. It's not for me, putting on a face, or putting on makeup, or making masquerade. It has to come from inside out. I knew what I wanted to do and he let me do it. Hollywood was a very strange place. To me, it was like a huge hotel with a huge door, one of those rotunda doors. On one side people went in, heads high, and very soon they came out on the other side, heads hanging."
"On Christmas night, I danced with all kinds of fellows with pimples and all kinds of sores. I suddenly felt, ‘What is this being shy? I have to give myself, I just felt I didn't want to be shy, I didn't want to draw away, but give myself, I mean, not physically, but be there. It was a great lesson also for me, this tour through Africa and Italy during the war."
"How can you close your eyes and say this has nothing to do with me? I'm not speaking about politics. Politics is a terrible thing. Everyone wants power."
"Most observers agree that Rainer won her Oscar as the result of her moving and poignant performance in just one, single scene in the picture, the famous telephone scene in which the broken-hearted Held congratulates Ziegfeld over the telephone on his upcoming marriage to Billie Burke while trying to retain her composure and her dignity. During the scene, the camera is entirely focused on Rainer, and she delivers a tour-de-force performance. Seventy years later, it remains one of the most famous scenes in movie history."
"That girl is a Frankenstein, she’s going to ruin our whole firm."
"I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore. Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley."
"Outside is pure energy and colorless substance. All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings."
"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature. … In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans … The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature."
"There are experiences that most of us are hesitant to speak about, because they do not conform to everyday reality and defy rational explanation. These are not particular external occurrences, but rather events of our inner lives, which are generally dismissed as figments of the imagination and barred from our memory. Suddenly, the familiar view of our surroundings is transformed in a strange, delightful, or alarming way: it appears to us in a new light, takes on a special meaning. Such an experience can be as light and fleeting as a breath of air, or it can imprint itself deeply upon our minds. One enchantment of that kind, which I experienced in childhood, has remained remarkably vivid in my memory ever since. It happened on a May morning — I have forgotten the year — but I can still point to the exact spot where it occurred, on a forest path on Martinsberg above Baden, Switzerland. As I strolled through the freshly greened woods filled with bird song and lit up by the morning sun, all at once everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light. Was this something I had simply failed to notice before? Was I suddenly discovering the spring forest as it actually looked? It shone with the most beautiful radiance, speaking to the heart, as though it wanted to encompass me in its majesty. I was filled with an indescribable sensation of joy, oneness, and blissful security. I have no idea how long I stood there spellbound. But I recall the anxious concern I felt as the radiance slowly dissolved and I hiked on: how could a vision that was so real and convincing, so directly and deeply felt — how could it end so soon? And how could I tell anyone about it, as my overflowing joy compelled me to do, since I knew there were no words to describe what I had seen? It seemed strange that I, as a child, had seen something so marvelous, something that adults obviously did not perceive — for I had never heard them mention it. While still a child, I experienced several more of these deeply euphoric moments on my rambles through forest and meadow. It was these experiences that shaped the main outlines of my world view and convinced me of the existence of a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality that was hidden from everyday sight."
"In studying the literature connected with my work, I became aware of the great universal significance of visionary experience. It plays a dominant role, not only in mysticism and the history of religion, but also in the creative process in art, literature, and science. More recent investigations have shown that many persons also have visionary experiences in daily life, though most of us fail to recognize their meaning and value. Mystical experiences, like those that marked my childhood, are apparently far from rare."
"I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation."
"Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails dangers that must not be underestimated. Practitioners must take into account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being. The history of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken for a pleasure drug. Special internal and external advance preparations are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful experience. Wrong and inappropriate use has caused LSD to become my problem child."
"4/19/43 16:20: 0.5 cc of 1/2 promil aqueous solution of diethylamide tartrate orally = 0.25 mg tartrate. Taken diluted with about 10 cc water. Tasteless. 17:00: Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh. Supplement of 4/21: Home by bicycle. From 18:00- ca.20:00 most severe crisis. (See special report.) Here the notes in my laboratory journal cease. I was able to write the last words only with great effort. By now it was already clear to me that LSD had been the cause of the remarkable experience of the previous Friday, for the altered perceptions were of the same type as before, only much more intense. I had to struggle to speak intelligibly. I asked my laboratory assistant, who was informed of the self-experiment, to escort me home. We went by bicycle, no automobile being available because of wartime restrictions on their use. On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had traveled very rapidly. Finally, we arrived at home safe and sound, and I was just barely capable of asking my companion to summon our family doctor and request milk from the neighbors. In spite of my delirious, bewildered condition, I had brief periods of clear and effective thinking — and chose milk as a nonspecific antidote for poisoning."
"I was seized by the dreadful fear of going insane. I was taken to another world, another place, another time. My body seemed to be without sensation, lifeless, strange. Was I dying? Was this the transition? At times I believed myself to be outside my body, and then perceived clearly, as an outside observer, the complete tragedy of my situation. I had not even taken leave of my family (my wife, with our three children had traveled that day to visit her parents, in Lucerne). Would they ever understand that I had not experimented thoughtlessly, irresponsibly, but rather with the utmost caution, and that such a result was in no way foreseeable? My fear and despair intensified, not only because a young family should lose its father, but also because I dreaded leaving my chemical research work, which meant so much to me, unfinished in the midst of fruitful, promising development. Another reflection took shape, an idea full of bitter irony: if I was now forced to leave this world prematurely, it was because of this lysergic acid diethylamide that I myself had brought forth into the world."
"Slowly I came back from a weird, unfamiliar world to reassuring everyday reality. The horror softened and gave way to a feeling of good fortune and gratitude, the more normal perceptions and thoughts returned, and I became more confident that the danger of insanity was conclusively past. Now, little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux. It was particularly remarkable how every acoustic perception, such as the sound of a door handle or a passing automobile, became transformed into optical perceptions. Every sound generated a vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and color."
"This self-experiment showed that LSD-25 behaved as a psychoactive substance with extraordinary properties and potency. There was to my knowledge no other known substance that evoked such profound psychic effects in such extremely low doses, that caused such dramatic changes in human consciousness and our experience of the inner and outer world. What seemed even more significant was that I could remember the experience of LSD inebriation in every detail. This could only mean that the conscious recording function was not interrupted, even in the climax of the LSD experience, despite the profound breakdown of the normal world view. For the entire duration of the experiment, I had even been aware of participating in an experiment, but despite this recognition of my condition, I could not, with every exertion of my will, shake off the LSD world. Everything was experienced as completely real, as alarming reality; alarming, because the picture of the other, familiar everyday reality was still fully preserved in the memory for comparison. Another surprising aspect of LSD was its ability to produce such a far-reaching, powerful state of inebriation without leaving a hangover. Quite the contrary, on the day after the LSD experiment I felt myself to be, as already described, in excellent physical and mental condition. I was aware that LSD, a new active compound with such properties, would have to be of use in pharmacology, in neurology, and especially in psychiatry, and that it would attract the interest of concerned specialists. But at that time I had no inkling that the new substance would also come to be used beyond medical science, as an inebriant in the drug scene. Since my self-experiment had revealed LSD in its terrifying, demonic aspect, the last thing I could have expected was that this substance could ever find application as anything approaching a pleasure drug."
"Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one commonly takes as "the reality," including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous — that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego. One can also arrive at this insight through scientific reflections. The problem of reality is and has been from time immemorial a central concern of philosophy. It is, however, a fundamental distinction, whether one approaches the problem of reality rationally, with the logical methods of philosophy, or if one obtrudes upon this problem emotionally, through an existential experience. The first planned LSD experiment was therefore so deeply moving and alarming, because everyday reality and the ego experiencing it, which I had until then considered to be the only reality, dissolved, and an unfamiliar ego experienced another, unfamiliar reality. The problem concerning the innermost self also appeared, which, itself unmoved, was able to record these external and internal transformations. Reality is inconceivable without an experiencing subject, without an ego. It is the product of the exterior world, of the sender and of a receiver, an ego in whose deepest self the emanations of the exterior world, registered by the antennae of the sense organs, become conscious. If one of the two is lacking, no reality happens, no radio music plays, the picture screen remains blank."
