Themes

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

""Hell is just a frame of mind": widely claimed on the internet to be a quotation from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. The demon Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus does, however, imply a similar idea by saying that losing his place in heaven makes him experience hell, by comparison, wherever he is:"

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

"The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious"

""I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto.", Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (played by Judy Garland)"

""In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things, charity" (In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis [or, dubiis] libertas, in utrisque [or, omnibus] caritas)."

""A stupid person's idea of a clever person", Julie Burchill of Stephen Fry."

""Not many people know that.", Michael Caine, British actor."

""Nice guys finish last." Leo Durocher (1906–1991), US baseball manager."

""The two most common elements in the Universe are Hydrogen and Stupidity." Harlan Ellison (born May 27, 1934), US author."

""I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" Voltaire"

""To learn who rules over you, simply find out whom you are not allowed to criticize." Voltaire"

""If I can't dance I don't want to be in [or a part of] your revolution." (also: "If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution")"

"Just the facts, ma'am."

"We trained hard... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."

""Elementary, my dear Watson" – Sherlock Holmes"

"The end justifies the means."

"There's a sucker born every minute."

"On the whole, I would rather be in Philadelphia."

"I invented the internet."

"Theirs but to do or die!"

"Far from the maddening crowd"

"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it."

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us."

"Well-behaved women rarely make history."

"Well, that escalated quickly."

"Please, Sir, can I have some more?"

"The harder he works, the luckier he gets."

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of 99, wear sunscreen."

"If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain."

"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."

"I will return and I will be millions."

"I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while!"

"Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."

"I cannot allow your ignorance, however great, to take precedence over my knowledge, however small."

"Good things come to those who wait."

"I can't believe Nixon won. I don't know anyone who voted for him."

"We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like."

"The British are coming"

"The Shaggs are better than the Beatles."

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on. (Samuel Goldwyn)"

"Don't worry, be happy."

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning."

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

"Phenomenon (do, doo, do-do-doo)"

"Ringo isn't the best drummer in the world; he isn't even the best drummer in the Beatles."

"A house that has a library in it has a soul."

"Hell is the truth seen too late."

"No rest for the wicked."

"Lies, damned lies and statistics"

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

"Mate, how does it feel to have dropped the World Cup?"

"Because it's there"

"It's a funny old game"

"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

""Beam me up, Scotty" – James T. Kirk"

""Damn it, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a..." – Leonard McCoy"

""All that glistens is not gold" / "All that glitters is not gold" – William Shakespeare"

""Blood, Sweat, and Tears" – Winston Churchill"

"God helps those who help themselves."

"Lead on, Macduff"

"Bubble bubble, toil and trouble."

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much"

"Money is the root of all evil."

"Now is the winter of our discontent."

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well."

"Play it again, Sam"

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille"

"Greed is good"

"Someone set us up the bomb"

"The rest is science"

"To gild the lily"

"Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"

""I am not a crook" – Richard Nixon"

"You dirty rat!"

"The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash."

"A language is a dialect with a navy."

""The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality", or a variation on that."

""A damn close run thing" – Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, referring to his victory over Napoleon at Waterloo."

""Do you feel lucky, punk?" – Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry"

"Whenever I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my revolver."

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"

"Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes."

"Houston, we have a problem"

""Kismet Hardy / Kiss me, Hardy" – British Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson"

""The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" – Edmund Burke"

""We don't need no steenking badges!" – Bandit in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"

"Spare the rod, spoil the child"

""Crisis? What crisis?" – British Prime Minister James Callaghan"

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

"Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words."

"Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."

"I woke up this mornin' and I got myself a beer."

"Hold you in his armchair, you can feel his disease."

"Let them eat cake."

"You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"

"Hello, Clarice."

"Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten me into"

"I'm out of order? You're out of order! This whole court's out of order!"

"I am the devil, and I have come to do the devil's work."

"Music hath/has charms to soothe the savage beast."

"Only the Dead have seen the end of War."

"A rose by any other name smells just as sweet."

"Where art thou Romeo?"

"If you build it, they will come"

"'Step into my parlor,' said the spider to the fly."

"Brain: An apparatus with which we think we think"

"Nul points"

""Mirror, mirror, on the wall..." – The Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

"Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman, Be him alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread."

"Luke, I am Your Father – Darth Vader in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back"

"Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink."

"Brace yourself, winter is coming"

"And I'd have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!"

"There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way."

"Eppur Si Muove (And Yet it Moves)."

"Lights, Camera, Action."

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"

"640k ought to be enough for anyone."

"Do you want to play a game?"

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."

"Good Morning, Dave."

"Rivers of Blood."

"Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, he has a brother who is a known homo sapiens, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy."

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."

"That's where the money is."

"I may be drunk, Bessie, but you are ugly, and tomorrow I shall be sober."

"The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton."

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

"The people of this country have had enough of experts. - Michael Gove, in interview with Faisal Islam on June 3, 2016."

""Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." – Brooke Shields"

""This is not madness. This is Sparta." - Gerald Butler as Leonidas in 300 (2007)."

""Your princess is in another castle." - Super Mario Brothers (1985)."

""Imagine, if you will." - The Twilight Zone (1959-1964)."

""The meaning of life is 42." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy, Primary Phase (radio), 1978."

""What's the deal with [X]?" - Seinfeld (1989-1998)"

"I don't want to believe, I want to know."

"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."

"Yogi Berra"

"Otto von Bismarck"

"Albert Camus"

"George Carlin"

"Winston Churchill"

"Albert Einstein"

"Benjamin Franklin"

"Bill Gates"

"Samuel Goldwyn"

"Adolf Hitler"

"Abraham Lincoln"

"Napoleon Bonaparte"

"Dorothy Parker"

"Dan Quayle"

"Carl Sagan"

"William Shakespeare"

"George Bernard Shaw"

"Joseph Stalin"

"John Steinbeck"

"Henry David Thoreau"

"Mark Twain"

"Kurt Vonnegut"

"Oscar Wilde"

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"...I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

"It makes sense to examine Plato and pottery together in order to understand the Greek world, Descartes and the mechanical clock together in order to understand Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the same way, it makes sense to regard the computer as a technological paradigm for the science, the philosophy, even the art of the coming generation."

"The clock has been the center of Western technology since its invention in the Middle Ages. Computer technology too finds it indispensable, although it has changed the clock from a mechanical device to a wholly electronic one."

"In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists."

"I have bought this wonderful machine- a computer. Now I am rather an authority on gods, so I identified the machine- it seems to me to be an Old Testament god with a lot of rules and no mercy."

"Trust The Computer. The Computer is your friend."

"Starting when computer technology first emerged during World War II and continuing into the 1960s, women made up most of the computing workforce. By 1970, however, women only accounted for 13.6% of bachelor's in computer science graduates. In 1984 that number rose to 37%, but it has since declined to 18% -- around the same time personal computers started showing up in homes. According to NPR, personal computers were marketed almost exclusively to men and families were more likely to buy computers for boys than girls."

"To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now, large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world—increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward."

"This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynman called it a disease. I fear he is right."

"If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result."

