Refugees

"Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it."

"We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections."

"The grand discoveries which scientific experiment yielded at and about the turn of the century, in which investigators in many countries took an eminent part and which were destined all unexpectedly to give us a fresh insight into the structure of atoms, were due in the first instance, as all are aware, to the work of the great investigators of the English school, Sir Joseph Thomson and Sir Ernest Rutherford, who have inscribed their names on the tablets of the history of scientific research as distinguished witnesses to the truth that imagination and acumen are capable of penetrating the crowded mass of registered experience and of revealing Nature's simplicity to our gaze."

"Even the mathematical framework helps nothing, I would first like to understand how Nature avoids the contradictions. (1927)"

"The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based."

"Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems."

"What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character ... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly."

"For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory regarding the limited applicability of such customary idealizations, we must in fact turn to quite other branches of science, such as psychology, or even to that kind of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of existence."

"Contraria Sunt Complementa"

"However far the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms. The argument is that simply by the word "experiment" we refer to a situation where we can tell others what we have done and what we have learned and that, therefore, the account of the experimental arrangement and of the results of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics."

"An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field."

"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct."

"Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language."

"Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are."

"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."

"Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd."

"Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question."

"It is a great pity that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness."

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."

"Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them."

"Truth and clarity are complementary."

"It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite."

"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think."

"Oh, what idiots we all have been. This is just as it must be."

"I go into the Upanishads to ask questions."

"No, no, you are not thinking, you are just being logical."

"I am absolutely prepared to talk about the spiritual life of an electronic computer: to state that it is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the machine really feels or ponders, or whether it merely looks as though it did, is of course absolutely meaningingless."

"I feel very much like Dirac: the idea of a personal God is foreign to me. But we ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science. True, we are inclined to think that science deals with information about objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far."

"I consider those developments in physics during the last decades which have shown how problematical such concepts as "objective" and "subjective" are, a great liberation of thought. The whole thing started with the theory of relativity. In the past, the statement that two events are simultaneous was considered an objective assertion, one that could be communicated quite simply and that was open to verification by any observer. Today we know that 'simultaneity' contains a subjective element, inasmuch as two events that appear simultaneous to an observer at rest are not necessarily simultaneous to an observer in motion. However, the relativistic description is also objective inasmuch as every observer can deduce by calculation what the other observer will perceive or has perceived. For all that, we have come a long way from the classical ideal of objective descriptions. In quantum mechanics the departure from this ideal has been even more radical. We can still use the objectifying language of classical physics to make statements about observable facts. For instance, we can say that a photographic plate has been blackened, or that cloud droplets have formed. But we can say nothing about the atoms themselves. And what predictions we base on such findings depend on the way we pose our experimental question, and here the observer has freedom of choice. Naturally, it still makes no difference whether the observer is a man, an animal, or a piece of apparatus, but it is no longer possible to make predictions without reference to the observer or the means of observation. To that extent, every physical process may be said to have objective and subjective features. The objective world of nineteenth-century science was, as we know today, an ideal, limiting case, but not the whole reality. Admittedly, even in our future encounters with reality we shall have to distinguish between the objective and the subjective side, to make a division between the two. But the location of the separation may depend on the way things are looked at; to a certain extent it can be chosen at will. Hence I can quite understand why we cannot speak about the content of religion in an objectifying language. The fact that different religions try to express this content in quite distinct spiritual forms is no real objection. Perhaps we ought to look upon these different forms as complementary descriptions which, though they exclude one another, are needed to convey the rich possibilities flowing from man's relationship with the central order."

"In mathematics we can take our inner distance from the content of our statements. In the final analysis mathematics is a mental game that we can play or not play as we choose. Religion, on the other hand, deals with ourselves, with our life and death; its promises are meant to govern our actions and thus, at least indirectly, our very existence. We cannot just look at them impassively from the outside. Moreover, our attitude to religious questions cannot be separated from our attitude to society. Even if religion arose as the spiritual structure of a particular human society, it is arguable whether it has remained the strongest social molding force through history, or whether society, once formed, develops new spiritual structures and adapts them to its particular level of knowledge. Nowadays, the individual seems to be able to choose the spiritual framework of his thoughts and actions quite freely, and this freedom reflects the fact that the boundaries between the various cultures and societies are beginning to become more fluid. But even when an individual tries to attain the greatest possible degree of independence, he will still be swayed by the existing spiritual structures — consciously or unconsciously. For he, too, must be able to speak of life and death and the human condition to other members of the society in which he's chosen to live; he must educate his children according to the norms of that society, fit into its life. Epistemological sophistries cannot possibly help him attain these ends. Here, too, the relationship between critical thought about the spiritual content of a given religion and action based on the deliberate acceptance of that content is complementary. And such acceptance, if consciously arrived at, fills the individual with strength of purpose, helps him to overcome doubts and, if he has to suffer, provides him with the kind of solace that only a sense of being sheltered under an all-embracing roof can grant. In that sense, religion helps to make social life more harmonious; its most important task is to remind us, in the language of pictures and parables, of the wider framework within which our life is set."

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."

"Stop telling God what to do with his dice."

"Of course not ... but I am told it works even if you don't believe in it."

"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."

"We pretend that if I get result +1 here, immediately the photon there is in the state |x>, but if I find -1, immediately the other photon assume[s] another state of polarization... [T]his image is not acceptable for Einstein because it seems as [though] something is going . ...It is by this ...reasoning that Einstein said... "If you want to make sense of this correlation at a distance, you have to accept that before they arrive at the measuring apparatus, the particles have already a property determining the outcome." ...Bohr disagreed immediately. ...I don't know anybody who finds Bohr's reply understandable. It's not a joke, what I'm going to say, although it sounds [like] a joke. Bohr is so cautious in his wording that he makes it almost impossible to understand... Bohr insisted on complementarity, and at one point he declared... that "Clarity and truth are complementary," and he made all efforts to be as true as possible."

"Bohr seemed to think that he had solved this question. I could not find his solution in his writings. But there was no doubt that he was convinced that he had solved the problem and, in so doing, had not only contributed to atomic physics, but to epistemology, to philosophy, to humanity in general. And there are astonishing passages in his writings in which he is sort of patronizing to the ancient Far Eastern philosophers, almost saying that he had solved the problems that had defeated them. It's an extraordinary thing for me—the character of Bohr—absolutely puzzling. I like to speak of two Bohrs: one is a very pragmatic fellow who insists that the apparatus is classical, and the other is a very arrogant, pontificating man who makes enormous claims for what he has done."

"One of the favorite maxims of my father was the distinction between the two sorts of truths, profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd."

"If quantum theory has any philosophical importance at all, it lies in the fact that it demonstrates for a single, sharply defined science the necessity of dual aspects and complementary considerations. Niels Bohr has discussed this question with respect to many applications in physiology, psychology, and philosophy in general."

"Not often in life has a human being caused me such joy by his mere presence as you did."

"It is practically impossible to describe Niels Bohr to a person who has never worked with him. Probably his most characteristic property was the slowness of his thinking and comprehension. When, in the late twenties and early thirties, the author of this book was one of the "Bohr boys" working in his Institute in Copenhagen on a Carlsberg (the best beer in the world!) fellowship, he had many a chance to observe it. In the evening, when a handful of Bohr's students were "working" in the Paa Blegdamsvejen Institute, discussing the latest problems of the quantum theory, or playing Ping-pong on the library table with coffee cups placed on it to make the game more difficult, Bohr would appear, complaining that he was very tired, and would like to "do something." To "do something" inevitably meant to go to the movies, and the only movies Bohr liked were those called The Gun Fight at the Lazy Gee Ranch or The Lone Ranger and a Sioux Girl. But it was hard to go with Bohr to the movies. He could not follow the plot, and was constantly asking us, to the great annoyance of the rest of the audience, questions like this: "Is that the sister of that cowboy who shot the Indian who tried to steal a herd of cattle belonging to her brother-in-law?" The same slowness of reaction was apparent at scientific meetings. Many a time, a visiting young physicist (most physicists visiting Copenhagen were young) would deliver a brilliant talk about his recent calculations on some intricate problem of the quantum theory. Everybody in the audience would understand the argument quite clearly, but Bohr wouldn't. So everybody would start to explain to Bohr the simple point he had missed, and in the resulting turmoil everybody would stop understanding anything. Finally, after a considerable period of time, Bohr would begin to understand, and it would turn out that what he understood about the problem presented by the visitor was quite different from what the visitor meant, and was correct, while the visitor's interpretation was wrong."

"I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?"

"The first thing Bohr said to me was that it would only then be profitable to work with him if I understood that he was a dilettante. The only way I knew to react to this unexpected statement was with a polite smile of disbelief. But evidently Bohr was serious. He explained how he had to approach every new question from a starting point of total ignorance. It is perhaps better to say that Bohr's strength lay in his formidable intuition and insight rather than erudition."

"When asked whether the algorism of quantum mechanics could be considered as somehow mirroring an underlying quantum world, Bohr would answer, "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature." Bohr felt that every step in the development of physics has strengthened the view that the problem of establishing an unambiguous description of nature has only one solution. He regarded all attempts to replace our elementary concepts or to introduce a new logic to account for the peculiarities of quantum phenomena as not merely unnecessary but also incompatible with our most fundamental conditions, since we are suspended in a unique language."

"[Bohr was] a marvelous physicist, one of the greatest of all time, but he was a miserable philosopher, and one couldn't talk to him. He was talking all the time, allowing practically only one or two words to you and then at once cutting in."

"A big, athletic man, a terrible writer and famous mumbler, Bohr was, after Einstein, the greatest physicist of the era, remarkable not only for his intuitive brilliance but for a kindness that extended equally to his friends and to humanity."

""You can talk about people like Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Confucius, but the thing that convinced me that such people existed were the conversations with Bohr," Dr. Wheeler said."

"Niels Bohr distinguished two kinds of truths. An ordinary truth is a statement whose opposite is a falsehood. A profound truth is a statement whose opposite is also a profound truth."

"Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε, ὡς μήτε τὰ γενόμενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων τῷ χρόνῳ ἐξίτηλα γένηται, μήτε ἔργα μεγάλα τε καὶ θωμαστά, τὰ μὲν Ἕλλησι τὰ δὲ βαρβάροισι ἀποδεχθέντα, ἀκλεᾶ γένηται, τά τε ἄλλα καὶ δι᾽ ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν ἀλλήλοισι."

"I know that human happiness never remains long in the same place."

"Men trust their ears less than their eyes."