"What constitutes the essential, characteristic difference between everyday reality and the world picture experienced in LSD inebriation? Ego and the outer world are separated in the normal condition of consciousness, in everyday reality; one stands face-to-face with the outer world; it has become an object. In the LSD state the boundaries between the experiencing self and the outer world more or less disappear, depending on the depth of the inebriation. Feedback between receiver and sender takes place. A portion of the self overflows into the outer world, into objects, which begin to live, to have another, a deeper meaning. This can be perceived as a blessed, or as a demonic transformation imbued with terror, proceeding to a loss of the trusted ego. In an auspicious case, the new ego feels blissfully united with the objects of the outer world and consequently also with its fellow beings. This experience of deep oneness with the exterior world can even intensify to a feeling of the self being one with the universe. This condition of cosmic consciousness, which under favorable conditions can be evoked by LSD or by another hallucinogen from the group of Mexican sacred drugs, is analogous to spontaneous religious enlightenment, with the unio mystica. In both conditions, which often last only for a timeless moment, a reality is experienced that exposes a gleam of the transcendental reality, in which universe and self, sender and receiver, are one."
"The cultural-historical meaning of the Eleusinian Mysteries, their influence on European intellectual history, can scarcely be overestimated. Here suffering humankind found a cure for its rational, objective, cleft intellect, in a mystical totality experience, that let it believe in immortality, in an everlasting existence. This belief had survived in early Christianity, although with other symbols. It is found as a promise, even in particular passages of the Gospels, most clearly in the Gospel according to John, as in Chapter 14:16-20. Jesus speaks to his disciples, as he takes leave of them:"
"As a path to the perception of a deeper, comprehensive reality, in which the experiencing individual is also sheltered, meditation, in its different forms, occupies a prominent place today. The essential difference between meditation and prayer in the usual sense, which is based upon the duality of creator-creation, is that meditation aspires to the abolishment of the I-you-barrier by a fusing of object and subject, of sender and receiver, of objective reality and self. Objective reality, the world view produced by the spirit of scientific inquiry, is the myth of our time. It has replaced the ecclesiastical-Christian and mythical-Apollonian world view. But this ever broadening factual knowledge, which constitutes objective reality, need not be a desecration. On the contrary, if it only advances deep enough, it inevitably leads to the inexplicable, primal ground of the universe: the wonder, the mystery of the divine — in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula; in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people."
"It could become of fundamental importance, and be not merely a transient fashion of the present, if more and more people today would make a daily habit of devoting an hour, or at least a few minutes, to meditation. As a result of the meditative penetration and broadening of the natural-scientific world view, a new, deepened reality consciousness would have to evolve, which would increasingly become the property of all humankind. This could become the basis of a new religiosity, which would not be based on belief in the dogmas of various religions, but rather on perception through the "spirit of truth." What is meant here is a perception, a reading and understanding of the text at first hand, "out of the book that God's finger has written" (Paracelsus), out of the creation. The transformation of the objective world view into a deepened and thereby religious reality consciousness can be accomplished gradually, by continuing practice of meditation. It can also come about, however, as a sudden enlightenment; a visionary experience. It is then particularly profound, blessed, and meaningful. Such a mystical experience may nevertheless "not be induced even by decade-long meditation," as Balthasar Staehelin writes. Also, it does not happen to everyone, although the capacity for mystical experience belongs to the essence of human spirituality."
"The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience, makes it possible with their help, and after suitable internal and external preparation, as it was accomplished in a perfect way at Eleusis, to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak. Meditation is a preparation for the same goal that was aspired to and was attained in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Accordingly it seems feasible that in the future, with the help of LSD, the mystical vision, crowning meditation, could be made accessible to an increasing number of practitioners of meditation I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing material aid to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character of LSD as a sacred drug."
"I was visited by Timothy Leary when he was living in Switzerland many years ago. He was a very intelligent man, and quite charming. I enjoyed our conversations very much. However, he also had a need for too much attention. He enjoyed being provocative, and that shifted the focus from what should have been the essential issue. It is unfortunate, but for many years these drugs became taboo. Hopefully, these same problems from the Sixties will not be repeated."
"I believe that shortly after LSD was discovered, it was recognized as being of great value to psychoanalysis and psychiatry. It was not considered to be an escape. It was a very important discovery at that time, and for fifteen years it could be used legally in psychiatric treatment and for scientific study in humans. During this time, Delysid, the name I gave to LSD, was used safely, and was the subject of thousands of publications in the professional literature. Actually, just last week, I had visitors from the Albert Hofmann Foundation, to whom I gave all of the original documentation, which had been stored at the Sandoz Laboratories. This early work was very well documented, and shows how well research with LSD went until it became part of the drug scene in the 1960s. So, from originally being part of the therapeutic pharmacopeia, LSD became a drug of the street and inevitably it was made illegal. Because of this reputation, it became unavailable to the medical field, and so the research, which had been very open, was stopped. Now it appears that this research may start again. The importance of such investigations appears to be recognized by the health authorities, and so it is my hope that finally the prohibition is coming to an end, and the medical field can return to the explorations which were forced to stop thirty years ago."
"LSD wanted to tell me something. … It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation."
"When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist."
"I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD … It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be."
"When Hofmann synthesized the chemical in LSD, he stumbled upon a 4,000-year-old secret."
"John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. I like to read Archie Ammons, my great friend. And Harold Bloom, another former student."
"The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves."
"Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading."
"I've always been surprised at the degree of success of The Mirror and the Lamp and the range and duration of esteem for it. … I had no reason to expect in 1953 that it would appeal to more than a specialized group interested in literary criticism. I think one of the reasons why it's been of interest to a broad spectrum of readers is because one of its emphases was on the role of metaphors in steering human thinking. It was a very early book to insist on the role of metaphors in cognition, as well as in imaginative literature — to claim that key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions. … Natural Supernaturalism is quite well known and even used as a textbook, but it never seems to have attracted the acclaim of its predecessor."
"If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem."
"When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that."
"If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false."
"We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity. The appeal of literature is that it is so thoroughly a human thing — by, for and about human beings. If you lose that focus, you obviate the source of the power and permanence of literature."
"It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable."
"He always violated your expectations. … He was a character."
"The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives."
"I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable. It’s not the final thing, it’s the first thing, which may just be the suggestive, vague identification of something that you have to come back to and rewrite. At first, students tend to freeze at the first effort. The breakthrough comes when they realize that they can make it better — can identify what their purposes were and realize better ways to achieve those purposes. That is the important thing in teaching students to write: not to be frozen in their first effort."
"I think most of the things I published have been published out of desperation, not because they were perfected."
"Pay attention to your students. Hear what they say, try to find out what their capacities are, what make sense to them. Adapt what you are doing and saying to those capacities, but make your students stretch upward. I think the trick is to adapt to the level of a student, but never rest on that level — always make them reach out. … If a student does not quite get it the first time, he or she will come back and get it later. If you don’t set your writing — and teaching — at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle."
"All students are capable of growth. Some of them seem to be very slow to begin with and it’s probably not their fault, nor do I think it’s a matter of genetics. It’s a matter of what has happened in their lives before. They are all capable of growing, but they will not grow unless you interest them, captivate them in some way, and then make them reach out. Then they will finally enjoy reaching out."
"Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. It expands you in every way. It illuminates what you’re doing. It shows you possibilities you haven’t thought of. It enables you to live the lives of other people than yourself. It broadens you, it makes you more human. It makes life enjoyable."
"One of the joys of teaching with the anthology is to watch the excitement grow as students, who may think the past dull and irrelevant, find how fresh and new and powerful are the kinds of writings that are hundreds of years old."