"The simple fact is that without supporting directives or a mechanism for feedback, security is defined differently by each person and verified by no one. There is no metric for compliance with a "culture", and a "culture of security" is overridden by a culture of "get the job done" every time. If there are rules, write them down. If technology is put in place to implement or monitor the rules, write that down too. If people break the rules, follow up. If the rules prevent legitimate business from getting done, change them. It's that simple."

"It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do? So I have often made the hypotheses that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities."

"Spock: Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them. Captain, a starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it or him."

""So computers are tools of the devil?" thought Newt. He had no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody, and all he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn't him."

"Where a calculator like the ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1½ tons."

"What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking — there's the real danger."

"Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind."

"These machines have no common sense; they have not yet learned to "think," and they do exactly as they are told, no more and no less. This fact is the hardest concept to grasp when one first tries to use a computer."

"The Analytical Engine has no pretentions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform."

"Dare to be gorgeous and unique. But don't ever be cryptic or otherwise unfathomable. Make it unforgettably great."

"The Joker: Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen?"

"The reality is that future cyber warfare will likely resemble medieval siege warfare – as critical infrastructure and vital services to a city's population are shut-down and locked-out as a result of a ransomware attack."

"Today's computers are not even close to a 4-year-old human in their ability to see, talk, move, or use common sense. One reason, of course, is sheer computing power. It has been estimated that the information processing capacity of even the most powerful supercomputer is equal to the nervous system of a snail—a tiny fraction of the power available to the supercomputer inside [our] skull."

"But if these machines were ingenious, what shall we think of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage? What shall we think of an engine of wood and metal which can not only compute astronomical and navigation tables to any given extent, but render the exactitude of its operations mathematically certain through its power of correcting its possible errors? What shall we think of a machine which can not only accomplish all this, but actually print off its elaborate results, when obtained, without the slightest intervention of the intellect of man?"

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

"An adversary capable of implanting the right virus or accessing the right terminal can cause massive damage."

"By the '80s, the early pioneering work done by female programmers had mostly been forgotten. In contrast, Hollywood was putting out precisely the opposite image: Computers were a male domain. In hit movies like "Revenge of the Nerds," "Weird Science," "Tron," "WarGames" and others, the computer nerds were nearly always young white men. Video games, a significant gateway activity that led to an interest in computers, were pitched far more often at boys, as research in 1985 by Sara Kiesler, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, found. "In the culture, it became something that guys do and are good at," says Kiesler, who is also a program manager at the National Science Foundation. "There were all kinds of things signaling that if you don't have the right genes, you're not welcome.""

"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."

"Computers with their binary on–off logic seem to appeal to the military mind. This is because the military, in order to counter the inherent confusion and danger of war, is forever seeking ways to make communications as terse and unambiguous as humanly possible. Computers by their very nature do just that. Had they only been able to stand at attention and salute, in many ways they would have made ideal soldiers."

"With computers acting as the stimulus, the theory of war was assimilated into that of microeconomics. . . . Instead of evaluating military operations by their product –that is, victory – calculations were cast in terms of input–output and cost effectiveness. Since intuition was replaced by calculation, and since the latter wasto be carried out with the aid of computers, it was necessary that all the phenomena of war be reduced to quantitative form. Consequently everything that could be quantified was, while everything that could not be tended to be thrown onto the garbage heap."

"It used to be said of a man who had suffered a catastrophic setback in his line of work that he had been handed his head on a platter. We are being handed our heads with tweezers now."

"The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers."

"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."

"Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer."

"Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer? Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong."

"Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?"

"A refund for defective software might be nice, except it would bankrupt the entire software industry in the first year."

"The computer was a fairly new thing in 1971, and most people were not well acquainted with it. There was only one five-week course in programming at Carleton. I had taken the class when I was a junior, and the next trimester, I was recruited to be a lab assistant to help other students who were taking the course. I was fascinated by the power of the computer to not only calculate, but also to interact with written language. I had been thinking about writing a program to interact with a human through language, but the content of such a program remained a mystery to me."

"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games."

"The primary duty of an exception handler is to get the error out of the lap of the programmer and into the surprised face of the user."

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

"There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing."

"Cynic: An idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision."

"The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes — openly bad and secretly bad."

"Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be."

"If you scratch a cynic, you will find a disappointed idealist."

"Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost."

"Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us."

"Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying "yes"..."

"Cynicism is full of naive disappointments."

"Cynicism formulates issues clearly, but only to dismiss them."

"Cynicism is intellectual treason."

"Cynics are disappointed romantics; they keep looking for someone to admire and can never find anyone."

"People who are stupid, unscrupulous, or hypocritical, think that others are just the same. And — this is the real pity — they treat them as if they were."

"I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope – an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all."

"Cynicism is cheap – you can buy it at any Monoprix store – it’s built into all poor-quality goods."

"A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future."

"Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth."

"Your universities teach you to be eternal cynics, a cynicism that can be only drowned in alcohol and diet pills and psychoanalysts and golf. Forget your cynicism. There is not one who has more respect for life than a revolutionist."

"Irony differentiates. Cynicism never does."

"Those who are too weak to make a stand against reality have no choice but to obliterate themselves by identifying with it. They are never rationally reconciled to civilization. Instead, they bow to it, secretly accepting the identity of reason and domination, of civilization and the ideal, however much they may shrug their shoulders. Well-informed cynicism is only another mode of conformity. These people willingly embrace or force themselves to accept the rule of the stronger as the eternal norm."

"There is a principle, supposed to prevail among many, which is utterly incompatible with all virtue or moral sentiment; and as it can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition, so in its turn it tends still further to encourage that depravity. This principle is, that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations."

"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist."

"Cynicism isn't smarter, it's only safer. There's nothing fluffy about optimism."

"You resemble those political economists who, if they see a paragraph in the paper one day rejoicing over the country's prosperity, examine its columns to see what new tax is to be suggested."

"I once said cynically of a politician, "He'll double-cross that bridge when he comes to it.""

"During the Cold War, you could trot out communism or anti-imperialism as alternatives, but today few people will believe your obviously corrupt system is better than the rule of law and democracy championed by the West. So you appeal to cynicism rather than idealism. You say that the so-called democracies of the world are just as craven and corrupt as anyone, but less honest about it; that every country kills its enemies; that all media is propaganda; that morality is just a weapon some countries use to beat up others; that in this contest, there is no objective truth, just subjective opinion, no right or wrong, just winners and losers."

"Cynicism is intellectual dandyism."

"A society that is in its higher circles and on its middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of ‘success’ to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed."

"Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness — that means cynically and with innocence."

"The worst cynicism: a belief in luck."

"All I ask of you is one thing: please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism — it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen."

"Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo — or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role?"

"Cynicism is only intellectual sloth."

"The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities — all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance...It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat...The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder."

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

"A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern."

"The greater part of the truth is always hidden, in regions out of the reach of cynicism."

"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

"Cynicism is just an excuse for not helping. Anger only diminishes our power. Whining is absolutely not an option. The answer now? GET BUSY. Progressive candidates are running in primaries all over the country. HELP THEM!"

"When intellectual formulations are treated simply by relegating them to the past and permitting the simple passage of time to substitute for development, the suspicion is justified that such formulations have not really been mastered, but rather they are being suppressed."