"When this response reached Croesus, it afforded him far more pleasure than anything else the oracle had told him, because he was sure that a mule would never replace a man as the Persian king, and that in consequence he and his descendants would rule for ever. He next turned his mind to investigating which was the most powerful Greek state, so that he could gain them as his allies. As a result of his enquiries, he discovered that Lacedaemon and Athens were the outstanding states, and that Lacedaemon was populated by Dorians while Athens was populated by Ionians. For these two peoples—the one Pelasgian, the other Hellenic—had been pre-eminent in the old days. The Pelasgians never migrated anywhere, but the Hellenes were a very well-travelled race. When Deucalion was their king, they were living in Phthia, but in the time of Dorus the son of Hellen they were in the territory around Mounts Ossa and Olympus, known as Histiaeotis. Then they were evicted from Histiaeotis by the Cadmeans and settled on Mount Pindus, where they were called Macedonians. Next they moved to Dryopis, and from Dryopis they finally reached the Peloponnese and became known as the Dorians."

"In peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons."

"It was a kind of Cadmean victory."

"I am going to talk at some length about Egypt, because it has very many remarkable features and has produced more monuments which beggar description than anywhere else in the world."

"From great wrongdoing there are great punishments from the gods."

"If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it."

"For if one should propose to all men a choice, bidding them select the best customs from all the customs that there are, each race of men, after examining them all, would select those of his own people; thus all think that their own customs are by far the best"

"It is better to be envied than pitied."

"Force has no place where there is need of skill."

"The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water."

"Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy (Alexander I) of Macedonia has received you hospitably."

"Now, that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know."

"But Alexander (I of Macedon), proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek; so he contended in the furlong race and ran a dead heat for first place."

"It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness."

"Haste in every business brings failures."

"When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge."

"Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances."

"Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks."

"Far better is it to have a stout heart always, and suffer one's share of evils, than to be ever fearing what may happen."

"I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it."

"Although he had plenty of troops he did not have many men."

"The Lacedaemonians fought a memorable battle; they made it quite clear that they were the experts, and that they were fighting against amateurs."

"Before battle was joined they say that someone from Trachis warned him how many Persians there were by saying that when they fired their bows, they hid the sun with the mass of arrows. Dianeces, so the story goes, was so dismissive of the Persian numbers that he calmly replied, "All to the good, my friend from Trachis. If the Persians hide the sun, the battle will be in shade rather than sunlight.""

"Stranger, tell the people of Lacedaemon That we who lie here obeyed their commands."

"From Peloponnesos (came) the Lakedaimonians..., the Corinthians..., the Sikyonians..., the Epidaurians..., the Troiezenians... All these (groups)... belong to the Dorian and Macedonian nation (and) had emigrated last from Erineus and Pindos and Dryopis."

"It is sound planning that invariably earns us the outcome we want; without it, even the gods are unlikely to look with favour on our designs."

""At sea your men will be as far inferior to Greeks as women are to men." (By Artemisa, the best persian warrior in Salamina, a very courageous woman. A superbe irony!)."

"My men have turned into women and my women into men!"

"It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed."

"The king's might is greater than human, and his arm is very long."

"This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power."

"In soft regions are born soft men."

"Call no man happy till he dies."

"Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh."

"Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before."

"The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance."

"Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects."

"The invention of brewing is ascribed to the Egyptians... from whence it seems to have passed to... western nations... Herodotus attributes the discovery of the art of brewing to the wife of ."

"If we take up his book, we are filled with admiration till the last syllable and always seek for more."

"The History of Herodotus works up the materials thus collected into an artistic picture of the world, grouped round a central idea. This idea is the great struggle between East and West, between Asiatic and Greek, of which the Persian Wars formed the last chapter. The History falls into two chief parts. The first five books are an introduction, tracing the rise and growth of the Persian power. The last four books relate the Persian invasions of Greece under Darius and Xerxes."

"It is a prose tragedy, which justifies the ways of Heaven to men by showing how sin is punished with ruin."

"He was the first artist in prose. As a historian, he fails chiefly by inattention or insensibility to political cause and effect. He will account for a great event merely by some accident which was the immediate occasion of it, without seeking to find any deeper source. And he tells us little or nothing about constitutional change. His charm of style is all the greater for his almost child-like simplicity, and he is one of the most delightful story-tellers. His narrative flows on in what the Greeks called the running style, seldom attempting compact periods."

"Herodotus was the first to organize a vast enquiry about a war and its causes. This is indeed the legacy of Herodotus to European historiography, and I am not going to say that it is an enviable legacy from every point of view. It has made war the central theme or one of the very central themes of European historiography ever since. If I had to answer the famous question an Oxford undergraduate once put to Sir John Myres – "Sir, if Herodotus was such a fool as they say, why do we read him for Greats?" – my answer would be that Herodotus was not only the founder of European historiography in a generic way: he provided European historiography with one of its leading and recurring themes, the study of war, in its origins, main events, results."

"We have now collected enough evidence to be able to say that he can be trusted. Curiously enough we are in a better position to judge him as an historian of the East than as historian of the Persian Wars. In the last century Orientalists have scrutinized Herodotus with the help of archaeology and with the knowledge of languages that he could not understand. They have ascertained that he described truthfully what he saw and reported honestly what he heard. Where he went wrong, either his informants misled him or he had misunderstood in good faith what he was told. We are not so well placed for the history of the Persian Wars because Herodotus himself remains our main source. Wherever we happen to be able to check him with the help of inscriptions or of simple topography, we have no reason to be dissatisfied with him... We know that his history is respectable because we are now able to check it against independent evidence."

"His epic tale of the Persian wars was a unique document of the Greek past."

"Although the problem of transmuting chemical elements into each other is much older than a satisfactory definition of the very concept of chemical element, it is well known that the first and most important step towards its solution was made only nineteen years ago by the late Lord Rutherford, who started the method of the nuclear bombardments."

"Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide. It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality and dignity even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country... The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light."

"Where are they?"

"I cannot think of a single one, not even intelligence."

"I hope it won't take long."

"If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist."

"There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery."

"Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration..."

"He was simply unable to let things be foggy. Since they always are, this kept him pretty active."

"MAJORANA: There are scientists who 'happen' only once in every 500 years, like Archimedes or Newton. And there are scientists who happen only once or twice in a century, like Einstein or Bohr. FERMI: But where do I come in, Majorana? MAJORANA: Be reasonable, Enrico! I am not talking about you or me. I am talking about Einstein and Bohr."

"As astronomer Carl Sagan thought about what Fermi said Fermi paradox], he began to be alarmed. ...This could only mean that advanced civilizations destroy themselves before they get that far, a viewpoint Sagan published in 1966."

"If Fermi had been born a few years earlier, one could well imagine him discovering Rutherford's atomic nucleus, and then developing Bohr's theory of the hydrogen atom. If this sounds like hyperbole, anything about Fermi is likely to sound like hyperbole."

"There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi."

"The course of history as a whole is no object of experience; history has no eidos, because the course of history extends into the unknown future."

"The death of the spirit is the price of progress."

"Philosophy springs from the love of being; it is man's loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune himself to it. Gnosis desires dominion over being; in order to seize control of being the Gnostic constructs his system. The building of systems is a gnostic form of reasoning, not a philosophical one."

"Christ is the head of the corpus mysticum, which includes all men from the beginning of the world to its end. He is not the president of a special-interest club."

"'The order of history is the history of order.'"

"One can hardly engage in a serious study of medieval Christianity without discovering among its ‘values’ the belief in a rational science of human and social order and especially of natural law. Moreover, this science was not simply a belief, but it was actually elaborated as a work of reason."

"The tenacity of faith in this complex of ideas is certainly not caused by its merits as an adequate interpretation of man and society. The inadequacy of a pleasure-pain psychology, the poverty of utilitarian ethics, the impossibility of explaining moral phenomena by the pursuit of happiness, the uselessness of the greatest happiness of the greatest number as a principle of social ethics - all these have been demonstrated over and over again in a voluminous literature. Nevertheless, even today this complex of ideas holds a fascination for a not inconsiderable number of persons. This fascination will be more intelligible if we see the complex of sensualism and utilitarianism not as number of verifiable propositions but as the dogma of a religion of socially immanent salvation. Enlightened utilitarianism is but the first in a series of totalitarian, sectarian movements to be followed later by Positivism, Communism and National Socialism."

"The criterion of integral sanity [for Littré] is the acceptance of Positivism in its first stage. The criteria of decadence or decline are (1) a faith in transcendental reality, whether it expresses itself in the Christian form or in that of a substitute religion, (2) the assumption that all human faculties have a legitimate urge for public expression in a civilization, and (3) the assumption that love can be a legitimate guiding principle of action, taking precedence before reason. This diagnosis of mental deficiency is of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated. It is not the isolated diagnosis of Littré; it is rather the typical attitude toward the values of Western civilization which has continued among "intellectual positivists" from the time of Mill and Littré down to the neo-Positivistic schools of the Viennese type. Moreover, it has not remained confined to the schools but has found popular acceptance to such a degree that this variant of Positivism is today one of the most important mass movements. It is impossible to understand the graveness of the Western crisis unless we realize that the cultivation of values beyond Littré's formula of civilization as the dominion of man over nature and himself by means of science is considered by broad sectors of Western society to be a kind of mental deficiency."

"But it is useless to subject this hash of uncritical language to critical questioning. We can make no sense of these sentences of Engels unless we consider them as symptoms of a spiritual disease. As a disease, however, they make excellent sense for, with great intensity, they display the symptoms of logophobia, now quite outspokenly as a desperate fear and hatred of philosophy. We even find named the specific object of fear and hatred: it is "the total context of things and of knowledge of things." Engels, like Marx, is afraid that the recognition of critical conceptual analysis might lead to the recognition of a "total context," of an order of being and perhaps even of cosmic order, to which their particular existences would be subordinate. If we may use the language of Marx: a total context must not exist as an autonomous subject of which Marx and Engels are insignificant predicates; if it exists at all, it must exist only as a predicate of the autonomous subjects Marx and Engels. Our analysis has carried us closer to the deeper stratum of theory that we are analysing at present, the meaning of logophobia now comes more clearly into view. It is not the fear of a particular critical concept, like Hegel's Idea, it is rather the fear of critical analysis in general. Submission to critical argument at any point might lead to the recognition of an order of the logos, of a constitution of being, and the recognition of such an order might reveal the revolutionary idea of Marx, the idea of establishing a realm of freedom and of changing the nature of man through revolution, as the blasphemous and futile nonsense which it is."