"It’s a pleasure that you don’t outgrow the anthology."
"I didn't lie; nobody calls me a liar, I may have increased my age."
"I feel honored."
"An old sergeant said, if you want to get to France in a hurry, then join the ambulance service, the French are big for ambulance service."
"I had many different assignments and I was doing things that I thought were important... no, I didn't either: I didn't think they were important. But I found out afterwards when I read up on my history that some of the things that I did were quite important."
"I think General Pershing was the most military figure I’ve ever seen."
"I gave the general a snappy salute."
"I was gung-ho, no question about that."
"My job driving the ambulance was not very severe, you did what you were supposed to do. That was my main job."
"Why should I read something someone made up when real events are so interesting?"
"Longevity has never bothered me at all, I have studied longevity for years."
"If your country needs you, you should be right there, that is the way I felt when I was young, and that's the way I feel today."
"One day, I came in and she was on the telephone. She was quite pale. She told me that I wouldn't believe what was going on. She was being watched. She said she would not be able to invite me for tea again. She was a nice Jewish lady."
"Some of our German passengers on the ship would be crying. The Brits were the same way. They were crying, because they realized a new war was about to break out across Europe, with Hitler at the head of the goose-stepping parade."
"In the Philippines in those last months, it was perfect starvation. They had planned to starve us to death."
"I don't know anyone my age."
"When you start to die, don’t."
"We cherish the chance to say thank you in person to Cpl. Frank Buckles."
"Mr. Buckles has a vivid recollection of historic times, and one way for me to honor the service of those who wear the uniform in the past and those who wear it today is to herald you, sir, and to thank you very much for your patriotism and your love for America."
"Then I went to the Cavendish and there I took Rutherford’s course in nuclear physics. He was a very dramatic lecturer and full of anecdotes. He made it come alive. So this was very impressive--also very phenomenological, everything he did; very simple derivations. I think that’s very important for the first learning and this is perhaps something students now miss. They get the theory of nuclear physics thrown at them; sometimes before they ever know there is a phenomenon they have the complete theory of it. The phenomena are not sufficiently emphasized, I think, in teaching today."
"If history has a lesson, it is that the "winner take all" attitude deprives one of the pleasures of being the heir to the best of different traditions, even while avoiding their intolerance against each other."
"You must develop one all-important ability — being able to enlist the help of other people. You have to reach a state where others want to help you. This includes giving credit...which will come back to you a hundredfold. Your reputation stems from what people say when you’re not present."
"One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism."
"To awaken quite alone in a strange town, is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world."
"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."
"There was only a single sharpshooter up in the trees to keep the croc away from me."
"I wish I would have had more to do in the film. I hated to get killed so soon."
"I guess the one thing I really learned from participating in sports was to just never say "no", never stop trying, and to always believe that you can do better than the next fellow. I tried to follow this throughout my life, but I always tried to be respectful about it."
"All I knew about shot putting was that my brother could do 44 feet … I decided I wanted to beat him. … So I got a shot and went to work and made up my mind to do 45 feet."
"Herman Brix brought a presence to the screen that many people feel personifies the Tarzan of the books … lean and muscular, articulate and dignified. He moved with the superb athletic grace that my grandfather envisioned."
"Brix's portrayal was the only time between the silents and the 1960s that Tarzan was accurately depicted in films. He was mannered, cultured, soft-spoken, a well-educated English lord who spoke several languages, and didn't grunt."
"'Majesty, there you see a how a person comes down in the world.'"
"'As far as I know, pornography is the only working medicine against seasickness.'"
"'Well, the Belgians aren't a seafaring people, are they?'"
"'Yes I am a lucky guy'"
"I myself am just an ordinary woman. I had a lot of choices"
"I don't want to be considered a hero. Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."
"(Gies was asked if Anne Frank would have been in love with Peter (Van Pels) forever.)"
"Democracy is not something we have, it's something we do."
"I, for one, am certainly going to continue to raise a little hell."
"I may have lost the election but I have not lost my reason to live."
"Our country is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people, and if that's not worth fighting for I don't know what is."
"I want to plant a few more seeds here and there before they plant me."
"The more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it. Thus it follows that from the forgetfulness of language that its real being consists in what is said in it. What is said in it constitutes the common world in which we live. … The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it — what is said."
"Aristotle established the classical definition of man, according to which man is the living being who has logos. In the tradition of the West, this definition became canonical in a form which stated that man is the animal rationale, the rational being, distinguished from all other animals by his capacity for thought. Thus it rendered the Greek word logos as reason or thought. In truth, however, the primary meaning of this word is language.... The word logos means not only thought and language, but also concept and law."
"[Although the natural sciences are indispensable to human survival,] this does not mean that people would be able to solve the problems that face us, peaceful coexistence of peoples and the preservation of the balance of nature, with science as such. It is obvious that not mathematics but the linguistic nature of people is the basis of human civilization."
"People cannot live without hope; this is one of the statements I can defend without any reservations."
"What man needs is not just the persistent posing of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now. The philosopher, of all people, must, I think, be aware of the tension between what he claims to achieve and the reality in which he finds himself."
"The hermeneutic consciousness, which must be awakened and kept awake, recognizes that in the age of science philosophy's claim of superiority has something chimerical and unreal about it. But though the will of man is more than ever intensifying its criticism of what has gone before to the point of becoming a utopian or eschatological consciousness, the hermeneutic consciousness seeks to confront that will with something of the truth of remembrance: with what is still and ever again real."
"The free artist creates without a commission. He seems distinguished by the complete independence of his creativity and thus acquires the characteristic social features of an outsider whose style of life cannot be measured by the standards of public morality. The concept of the bohemian which arose in the nineteenth century reflects this process. The home of the Gypsies became the generic word for the artist's way of life. But at the same time the artist, who is as "free as a bird or a fish," bears the burden of a vocation that makes him an ambiguous figure. For a cultured society that has fallen away from its religious traditions expects more from art than the aesthetic consciousness and the "standpoint of art" can deliver. The Romantic desire for a new mythology... gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new consecration. He is something like a "secular saviour' for his creations are expected to achieve on a small scale the propitiation of disaster for which an unsaved world hopes."
"Being that can be understood is language."
"In Wahrheit gehört die Geschichte nicht uns, sondern wir gehören ihr. Lange bevor wir uns in der Rückbesinnung selber verstehen, verstehen wir uns auf selbstverständliche Weise in Familie, Gesellschaft und Staat, in denen wir leben. Der Fokus der Subjektivität ist ein Zerrspiegel. Die Selbstbesinnung des Individuums ist nur ein Flackern im geschlossenen Stromkreis des geschichtlichen Lebens. Darum sind die Vorurteile des einzelnen weit mehr als seine Urteile die geschichtliche Wirklichkeit seines Seins."
"We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said. It would be an inadmissible abstraction to contend that we must first have achieved a contemporaneousness with the author or the original reader by means of a reconstruction of his historical horizon before we could begin to grasp the meaning of what is said. A kind of anticipation of meaning guides the effort to understand from the very beginning."
"Das Kunstwerk, das etwas sagt, konfrontiert uns mit uns selbst. Das will sagen, es sagt etwas aus, das so, wie es da gesagt wird, wie eine Entdeckung ist, d.h. die Aufdeckung von etwas Verdecktem. Darauf beruht jene Betroffenheit. «So wahr, so seiend» ist nichts, was man sonst kennt. Alles Bekannte ist übertroffen. Verstehen, was einem das Kunstwerk sagt, ist also gewiß Selbstbegegnung."
"The language of art is constituted precisely by the fact that it speaks to the self-understanding of every person, and it does this as ever present and by means of its own contemporaneousness. Indeed, precisely the contemporaneousness of the work allows it to come to expression in language. Everything depends on how something is said."
"Understanding does not occur when we try to intercept what someone wants to say to us by claiming we already know it."
"Nothing exists except through language."
"From Gadamer I learned that to understand a given thinker requires one to presuppose that he is right."