"I saw in the Soviet Union many opponents of the regime. I visited a dozen prisons — the political sections among them. I saw considerable of the work of the OGPU. I heard a good many stories of severity, even of brutality, and many of them from the victims. While I sympathized with personal distress I just could not bring myself to get excited over the suppression of opposition when I stacked it up against what I saw of fresh, vigorous expressions of free living by workers and peasants all over the land. And further, no champion of a socialist society could fail to see that some suppression was necessary to achieve it. It could not all be done by persuasion."

"Let us put aside resolutely that great fright, tenderly and without malice, daring to be wrong in something important rather than right in some meticulous banality, fearing no evil while the mind is free to search, imagine, and conclude, inviting our countrymen to try other instruments than coercion and suppression in the effort to meet destiny with triumph, genially suspecting that no creed yet calendared in the annals of politics mirrors the doomful possibilities of infinity."

"This is what makes people in this country wary of Islam in many of its forms, in one place or another: the centrality and inescapability of religion, the loss of freedom of thought and expression, the harshness of sharia (Islamic law), the patriarchal suppression of women, including their inequality under sharia, the medieval punishments for apostasy, adultery and even theft, the insistence on a cruel form of animal slaughter, the violence and anti-Semitism of many sacred texts, the disinclination to integrate with the host culture and finally one can argue the incompatibility of theocratic Islam with democracy. To find all those things alarming as possibilities is not to be Islamophobic or racist. It is to be reasonable from a western point of view."

"If we designate as intelligence, quantitatively, the total of mental functioning, it is evident that the suppression of verbal thought involves a defect, relatively very important among cultivated individuals leading a complex social life: the uneducated person from this point of view is a defective."

"The suppression of natural sexual gratification leads to various kinds of substitute gratifications. Natural aggression, for example, becomes brutal sadism which then is an essential mass-psychological factor in imperialistic wars."

"God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners."

"What Dad means by "see" of course, is "drive past at 67 miles per hour." Dad feels it is a foolish waste of valuable vacation time to get out of the car and actually go look at an attraction."

"Leave for a while thy costly country seat; And, to be great indeed, forget The nauseous pleasures of the great: Make haste and come: Come, and forsake thy cloying store; Thy turret that surveys, from high, The smoke, and wealth, and noise of Rome; And all the busy pageantry That wise men scorn, and fools adore: Come, give thy soul a loose, and taste the pleasures of the poor."

"Sometimes 'tis grateful to the rich to try A short vicissitude, and fit of poverty: A savoury dish, a homely treat, Where all is plain, where all is neat, Without the stately spacious room, The Persian carpet, or the Tyrian loom, Clear up the cloudy foreheads of the great."

"Vacation is what you take when you can't take what you've been taking any longer."

"The family is always the family but during vacations it is an extended family and that is exhausting."

"Vacation All I ever wanted Vacation Had to get away Vacation Meant to be spent alone."

"The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires."

"[...] the Christian idea of man “made in the image and likeness of God” has created, on a political level, a tension that runs through the entire history of the West. It is, in fact, an ideal which, despite compromising and even murky vicissitudes, between ‘theocratic’ temptations and ‘satanocratic’ rejections of political power, has exerted, throughout history, a sometimes overwhelming pressure on its antithetical worldly element. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's”: with this, the principle that Káysar is not Kýrios entered history – political power was desacralised, the worldly order relativised, and Caesar's demands subjected to a judgement of legitimacy by an inviolable conscience. On this basis, Origen could justify, against Celsus, the refusal of Christians to associate themselves with the cult of the emperor or to refuse to kill in obedience to his orders."

"It has become a settled principle that nothing which is good and true can be destroyed by persecution, but that the effect ultimately is to establish more firmly, and to spread more widely, that which it was designed to overthrow. It has long since passed into a proverb that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.""

"There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness."

"If a Texas surgeon who rightfully blew the whistle on a child-mutilation program his state outlawed can face politically charged persecution laden with misconduct simply because the Biden administration wants to make a point about people who oppose its radical transgender agenda, no one is safe."

"Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant."

"Bigotry may be called the appalling frenzy of the indifferent. This frenzy of the indifferent is in truth a terrible thing; it has made all monstrous and widely pervading persecutions. In this degree it was not the people who cared who ever persecuted; the people who cared were not sufficiently numerous. It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack. There have come some persecutions out of the pain of a passionate certainty; but these produced, not bigotry, but fanaticism — a very different and a somewhat admirable thing. Bigotry in the main has always been the pervading omnipotence of those who do not care crushing out those who care in darkness and blood."

"As I sang hymns on stage, one phrase echoed continuously in my mind: “If one member suffers, all members suffer together.” This is not a slogan, but the fundamental logic of the church as the body of Christ. Persecution is not “their problem,” but “our shared wound.” …the most insidious aspect of persecution isn’t a single “disruption,” but the gradual fragmentation of people’s lives—leaving them exhausted, scattered, doubting, and retreating—forcing faith to [withdraw slowly] from public expression until it can only be “hidden in the heart.” …the cruelty of persecution lies not only in stripping away freedom, but in attempting to sever people’s connection to truth—robbing them of their voice, their testimony, and their network of mutual support."

"Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed."

"Persecution cannot harm him who stands by Truth. Did not Socrates fall proudly a victim in body? Was not Paul stoned for the sake of the Truth? It is our inner selves that hurt us when we disobey it, and it kills us when we betray it."

"[Australian scholar David Thomas] Smith’s theory of religious persecution shows us that a general “system of tolerance of minorities” is perfectly compatible with the persecution of some groups, and the two things in fact go together in many modern democratic states, which answers the objection that Tai Ji Men cannot be persecuted because Taiwan in general protects religious liberty. It also shows that democratic states, unlike their totalitarian counterparts that are often irrational, cease the persecutions when they understand that the political cost of persecution has become higher than the cost of tolerating a group they do not like."

"There is a deplorable tendency of expanding the notion of “human trafficking” beyond its original limits, targeting religious organizations that use unpaid volunteers for their missionary or charitable activities."

"Academics have a key role in persuading the courts and the governments, which is paradoxically easier than persuading the media, that “cults” and “brainwashing” are pseudo-scientific labels used to discriminate against unpopular religious minorities. Of course, there are abusive and criminal religious groups, but they should be prosecuted for their real common law crimes rather than for the imaginary crimes of “being a cult” and “using brainwashing.”"

"History shows many examples of persecuted believers who win in the end. Religions tend to last longer than governments, regimes, or their opponents. History is fair, and often gives persecuted believers the last laugh."

"The world must not mistake persecution for prosecution."

"Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

"Any body of men who believe in hell will persecute whenever they have the power."

"The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failure to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy."

"The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries."

"Can we agree that having an irresistible urge to ridicule other people’s beliefs is not generally a sign of good mental health?"

"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

"Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted."

"Few of those living in what we call the “free world”—an endangered concept and sometime a rather ambiguous one, which yet retains an important value—know what [it] is like to be considered “bad” for the mere fact of belonging to a certain group. The violence of all this is hardly understandable for those who have never suffered it, and it is literally incredible when we see it performed in front of our eyes."

"To persecute Makes a faith hated, and is furthermore No perfect witness of a perfect faith In him who persecutes."

"We share the collective idea of ANONYMOUS worldwide; we are the people. We believe in non-violent, peaceful civil disobedience."

"We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."