"We see again confirmed the correlation between spiritual impotence and antirationalism: one cannot deny God and retain reason."

"In Brazil, it goes like this: communists only read communist authors, (economic) liberals only read liberal authors and so on. Each one is afraid of tarnishing their little soul with sinful thoughts. In order for someone to speak with some propriety about the communist movement, they must have previously studied the following things:"

"The three mid-twentieth-century master painters of liberal disorder considered here—Richard Weaver, Eric Voegelin and Alasdair MacIntyre—all worked in the United States. Voegelin and MacIntyre were European emigrés. They wrote with a historical and geographic broad sweep. By the “West” they meant, willy-nilly, the classical Mediterranean world, medieval Christendom, and present-day rich, non-Communist nations. All took for granted a pervasive spiritual decline. None focused topically on this or that particular social harm or its solution. They wrote as if Western troubles were, if not of one kind, at any rate from a common source in a collective moral disorder. The scholastic and historical detail was imposing. With Voegelin, it was overwhelming. Despite the detail, however, the appeal of the picture lay in its simplicity and familiarity. Each told a time-honored story of Luciferan pride and fall. What liberals saw as progress, these thinkers took for ruinous and merited decline. Reversing decline, supposing that reversal were possible, was a matter of morals and how to think about morals. Each had a social diagnosis, a historical story, and a suggested cure. On the diagnosis, they concurred. We were suffering from liberal modernity. On the timing of its onset they differed: the twelfth century, perhaps earlier (Voegelin); the fourteenth century (Weaver); eighteenth-century Enlightenment (MacIntyre). The suggested cure was to rebuff liberal efforts to privatize morality and put morality back into politics and public life. Weaver, Voegelin, and MacIntyre opened paths toward present-day “values” conservatism. They pointed to a sphere of politics that conservatives might hope to claim as their own."

"Voegelin’s was a lapsarian story, like Weaver’s, but told with a deeper knowledge of languages and the past. The timescale ran from preclassical times to the present. He elaborated an overarching tale of humanity’s fall into modernity in many essays, in an eight-volume history of political ideas written for college use, and in his main work, the five-volume Order and History (1956–87). For Voegelin, the “ismatic” apple that prompted our fall into modernity was not nominalism but gnosticism. By “gnosticism,” he meant a corrosive error about the nature of social norms, made originally by puritanical, mystic religious sects—the Gnostics—in the early Christian period. The gnostic error on Voegelin’s telling became pervasive in later myth, religion, and politics. The error was to confuse norms binding together present society with idealized depictions of a hoped-for future society. To that simple-sounding thought—that aiming to remake society was chasing a fantasy—Voegelin gave rich historico-philosophical clothing."

"The Nazis' opponents also recognized the pseudo-religious character of the movement. As the Catholic exile Eric Voegelin put it, Nazism was 'an ideology akin to Christian heresies of redemption in the here and now . . . fused with post-Enlightenment doctrines of social transformation'. The journalist Konrad Heiden called Hitler 'a pure fragment of the modern mass soul' whose speeches always ended 'in overjoyed redemption'. An anonymous Social Democrat called the Nazi regime a 'counter-church'. Two individuals as different as Eva Klemperer, wife of the Jewish-born philologist Victor, and the East Prussian conservative Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen could agree in likening Hitler to the sixteenth-century Anabaptist Jan of Leyden."

"The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal."

"What was novel in Voegelin’s thought was that he wedded that commonplace to a theory of history, suggesting that a universal process of symbolization was surreptitiously at work in human civilization, giving world history a discernible direction."

"You truly are an extraordinary man, Mr Sandeen. Nobody I know counts weeks. That is absolutely marvelous."

"When this book was first conceived (more than 25 years ago) few mathematicians outside the Soviet Union recognized probability as a legitimate branch of mathematics."

"The results concerning fluctuations in coin tossing show the widely held beliefs about the law of large numbers are fallacious. They were so amazing and so at variance with common intuition that even sophisticated colleagues doubted that coins actually misbehave as theory predicts."

"The bewildered novice in chess moves cautiously, recalling individual rules, whereas the experienced player absorbs a complicated situation at a glance and is unable to account rationally for his intuition. In like manner mathematical intuition grows with experience, and it is possible to develop a natural feeling for concepts such as four dimensional space."

"The manner in which mathematical theories are applied does not depend on preconceived ideas; it is a purposeful technique depending on, and changing with, experience."

"The philosophy of the foundations of probability must be divorced from mathematics and statistics, exactly as the discussion of our intuitive space concept is now divorced from geometry."

"Historically, the original purpose of the theory of probability was to describe the exceedingly narrow domain of experience connected with games of chance, and the main effort was directed to the calculation of certain probabilities."

"Only yesterday the practical things of today were decried as impractical, and the theories which will be practical tomorrow will always be branded as valueless games by the practical man of today."

"When a coin is tossed, it does not necessarily fall heads or tails; it can roll away or stand on its edge."

"This means that if in a city seven accidents occur each week, then (assuming that all possible distributions are equally likely) practically all weeks will contain days with two or more accidents, and on the average only one week out of 165 will show a uniform distribution of one accident per day."

"Simple methods will soon lead us to results of far reaching theoretical and practical importance. We shall encounter theoretical conclusions which not only are unexpected but actually come as a shock to intuition and common sense. They will reveal that commonly accepted notions concerning chance fluctuations are without foundation and that the implications of the law of large numbers are widely misconstrued."

"To every event defined for the original random walk there corresponds an event of equal probability in the dual random walk, and in this way almost every probability relation has its dual."

"The notion of conditional probability is a basic tool of probability theory, and it is unfortunate that its great simplicity is somewhat obscured by a singularly clumsy terminology."

"Infinite product spaces are the natural habitat of probability theory."

"The theory of independent experiments is the analytically simplest and most advanced part of probability theory."

"It is a common fallacy to believe that the law of large numbers acts as a force endowed with memory seeking to return to the original state, and many wrong conclusions have been drawn from this assumption."

"The man in the street, and also the philosopher K. Marbe, believe that after a run of seventeen heads tail becomes more probable. This argument has nothing to do with imperfections of physical coins; it endows nature with memory, or, in our terminology, it denies the stochastic independence of successive trials. Marbe's theory cannot be refuted by logic but is rejected because of empirical support."

"Warning. It is usual to read into the law of large numbers things which it definitely does not imply. If Peter and Paul toss a perfect coin 10,000 times, it is customary to expect that Peter will be in the lead roughly half the time. This is not true. In a large number of different coin-tossing games it is reasonable to expect that any fixed moment heads will be in the lead in roughly half of all cases. But it is quiet likely that the player who ends at the winning side has been in the lead for practically the whole duration of the game. Thus, contrary to widespread belief, the time average for any individual game has nothing to do with the ensemble average at any given moment."

"The painful experience of many gamblers has taught us the lesson that no system of betting is successful in improving the gambler's chances. If the theory of probability is true to life, this experience must correspond to a provable statement."

"Note the situation is different when the player is permitted to vary his stakes. In this case there exist advantageous strategies, and the game depends on the strategy."

"It has been suggested that an army of monkeys might be trained to pound typewriters at random in the hope that ultimately great works of literature would be produced. Using a coin for the same purpose may save feeding and training expenses and free the monkeys for other monkey business."

"The classical theory of probability was devoted mainly to a study of the gamble's gain, which is again a random variable; in fact, every random variable can be interpreted as the gain of a real or imaginary gambler in a suitable game."

"Much harm was done by the misleading suggestive power of this name. It must be understood that a fair game may be distinctly unfavorable to the player."

"This faulty intuition as well as many modern applications of probability theory are under the strong influence of traditional misconceptions concerning the meaning of the law of large numbers and of a popular mystique concerning a so-called law of averages."

"It is not necessary to think of gambling places; the statistician who applies statistical tests is engaged in a dignified sort of gambling, and in his case the distribution of the random variables changes from occasion to occasion."

"The fact that the mean recurrence time is infinite implies that the chance fluctuations in an individual prolonged coin-tossing game are far removed from the familiar pattern governed by the normal distribution."

"Physical irreversibility manifests itself in the fact that, whenever the system is in a state far removed from equilibrium, it is much more likely to move toward equilibrium, than in the opposite direction."

"It is seen that continued shuffling may reasonably be expected to produce perfect "randomness" and to eliminate all traces of the original order. It should be noted, however, that the number of operations required for this purpose is extremely large."

"In stochastic processes the future is not uniquely determined, but we have at least probability relations enabling us to make predictions."

"It should be noted that this duration is considerably longer than we naively expect. If two players with 500 dollars each toss a coin until one is ruined, the average duration of the game is 250,000 trials. If a gambler has only one dollar and his adversary has 1000, the average duration is 1000 trials."

"three repairman per twenty machines are much more economical than one repairman per six machines."

"Anyone writing a probability text today owes a great debt to William Feller, who taught us all how to make probability come alive as a subject matter. If you find an example, an application, or an exercise that you really like, it probably had its origin in Feller's classic text, An Introduction to Probability Theory And (Its) Applications."

"Some hentai games are very good. While wanton sexuality, ironically enough, seems to turn most people off, in some (admittedly rare) cases it can actually deepen your attachment to a character and really make you appreciate a plot that much more. There are hentai games that are funny as hell, emotionally touching (even through a language barrier), and there are also games that are just straight up twisted."

"My greatest fear was that no one would listen to my warning. Never have I been so glad to have been so wrong. The reaction in certain countries has been particularly inspiring to me... At the NSA, I witnessed with growing alarm the surveillance of whole populations without any suspicion of wrongdoing, and it threatens to become the greatest human rights challenge of our time. The NSA and other spying agencies... have revoked our right to privacy and broken into our lives. And they did it without asking the public in any country, even their own. Today, if you carry a cell phone in Sao Paolo, the NSA can and does keep track of your location... When someone in Florianopolis visits a website, the NSA keeps a record of when it happened and what you did there... They even keep track of who is having an affair or looking at pornography, in case they need to damage their target's reputation. There is a huge difference between legal programs, legitimate spying, legitimate law enforcement — where individuals are targeted based on a reasonable, individualized suspicion — and these programs of dragnet mass surveillance that put entire populations under an all-seeing eye... These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power."

"My act of conscience began with a statement: "I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded. That's not something I'm willing to support, it's not something I'm willing to build, and it's not something I'm willing to live under." Days later, I was told my government had made me stateless and wanted to imprison me. The price for my speech was my passport, but I would pay it again: I will not be the one to ignore criminality for the sake of political comfort. I would rather be without a state than without a voice... when all of us band together against injustices and in defense of privacy and basic human rights, we can defend ourselves from even the most powerful systems.""