"Watch every tendency towards militarism, for we know that preparation for war leads to war."
"A man feels impelled to do something to keep awake."
"I'm still at work with my hand to the plough and my face to the future. The shadows of evening … lengthen about me but morning is in my heart. … the testimony I bear is this: that the castle of enchantment is not yet behind me, it is before me still and daily I catch glimpses of its battlements and towers. The best of life is always further on. The real lure is hidden from our eyes, somewhere behind the hills of time."
"I did my own thinking … I have never given it out to be done by others as one gives out washing."
"We need tolerant men. We must all give in a little."
"I'm not in the habit of looking back - I leave that till I get old."
"Will probably go down to posterity as 'The man who did.'"
"There is no depth of life without a way to depth, no truth without a way to truth."
"Knowledge is a process, not a product."
"Man alone, during his brief existence on this earth, is free to examine, to know, to criticize, and to create. In this freedom lies his superiority over the forces that pervade his outward life. He is that unique organism in terms of matter and energy, space and time, which is urged to conscious purpose. Reason is his characteristic and indistinguishing principle. But man is only man -- and free -- when he considers himself as a total being in whom the unmediated whole of feeling and thought is not severed and who impugns any form of atomization as artificial, mischievous, and predatory."
"Competition is dangerous, socially offensive, considered right and normal, because you are brought up to that value system. What kind of competition did Jesus have? What kind of competition is there in your body? Suppose your brain said, "I'm the most important organ!" And the liver said, "I am. And I want a Free Enterprise system!" You'd rot away in a month if every organ of your body went out for itself."
"When I was a young man, growing up in New York City, I refused to pledge allegiance to the flag. Of course I was sent to the principal's office and he asked me: "Why don't you want to pledge allegiance? Everybody does." I said: "Everybody once believed the Earth was flat but, that doesn't make it so." I explained that America owed everything it has to other cultures and other nations, and that I would rather pledge allegiance to the Earth and everyone on it. Needless to say, it wasn't long before I left school entirely. I set up a lab in my bedroom. There, I began to learn about science and nature. I realized then that the universe is governed by laws, and that the human being, along with society itself, was not exempt from these laws. Then came the crash of 1929, which began with what we now call "The Great Depression." I found it difficult to understand why millions were out of work, homeless, starving, while all the factories were sitting there, the resources were unchanged."
"It was then that I realized that the rules of the economic game were inherently invalid. Shorty after came World War II, where various nations took turns, systematically destroying each other. I later calculated that all the destruction and wasted resources spent on that war could've easily provided for every human need on the planet. Since that time, I've watched humanity set the stage for its own extinction. I have watched as the precious, finite resources are perpetually wasted and destroyed in the name of profit and free markets. I have watched the social values of society be reduced into a base artificiality of materialism and mindless consumption. And I have watched as the monetary powers control the political structure of supposedly "free societies." I'm 94 years old now and I'm afraid my disposition is the same as it was 75 years ago: this shit's got to go."
"For the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence when technologies were simple or non-existent, this may have had little impact on human life and the earth that sustains it. Each generation of hunters and gatherers, then plowmen and pioneers, passed on tools to the next generation to help them survive. Change from one generation to the next was slow and hardly noticeable. In those days there was little understanding of science and how things worked, and explanations were not scientific."
"You can play a role in the shaping of tomorrow’s world by asking yourself questions like, “What kind of world do I want to live in?” and “What does democracy mean to me?” There are many other options of organization for the future than those typically discussed today... In order to accomplish this task one must be free of bias and nationalism, and reflect those qualities in the design of policies. How would you approach that? This is a difficult project requiring input from many disciplines."
"The lives of most men and women are blighted by problems they cannot solve. Many events in our lives are the result of things beyond our control. While it is comforting to think, “I’m in charge,” in truth most changes effected by individuals are very limited in scope."
"People usually blame themselves or “fate.” However, when two cars collide at an intersection, should we blame the individual drivers, “fate,” or the way transportation is engineered so that it permits collisions in the first place?"
"In 2005 there were 43,200 thousand deaths in the US from car accidents, plus hundreds of thousands of injuries. But consider another way we get people from one place to another – the elevator. How many people have been killed in collisions between elevators? These devices carry millions of people every day without a single mishap because of their intelligent design. How might highway transportation be similarly arranged?"
"One would think that with our technology we could eliminate most social ills. Couldn’t modern technology supply enough food, clothing, shelter, and material goods for all if used intelligently? What is stopping us from achieving this? Technology is racing forward but our societies are still based on concepts and methods devised centuries ago. We still have a society based on scarcity and the use of money. We still have thinking patterns based on old structures used several thousand years ago. We are trying to adjust to the rapid advances in technology with obsolete values that no longer work in today’s world."
"What has been handed down to us does not seem to be working for the majority of people. With the advances in science and technology over the last two hundred years, you may be asking: “does it have to be this way?” With the observable fact that scientific knowledge makes our lives better when applied with concern for human welfare and environmental protection, there is no question that science and technology can produce abundance so that no one has to go without... Hopes for divine intervention by mythical characters are delusions that cannot solve the problems of our modern world. The future of the world is our responsibility and it depends upon decisions we make today. We are our own salvation or damnation."
"Although we accept the inevitability of change, humans meet it with a lot of resistance. In most cases, change threatens those in positions of advantage and for the most part they are there in the first place to keep things the way they are."
"Yet at every turn, vested interests (those who have the most to gain in keeping things the way they are) oppose even technological changes... And so it goes."
"Until scientific inquiry came of age, human beings could not comprehend their relationship to the physical world, so they invented their own explanations. These explanations tended to be simplistic and in many cases, harmful. For example, if one knows a tidal wave is approaching and chooses to stay and pray for deliverance rather than leaving, this could be detrimental to his/her survival... Scientists ask the question “what do we have here?” and then they proceed to do experiments to determine the nature of the physical world."
"People raised in a monetary system where the bottom line is profit are likely to outsource portions of their business rather than be concerned with the well-being of their country and employees. The nature of our social institutions perpetuates this behavior. For example, if a moderate sized company were concerned with the well-being of employees and provided medical care, playgrounds for children, and a higher wage scale, it would not attract as many investors... This is not human nature but a byproduct of the culture."
"Many people today see genes as a reason for aberrant behavior, but the major influences have been shown to be environmental... What is considered appropriate behavior today may be considered un-sane in the future...Better values, ideals, and behavior cannot be fully realized while there is still hunger, unemployment, deprivation, war, and poverty."
"The existence of money is hardly ever questioned or examined, but let’s consider our use of money.... There are many disadvantages to using this old method of exchange for goods and services. We will consider just a few here and let you add to this list on your own."
"When travel outside the city is desired, computer-guided vehicles for land, sea, air, space and beyond can transport passengers and freight. For rapid movement of passengers on land across via ducts, bridges, and tunnels, high-speed mag-lev trains span great distances and will efficiently replace most aircraft transportation."
"Without large corporations controlling automobile manufacture for profit, all transportation systems can be designed as modular, continuously updated, and provided with the latest developments in technology."
"The conflicts today with our fellow human beings are over opposing values and limited access to the necessities of life. If we manage to arrive at a saner future civilization, the conflicts will be against problems common to all humans."
"In a vibrant and emergent culture, rather than having conflicts between nations, the challenges we will face will be overcoming scarcity, restructuring damaged environments, creating innovative technologies, increasing agricultural yield, improving communications, building communications between nations, sharing technologies, and living a meaningful life."
"As we enhance the lives of others, protect our environment, and work toward abundance, all our lives can become richer and more secure. If these values were put into practice, it would enable all of us to achieve a much higher standard of living within a relatively short period of time; a standard of living that would be continuously improved."
"When education and resources are available to all without a price tag, there will be no limit to human potential."
"Although many of us consider ourselves forward-thinkers, we still cling tenaciously to the old values of the monetary system."