""People who make sacrifices are very much loved and admired, aren't they? " she asked, earnestly. "If the sacrifice is a true one. But many of the bravest never are known, and get no praise. That does not lessen their beauty, though perhaps it makes them harder, for we all like sympathy," and Dr. Alec sighed a patient sort of sigh."

"My efforts have gone through many incarnations, and at one time, I would not post the face of the female, I wouldn’t post her name, and I wouldn’t post any information. [But] many times, family members get in touch with me because they’ve lost touch with this person and are trying to locate them. Sometimes, law enforcement will say that it’s a runaway that they’ve been trying to locate. I just found that there was no reason to maintain their anonymity."

"Never answer an anonymous letter."

"We talked of the casuistical question, Whether it was allowable at any time to depart from Truth? JOHNSON. 'The general rule is, that Truth should never be violated, because it is of the utmost importance to the comfort of life, that we should have a full security by mutual faith; and occasional inconveniences should be willingly suffered that we may preserve it. There must, however, be some exceptions. If, for instance, a murderer should ask you which way a man is gone, you may tell him what is not true, because you are under a previous obligation not to betray a man to a murderer.' BOSWELL. 'Supposing the person who wrote Junius were asked whether he was the authour, might he deny it?' JOHNSON. 'I don't know what to say to this. If you were sure that he wrote Junius, would you, if he denied it, think as well of him afterwards? Yet it may be urged, that what a man has no right to ask, you may refuse to communicate; and there is no other effectual mode of preserving a secret and an important secret, the discovery of which may be very hurtful to you, but a flat denial; for if you are silent, or hesitate, or evade, it will be held equivalent to a confession. But stay, Sir; here is another case. Supposing the authour had told me confidentially that he had written Junius, and I were asked if he had, I should hold myself at liberty to deny it, as being under a previous promise, express or implied, to conceal it. Now what I ought to do for the authour, may I not do for myself?"

"A factor that is almost indispensable to this kind of behavior [serial killing] is the mobility of contemporary American life. Living in large centers of population, and living with lots of people, you can get used to dealing with strangers. It's the anonymity factor, and it has a twofold effect. First of all if you're among strangers you're less likely to remember them, or care what they're doing or what they should, or should not, be doing. If they should or shouldn't be there. Secondly, you're conditioned almost not to be afraid of strangers. Mobility is very important here. As we've seen...the individual's [himself in third person] modus operandi was moving large distances in an attempt to camouflage what he was doing. Moving these distances, he was able to take advantage of the anonymity factor."

"We are clandestine because we refuse the spectacle of celebrity and we are everyone. Because without real names, faces or noses, we show that our words, dreams, and desires are more important than our biographies. Because we reject the society of surveillance that watches, controls, spies upon, records and checks our every move. Because by hiding our identity we recover the power of our acts. Because with greasepaint we give resistance a funny face and become visible once again."

"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

"Faith lived in the incognito is one which is located outside the criticism coming from society, from politics, from history, for the very reason that it has itself the vocation to be a source of criticism. It is faith (lived in the incognito) which triggers the issues for the others, which causes everything seemingly established to be placed in doubt, which drives a wedge into the world of false assurances."

"Inigo Montoya: Who are you? Man in Black: No one of consequence. Inigo Montoya: I must know... Man in Black: Get used to disappointment."

"Sacrificing anonymity may be the next generation's price for keeping precious liberty, as prior generations paid in blood."

"Fear names. Names have power in identity. Others can use names as weapons. Names are a hook that can be used to track you across the planes. Remain nameless, and you shall be safe. I am the Nameless One."

"Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred million, five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, in all good time, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight’s children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace."

"If I had remained invisible, the truth would have stayed hidden. I couldn't allow that."

"Great works of literature have frequently been produced by authors writing under assumed names. Despite readers' curiosity and the public's interest in identifying the creator of a work of art, an author generally is free to decide whether or not to disclose her true identity. The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible. Whatever the motivation may be, at least in the field of literary endeavor, the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry."

"On occasion, quite apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her message simply because they do not like its proponent."

"Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. … It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation--and their ideas from suppression--at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse."

"You know C. S. Lewis, whom I greatly admire, said there’s no such thing as creative writing. … He said there is, in fact, only one Creator and we mix. That’s our function, to mix the elements He has given us. See how wonderfully anonymous that leaves us? You can’t say, “I did this; this gross matrix of flesh and blood and sinews and nerves did this.” What nonsense! I’m given these things to make a pattern out of. Something gave it to me. I’ve always loved the idea of the craftsman, the anonymous man. For instance, I’ve always wanted my books to be called the work of Anon, because Anon is my favorite literary character. If you look through an anthology of poems that go from the far past into the present time, you’ll see that all the poems signed “Anon” have a very specific flavor that is one flavor all the way through the centuries. I think, perhaps arrogantly, of myself as “Anon.” I would like to think that Mary Poppins and the other books could be called back to make that change. But I suppose it’s too late for that."

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman."

"I have many names, and none of them matter."

"No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality — the Nameless."

"I charge you — forget the names you bear, forget the words I speak as soon as they are uttered. Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves, which arises as I address it. It hearkens not to my words, but to the reality within me, of which it is part. This is the atman, which hears me rather than my words. All else is unreal. To define is to lose. The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma. Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream. "Essence dreams it a dream of form. Forms pass, but the essence remains, dreaming new dreams. Man names these dreams and thinks to have captured the essence, not knowing that he invokes the unreal. These stones, these walls, these bodies you see seated about you are poppies and water and the sun. They are the dreams of the Nameless. They are fire, if you like."

"To struggle against the dreamers who dream ugliness, be they men or gods, cannot but be the will of the Nameless."

"Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty."

"I wouldn't say I'm normal, but I'm relatively stable. When I think of normalcy I think of mediocrity and mediocrity scares the fuck out of me."

"There's no such thing as a normal child."

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."

"America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration."

"My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage."

"The note I wanted; that of the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy."

"Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."

"Normal is enormously susceptible to swinging with the gusts of politics and history. Disguised as scientific and fixed, it is subjective and protean. That is why I used the word normative above, a term derived from statistics, simply meaning what most people do."

"If, as psychologists, we follow the analogy of the other biological sciences, we must expect to find normalcy synonymous with maximal efficiency of function. Survival of the fittest means survival of those members of a species whose organisms most successfully resist the encroachments of environmental antagonists, and continue to function with the greatest internal harmony. In the field of emotions, then, why would we alter this expectation? Why should we seek the spectacularly disharmonious emotions, the feelings that reveal a crushing of ourselves by environment, and consider these affective responses as our normal emotions?"

"The Normal is the good smile in a child's eyes - all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults."

"Don't become a well-rounded person. Well rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish."

"What is abnormal is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnormal."

"In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized."

"Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry’s haunting curse, the Incomplete!"

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

"I didn't think that working hard and wanting something that's out of your control would be that bothersome to people. It was just really disappointing for me."

"Struggling. How many people in life have it easy? I don't care what you do for a living. I don't believe I'm gifted, like Clemente, or Cedeno, or Mantle. About 10% of the ballplayers are gifted. For the other 90% of us, it's a struggle."

"To rank the effort above the prize may be called love."

"Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil."

"Those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes."