"When we've got these people who have practically limitless powers within a society, if they get a pass without so much as a slap on the wrist, what example does that set for the next group of officials that come into power? To push the lines a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further, and we'll realize that we're no longer citizens - we're subjects."

""When you are in the position privileged access, like a system administrator, you are exposed to a lot more information on a broader scale then the average employee..."

"Praxis films (2013)"

"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards. I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under."

"You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will."

"Hi and Merry Christmas. I’m honored to have a chance to speak with you and your family this year. Recently we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide system of mass surveillance watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information."

"The types of collection in the book -– microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us –- are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person."

"A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem because privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be."

"The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance, and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying."

"I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous."

"All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."

"If I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now."

"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American"

"This country is worth dying for."

"Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed."

"Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history."

"Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it."

"I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded."

"The government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression."

"No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused."

"There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law."

"The true measurement of a person's worth isn't what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those beliefs. If you're not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren't real."

"It is we who infuse life with meaning through our actions and the stories we create with them."

"And history also shows that seemingly ordinary people who are sufficiently resolute about justice can triumph over the most formidable adversaries."

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

"When you say I don’t care about the right to privacy because I have nothing to hide, that is no different than saying I don’t care about freedom of speech because I have nothing to say or freedom of the press because I have nothing to write."

"Simply because you are following the law, doesn't mean that you'll be exempt from governmental interference in your private life."

"The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities that we've ever seen in history. Now, what they will argue, is that they don't use this for nefarious purposes against American citizens. In some ways, that's true but the real problem is that they're using these capabilities to make us vulnerable to them and then saying, 'well I have a gun pointed at your head. I'm not going to pull the trigger. Trust me.'"

"Abandoning open society for fear of terrorism is the only way to be defeated by it."

"Privacy is the right to a free mind."

"Saying that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say. It’s a deeply anti social principle because rights are not just individual, they’re collective, and what may not have value to you today may have value to an entire population, an entire people, an entire way of life tomorrow. And if you don’t stand up for it, then who will?"

"Politics: the art of convincing decent people to forget the lesser of two evils is also evil."

"There are no heroes, just heroic decisions"

"What does the Office of Information Sharing do? Well...Think about someone who’s supposed to know all the secrets to everything... When they say, “I need to know what’s going on with this,” or, “Show me this program,” somebody has to get that, right? They don’t know how to get it themselves. And that means somebody has all the access as these directors have all of these other things... I was sitting, for the first time in my career, really, with absolute awareness, not of the little picture, but the big picture, how all the pieces fit together. And I created a system called the HEARTBEAT... new technological platform... that pulls from all of these different newspapers and says, “Here’s what’s interesting for you, based on who you are,”... a kind of crude proof of concept system to do this... this meant that I now was sitting on top of a mountain of secrets. And it turned out that a lot of those secrets were criminal. So now I had to find a way to collect the evidence of wrongdoing, get it out of one of the most highly secured buildings on the planet...and somehow get it to journalists without getting caught."

"I think some of the reporting that WikiLeaks has done is tremendously important, both for the historic record and also for contemporary politics... what had happened in the wake of the 2009 Manning disclosures — this is where WikiLeaks published the “Collateral Murder” video of U.S. helicopter pilots killing not just a journalist, but also the first responders that came to their aid, and the classified histories of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the State Department’s diplomatic cables, that in some ways are argued to have sort of helped spark or at least catalyze the Arab Spring movement. What had happened is, in the early parts of WikiLeaks’ reporting, they worked in concert with newspapers, with sort of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Der Spiegel — major newspapers. angered the troops” — which has never borne out, by the way. We’re now more than 10 years on from those activities, and the government, even at Chelsea Manning’s trial, after they’ve convicted her, the government was invited by the judge to show evidence of harm, and they couldn’t show anyone was harmed as a result of the disclosures."

"The end of it, the finish line, was you’ve delivered the secret to journalists, that the government has violated the rights of Americans and the Constitution of the United States. They can then publish that information, and that was the end of the process... And so, then, when the story comes out — and my biggest fear was this was going to be a two-day story that everybody stopped talking about, it just blew over, the government sort of suppressed it — it became the biggest story on the planet that year. Suddenly, everybody was interested... The government made me public enemy number one. I was the most wanted man in the world. It was a question of: “All right, what now?” And I didn’t really have an idea... I talked with lawyers that were introduced to me by the journalists — human rights lawyers — and tried to plan my next stage....I talked to the United Nations. And ultimately, the United Nations came back and went..."...the U.S. has enormous sway in our organization. They pay an enormous amount of our budget. And the U.S. gets what the U.S. wants. We probably can’t help you...”"

"If you ever wonder where we're at on the dystopia scale, consider that it's normal to believe the government is spying on you, and crazy to believe that they're not."

"I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA’s activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them."

"It turns out "Hey Alexa" is short for "Hey Keith Alexander." Yes, the Keith Alexander personally responsible for the unlawful mass surveillance programs that caused a global scandal. And Amazon Web Services (AWS) host ~6% of all websites."

"There's good cops out there. I had a lot of interactions with cops as a young man that were nothing but positive. It's not that the police as an idea are the enemy. It is the system is that is rotten... i think even honest cops recognize that the system is fundamentally broken.... There are a lot of cops who've given their lives to stop very bad people... we should honor them... we should provide for their families... but the way that we do that is by providing a better society that's more fair to police by being more fair to everyone... As long as we have an occupation that is invested with extreme authority, they must be invested with an extraordinary standard of accountability. It's that simple from my perspective.... Today in the world of business.. government... policing... anywhere you look it's a common issue. What we have is a disproportionate allocation of influence... of economic resources... a disproportionate allocation of authority without an equal allocation of responsibility. (~2:09:10)"

"Are people aware of the extent of the intrusion? Are people aware of what is happening? And is it necessary? Is it something they consented to? And I think for the vast majority of people, the answer is no.... Z"

"When Facebook is sort of grinding down your privacy, you don't see it. And although you will feel it, you won't feel it for years.... these companies have quietly created perfect records of everything you've done, everywhere you've gone, everything you've clicked, everything you've liked, how long you've stayed on a page, you know, when you had to scroll up to reread a section. All of that is captured, and they use this to model ways to influence your behavior to actually shape and manipulate the decisions you make as a human being."

"And then they sell... or... rent this capability. Facebook says they don't sell data, which is absurd because...they're collecting all of the data and then they're selling... to the highest bidder... what they're selling is access to your eyeballs...access to your mind.... It's you being exploited, and you don't see it happening...."

"For example, AT&T has been storing all of our movements... cell-site location information - for every handset [customers & non-customers]... that happens to be connected to one of their towers...."

"Going back to 2009, they're storing this. They have the last 10 years of your movements, and everyone you know, more or less..."

"Here's the thing - they sell that as a service to law enforcement agencies without a warrant. They don't have to go to court and say, you know, we need a warrant... They can do it on much lower authorities, like subpoenas and things like that... that's just this location information... What about your actual calling records? ...calling records are a proxy for what's called a person's social graph... that's the state of play today."

"These technical services are intentionally designed to be monopolies, to exploit...the network effect, particularly in secure messengers, things like Whatsapp or Facebook itself, which is not secure at all, so that the only way you can talk to someone or the only way you can read this is that you must use this service..."

"Eric Schmidt, former head of Google, argued that, you know, privacy is dead, that culture's changed, that we don't care about this anymore, that it's not right."

"The political argument that we get here all the time is if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

"And for us to hear that today, to begin with, should just, you know, raise the hairs on the back of our neck a little bit and go, why do we have any rights? What are rights for? If we're in a democracy - right?"

"Privacy is not about something to hide. Privacy is about something to protect."

"The United States is probably the only advanced democracy in the world that does not have a basic privacy law."

"The Fourth Amendment... Is not a basic privacy law. That's a specific prohibition against the government to engage in particular kinds of searches, but it does nothing to protect you from sort of the predatory activities of companies."

"We have to raise our expectations for the centers of power in society if we want to have a fairer society."

"I grew up in the shadow of government. Both my parents worked for the government, and I expected that I would, as well. September 11th happened when I was 18 years old... And when everybody else was protesting the Iraq War, I was volunteering to join it. And that’s because I believed the things that the government was saying — not all of them, of course, but I believed that the government was mostly honest, because it seemed to me unreasonable that the government would be willing to risk sort of our long-term faith in the institution of government for short-term political advantage. As I said, I was a very young man. And I ended up going to work for the CIA undercover overseas out in the diplomatic platforms. Then I moved into contracting... because most people go into contracting still working for the government in these classified spaces because you make basically twice as much for the same work...."

"When you first enter on duty at the CIA, they take you in a dark room. It’s a very solemn ceremony. You raise your hand and say, you know, "I," — state your name, whatever — "do solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." They talk about the oath of secrecy. There is no oath of secrecy. There is a Standard Form 312, classified nondisclosure agreement... that you sign, which is what they’re actually referring to, but it's not an oath.... you do take this oath of service, as they describe it... What happens when you have conflicting obligations? On one hand, you’re supposed to keep these secrets of government... The fact that the government is breaking the law is itself a secret. But when the government's lawbreaking is a violation of the Constitution that you entered into duty to uphold, what then do you do? ...I talked to my colleagues. I talked to my bosses.... Many of them agreed that it was wrong, but they said, "You know, it’s not my job to fix it. It’s not your job, either." ...Everybody knew the government was going to be extremely unhappy... But, for me, I felt that I had an obligation to do this. And so I gathered information that I believed was evidence of unlawful or unconstitutional activities."

"When I came forward in 2013, I said the reason that I came forward was that we have a right to know that which is done to us and that which is done in our name by our governments. That was already under threat. And when you look at the world since, it seems that that trend is accelerating. Do we still have that right? Do we have any rights if we don’t defend them? Well, today we see someone who has stood up to defend that right, who has aggressively championed that right, at an extreme cost. And it’s time for us to defend his rights."

"If you love the truth, as I think everyone here does — you wouldn’t be listening to this, you wouldn’t be watching this, you wouldn’t be participating in this, you wouldn’t care about this, unless something in you told you that something important was happening here... We are unindicted co-conspirators in his quest to raise a lantern in the halls of power."

"[Snowden] betrayed the trust and confidence we had in him. This was an individual with top secret clearance whose duty it was to administer these networks. He betrayed that confidence and stole some of our secrets."