"Our times demand the declaration of the world's resources as the common heritage of all people."
"People will continue to search for answers to universal and perplexing problems. But to find meaningful answers, one must first know what questions to ask."
"War represents the supreme failure of nations to resolve their differences. From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, it is the most inefficient waste of lives and resources ever conceived."
"We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design."
"Whenever money is involved, there is elitism."
"As we begin to plan for a new human society, we need to foster common values about clean air, water, and other elements of self-sustenance. These, along with a complete inventory of Earth's resources, will form the basis for a holistic approach to cybernated decision-making."
"Laws, at best, are attempts to control a population, and work only sporadically with great expense and hardship. Other common behaviorcontrol methods are patriotism, religion, propaganda, and nationalism. All manmade laws are developed to preserve the established order."
"Human beings free of debt, insecurity, and fear become much more amiable. With no one out to sell anyone anything or to deprive another of possessions or money, the basis for unhealthy human aggression is outgrown. People no longer are burdened by the nagging concerns that consume so much attention such as mortgages, health care costs, education fees, fire insurance, economic recession or depression, the loss of jobs, and taxes. With the elimination of these burdens and the removal of the conditions that create feelings of envy, greed, and competition, people’s lives would be far more meaningful."
"Science and education, when devoid of a social conscience or environmental and human concern, are meaningless."
"Earth is abundant with plentiful resources. Our practice of rationing resources through monetary control is irrelevant and counter-productive to our survival."
"Progress in every country depends mainly on the education of its people. Without education, we are a nation of children. The difference between one man and another, apart from birth and social position, consists in the extent of knowledge, general and practical, acquired by him. We may safely assume that man in all countries within certain limits start with the same degree of intelligence. A civilised nation is distinguished from an uncivilised one by the extent of its acquired intelligence and skill."
"Self-examination not moral or spiritual, but secular - that is, a survey and analysis of local conditions in India and a comparative study of the same with those in other parts of the globe."
"The Indian mind needs to be familarised with the principles of modern progress, a universal impulse for enquiry and enterprise awakened, and earnest thinking and effort promoted. A new type of Indian citizenship purposeful, progressive and self-respecting should be created, and self-reliant nationhood developed."
"You are for developing village industries and I favour both heavy industries and village industries. To the extent that you propose to advance village industries, I am at once with you. I can never persuade myself to take up a hostile attitude towards any constructive work, from any quarter, least of all towards work attempted by one with your brilliant historic achievements in public life....I am in favour of heavy industries because heavy industries will save the money that is going out of the country in large sums every year; heavy industries are required to provide the local manufactures of machinery and equipment required by our railways and for defence forces and heavy industries are required also for supplying machinery and tools for the village industries themselves. I recommend more extended use of mechanical power because it produces results for the country much more rapidly than human power. The object is to get food and commodities required by our people for a decent standard of living as speedily as possible."
"Mental energy is wasted in caste disputes and village factions."
"In our warm climate, we have not got the same incentive to exertion and we may never be able to attain the same level of prosperity as Western people."
"If you feel that by giving this title, I will praise your government, you will be disappointed. I am a fact finding man."
"He wrote in his letter addressed to Jawahar Lal Nehru, then Prime Minister of India when the Bharat Ratna title was conferred on him, as quoted in"
"These facts and figures must serve as an eye-opener to the people of Mysore. I refer to them here not because I have any hopes of our reaching the levels of prosperity of the two Colonies, but because it will do us good to know what organization and human endeavour are capable of achieving under favourable conditions. / The nationality of our people rests on a religious and fatalistic basis, not on an economic basis, as in the West. There are still people among us who believe that the golden age was in the past, the world is on the down-grade and the old-word conditions might yet be reproduced some day. The Hindu ideal of life is that this world is a preparation for the next and not a place to stay in and make ourselves comfortable. We are devoted to past ideals, although, out of necessity or from prospect of personal gain, we have partly taken to Western methods of work and business. There is a yearning for the old ideals and a half-hearted acquiescence in the new and, on the whole, the genius of the people is for standing still. / If we are to follow in the wake of other countries in the pursuit of material prosperity, we must give up aimless activities and bring our ideals into line with the standards of the West, namely, to spread education in all grades, multiply occupations and increase production and wealth. All other activities should conform themselves to the economic idea. [148-149]"
"I walked my way to good health"
"It is better to work out than rust out."
"The development of this system, the [Block System] is due entirely to the genius of Mr Vishvesharaya, certainly one of the ablest officers, European or Indian, of the Public Works Department, with whom it has been my pleasure and honour to work"
"As sound as what one might expect from the distinguished engineer who drew them up. He has shown the way to turn dire misfortune into a positive blessing. The proposals are without blemish. I strongly advocate carrying out the scheme."
"Was one of the greatest patriots of India belonging to no party, adopting no slogans, attached to no shibboleths but dedicated to the upliftment of his countrymen. He is undoubtedly the best known engineer of India. He was an able administrator, educationist and foresighted planner. His name ranks high among those who promoted industrialisation of India. He is known for his dictum "Industrialise or perish"."
"Industrialize or Perish"
"In spite of strength of my conviction, I have certain great regard for your fine abilities and love for the country and that shall be unabated whether I have the good fortune to secure your cooperation or face your honest opposition....I see that we hold perhaps diametrically opposite views. My conviction based upon extensive experiences of village life is that in India at any rate for generations to come, we shall not be able to make much use of mechanical power for solving the problem of the ever growing poverty of the masses."
"He is an engineer of integrity, character and broad national outlook who could take an unbiased view, resist local pressures and whose views would be respected and accepted by all."
"The slogans of 'countering back the mainland' created by Chiang Kai-shek and 'liberating Taiwan' by Mao Zedong several decades ago should be forgotten because none of them could be put into practice."
"When people on both sides of the Strait reach a consensus on their political system, unification will come to fruition naturally."
"Taiwanese independence is a dead end."
"Throughout history, people have never before expected to be as comfortable as people do today."
"I had to wait 110 years to become famous... I intend to enjoy it as long as possible."
"I see badly, I hear badly, and I feel bad, but everything's fine."
"I took pleasure when I could... I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I'm very lucky."
"I wait for death... and journalists."
"I have got only one wrinkle, and I am sitting on it."
"I had a hell of a lot of will power! A hell of a will power, you understand? And it was very useful to me."
"Every age has its happiness and troubles."
"I have a rather masculine nature. I'm not afraid of anything."
"It is appropriate at the outset of this discussion to consider the reasons for and the effect of the division of work. It is sufficient for our purpose to note the following factors."
"The theory of organization... has to do with the structure of co-ordination imposed upon the work-division units of an enterprise."
"The efficiency of a group working together is directly related to the homogeneity of the work they are performing."
"What is the work of the chief executive? What does he do?"
"[POSDCORB as]... statement of the work of a chief executive is adapted from the functional analysis elaborated by Henri Fayol in his "Industrial and General Administration." It is believed that those who know administration intimately will find in this analysis a valid and helpful pattern, into which can be fitted each of the major activities and duties of any chief executive."
"Students of administration have long sought a single principle of effective departmentalization just as alchemists sought the philosophers' stone. But they have sought in vain. There is apparently no one most effective system of departmentalism."
"The power of an idea to serve as the foundation of co-ordination is so great that one may observe many examples of co-ordination even in the absence of any single leader or of any framework of authority."
"It may also be noted that the authoritarian states are in trouble internationally. Some regard this as intentional, as part of the diversion and scapegoat technique, while others think that it is more or less inevitable because of the very co-ordination of the economic activities of the individual nations in question."
"A workman subject to orders from several superiors will be confused, inefficient, and irresponsible; a workman subject to orders from but one superior may be methodical, efficient, and responsible."
"Administration has to do with getting things done; with the accomplishment of defined objectives. The science of administration is thus the system of knowledge whereby men may understand relationships, predict results, and influence outcomes in any situation where men are organized at work together for a common purpose."