"Somebody said that it couldn't be done, But he with a chuckle replied "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one wouldn't say so till he'd tried. he buckled right in with the trace of a grin his face. If he worried he hid it. He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done, and he did it."

"The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort."

"Genius is often only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it — so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business sometimes prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."

"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."

"If there is effort, there is always accomplishment."

"He has called on the best that was in us. There was no such thing as half-trying. Whether it was running a race or catching a football, competing in school—we were to try. And we were to try harder than anyone else. We might not be the best, and none of us were, but we were to make the effort to be the best. “After you have done the best you can,” he used to say, “the hell with it.”"

"The smallest effort is not lost, Each wavelet on the ocean tost Aids in the ebb-tide or the flow; Each rain-drop makes some floweret blow; Each struggle lessens human woe."

"Give Me leisure, all the time Maecenas found For Horace and his Virgil, and I'll try To build a masterpiece destined to live And save my name from ashes. When the ground Is poor, the ox works listlessly; rich soil Tires, but there's satisfaction then in toil."

"To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals — this alone is worth the struggle."

"Verily, the Hour is coming but I am about to make it manifest so that every soul may be rewarded as it strives."

"And that the human being attains only what he strives for."

"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach."

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

"Do not attempt to accomplish greater results by a greater effort of your little understanding, but by a greater understanding of your little effort. The greater your understanding of the power within yourself, the less effort you need to make in order to achieve."

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim."

"These ceremonies and the National Statuary Hall will teach the youth of the land in succeeding generations as they come and go that the chief end of human effort in a sublunary view should be usefulness to mankind, and that all true fame which should be perpetuated by public pictures, statues, and monuments, is to be acquired only by noble deeds and high achievements and the establishment of a character founded upon the principles of truth, uprightness, and inflexible integrity."

"As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth."

"LAZINESS, n. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree."

"Bhikkhus, the lazy person dwells in suffering, soiled by evil unwholesome states, and great is the personal good that he neglects. But the energetic person dwells happily, secluded from evil unwholesome states, and great is the personal good that he achieves. It is not by the inferior that the supreme is attained; rather, it is by the supreme that the supreme is attained. Bhikkhus, this holy life is a beverage of cream; the Teacher is present. Therefore, bhikkhus, arouse your energy for the attainment of the as-yet-unattained, for the achievement of the as-yet-unachieved, for the realization of the as-yet-unrealized."

"I don't think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble."

"My ambition is handicapped by my laziness"

"Absence of occupation is not rest, A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed."

"An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless when it goes as when it stands."

"Idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them – their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table."

"Sleepiness and laziness in a man are the beginning of his misfortune."

"Don't yield to that alluring witch, laziness, or else be prepared to surrender all that you have won in your better moments."

"[M]an when not stimulated by hope or necessity is naturally a lazy animal."

"An ingenious theory has arisen regarding the catapultic bat of Babe Ruth, which may explain how it is possible this early in the season for a batter to pile up twenty-three home runs. It seems Babe is a human being built on colossal proportions and that he is not overly fond of running bases at the fast and furious gait of his contemporary, Ty Cobb. To save his lumbering body the effort, therefore, he hits the ball over the fence and makes the circuit of the four bases at his leisure. That is as satisfactory an explanation as any other. The ways of laziness are indeed clever. Some there are who contend that most of the labor-saving devices that have revolutionized modern industries have sprung from the fertile brains, set in inactive bodies, of lazy men. Constructive laziness is, according to that school of thinking, a boon to humanity and a blazer of progress. Ruth, finding base-running inconvenient, devises a means of overcoming it and is hailed as the home run king of the world, admired of thousands and becomes the recipient of fat pay checks at whose figures the merely industrious man gasps."

"People standing on escalators! And that is a testimony to human laziness! I mean, the guy who invented the escalator is just, probably, kicking himself in the ass. Do you think the guy made the escalator so people—and they're made like stairs—just so people stand on it so you go up and down? You're supposed to walk on 'em so you get there faster. You know? And then people stand on there. So every time Im on an escalator, I'm just like, "Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me…." You know? That's my pet peeve, right there. And I'm gonna do something about it, and I'm urging you to do something about it! Write your congressman, get a group together, get together, and—I think we can do something about this."

"The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error. Satisfied if they themselves can escape from the hard labour of thought, they willingly abandon to others the guardianship of their thoughts."

"The lazy are always wanting to do something."

"There is no such thing as a lazy person; he is either sick or uninspired."

"Indolence is the worst enemy that the church has to encounter. Men sleep around her altar, stretching themselves on beds of ease, or sit idly with folded hands looking lazily out on fields white for the harvest, but where no sickle rings against the wheat."

"At ease in a world in which my Lord was such a sufferer!"

"The passive idler of all men in the world is the most difficult to please. Those who do the least themselves are always the severest critics upon the noble achievements of others."

"The idle man is the devil's cushion."

"If you are idle, you are on the road to ruin; and there are few stopping places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road."

"Idleness is the great corrupter of youth, and the bane and dishonor of middle age. He who, in the prime of life, finds time to hang heavy on his hands, may with much reason suspect that he has not consulted the duties which the consideration of his age imposed upon him; assuredly he has not consulted his happiness."

"An idle man has a constant tendency to torpidity. He has adopted the Indian maxim — that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. He hugs himself into the notion, that God calls him to be quiet."

"Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle."

"Be always employed about some rational thing that the devil find thee not idle."

"A good many people are complaining all the time about themselves, and crying out, "My leanness! my leanness!" when they ought rather to say, " My laziness! my laziness!""

"I am not the only one that condemns the idle; for once when I was going to give our minister a pretty long list of the sins of one of our people that he was asking after, I began with, "He's dreadfully lazy." "That's enough," said the old gentleman; " all sorts of sins are in that one.""

"The worst idleness is that of the heart. Think of the condition and prospects of a voiceless, thankless, prayerless heart."

"When you and I are inclined to nestle down in indolence and self-indulgence, God " stirs up our nests;" and bids us fly upward."

"The only cure for indolence is work; the only cure for selfishness is sacrifice; the only cure for unbelief is to shake off the ague of doubt, by doing Christ's bidding; the only cure for timidity is to plunge into some dreaded duty before the chill comes on."

"The idea of content is today mainly a hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism. . . it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as the content of a work of art."

"A quotation from a text or speech."

"From the earliest times man has turned to the waters to carry goods and passengers. Through the centuries he has harnessed many different forms of energy to move his cargoes on rivers, bays, and seas. He has built rafts to move upon the currents, galleys rowed by men, sailing ships of great variety to tap the strength of the winds, and steam and motor ships driven by the energy of coal and oil. Now man is ready to use the primordial source of power, the conversion of matter into energy, to send his merchant vessels on their voyages."