"I think I have just read about the man for which I have waited. Earmarks of a real hero."

"He's obviously violated the laws of America, for which he's responsible, but I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far ... I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial."

"Snowden did what he did because he recognised the NSA's surveillance programs for what they are: dangerous, unconstitutional activity. This wholesale invasion of Americans' and foreign citizens' privacy does not contribute to our security; it puts in danger the very liberties we're trying to protect."

"He's a fugitive, not as Secretary Kerry says from justice — he's a fugitive from injustice. He has no chance of a fair, just trial in this country."

"While we can see Snowden’s experience as an instructional primer on both the value of whistleblowers and the costs of vilifying them, there are elements of his story—fed by the character assassination reprisal tactics of the government—that perpetuate many of the misperceptions about whistleblowers and contribute to the view that whistleblowers are problems to be addressed, rather than potential solutions. Snowden’s case also typifies the most egregious manifestations of the institutional belief that whistleblowers are problems to be addressed rather than sources of risk management and mechanisms for promoting compliance—the focus on the “messenger” rather than the “message.”"

"The corporate press' "myths" include “that Edward Snowden is a Russian spy,” Greenwald noted. "While he was in Hong Kong . . . what was being said with the same authoritative tone: 'It’s very obvious: Edward Snowden is a Chinese spy.' When he ended up being trapped in Moscow, the very same people who’d said that, their accusations instantly morphed into, 'Of course, he’s a Russian spy,' without any acknowledgement they’d been saying something profoundly different just weeks earlier." ...This character assassination includes the allegation that Snowden’s motive for leaking NSA classified information is due to his being “a narcissist”—although after initially coming forward Snowden turned down numerous interview requests from top media outlets, which, Greenwald quipped, is a strange way for someone craving attention to behave...He also defended Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, whom he said had been smeared in the press for blowing the whistle....Maligning dissidents as deviant or mentally ill is a technique repressive regimes use to marginalize dissenters, Greenwald said, the rationale being that only crazy people would resist the status quo, while normal, well-adjusted people support it. He added that those reporters who are professional flatterers of the powers-that-be can’t understand someone acting and taking risks due to “conscience” because they are cowards minus consciences."

"[Snowden] has joined the ranks of the hunted and the persecuted because he named and documented the crimes of the state. His defiance of the control and monitoring of our lives by the security and surveillance makes him an American hero."

"Our democracy, as Snowden I think has revealed, has become a fiction. The state, through elaborate forms of political theater, seeks to maintain this fiction to keep us passive. And if we wake up, the state will not shy away from draconian measures. The goal is complete subjugation, the iron rule of our corporations and our power elite."

"Moral courage ... is always defined by the state as treason. ... It is the courage to act and speak the truth. Thompson had it. Daniel Ellsberg had it. Malcolm X had it. Martin Luther King had it. What those in authority once said about them they say today about Snowden."

"Our governments feel threatened by Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange, because they are whistleblowers, journalists, and human rights activists who have provided solid evidence for the abuse, corruption, and war crimes of the powerful, for which they are now being systematically defamed and persecuted. They are the political dissidents of the West, and their persecution is today’s witch-hunt, because they threaten the privileges of unsupervised state power that has gone out of control. The cases of Manning, Snowden, Assange and others are the most important test of our time for the credibility of Western rule of law and democracy and our commitment to human rights.... It is about the integrity of the rule of law, the credibility of our democracies and, ultimately, about our own human dignity and the future of our children."

"As head of state and government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young US citizen Edward Snowden so he can come to the fatherland of Bolivar and Chavez to live away from the imperial North American persecution."

"Mr. Snowden revealed that the NSA and FBI were obtaining warrants from the FISA Court as a subterfuge. Thus, Mr. Snowden revealed, the feds do get FISA warrants, but only as a cover for their mass undifferentiated warrantless spying. This means that NSA and FBI use of the FISA Court is largely symbolic and unneeded since the NSA and the FBI can more easily break the law and spy without warrants than they can follow the law. The degree of NSA and FBI unconstitutional and criminal spying is breathtaking. Because of Mr. Snowden, we now know that all the data the feds mines, if printed, would fill 27 times the holding capacity of the Library of Congress every year. This is unconstitutional because it defies the Fourth Amendment. It is criminal because it constitutes computer hacking, even if presidentially authorized. When Mr. Snowden began his work at the CIA and the NSA, he took two oaths. The first was to keep secret whatever his bosses told him was secret. This presumably includes not only the data that the NSA mined but also the unconstitutional and criminal means that it used to acquire all that data. The second oath that Mr. Snowden took was to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. This means not only its plain text but also the values that underlie the text... Today he is an American banished from his homeland. Yet he remains a symbol of greatness of historic proportion and a reminder of the privations that heroes for the truth often must endure."

"I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker."

"We are open, respectful of the right to asylum, and it is clear that if circumstances permit it, we would receive Snowden with pleasure and give him asylum here in Nicaragua."

"[Snowden]'s done a great service, because he's telling the truth and this is what we are starved for. The American people are starved for the truth. And when you have a dictatorship or an authoritarian government, truth becomes treasonous. For somebody to tell the American people the truth is a heroic effort."

"WikiLeaks has achieved far more than what The New York Times and The Washington Post in their celebrated incarnations did. No newspaper has come close to matching the secrets and lies of power that Assange and Snowden have disclosed. That both men are fugitives is indicative of the retreat of liberal democracies from principles of freedom and justice. Why is WikiLeaks a landmark in journalism? Because its revelations have told us, with 100 per cent accuracy, how and why much of the world is divided and run."

"I suggest... we look beyond this virus and ask how our current state of fear and its mass obedience will be exploit­ed in future. Will the workers 'stood down' ever see their jobs again? Will artificial intelligence consume freedoms that have been suspended? As Edward Snowden says, the disease of mass surveillance will outlast this pandemic."

"In a call with reporters hosted by the Freedom of the Press Foundation on Tuesday, board member John Cusack expressed his umbrage with the media’s “character assassination” of Edward Snowden and neglect of The Real Issues. “Why are the red and blue elites in the establishment press so afraid of an informed public?” he asked rhetorically. “Why do they keep changing the subject?” “Have the establishment media been so co-opted by government access that they’ve lost all sense of proportionality?”"

"(Reuters) - Seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful - and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth. In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans’ telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional. Snowden, who fled to Russia in the aftermath of the 2013 disclosures and still faces U.S. espionage charges, said on Twitter that the ruling was a vindication of his decision to go public with evidence of the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping operation."

"To me Snowden is a hero because he revealed secrets that we should all know, that the United States has repeatedly violated the fourth amendment. He should be welcomed and offered asylum. But he has no place to hide because every country is intimidated by the United States."

"I think Snowden has done a service ... I wouldn’t have had the courage, and maybe not even the intellectual capacity, to do it the way he did it ... There’s a logic to what he has done that is impressive ... He really has refrained from anything that was truly dangerous, with regard to our security — regardless of what people say. He has been circumspect about what he's released, how he's released it, who he's released it to. It’s clear to me from listening to his personal statements — I think those are important — that he did have a genuinely altruistic motive for doing it."

"My father tells a story about his father dying in a refugee camp. His father was a titled man in Igboland, which meant that he was a great man. He had one of the highest titles a man could have. But his hometown fell, so he had to leave and go to a refugee camp, and he died and he was buried in a mass grave. Which is just heartbreaking for a man, particularly a man like him. My father, who's the first son, and who takes his responsibilities very seriously, couldn't go to bury his father because the roads were occupied. He was in a different part of Biafra and so it took a year until ... he could go to the refugee camp. ... And he goes there and he says, 'I want to know where my father was buried.' And somebody waved very vaguely and said, 'Oh we buried the people there.' So it was a mass grave. So many people had died. And my father says he went there and he took a handful of sand, and he said he's kept the sand ever since. For me, that was one of the most moving things I had ever heard.""

"If you isolate a country, you isolate yourself, as the United States, from being influential and effective in the course of events, unless you are talking about the negative influence, like making the embargo that could kill the people slowly, or launching a war and supporting terrorists that could kill them in a faster way."

"The sanctions on the Syrian people that made the situation much worse and this is another reason for the refugees that you have in Europe now. How do you don't want refugees at the same time you created all the situation or the atmosphere that will tell them: 'Go outside Syria, somewhere else' ? and of course they'll go to Europe..."

"The events of this decade—and, indeed, those of the past year—indicate very clearly that refugee issues cannot be discussed without reference to security."

"In some parts of the world, states have collapsed as a result of internal and communal conflicts, depriving their citizens of any effective protection. Elsewhere, human security has been jeopardized by governments which refuse to act in the common interest, which persecute their opponents and punish innocent members of minority groups."

"Perhaps the most striking Indian policy was something that it did not do. India did not stop masses of Bengali refugees from flooding into India. Unimaginably huge numbers of Bengalis escaped into safety on Indian soil, eventually totaling as many as ten million—five times the number of people displaced in Bosnia in the 1990s. The needs of this new, desperate population were far beyond the capacities of the feeble governments of India’s border states, and Indira Gandhi’s government at the center. But at that overcharged moment, the Indian public would have found it hard to accept the sight of its own soldiers and border troops opening fire to keep out these desperate and terrified people. Here, at least, was something like real humanitarianism. As payment for this kindness, India found itself crushed under the unsustainable burden of one of the biggest refugee flows in world history—which galvanized the public and the government to new heights of self-righteous fury against Pakistan."

"The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is Mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me."

"Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates."

"…a national policy of the government of Poland to put people into homes as soon as they arrive here, not to put them in refugee centers, or have them stay in the parks or something like that. They’re put in people’s homes and they’re given a stipend. They’re given access to education. They’re given access to health care, and importantly, they’re given access to the job market."

"Well, I was myself recently also in Afghanistan, and I sat down with the mothers in these displacement camps around Kabul. And I asked them, “What about the future? What do you think of the future?” And they told me very clearly, “We believe we will starve and freeze to death this harsh winter, unless there is an enormous aid operation coming through and unless there is a public sector again that is able to provide services.” It is as acute as that. Forty million civilians were left behind when the NATO countries went for the door in August."