"Public administration is that part of the science of administration which has to do with government, and thus concerns itself primarily with the executive branch, where the work of government is done, though there are obviously administrative problems also in connection with the legislative and the judicial branches. Public administration is thus a division of political science, and one of the social sciences."
"At the present time administration is more an art than a science; in fact there are those who assert dogmatically that it can never be anything else. They draw no hope from the fact that metallurgy, for example, was completely an art several centuries before it became primarily a science and commenced its great forward strides after generations of intermittent advance and decline."
"The fundamental objective of the science of administration is the accomplishment of the work in hand with the least expenditure of man-power and materials. Efficiency is thus axiom number one in the value scale of administration. This brings administration into apparent conflict with certain elements of the value scale of politics, whether we use that term in its scientific or in its popular sense. But both public administration and politics are branches of political science, so that we are in the end compelled to mitigate the pure concept of efficiency in the light of the value scale of politics and the social order. There are, for example, highly inefficient arrangements like citizen boards and small local governments which may be necessary in a democracy as educational devices. It has been argued also that the spoils system, which destroys efficiency in administration, is needed to maintain the political party, that the political party is needed to maintain the structure of government, and that without the structure of government, administration itself will disappear. While this chain of causation has been disproved under certain conditions, it none the less illustrates the point that the principles of politics may seriously affect efficiency. Similarly in private business it is often true that the necessity for immediate profits growing from the system of private ownership may seriously interfere with the achievement of efficiency in practice."
"Gulick divided the work of chief executives into seven functional elements. He used the acronym POSDCORB, representing the initials of the following activities, Planning... , Organizing... , Staffing... , Directing..., Coordinating..., Reporting..., Budgeting... Although Gulick visualized management as universal activity, his description of the preceding elements of a chief executive’s job primarily pertained to governmental administration. Gulick went on to identify four basic systems of departmentalization: purpose, process, person or things, and place. He held that "the major purpose of organization is co-ordination." In Gulick’s scheme, there is no one most effective system of departmentalization."
"I have a philosophy, you do the best you can, and the things you can’t do anything about, don’t give any thought to them. … I feel I have to make a contribution. When I was doing surgery, I made it by operating. Now I try to make it by speaking about preventive medicine."
"a Masonic plot backed by the Jews"
"If they had set out to kill six million Jews they would have done it. But all we hear about is Holocaust survivors. "Oh, we know it happened, cause over there is a survivor. Oh, my mother and father were survivors," they say. This is absolutely ridiculous. And (the Holocaust) it's all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it is. For instance the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz would not do the job. Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it? It takes a liter of petrol and 20 minutes - now six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That's why they lost the war."
"Literary translation may be considered as rivalry between two languages (or even between two cultures) which vie to express the original idea better. It should be faithful to the original at least, and beautiful at best. A literary translator should exploit the advantage of the target language, that is to say, make the fullest possible use of the best expressions of the target language in order to make the reader understand, enjoy and delight in the translated text."
"To face the powder, not powder the face."
"The best way to regain poetry is to recreate it."
"A verse translation should be faithful to the original, less in form than in sense. Or in other words, a poetic translation should be as beautiful as the original in sense, in sound and, if possible, in form."
"By riverside are cooing A pair of turtledoves; A good young man is wooing A maiden fair he loves."
"The sun beyond the mountains glows; The Yellow River seawards flows. You can enjoy a grander sight By climbing to a greater height."
"Poem: After the Bomb had Fallen"
"Poem: Lines on the Death of my Husband"
"We know that you, the organised workers of the country, are our friends ... As for the rest, they do not matter a tinker's cuss."
"I do physics in order to earn my living, and I do poetry in order to keep alive."
"I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity. Freedom of expression, for me, consists in moving within a measured range that I assign to each of my undertakings. How instructive it is to remember Leonardo da Vinci's counsel that "strength is born of constraint and dies from freedom.""
"Architects by design investigate the play of volumes in light, explore the mysteries of movement in space, examine the measure that is scale and proportion, and above all, they search for that special quality that is the spirit of the place as no building exists alone. The practice of architecture is a collective enterprise, with many individuals of various disciplines and talents working closely together. And from the commissioning to the completion of a project, there are also the many individuals for whom architects work, whose contribution to quality is frequently as crucial as that of the architect. So I accept this prize for all who have worked with me in this unique undertaking. Let us all be attentive to new ideas, to advancing means, to dawning needs, to impetuses of change so that we may achieve, beyond architectural originality, a harmony of spirit in the service of man."
"For me the important distinction is between a stylistic approach to the design; and an analytical approach giving the process of due consideration to time, place, and purpose ... My analytical approach requires a full understanding of the three essential elements ... to arrive at an ideal balance among them."
"The theory of functions of several complex variables has gone from its infancy with the work of Hartogs, Levi and Poincaré shortly after the turn of the century to its current role as a central field of modern mathematics, much as its predecessor, function theory in one complex variable, did in the 19th century. A central figure in this development has been Henri Cartan, whose series of papers in this field starting in the 1920's dealt with fundamental questions relating to Nevanlinna theory, generalizations of the Mittag-Leffler and Weierstrass theorems to functions of several variables, problems concerned with biholomorphic mappings and the biholomorphic equivalence problem, domains of holomorphy and holomorphic convexity, etc. The major developments in the theory from 1930 to 1950 came from Cartan and his school in France, Behnke's school in Münster, and Oka in Japan. The central ideas up to that time were synthesized in Cartan's Séminaires in the early 1950's, and these were very influential to the next several generations of mathematicians. Cartan's accomplishments were broad and he influenced mathematics through his writing, his teaching, his seminars, and his students in a remarkable manner."
"There are approximately two billion cells in the nervous system of a human being. The process of thinking in any individual is partly dependent upon the variable arrangement of these cells. Therefore no person can think exactly as another, any more than he can change his facial features to duplicate the facial features of another. If people would remember this fact and regulate their attitudes towards others to conform to it, it would encourage the exercise of tolerance, the human attribute most needed today."
"When you come that close to not being here, or being told they are going to take your foot off, it changes everything in your life."
"I was so thankful to just be alive. Things that bothered me before... nothing, I have become much more peaceful and less worried about anything."
"I came to school in the United States, and I will always consider America my second home."
"On July 7, 1937, Japan launched an all-out war on China. Through the first four and one-half years of total aggression, China defended herself unaided and alone. Not until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, in December of 1941.. .did the U.S. and China become allies. The combined effort of our two countries laid a solid foundation for the final victory in 1945. In those years of blood and tears, let us remember the moral courage of the people of the United States and China fighting shoulder to shoulder."
"It has been said, and I find it true from personal experience, that it is easier to risk one's life on the battlefield than it is to perform customary humble and humdrum duties which, however, are just as necessary to winning the war."
"The second impression of my trip is that America is not only the cauldron of democracy but the incubator of democratic principles. At some of the places I visited, I met the crews of your air bases. There, I found first generation Germans, Italians, Frenchmen, Poles, Czechoslovakians, and other nationals. Some of them had accents so thick, that if such a thing were possible, one could not cut them with a butter knife. But there they were, all Americans, all devoted to the same ideals, all working for the same cause, and united by the same high purpose. No suspicion or rivalry existed between them. This increased my belief and faith that devotion to common principles eliminates differences in race and that identity of ideals is the strongest possible solvent of racial dissimilarities."
"I have reached your country, therefore, with no misgivings, but with my belief that the American people are building and carrying out a true pattern of the nation conceived by your forebears, strengthened and confirmed."
"Again, now the prevailing opinion seems to consider the defeat of the Japanese as of relative unimportance and that Hitler is our first concern. This is not borne out by actual facts, nor is it to the interests of the United Nations as a whole to allow Japan to continue, not only as a vital potential threat but as a waiting sword of Damocles, ready -- but as a waiting sword of Damocles ready to des[cend] at a moment's notice."