"Man has profited whenever he found new sources of energy to speed the movement of passengers and goods upon the seas. His efforts reached one culmination in the nineteenth century when swift and wonderfully graceful American clipper ships sailed the long reaches of the oceans. Yet the heyday of these ships lasted less than the lifespan of a man. Long before the superb Flying Cloud made her record 374 miles in 24 hours under sail on her famous passage from New York to San Francisco in 1851, a noisy, dirty, dangerous machine — the steam engine—was taking to the seas and soon was to relieve mariners from their age-old dependence on the favor of the winds. Early in 1819 a small sailing ship, the Savannah, made the first crossing of the Atlantic with the assistance of a steam engine. Hers was a daring pioneering accomplishment sponsored by American merchants. But the shipping industries of the world were not ready for her, and the SS “Savannah” (the letters SS stand for "steamship") was a commercial failure, ending her days as a simple sailing ship. Change came slowly, and not until 20 years later did the first vessel, the British ship “Sirius”, cross the ocean propelled entirely by steam. This venture pointed the way for the development of the great British steam merchant ship fleet."

"Stop for a moment and ask yourself what would happen if the merchant fleets of the world were suddenly to vanish. How would raw materials, fuel, food, medicines, publications, and manufactured products move from one continent to another? No nation is completely self-sufficient; all find advantage in foreign trade. For example, 15 of the materials used in making a telephone in the United States must be imported. The industrialization now beginning in developing nations of Africa, Asia, and South America foretells increasing foreign trade, to be carried by the merchant marine."

"Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered."

"I remember the whirr and whine of her black Singer, the gold traceries on the cast iron rod by the wheel that lifted and lowered the needle. Threading, eyepieces, winding the turquoise string through hooks, around miniscule wheels, up and down, her hands clever in labyrinths,.."

"Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"

"I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars."

"A labyrinth of symbols… An invisible labyrinth of time."

"Ts'ui Pe must have said once: I am withdrawing to write a book. And another time: I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth. Every one imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing."

"In the work of Ts'ui Pên, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend."

"There's no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one."

"The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth."

"I wanted to create a labyrinth which would somehow help to prevent a compositional idea from establishing itself all too quickly. I had the idea of working on all the walls pretty well at the same time,as if they were one large painting completely surrounding me. By constantly wandering in the labyrinth I sought to realise a form of “de-composition”"

"Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue: Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true."

"The very scientist who, in the service of the sinful king, was the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom. But the hero-heart must be at hand. … Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn. Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

"If he is to choose the path of magic then he must choose responsibly, he must know enough about the labyrinth to walk a true path through it."

"I thought that I had found my way to the center of the Invisible Labyrinth; and I had — perhaps — discovered no more than the entrance. Watch my dust.... There is no walking backwards, and I am lost in the Labyrinth Invisible. I cannot retrace my steps. I wrote my name on the wall of the Invisible Labyrinth. I was so diligent in my studies; gave my whole time and heart to the pursuit. I wrote my name but I can find it no longer; My ashes blow like dust around the Invisible Labyrinth."

"She said, "It's not life or death, the labyrinth." "Um, okay. So what is it?" "Suffering," she said. "Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?...Nothing's wrong. But there's always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there's a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about."

"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."

"I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man’s destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth... I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish."

"My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death."

"The difficulty in dealing with a maze or labyrinth lies not so much in navigating the convolutions to find the exit but in not entering the damn thing in the first place. Or, at least not yet again. As a creature of free will, do not be tempted into futility."

"A labyrinth is a symbolic journey … but it is a map we can really walk on, blurring the difference between map and world."

"This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination."

"You mentioned . . . one of the two great labyrinths into which the mind is drawn. What . . . is the other?" "The other is the composition of the continuum, or: what is space?"

"Where he had failed, I would triumph. Where he had lost his way, I would find the path out of the labyrinth."

"New challenges driven by evolving global technology inspire fresh trends and approaches in teaching statistics in business schools of the 21st century."

"In the 1930s English statistical theory was beginning to travel, with contributions from, amongst others, Hotelling and Snedecor in America and Darmois in France, but its home was still in England where there were four important centres: University College London, Rothamsted Experimental Station, Edinburgh University and Cambridge University with University College and Rothamsted far in the lead. Although Cambridge University was slow to adopt modern statistical theory, Cambridge men–Karl Pearson, Edmund Whittaker and Ronald Fisher–had put the other places on the statistical map. University College was the most established centre and its importance went back to 1893 when Karl Pearson, the professor of applied mathematics, first collaborated with Raphael Weldon, the professor of zoology on a subject they called “biometry.” There was a second surge in the “English statistical school” associated with R. A. Fisher who went to work at Rothamsted in 1919."

"I wish that people would be persuaded that psychological experiments, especially those on the complex functions, are not improved (by large studies); the statistical method gives only mediocre results; some recent examples demonstrate that. The American authors, who love to do things big, often publish experiments that have been conducted on hundreds and thousands of people; they instinctively obey the prejudice that the persuasiveness of a work is proportional to the number of observations. This is only an illusion."

"All models are wrong, but some are useful"

"Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models."

"...the statistician knows...that in nature there never was a normal distribution, there never was a straight line, yet with normal and linear assumptions, known to be false, he can often derive results which match, to a useful approximation, those found in the real world."

"Life in financial markets has got no relation to sigmas. I mean, if everybody who had ever operated in financial markets had never had any concept of standard errors, and so on, they would be a lot better off."

"Strange events permit themselves the luxury of occurring."

"If you torture the data enough, nature will always confess."

"A new branch of mathematics was developed over the last 200 years to deal with the more complex aspect of reality: statistics."

"Confucius, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad would have been bewildered if you'd have told them that in order to understand the human mind and cure its illness you must first study statistics."

"There are no routine statistical questions, only questionable statistical routines."

"Statistics is the science of learning from data, and of measuring, controlling, and communicating uncertainty."

"I had been so terrorized by scientific statistics (if ten million people each leave over three grains of rice from their lunch, how many sacks of rice are wasted in one day; if ten million people each economize one paper handkerchief a day, how much pulp will be saved?) that whenever I left over a single grain of rice, whenever I blew my nose, I imagined that I was wasting mountains of rice, tons of paper, and I fell prey to a mood dark as if I had committed some terrible crime. But these were the lies of science, the lies of statistics and mathematics: you can't collect three grains of rice from everybody."

"In our private life as in our collective life there is no other truth than a statistical one."

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

"Statistics has been the most successful information science. Those who ignore Statistics are condemned to reinvent it."

"The rise of biometry in this 20th century, like that of geometry in the 3rd century before Christ, seems to mark out one of the great ages or critical periods in the advance of the human understanding."

"To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of."

"briefly, and in its most concrete form, the object of statistical methods is the reduction of data. A quantity of data, which usually by its mere bulk is incapable of entering the mind, is to be replaced by relatively few quantities which shall adequately represent the whole, or which, in other words, shall contain as much as possible, ideally the whole, of the relevant information contained in the original data."

"It is a statistical commonplace that the interpretation of a body of data requires a knowledge of how it was obtained."

"“Without Statistics and numbers, it's a mere thought of unconvincing opinions.”"

"A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler's "big lie"; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you."

"Statistics is both the science of uncertainty and the technology of extracting information from data."

"Statistics are often the last refuge of the antihumanist."

"I think the essential thing if you want to be a good statistician, as opposed to being a mathematician, is to talk to people and find out what they're doing and why they're doing it."

"Most people don’t have a good understanding of just how variable statistics are, even when you are dealing with robots."

"Statistics is the art of stating in precise terms that which one does not know."

"Statistics is the study and informed application of methods for reaching conclusions about the world from fallible observations."

"Each of us has been doing statistics all his life, in the sense that each of us has been busily reaching conclusions based on empirical observations."

"Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."

"Politicians use statistics in the same way that a drunk uses lampposts — for support rather than illumination."

"Uncertainty is a personal matter; it is not the uncertainty but your uncertainty."

"Without the aid of statistics nothing like real medicine is possible."

"According to a University College London study (2014), 40% of women surveyed with severe mental illness had suffered rape or attempted rape in adulthood, and 53% of those had attempted suicide as a result. In the general population, 7% of women had been victims of rape or attempted rape, of whom 3% had attempted suicide. If these statistics don't sound accurate to you, your hesitation or disbelief supports another reality about rape research: Because so many individuals who survive a rape may not report a rape (for a multitude of reasons), statistics have limited meaning."

"A statistical procedure is not an automatic, mechanical truth-generating machine."

"While it is easy to lie with statistics, it is even easier to lie without them."

"A statistical analysis, properly conducted, is a delicate dissection of uncertainties, a surgery of suppositions."

"91.7 percent of all statistics are made-up on the spot."

"In God we trust. All others must bring data."

"To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of his purpose."

"The true foundation of theology is to ascertain the character of God. It is by the art of statistics that law in the social sphere can be ascertained and codified, and certain aspects of the character of God thereby revealed. The study of statistics is thus a religious service."

"Average a left-hander with a right-hander and what do you get?"

"With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."

"Although its evolution in the United States differed markedly from that of applied mathematics, statistics, too, benefited from the presence of the emigres and from the overall war effort. After a protracted period of professional differentiation from the social scientists and from the social sciences, mathematical statisticians had formed their own society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), in 1935. By 1938, the IMS had also taken over responsibility for the Annals of Mathematical Statistics, a journal that had been founded in 1929 to serve the needs of the more mathematically and theoretically inclined statistical practitioners. Thus, when refugees like Neyman, William Feller, Mark Kac, and Abraham Wald took up positions in the United States at Berkeley, Brown, Cornell, and Columbia, respectively, they were able to participate in a young, but viable, community of mathematical statisticians."

"Numbers and stats bob in a sentimental slop, a swampy slurry of bits of hard data and buckets of mushy manipulation."

"The individual source of the statistics may easily be the weakest link. Harold Cox tells a story of his life as a young man in India. He quoted some statistics to a Judge, an Englishman, and a very good fellow. His friend said, Cox, when you are a bit older, you will not quote Indian statistics with that assurance. The Government are very keen on amassing statistics—they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every one of those figures comes in the first instance from the chowty dar [chowkidar] (village watchman), who just puts down what he damn pleases."

"Thomasina: If there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers? Septimus: We do. Thomasina: Then why do your shapes describe only the shapes of manufacture? Septimus: I do not know. Thomasina: Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet."

"There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up."

"The main problem with statistics is statisticians."

"The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard"

"Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise."

"The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data."

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

"Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read or write."

"Statistics is a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty"

"While nothing is more uncertain than the duration of a single life, nothing is more certain than the average duration of a thousand lives."

"The bulk of statistical criticism is of the hit-and-run variety – the critic points out some real or fancied flaw and supposes that his job is done. Indeed, some critics appear to labor under the misconception that if some flaw can be found in a study, this automatically in validates the author’s conclusions. Since the critic makes no attempt to develop a tenable counterhypothesis, his performance is on a par with that of a proponent who glances at his data and then jumps to his conclusion."

"Prisons are built with stones of law; brothels with bricks of religion."

"This is virgin territory out here for whorehouses."

"If they don't like the brothels, they needn't go to them."

"No-one was ever made wretched in a brothel."

"So long as we were in a room in a brothel, we belonged to our fantasies, but once having exposed them, we're now tied up with human beings, tied to you and forced to go on with this adventure according to the laws of visibility."

"In Hollywood, a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel."

"In regard to this principle, that all men are born free and equal, if there is an animal on earth to which it does not apply—that is not born free, it is man—he is born in a state of the most abject want, and in a state of perfect helplessness and ignorance, which is the foundation of the connubial tie…. Who should say that all the soil in the world is equally rich, the first rate land in Kentucky and the Highlands of Scotland because the superficial content of the acre is the same, would be just as right as he who should maintain the absolute equality of man in virtue of his birth. The ricketty and scrofulous little wretch who first sees the light in a work-house, or in a brothel, and who feels the effects of alcohol before the effects of vital air, is not equal in any respect to the ruddy offspring of the honest yeoman; nay, I will go further, and say that a prince, provided he is no better born than royal blood will make him, is not equal to the healthy son of a peasant."

"Vente, gresle, gelle, j'ay mon pain cuit. Ie suis paillart, la paillarde me suit. Lequel vault mieulx? Chascun bien s'entresuit. L'ung vault l'autre; c'est a mau rat mau chat. Ordure amons, ordure nous assuit; Nous deffuyons onneur, il nous deffuit, En ce bordeau ou tenons nostre estat."

"[The notion of equilibrium] is a notion which can be employed usefully in varying degrees of looseness. It is an absolutely indispensable part of the toolbag of the economist and one which he can often contribute usefully to other sciences which are occasionally apt to get lost in the trackless exfoliations of purely dynamic systems."

"Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination."

"The equilibrium model describes systems which, in moving to an equilibrium point, typically lose organization, and then tend to hold that minimum level within relatively narrow conditions of disturbance."

"In Deutsch's view, to say that a social system is in equilibrium implies that: 1) it will return to a particular state when disturbed; 2) the disturbance is coming from outside the system; 3) the greater the disturbance the greater the force with which the system will return to its original state; 4) the speed of the system's reaction to disturbance is somehow less relevant — a sort of friction, or blemish having no place in the "ideal" equilibrium; 5) no catastrophe can happen within the system."

"The equilibrium between supply and demand is achieved only through a reaction against the upsetting of the equilibrium."

"I remember Robbins asking me if I could turn the Hayek model into mathematics... it began to dawn on me that... the model must be better specified. It was claimed that, if there were no monetary disturbance, the system would remain in 'equilibrium'. What could such an equilibrium mean? This, as it turned out, was a very deep question; I could do no more, in 1932, than make a start at answering it. I began by looking at what had been said by... Pareto and Wicksell. Their equilibrium was a static equilibrium, in which neither prices nor outputs were changing... That, clearly, would not do for Hayek. His 'equilibrium' must be progressive equilibrium, in which real wages, in particular, would be rising, so relative prices could not remain unchange … The next step in my thinking, was … equilibrium with perfect foresight. Investment of capital, to yield its fruit in the future, must be based on expectations, of opportunities in the future. When I put this to Hayek, he told me that this was indeed the direction in which he had been thinking. Hayek gave me a copy of a paper on 'intertemporal equilibrium', which he had written some years before his arrival in London; the conditions for a perfect foresight equilibrium were there set out in a very sophisticated manner."

"To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium."

"Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good."

"Maxwell... during the 1860s... showed that when the velocities reached the bell-shaped distribution, no further net change was likely. (...Ludwig Boltzmann further elaborated... and strengthened Maxwell's results). Any specific molecule would speed up or slow down, but... other molecules would change in speed to compensate. When a gas reached that state... the gas was at equilibrium. ...[T]his notion of equilibrium is precisely analogous to the Nash equilibrium in game theory. ...[J]ust as the Nash equilibrium is typically a mixed set of strategies, a gas seeks an equilibrium state with a mixed distribution of molecular velocities."