"Money should not go to the military political group called the Taliban that took power by force. The money should go to the people, and it is possible. So, number one, there has to be trust funds, as we call it, that is held by U.N. agencies, that funnel money directly to the hospitals, that you just showed, where people are dying at the moment. It can go straight to the teachers that were on the payroll of the World Bank previously, can go straight to them. So, the money can go through us, international organizations, straight to the people. Secondly, unfreeze those funds that will enable banks to function again. At the moment, we cannot even buy relief items in Afghanistan. We have to ship them over, take them over from Pakistan and Iran, which means that employment is dying in Afghanistan. And thirdly, donors, come down from the fence. See that we are there. We are reliable channels for funding. The money will go to the people. Transmit funding, not just come with pledges. This will not become Switzerland in a long time. You have to share the risk with us to save lives this winter."

"The refugees in Germany constitute a substantial proportion of the German population. The United States Government, in planning economic measures of assistance with the authorities of the German Federal Republic, has always taken the refugees into account. Along with the indigenous population, they have in large part contributed to and benefited from the rising level of the German economy. The achievement of economic balance and the expansion of employment opportunities in Germany have been primary objectives of United States measures of assistance to the German economy. The United States Government will persist in these efforts in collaboration with the German Federal authorities. This collaboration has been particularly close and continuous in recent months since the flow of refugees into Berlin has increased."

"Most Westerners have never heard about the Hindu refugee problem, for most journalists including reputed India hands have simply kept it out of the picture."

"Meeting the needs of the world’s displaced people—both refugees and the internally displaced—is much more complex than simply providing short-term security and assistance. It is about addressing the persecution, violence and conflict which bring about displacement in the first place. It is about recognizing the human rights of all men, women and children to enjoy peace, security and dignity without having to flee their homes."

"There was not an inch of space to spare in West Bengal for the refugees from East Bengal."

"Another exodus is happening halfway around the world as asylum seekers from Central America make the perilous journey to the U.S./Mexico border. There, they face draconian U.S. immigration policies that consign them to "Remain in Mexico."... these migrants live in constant danger in squalid, makeshift refugee camps in Mexican border cities, waiting for a chance at asylum in the United States.... The U.S. government reported a record 210,000 migrant apprehensions along the southern border in July. Many of these people hail from the so-called "Northern Triangle" countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, where widespread inequality, systemic corruption, food insecurity, gang violence and now climate change are forcing people from their homes. These problems have long been exacerbated by U.S. military, economic and political interventions in the region. The United States engaged in "dirty wars" in Central America and has supported coups against democratically elected governments there, from overthrowing the government of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 to actively supporting the coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009. The United States has a responsibility to provide a safe haven for refugees, from Afghanistan, Latin America, or elsewhere, and to cease interventions that fuel these crises and displace so many."

"Look at today’s politicians... keen to be viewed as the virile leaders of their respective countries; eager to inflate their image by harming migrants and refugees, the most vulnerable in society. If there is courage in that, I fail to see it. Authoritarian leaders, or elected leaders inclined toward it, are bullies, deceivers, selfish cowards. If they are growing in number it is because (with exceptions) many other politicians are mediocre... Too busy with themselves, or too afraid to stand up to the demagogues and for others, they seem to shelter in the safety of silence and shuffled papers. Only when they leave public office do some speak up, discovering their courage rather belatedly. Many come and go; no one really notices... In consequence, too many summits and conferences held between states are tortured affairs that lack profundity but are full of jargon and tiresome clichés that are, in a word, meaningless."

"For far too long, American politicians have been sanctions-crazed.... Last month, the Trump administration sanctioned Mexican companies for seeking to supply food to Venezuela.... Three senators introduced a bill designed to punish countries that accept help from Cuban doctors, which would include Italy, Ukraine, Jamaica, and South Africa.... Leaders of countries suddenly facing the threat of punishment for accepting Cuban doctors have reacted with anger and incredulity... it would leave more than 50 countries with the choice of either expelling Cuban doctors at a moment of global pandemic or facing American opprobrium. The prime minister of tiny Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, protested that his country relies on Cuban doctors and pointedly added, “Those who would like us to do otherwise should undertake to fill the breach.” ...Most remarkably, Congress is moving to sanction Germany, a major ally for generations, because it is building a gas pipeline to Russia."

"Cuba, along with China, is sending doctors and supplies to a number of countries around the world to help them fight the pandemic... Washington is demonstrating the very opposite... removing all of its Peace Corps staff from around the world, and, even worse, increasing sanctions against countries like Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and Nicaragua during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak. It is accurate to say that the U.S. is weaponizing the virus against these countries... As a number of religious scholars have warned, “plagues expose the foundations of injustice” in our societies. The current pandemic is exposing not only our government’s utter failures to protect its own citizens, but also its profound lack of human decency in dealing with other nations"

"Some of the wars America fought were "simply for profit" and the sanctions it has imposed on certain countries have been as destructive as wars... Take Venezuela, which has suffered from U.S. sanctions for over 15 years, as an example. An estimated more than 40,000 people may have died in Venezuela from 2017 to 2018 as a result of U.S. sanctions that made it harder for ordinary citizens to access food, medicine, and medical equipment, according to a report published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, in 2019. The sanctions, Kovalik added, have also prevented Venezuela, which has the world's largest proven oil reserve, from "maintaining its oil industry and maintaining its power grids. Sanction is war by another means...You're just denying the people the economic benefits of their industries, and also, again, you're denying them electricity, other infrastructure, again in much the same way that you could or would through actual military means." However, most Americans don't see sanctions as war and they don't know the consequences so they "tolerate it more" and think the sanctions are "somehow a legitimate form of coercion," according to Kovalik. "When you look at the results, they're the same or similar to actual military warfare, but again, there are means that are more clandestine and do create more consent amongst the population of the Western world that might otherwise protest it," he concluded."

"Collective punishment of entire nations is immoral and wrong... Collective punishment can cause the people targeted by it to become more nationalistic, and in countries with a strong nationalist tradition this is even more likely.... When the U.S. government is seeking to make them miserable and poor, Iranians are unlikely to take enormous risks to do Washington’s bidding by toppling their own government. The overuse of sanctions is itself an abuse of power... The impulse to sanction one country after another is the same impulse behind wanting to “do something” militarily against this or that regime: we do it because we can and because we think we have the right to do whatever we want to others. The same arrogance and the same contempt for the sovereignty of other nations are on display. We should be opposed to the interventionists that want to use American military power to cause unnecessary death and destruction in other parts of the world, and in the same way we should reject the capricious and cruel use of economic sanctions to inflict misery and suffering on tens of millions of innocent people."

"When a foreigner lives with you in your land, you must not oppress him. You must regard the foreigner who lives with you as the native-born among you. You are to love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt; I am Yahweh your God."

"Since refugees are a global problem, the search for solutions must also be global."

"The Kshatriyas [military caste]... will become the thorns of the earth... attacking and repeating their attacks upon the good and the honest, and feeling no pity for the latter... And men will be filled with anxiety as regards the means of living... overwhelmed with covetousness, men will kill... and enjoy the possessions of their victims... And when men become fierce and destitute of virtue and carnivorous and addicted to intoxicating drinks, then doth the Yuga come to an end... friends and relatives and kinsmen will perform friendly offices for the sake of the wealth only that is possessed by a person... When the end of the Yuga comes, men abandoning the countries and directions and towns and cities of their occupation, will seek for new ones, one after another. And people will wander over the earth, uttering, 'O father, O son', and such other frightful and rending cries. p. 392)"

"No country in the world has been host to so many refugees as a 'shrinking and shrunken' India has been since the Partition in 1947... According to the estimate of the Government of India, 7.30 million people entered India between 1947-51 from the two wings of Pakistan. Except a few thousand Hindu families in Sindh, almost the entire Hindu and Sikh population were forced to leave their homes... In East Pakistan, the process was slow and systematic. Between 1947-51, the total number of people moving into India was estimated at 2.55 million... While West Pakistan was cleansed of its Kafirs except for a microscopic minority - being reduced from 23% in 1947 to 3% at present, the non-Muslim communities of East Pakistan/Bangladesh were reduced from 29% to 12% of the population. It is estimated that another 2.5 million Hindus fled the eastern wing of Pakistan during 1951-61... One finds that 90% of the total who fled East Pakistan in course of the liberation war of Bangladesh were Hindus... The extent of the missing Hindu population is estimated around 1.22 million during the last inter-censal period of 1981-91... In the Indian subcontinent, wherever the Kafirs become a minority, they are bound to become refugees, a fate which is in store for the Hindus in West Bengal, the north-eastern states and possibly Ladakh and Jammu."

"Fled bloodthirsty regime bent on extermination; now shaken and stirred."

"Your enemy is not the refugee. Your enemy is the one who made him a refugee."

"Not long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, 'We don't know how lucky we are.' And the Cuban stopped and said, 'How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.' And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth."

"The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving."

"In your dream no one is a refugee. Everyone has clean sheets."

"Refugees are the bravest people on earth right now, don't dare look down on them. Each mind a universe swirling as many details as yours, as much love for a humble place."

"I never touched Cubism myself, you know, although I was attracted by it one time. When I was painting at Céret and at Cagnes [1919, and from 1923]. I yielded to its influence in spite of myself, and the results were not entirely banal. But then.. .Céret itself is anything but banal. There is so much foreshortening in the landscape that, for that very reason, a picture may seem to have been painted in some specific style [quote in 1927]."

"It is the first time in my life that I have not been able to do anything. I am in a bad state of mind and I am demoralized, and that influences me. I have only [made] seven canvases. I am sorry. I wanted to leave Cagnes, this landscape that I cannot endure. I even went for a few days to Cap Martin, where I thought of settling down. It displeased me. I had to rub out the canvases I started.. .I am in Cagnes again, against my will, where, instead of landscapes, I shall be forced to do some miserable still lifes. You will understand in what a state of indecision I am. Can't you suggest some place for me? Because, several times I have had the intention of returning to Paris. [quote in 1929]."

"Once I saw the village butcher [in his youth, in Russia] slice the neck of a bird and drain the blood out of it. I wanted to cry out, but his joyful expression caught the sound in my throat.. .This cry, I always feel it there. When, as a student I drew a crude portrait of my professor, I tried to rid myself of this cry, but in vain. When I painted the beef carcass it was still this cry that I wanted to liberate. I have still not succeeded. [remark to his friend and biographer]"

"You don't like my painting, you only want to help me. If you had given me one franc for my picture I would have taken it [when M. Castaing discovered his art for the very first time and offered him in advance 100 franc to make a new painting - circa 1917 – 1919]"

"You have no right to interfere with my art. Your wife is not your property. I need her, in order to finish my picture, I must have her! I will sue you! [the woman returned by persuasion of the Castaings who supported Soutine]."