"We of this generation who are privileged to help make a better world for ourselves and for posterity should remember that, while we must not be visionary, we must have vision so that peace should not be punitive in spirit and should not be provincial or nationalistic or even continental in concept, but universal in scope and -- and humanitarian in action, for modern science has so annihilated distance that what affects one people must of necessity affect all other peoples."
"We in China, like you, want a better world, not for ourselves alone, but for all mankind, and we must have it. It is not enough, however, to proclaim our idea[l]s or even to be convinced that we have them. In order to preserve, uphold, and maintain them, there are times when we should throw all we cherish into our effort to fulfill these ideals even at the risk of failure."
"We must have the vision so that peace should not be punitive in spirit and should not be provincial or nationalistic or even continental in concept; but universal in scope and humanitarian in action, for modern science has so annihilated distance that what affects one people must of necessity affect all others."
"The teachings drawn from our late leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, have given our people the fortitude to carry on. From five and a half years of experience, we in China are convinced that it is the better part of wisdom not to accept failure ignominiously, but to risk it gloriously."
"We shall have faith, that, at the writing of peace, America and our other gallant Allies will not be obtunded by the mirage of contingent reasons of expediency."
"Man's mettle is tested both in adversity and in success. Twice is this true of the soul of a nation."
"We in China, though we have been harried for years by death and destruction, have been giving careful thought toward the perfection of a political and social system that will ensure in the future the greatest good for the greatest number."
"We have chosen the path that we shall tread in the future. We are determined that there shall be no more exploitation of China. I have no wish to harp on old grievances, but realism demands that I should mention the ruthless and shameless exploitation of our country by the West in the past and hard-dying illusion that the best way to win our hearts was to kick us in the ribs. Such asinine stupidities must never be repeated, as much for your own sake as for ours. America and Britain have already shown their consciousness of error by voluntarily offering to abrogate the iniquitous system of extraterritoriality that denied China her inherent right to equality with other nations."
"While as a nation we are resolved that we will not tolerate foreign exploitation we are equally determined that within our country there be no exploitation of any section of society by any other section or even by the state itself. The possession of wealth does not confer upon the wealthy the right to take unfair advantage of the less fortunate."
"We are striving to institute a flexible system of political and economic development that will serve the future as well as the present. This attempt started directly China became a republic, thirty-one years ago, and has continued even throughout the war years. In order to give our people fuller and better opportunities for a well-rounded and happier life, a new kind of Chinese socialism, based on democratic principles, is evolving."
"I have already referred to Chinese socialism, for our political compass shows our ship of state ploughing in that direction. Nevertheless, some people are alarmed at the very word ‘socialism,’ much as a timid horse shies away from its own shadow. Actually, though not called by that name, socialism has influenced national thought in China for decades, even amid the confusion caused by civil unrest and the present war. But it does not have any affiliation with communism. The Chinese do not accept the much-mooted theory of enriching the poor by dispossessing present owners of their wealth, nor do they believe such a step would give any prospect of an enduring alleviation of poverty and human misery."
"Chinese socialism, if you like to call it that, seeks above all else to preserve the birthrights of the individual. No state can be great and prosperous unless the people are contented."
"One of our national characteristics is not to do things without careful deliberation. Those who are privileged to direct the aspirations of a quarter of the world’s population have a wonderful opportunity but a fearful responsibility."
"Considering what China has already accomplished in the face of heartbreaking obstacles, we confront the future with calmness and confidence. The difficulties before us are stupendous; but with the help, from our sister democracies, of technique and capital, which we have proved we deserve, we have no doubt we can solve our problems."
"But, for a time in the early 1940s, she had been the most powerful woman on earth, and could dream of ruling the world with an American consort."
"She can talk beautifully about democracy, but does not know how to live democracy."
"The formidable wife of Nationalist China's leader, she fought her own corner as ruthlessly as she defended his."
"After Chiang died, Mei-ling's move to Long Island was barely reported. By the 1990s, many believed she must have died. She refused Beijing's invitation to attend the funeral of her sister Ching-ling in 1981, though when Ching-kuo died in 1988, she became briefly involved in an effort to prevent the Taiwan-born Li Teng-hui from succeeding him. It was soon announced, however, that, though she still had a "strong will", she would no longer "intervene in state affairs." Finally, Soong Mei-ling had lost the art for intrigue and the zest for power that sustained for so long her formidable role as Nationalist China's Dragon Lady."
"Even at 95, I remember everything. Closure is never complete. I didn’t ask for Hollywood, it discovered me."
"It made me very, very, very, very happy, because I met all those I love and I thank the heavens for giving them to me. I thank God for the trouble they went to."
"Well, the whole flight took 13 hours…4 to Japan, 9 hours across the water to China. No particular or dramatic things happened. We ended up thinking about what could happen, especially after Hank, our navigator, handed me a note saying we were going to end up about 180 miles short of China. We didn’t know what to think about that. But we got to China with fuel to spare, a tailwind helped us."
"When I think about it, the mission was not a highly dangerous affair. You could do something about it if there was a problem. But, looking back, I’d say we were pretty lucky."
"To the gentlemen we lost on the mission and to those who have passed away since, thank you very much and may they rest in peace."
"I was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio. As a young kid I used to ride my bicycle from where we lived three or four miles to McCook Field, the Army Air Corps’ first test base. I got to watch all the old-timers. They were testing air refueling, dropping a hose out of one airplane that was higher than another."
"Our airplane had incendiary bombs. Our mission was to light up Tokyo."
"We placed the B-25 in the middle of the deck, with about seven feet between the right wingtip and the ship’s island. The Navy had painted a white line down the deck for the left main gear and another for the nose gear. We taxied up and revved the engine. A launcher picked the appropriate time, the peak of an up movement with the water, and the carrier just dropped out from underneath the airplane. We got off a good 20 or 30 feet from the end of the deck."
"The only thing we could do was fly until we ran out of gas and then bail out. It was dark, and we didn’t know anything about the terrain except that it was mountainous, but that was the only alternative, unless you wanted to commit suicide. We bailed out at around 9,000 feet."
"The raid was designed to do two things. One was to let the Japanese people know their leaders were not being truthful by saying Japan couldn’t be bombed by air. The other was to give the Allies, and particularly the United States, a morale shot in the arm."
"No, we were just doing our job, part of the big picture, and happy that what we did was helpful. We couldn’t have done it without the Navy. They risked two of their carriers and quite an armada."
"My spoon was lifted when the bomb came down/That left no face, no hand, no spoon to hold./A hundred thousand died in my home town./This came to pass before my soup was cold. ("Epitaph: 1945")"
"Hungry, not one word here/is as good as bread."
"they swarmed everywhere,/the unwritten poems."
"They went hunting lions/But a flea attacked them/And their hunters' passion/Narrowed to a flea."
"No god came down, my brothers,/To breathe on them, my sisters./Their bodies made a mountain/That never touched the heavens./Whose lightning struck the killers?/Whose rain drowned out the fires?/My brothers and my sisters,/No angel leaned upon them./No miracle could shield them/From the cold human hands."
"I learned the speech of birds; now every tree/Screams out to me a baleful prophecy."
"All, all runs wild, all wild and uncontrolled./A toad hops from my mouth instead of gold."
"Excuse me for living,/But, since I am living,/Given inches, I take yards,/Taking yards, dream of miles/And a landscape, unbounded/And vast in abandon./And you dreaming the same."
"I was, I did, but I will let it be./Tonight I must hold dear/Whatever brought me here."
"I must learn again to give it welcome."
"The hunters hang onto their man/And merrily pass by/Where I scot-free and you scot-free/Stand in the shadow of Why."
"Born of a war, I was always aching and straining/To nuzzle myself into peace./Peace when it came was hunted and haunted, and stayed/Just for a moment."
"In silence is the smell of treachery, and sanction/Of hunger, and therefore I shout./But in the storm of sound I clothe myself/In a hush like fur."