"..My paintings are a heap of shit, but better than Modigliani, Marc Chagall, and Krémènge [a Russian companion painter]. Some day I will destroy my canvases, but they are too cowardly to do it."

"Dear Mrs. Castaing, please come over after midday at 2 o'clock with a white dress without sleeves in order to pose. Because today I will not go to Mrs. Saxe. I am disgusted to do nothing at all."

"I want to show Paris in the carcass of an ox."

"Ah, the giant that is Rembrandt; he's God, he's God!"

"There are some who believe that Soutine deforms his paintings just to deform. That is a grave error. He himself suffers in front of these formless canvases where his marvelous universal staggers like his own insides. At home, he lacerates his paintings in rage. At the dealers, he buys them back to take them away and destroy them."

"Soutine painted rapidly. He nurtured his idea for several months and then, when ready, started the painting in fury. He worked with passion, with fever, in a trance, sometimes to the music of some Bach fugue that he played on a phonograph. Once he finished the painting, he was weak, depressed, wiped out."

"He [Soutine] was one of the rare examples in our day.. ..a painter who could make his pigments breathe light. It is something which cannot be learned or acquired. It is a gift of God."

"I think I would choose Chaim Soutine.. .I've always been crazy about Soutine - all of his paintings. Maybe it's the lushness of the paint. He builds up a surface that looks like a material, like a substance. There's a kind of transfiguration, a certain fleshiness in his work.. .I remember when I first saw the Soutine’s in the Barnes Collection.. ..the Matisse's had a light of their own, but the Soutine's had a glow that came from within the paintings - it was another kind of light."

"The most powerful thing young students with neither money nor power can do, is to do activism and use journalists and their cameras. When people learn about the problems and discuss them, things start to change."

"The picture of a naked girl is the most peaceful, but also the most unveiling image you can create, so it is very powerful. [...] We live in a patriarchal system where the is totally controlled and used. Women are ashamed of their bodies, and this is a deep problem. We are slaves of men because we do not control our sexuality."

"Feminists often tried to be men: they cut their hair, did not use makeup, walked like men, hid their breasts, used men's clothing... they became men and we thought that was a dangerous path for feminism. [...] We are not ashamed of our bodies. We are proud that we are women, that we are different from men. This is the greatest thing we have achieved with Femen, we have put the woman in the centre of feminism."

"It was great to come so close to Putin and say 'fuck you' straight to his face, almost two years before other Ukrainians understood what he was doing to the country."

"I am human, sometimes I feel afraid and sometimes I am worried because even though I am not afraid to spend a few years in jail, I understand that my mother and friends will be worried. I always discuss this in my head. [...] I'm more scared to live in this country, in this world, and do nothing: to spend life too afraid of everything, too afraid to speak or go to certain places, to just be in a normal work and don't create anything for the next generation. In my understanding, that is much more scary than to go to jail."

"They can kill you in one second, you understand that you are a very very small person. But in the same time one thinks: you are a small person that can make such a big point that even Russia will send their after you!"

"The people should always control the politicians' decisions, but after the they relaxed and believed the president would change things. Because of wrongful decisions of Poroshenko and Putin, yes both of them, we now have a crisis, and a war that nobody believed could become so big and difficult to handle."

"Going into this system means you cannot be against it. It's good to keep a non-governmental free organisation without money from the government, and without having to play the political games. Just to be free and to have the possibility to discuss and control each decision of the from the streets... It's the best and most powerful place to be."

"Femen is the feminist, the girl with the Ukrainian sign, the flowers in the hair, the naked boobs with painted slogans, and in comfortable boots to run and make action in front of the enemy on the streets."

"I'm very happy about what we did, what we do, and what we will do. That's why I again say to women from all over the world, and especially from Luxembourg: Let's be together, and let's fight together!"

"Count us, because we count too. This should not be just another meeting where we make grand statements and then move on...You can and should do more, to ensure that people with disabilities, are included in all aspects of your work – we can’t wait any longer."

"The most exciting part! The kids were crying around me and I felt like a crazy person because I was the only one who was smiling the whole time. Sometimes it’s good to be too young to be aware of what’s going on around you. Maybe I was too young to realise [the danger]."

"You feel like you’re in a constant test. With terror attacks happening in Europe (such as in Berlin and Ansbach last year, and recent attacks in London and Manchester) it puts even more pressure on refugees. You feel guilty until proven innocent. It pushes the button for us to work harder and prove that we think it’s wrong, too."

"For me, it meant not being able to go to school, hang out with friends or go to the cinema. It was almost like house arrest. Having a disability in Syria often means that you are hidden away. You confront shame, discrimination and physical barriers. You are someone who is pitied."

"I feel like Merkel is under pressure because some people are bad ambassadors of the refugees, and they are not representing a good image of us. What I would like to say is that she is doing good for the EU and for Germany: Germany is getting better from the love from refugees. She’s doing good, and I hope she keeps us."

"[Coming back to life was not hard] You know what's hard? Getting from Syria to Germany: There are some amazing people coming through that border. This amazing 16-year-old girl, Nujeen Mustafa, she's our kind of people."

"وَنَحْنُ نُحِبُّ الحَيَاةَ إذَا مَا اسْتَطَعْنَا إِلَيْهَا سَبِيلاَ وَنَرْقُصُ بَيْنَ شَهِيدْينِ نَرْفَعُ مِئْذَنَةً لِلْبَنَفْسَجِ بَيْنَهُمَا أَوْ نَخِيلاَ نُحِبُّ الحَيَاةَ إِذَا مَا اسْتَطَعْنَا إِلَيْهَا سَبِيلاَ"

"لو يذكرُ الزيتون غارسَهُ لصار الزيت دمعا"

"I have the wisdom of one condemned to death: I own nothing for anything to own me"

"My poems do not deliver mere images and metaphors; but deliver landscapes, villages and fields, deliver a place. It makes that which is absent from geography present in its form, that is, able to reside in the poetic text, as if residing on his land. I don’t think that a poet is entitled to a greater happiness than that some people seek refuge in his lines of poetry, as if they were real houses. Indeed, in Arabic, there is a nice and unusual homonymy. Both the poetic verse and the house are said “bayt.” As if a man can reside there."

"The sea is the obsession of the poet, because the first poetic rhythm, or the first sense of poetic rhythm, was born of the motion of the waves."

"I don't know what I want. Exile is so strong within me I may bring it to the land."

"In my last book I said: “I have one dream: to find a dream.” A dream is a piece of the sky found in everyone. We can’t be boundlessly realistic or pragmatic. We are in need of the sky."

"Only culture is a guarantee of true peace."

"I encouraged the leadership in its time of weakness. Now that they are strong, I'm allowed not to applaud. If a Palestinian state is established, I will be in the opposition. That's my natural place."

"What is a homeland? It is a place that enables people to blossom, and not a place in which people serve the flag. In my poem, Cease-fire with the Mongolians, I say that I am going to make socks out of the flag. My life's work is not on behalf of a flag."

"Interviewer: I know that the comparison between the Jewish fate and the Palestinian fate bothers you, because it hints at a kind of “contest” over who is the greater victim. Darwish: First of all, this comparison doesn’t bother me as long as we are speaking from a place of literary concern. In this domain, nationalism doesn’t exist. I think that this neurosis about whether or not one should accept the comparison will be resolved along with peace. The Jew won’t be ashamed to find the Arab element within him, and the Arab won’t be ashamed to acknowledge that he is also composed of Jewish elements. Especially when speaking about “Eretz Israel” in Hebrew and "Palestine" in Arabic. I am a son of all the cultures that have passed through the land—the Greek, the Roman, the Persian, the Jewish, the Ottoman. A presence that exists at the very core of my language. Every powerful culture passed through and left something. I am the son of all these fathers, but I belong to one mother. Does that mean that my mother is a prostitute? My mother is this earth; she received all of them. She was both a witness and a victim. I am also the son of the Jewish culture that was in Palestine. That’s why I don’t recoil from the comparison. But because of the political tension—which says that if Israel is here the Palestinians must be absent, and that if the Palestinians are here then Israel must be absent—we haven’t accepted the fact that we are the products of similar conditions and have competed with each other over who is the greater victim."

"We will become a people, if we want to, when we learn that we are not angels, and that evil is not the prerogative of others We will become a people when we stop reciting a prayer of thanksgiving to the sacred nation every time a poor man finds something to eat for his dinner We will become a people when we can sniff out the sultan’s gatekeeper and the sultan without a trial We will become a people when a poet writes an erotic description of a dancer’s belly We will become a people when we forget what the tribe tells us, when the individual recognises the importance of small details We will become a people when a writer can look up at the stars without saying: ‘Our country is loftier and more beautiful!’ We will become a people when the morality police protect a prostitute from being beaten up in the streets We will become a people when the Palestinian only remembers his flag on the football pitch, at camel races, and on the day of the Nakba We will become a people, if we want to, when the singer is allowed to chant a verse of Surat al-Rahman at a mixed wedding reception We will become a people when we respect the right, and the wrong."

"When you prepare your breakfast, think upon others Do not forget to feed the pigeons When you engage in your wars, think upon others Do not forget those who demand peace As you pay your water bill, think upon others Who seek sustenance from the clouds, not a tap And when you return home – to your house – think upon others Such as those who live in tents When you fall asleep counting planets, think upon others Who cannot find a place to sleep And as you search for meaning with fancy metaphors, think upon others Who have lost their right to speak And when you think of others, far away, think of yourself And say: I am a candle in the darkness"

"My father would read Darwish to me when I was a child and translate it because, in those days, there were not many translations of him. My father would read other poetry and translate it for me, and I just loved it. I loved everything about it: the metaphors, the passion, the care, the tenderness, the flowing quality of the lines. I eventually met Darwish, and he would ask me to read his poems in English; he didn’t like to read his poems in English at all. He read in Arabic, and just getting to be with him was such a landmark in my lifetime’s experience...I felt them [poets] as a wellspring of the spirit of Palestine, and the love and the care for Palestine—that is something that the media often finds easy to overlook. It’s just so insulting—versus the poetry which is so respectful, passionate, loving, and nostalgic."

"The Chinese Foreign Ministry has said more than once that I am a free person. Did I do anything wrong by leaving my home? If other people helped me leave ... this is something that should be praised. Why then when I leave do they break into my home to beat people, detain them."

"China will see democracy, I’m one hundred per cent sure – it just needs time. If everyone makes an effort to build a more just and civil society then it will come faster and if everyone stands by and does nothing, then it will come slower but is still inevitable. Whether the authorities wish it to or not, the dawn comes and the day breaks just the same."