"Unmade by what has made me"
"When there was one kiss/against ten curses/and one loaf/against ten hungry/and one hello/against ten goodbyes/the odds stalked/your crooked steps."
"His praise like rain runs down the gutters"
"My words may turn into stones/as easily as a man/turned one day into silence."
"Neither destroyed nor diamond/I walk from the core of your flame,/The rain does not hiss when it hits me,/And I answer to my old name."
"Tomorrow we cross/The borders of loss"
"Her feelings are deep and expressed without shame or coyness. She's straightforward. She offers the difficult product-clarity. She makes a music for which readers of poetry have been lonesome for years."
"As a bishop, I was never political, but I always tried to make my presence felt among the people, standing with them and defending them when necessary. I always spoke to everyone because I felt strongly that whoever was in front of me was, before anything else, a human being."
"I met Benedetti a couple of times back in the 1990s at theological gatherings in Rome, shortly after he retired from Foligno, and was struck by his gentleness and lack of pretense, despite his impressive résumé."
"When Antony] entered the cave he saw the lifeless corpse in a kneeling position, its head erect and its hands stretched out toward heaven. At first he thought that Paul was still alive and so he knelt down beside him to pray, but when he heard no sighs from the praying man, as he usually did, he fell upon him in a tearful embrace, realizing that even as a corpse the holy man, by means of his reverent posture, was praying to God for whom all things live."
"For the good of God's Church and for my own peace of mind, I believe it is time of a younger man to take over the reins of office here in Newark. I have done my best and I am very happy now to step aside."
"Now looking at all these icons I myself can't believe that I did all of this with my own hands."
"Dr. Anderson was a founding member of the PEI chapter of the Canadian Federation of University Women, and her work on celiac disease has been recognized as a significant contribution to both the scientific and educational communities.""
"Doris Margaret Anderson’s expertise in celiac disease and her dedication to education have had a lasting impact on the Island community and beyond, leading to her appointment as a Member of the Order of Canada in 1982."
"Politics always interested me. I loved my constituents, I love people and I enjoy people, as I love and enjoy every single day."
"Carol Berman’s longevity and unwavering spirit continued to inspire those who knew her. She was a resilient advocate and public servant whose legacy will be remembered by the people she served."
"On October 17, 2023, Carol Berman passed away, leaving behind a legacy of political dedication, unwavering commitment to her community, and a life that spanned an incredible century. Her impact on New York’s political landscape and her indomitable spirit will be cherished and remembered for generations to come."
"She lived an extraordinary life. Carol had this unending warmth of kindness, and I can see how she got things done … (She was) a leader to be reckoned with."
"She had many firsts, even though the Dodgers deserted Brooklyn. My mother empowered me to have an interesting and fun career. She has empowered our whole family and many people who knew her."
"Thank you for everything, Mom . . . love you forever."
"I can only say, as former president of the Mill Brook Civic Association, Carol was always there for us with issues that affected us. You could always reach out to Carol and she was quick to respond. She was a very warm and caring person, and will be greatly missed."
"Carol Berman was a hardworking public official who continued to benefit the community long after her service as a senator."
"My mother lived a wonderful life. On hundred years is a lot to cover."
"In a 1980 interview for “The Political Activities of the First Generation of Fully Enfranchised Connecticut Women, 1920-1945” at the Center for Oral History at UConn, Emily Sophie Brown stated that her priorities included anything concerning humanity, and things to do with children. This emphasis on humanity and care defined her career and many of the organizations she advocated for and represented."
"My name is Onnophrius, and for sixty years I have lived in this solitary place and desert. I walk in the mountains like the wild beasts, and I live on the plants and trees, and I have not seen anyone I know."
"I rose and stretched out my hands and I prayed, and suddenly a man of light came to me, the one who had come to me the first time. And when he came, he stood over me and he strengthened me as he had done the first time. In short, seventeen days passed while I journeyed in this manner. Suddenly I looked in the distance. I saw a man coming who was completely fire, his hair spread out over his body like a leopard’s. Indeed, he was naked, and leaves from a plant covered his shameful parts. Now when he came close to me, I climbed up on a mountain ledge, thinking that he was a mountain man. Now when he came closer, he threw himself under the mountain ledge in the shade because he was exhausted and because of his hunger and thirst. Indeed, he was in grave danger of dying. He raised his eyes to the mountain ledge and called to me, saying, “Paphnutius, come down to me, man of God. I, too, am a man of the desert, like yourself. I live in this desert on account of God.”"
"Considerable difficulties, however, beset the way of 's biographer. Her life was so much bound up with her husband's career that to write an orthodox biography would merely be to repeat the story which has already been told with such fullness and brilliance by and ."
"Lyra Innocentium was much valued by the devout, but it never attained to the world-wide popularity of ', and in some quarters it gave positive offence. ... Keble's chief reason for publishing Lyra Innocentium was his desire to raise money for the rebuilding of Hursley Church."
"A picnic is the Englishman's grand gesture ..."
"... today even our s are presented at a Garden Court, followed by a more or less picnic on the lawn. All classes and ranks share in this taste ..."
"It was at , and then at , that Georgina's literary career took wing. In 1943 her Charlotte Mary Yonge: the Story of an Uneventful Life was published. 's reputation as a writer was then at its nadir, and Georgina's book provoked a savage and contemptuous review by Mrs , but it was greeted with joy by a wide, though secret band of fans throughout the country, and led to a revival in Charlotte Yonge studies in university English literature departments, and to the foundation, a few years later, of the Charlotte Mary Yonge Society, an elite group of writers such as , and ."
"In higher organisms, the cells of an individual become greatly diversified despite their identity of . How such diversification is achieved and how supra-cellular organization then comes about have remained largely obscure. A new way of getting at theses questions was formulated in ; its purpose was to subject the pivotal genotype-phenotype relationship to experimental manipulation. The intact organism was taken to be the necessary framework for such an experimental study of gene expression, and the mouse, with its wide variety of available s, was easily the most promising vertebrate species. The plan was to make artificial mice: within each, cells with different, rather than identical, genotypes would be included. ... Certain kinds of had previously been extensively employed in studies with '. ... The first indication, in a mammal, of an admixture of genotypes came with 's discovery of erythrocyte mosaicism in fraternal cattle co-twins. ..."
"s owe their existence to a population of persistently proliferating s which probably originate from the normal generative cells of that ... Normal stem cells ordinarily tend to give rise to non-dividing terminally differentiated cellular progeny; malignant stem cells, on the other hand, suffer an impairment of differentiation. Early in embryonic life, stem cells are developmentally versatile; the earliest ones, e.g., s in the mouse, are , or individually capable of forming an entire organism. s are exceptional tumors in that they contain a multiplicity of tissues, a characteristic implying that their stem cells arise from cells more developmentally primitive than is the case in other malignancies."
"She made foundational discoveries and revolutionized many tools and techniques of that paved the way for tremendous progress in our understanding of cancer."
"Beatrice Mintz, known as “Bea” to her friends, was a developmental geneticist. ... Her pioneering work had a major impact on many different areas of science. She began her career addressing one of the most complex and fascinating questions of development: how the many different and diverse tissues in an organism are initiated and develop from a single fertilized egg. In the early 1960s Bea—at about the same time as in Poland and in Philadelphia—generated the first chimeric mice by combining early, genetically distinct, mouse embryos. She had contemplated this experiment for many years at the and began to work seriously on it after moving to (discussing the project with her colleagues) … And indeed, this manipulation of embryos was a breakthrough to a new era of experimental work in mammalian development. (Bea did not like the designation “chimera” because of its association with “monsters” in Greek mythology; she described these mice as “allophenic.”)"
"We were victims of a lie"
"I still smell smoke and see fire"
"I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams"
"I want this to be a forum where the best and brightest work together in an operating environment that embraces advanced knowledge and technologies to improve lives, including the life of our planet!"
"Let's level the playing field by making essential knowledge available, get it to people who need it, and support them in being healthy and self-sufficient"