"When I spoke out against China's 'one child' policy and other injustices, I was persecuted, beaten, and put under house arrest by the government...In April, 2012, I escaped and was given shelter in the American embassy in Beijing. I am forever grateful to the American people for welcoming me and my family to the United States where we are now free."

"If the German Propaganda Ministry is trying to tell the world that there is even the slightest bit of liberty left to the editors in making up their newspapers, the newspapers themselves belie this completely. It is astonishing, to say the least, to what degree they resemble each other. On any one date all of them, in Germany and in the occupied countries, carry exactly the same headlines, talk about the same subjects. Of course, I am not referring to the news of the day. It is only natural that all of them should carry the news of the day or whatever is handed out as the news of the day over there. But the similarity extends even to general subjects, to subjects which are not timely, which could be published today or tomorrow or in four weeks or not at all."

"The thing that strikes you most: there is very little war news in German-controlled papers. There are, to be sure, all the notices of promotions: the new generals, the new commanders. There are also items listing decorations conferred for some distinguished service or other. And there are a lot of what they call in Europe feuilletons, colorful and gossipy essays or think pieces which have to do with the war. But there is precious little news. There are some very good reportages on the life at the front or in U-boats or in bombers, and some good photos. The Germans were always good at that. But when it comes down to actual information, if you really want to know something—you don’t get much."

"Total war necessitates total espionage. The leadership of a country must be capable of finding out about and calculating the entire force of resistance of in opponents, military and otherwise."

"The Nazis understood early that revolutionizing warfare meant revolutionizing espionage. An Intelligence Service which had been mediocre during the First World War was replaced by one which before and during the Second World War achieved enormous triumphs. The Nazis worked on the basis of total espionage."

"Goebbels was well informed indeed on some things the Russians were doing. He knew that the Communist had been the first to co-ordinate propaganda and espionage. He knew that Lenin himself was the inventor of total propaganda, and that he had even coined the word to describe it: agitprop—an abbreviation for agitation and propaganda. Propaganda had meant to Lenin persuasion of the masses, and agitation was the aggressive form of persuasion."

"Next to Goebbels, Himmler was the foremost connoisseur of Russian methods in the Nazi Party. But while the great propagandist was concerned mainly with the theory, Himmler studied the practice of the Bolshevists."

"One of the principal reasons for the enmity between Himmler and Göring was Himmler’s tireless scheming to infiltrate Gestapo men into the Army Intelligence Service, and thereby to get control of it."

"What does espionage cost? The question is certainly as old as espionage itself. It is one which has been discussed a great deal, but little definite information has been available. When Hitler came to power, all the sources became invisible. One of Hitler’s first governmental strokes was to abolish the fiscal report—under the Constitution the Government had to make an account to the people or their representatives of all expenditures. This eliminated all chance of checking espionage expenditures."

"German army circles had never cherished any illusions about their Italian partner. It is said that even in the twenties the leading officers of the German General Staff—which by the Treaty of Versailles had no official existence— declared, ‘The next war will be lost by the country which takes Italy for an ally.’ A joke, of course, but it reflects the attitude of Germany’s military men. Their attitude was no different where espionage was concerned."

"At the end of August 1943 Dr. Alexander Loudon, Netherlands Ambassador to Washington, made a most interesting forecast about the outcome and aftermath of the war. He predicted that, with defeat, the German General Staff, the Nazi leaders, and in particular the Gestapo, would go underground to prepare for the next war. As for this war, he said, the Nazis knew that they had already lost it, and were willing and eager to get it over with."

"Generals usually know when a war is lost. The German generals had never been absolutely convinced that they could win World War II. They had only hoped to win it mainly because Hitler had promised them that the enemy armies would suffer amoral collapse and that they themselves would not have to fight a two-front war."

"By early 1943 Hitler had become perhaps the most isolated man inside the Third Reich, Every report was rewritten before it was given to him. He no longer saw the newspapers, though, to be sure, they contained little enough genuine information. He saw only clippings. The reason for all these precautionary measures was that nobody around Hitler fancied the hysterical outbreaks to which he was so addicted, and nobody wanted him to have any more brainstorms or intuitions of the kind which had already cost the army so dearly in Russia"

"Only in exceptional cases have the Nazis ever used German citizens or former German citizens as agents in the United States. This is only logical. A man or a woman with a German accent would have small chance indeed of convincing a gathering of even the most stupid people that, in advocating America’s isolationism or withdrawal from the war now, he is motivated solely by patriotic feelings for America."

"After the first few issues [of Nationalsozialistische Briefe] appeared most of its readers were convinced that Joseph Goebbels was a communist in disguise. In Rheydt, people had thought so for years. There was indeed very little difference between the language of Goebbels and the language of the communists. The Party ‘big shots’ became apprehensive."

"It is true that in the National Socialist Letters, Goebbels put the accent on Socialism rather than on Nationalism, to such an extent that he sponsored an alliance between a Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia; he also flirted with an ideological alliance with other rebellious ‘have not’ counties such as India and China."

"‘We will never get anywhere,’ Goebbels wrote, perhaps remembering his discussions with Fledges, ‘if we lean on the interests of the cultured and propertied classes. Everything will come to us if we appeal to the hunger and despair of the masses.’"

"[Goebbels] specialized in articles on Bolshevism of a decidedly pro-Russian tone. He worked on a speech, ‘[[w:Vladimir Lenin |Lenin or Hitler?’ In this comparative study he came to the conclusion that Hitler’s ideas were superior. Nevertheless, the comparison was not necessarily unflattering to the Russian."

"In a number of contributions published in the Voelkischer Beobachter [Goebbels] celebrated Lenin as the national liberator of his country. ‘The Soviet system does not endure because it is Bolshevist or Marxist or international, but because it is national—because it is Russian,’ he wrote to a leftist friend. ‘No Czar has ever aroused the national passion of the Russian people as Lenin did.’"

"But Goebbels was not a Communist in any sense of the word. And he took pains to say so. ‘Communism is nothing but a grotesque distortion of true Socialist thought,’ he wrote to Count Reventlow, a rightist politician. ‘We and we alone could become the genuine Socialists in Germany, or, for that matter, in Europe.’"

"Hitler and Goebbels also argued at length about Russia and the Fuehrer made it unequivocally clear that Goebbels was no longer to indulge in praising Lenin as a ‘national liberator’ nor to draw any parallels between the Bolshevists and the Nazis. On April 16, [1926] Goebbels noted: ‘His arguments are convincing, but I think he has not quite recognized the Russian problem. Still, I may have to reconsider some of its aspects.’"

"Nobody knew better than Goebbels that a Propaganda Ministry was almost a contradiction in terms. Propaganda is the more effective the less people know that they are supposed to be influenced, and vice versa."

"For overnight the Russians and Germans had become comrades-in-arms. How could Goebbels explain this development to his audiences? If he had had more time, the problem would have been much simpler. But here, as many times thereafter, the real significance of the coup was its suddenness: Hitler struck without advance warning. As the Fuehrer wanted to surprise the world, Goebbels was unable to prepare the German people. Neither could he stop all anti-Russian propaganda weeks and months in advance."

"I was woken at 6.30 a.m. and given twenty minutes to prepare for departure... When we arrived at the airport my hands and feet were bound and I was thrown into an isolation cell for over three hours. At 11.15 they forced me onto the plane. I began to scream and cry as I was surrounded by six gendarmes and two men from Sabena. The airline men pushed me around and one held a cushion to my face. He almost suffocated me. These men were supposed to accompany me all the way to Lome. Passengers intervened at this point, saying that they would get off the plane if the men did not let me go."

"As commander of the security detachment at the national airport I believe that I am officially responsible for the death of Semira Adamu."

"Her (Semira) death is not a singular incident. The deaths of refugees are the symptoms of policies that no longer see the humanity of those fleeing their homeland, but prefer to see them as numbers, or worse, as a natural disaster, a "flood"."

"Semira was vulnerable to various racialised intersections of exclusion: She was Black, female, young and ambitious She was attractive, eloquent and well educated She was an asylum-seeker whose application had been rejected She was an undocumented person with an 'illegal' status She was a deportable detainee who was deemed expendable She was a whistleblower and defender of detainee rights."

"The death of Semira is part of a series of complaints and is the result of several new laws to get asylum in Belgium."

"Whatever judgment Brussels Tribunal (Tribunal correctionnel) hands down on 12 December to five law enforcement officers tried in connection with the death of Semira Adamu, during an attempt to deport her forcibly by air in September 1998, it has always been clear that governments and state officers have a responsibility to ensure respect for the physical safety and inherent dignity of all people in their custody, including deportees."

"Amid all the din about normalization, I have noticed one startling absence, namely, the current status of the Palestinian refugees living in every major Arab country, whose condition everywhere—there are no exceptions—is unacceptably miserable. Wherever there are Palestinians in the Arab world, there are rules and regulations forbidding them full status as residents, forbidding them work and travel, requiring them to register with the police on a monthly basis, and so on. It’s not only Israel that treats Palestinians badly, it is the Arab countries who do so also. Now see if there is a sustained campaign by Arab intellectuals against this invidious local treatment of the Palestinian refugees: you won’t see or hear one. What excuse is there for the horrible refugee camps in which so many of them live, even in places like Gaza and the West Bank; what right do local mokhabarat forces have to harass them and generally make their lives miserable? And why is there no protracted press campaign to end this appalling state of affairs? Why, because it is much easier (and less risky) to rail against normalization and Hebrew translations than it is to dramatize the unacceptable condition of Palestinian refugees in the Arab world, who are always being told that they cannot be “normalized” because it would implement Israel’s design. What rubbish!"

"I’ve always been very vocal about my frustrations around race in this industry"

"I am proud to be able to share my own story so people can better understand the true plight of refugees. I want to use my own experience to educate others about a very real issue that – in one way or another – really does affect all of us"

"If I had this access when I was growing up, I probably would have turned out better. We need it. We need to save the children from what’s really happening"

"Some young Syrians struggle to remember a time before violence and loss, before they had to flee their homes and become refugees. We provide a safe space for them to play and be children again"

"It’s still so strange when people come up and recognise me. But I am so happy to inspire others in similar situations to mine"

"Put your best foot forward. I am happy to announce that I am officially done with the fashion industry, I will be moving back to Australia In [sic] order to live the life that I fully deserved. Which is real life. I can no longer deal with the fakes and the lies. My life is too short for this dramatic life. I am thankful and grateful for every sweet souls [sic] that I have crossed path with."