"It cannot but happen that those individuals whose functions are most out of equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces, will be those to die; and that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces. But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest. Out of the fittest thus multiplied, there will, as before, be an overthrowing of the moving equilibrium wherever it presents the least opposing force to the new incident force."

"Economic theory is devoted to the study of equilibrium positions. The concept of equilibrium is very useful. It allows us to focus on the final outcome rather than the process that leads up to it. But the concept is also very deceptive. It has the aura of something empirical: since the adjustment process is supposed to lead to an equilibrium, an equilibrium position seems somehow implicit in our observations. That is not true. Equilibrium itself has rarely been observed in real life — market prices have a notorious habit of fluctuating."

"About the Sauromatai the following tale is told:--When the Hellenes had fought with the Amazons,--now the Amazons are called by the Scythians /Oiorpata/, which name means in the Hellenic tongue"slayers of men," for "man" they call /oior/, and /pata/ means "to slay,"--then, as the story goes, the Hellenes, having conquered them in the battle at the Thermodon, were sailing away and conveying with them in three ships as many Amazons as they were able to take prisoners. These in the open sea set upon the men and cast them out of the ships; but they knew nothing about ships, nor how to use rudders or sails or oars, and after they had cast out the men they were driven about by wave and wind and came to that part of the Maiotian lake where Cremnoi stands; now Cremnoi is in the land of the free Scythians. There the Amazons disembarked from their ships and made their way into the country, and having met first with a troop of horses feeding they seized them, and mounted upon these they plundered the property of the Scythians."

"The Scythians meanwhile were not able to understand the matter, for they did not know either their speech or their dress or the race to which they belonged, but were in wonder as to whence they had come and thought that they were men, of an age corresponding to their appearance: and finally they fought a battle against them, and after the battle the Scythians got possession of the bodies of the dead, and thus they discovered that they were women. They took counsel therefore and resolved by no means to go on trying to kill them, but to send against them the youngest men from among themselves, making conjecture of the number so as to send just as many men as there were women. These were told to encamp near them, and do whatsoever they should do; if however the women should come after them, they were not to fight but to retire before them, and when the women stopped, they were to approach near and encamp. This plan was adopted by the Scythians because they desired to have children born from them."

"The young men accordingly were sent out and did that which had been commanded them: and when the Amazons perceived that they had not come to do them any harm, they let them alone; and the two camps approached nearer to one another every day: and the young men, like the Amazons, had nothing except their arms and their horses, and got their living, as the Amazons did, by hunting and by taking booty."

"Now the Amazons at midday used to scatter abroad either one by one or by two together, dispersing to a distance from one another to ease themselves; and the Scythians also having perceived this did the same thing: and one of the Scythians came near to one of those Amazons who were apart by themselves, and she did not repulse him but allowed him to lie with her: and she could not speak to him, for they did not understand one another's speech, but she made signs to him with her hand to come on the following day to the same place and to bring another with him, signifying to him that there should be two of them, and that she would bring another with her. The young man therefore, when he returned, reported this to the others; and on the next day he came himself to the place and also brought another, and he found the Amazon awaiting him with another in her company. Then hearing this the rest of the young men also in their turn tamed for themselves the remainder of the Amazons; and after this they joined their camps and lived together, each man having for his wife her with whom he had had dealings at first; and the men were not able to learn the speech of the women, but the women came to comprehend that of the men. So when they understood one another, the men spoke to the Amazons as follows: "We have parents and we have possessions; now therefore let us no longer lead a life of this kind, but let us go away to the main body of our people and dwell with them; and we will have you for wives and no others." They however spoke thus in reply: "We should not be able to live with your women, for we and they have not the same customs. We shoot with bows and hurl javelins and ride horses, but the works of women we never learnt; whereas your women do none of these things which we said, but stay in the waggons and work at the works of women, neither going out to the chase nor anywhither else. We therefore should not be able to live in agreement with them: but if ye desire to keep us for your wives and to be thought honest men, go to your parents and obtain from them your share of the goods, and then let us go and dwell by ourselves."

"The young men agreed and did this; and when they had obtained the share of the goods which belonged to them and had returned back to the Amazons, the women spoke to them as follows: "We are possessed by fear and trembling to think that we must dwell in this place, having not only separated you from your fathers, but also done great damage to your land. Since then ye think it right to have us as your wives, do this together with us,--come and let us remove from this land and pass over the river Tanaïs and there dwell."

"The young men agreed to this also, and they crossed over the Tanaïs and made their way towards the rising sun for three days' journey from Tanaïs, and also towards the North Wind for three days' journey from the Maiotian lake: and having arrived at the place where they are now settled, they took up their abode there: and from thenceforward the women of the Sauromatai practise their ancient way of living, going out regularly on horseback to the chase both in company with the men and apart from them, and going regularly to war, and wearing the same dress as the men."

"And the Sauromatai make use of the Scythian tongue, speaking it barbarously however from the first, since the Amazons did not learn it thoroughly well. As regards marriages their rule is this, that no maiden is married until she has slain a man of their enemies; and some of them even grow old and die before they are married, because they are not able to fulfil the requirement of the law."

"&(...) the Athenians replied as follows: "Though we know that this gathering was assembled for battle with the Barbarian and not for speech, yet since the Tegean has proposed to us as a task to speak of things both old and new, the deeds of merit namely which by each of our two nations have been achieved in all time, it is necessary for us to point out to you whence it comes that to us, who have been brave men always, it belongs as a heritage rather than to the Arcadians to have the chief place. First as to the sons of Heracles, whose leader they say that they slew at the Isthmus, these in the former time, when they were driven away by all the Hellenes to whom they came flying from slavery under those of Mykene, we alone received; and joining with them we subdued the insolence of Eurystheus. having conquered in fight those who then dwelt in Peloponnesus. Again when the Argives who with Polyneikes marched against Thebes, had been slain and were lying unburied, we declare that we marched an army against the Cadmeians and recovered the dead bodies and gave them burial in our own land at Eleusis. We have moreover another glorious deed performed against the Amazons who invaded once the Attic land, coming from the river Thermodon: and in the toils of Troy we were not inferior to any. But it is of no profit to make mention of these things; for on the one hand, though we were brave men in those times, we might now have become worthless, and on the other hand even though we were then worthless, yet now we might be better. Let it suffice therefore about ancient deeds; but if by us no other deed has been displayed (as many there have been and glorious, not less than by any other people of the Hellenes), yet even by reason of the deed wrought at Marathon alone we are worthy to have this privilege and others besides this, seeing that we alone of all the Hellenes fought in single combat with the Persian, and having undertaken so great a deed we overcame and conquered six-and-forty nations. Are we not worthy then to have this post by reason of that deed alone? However, since at such a time as this it is not fitting to contend for post, we are ready to follow your saying, O Lacedemonians, as to where ye think it most convenient that we should stand and opposite to whom; for wheresoever we are posted, we shallendeavour to be brave men. Prescribe to us therefore and we shallobey." They made answer thus; and the whole body of the Lacedemonians shouted aloud that the Athenians were more worthy to occupy the wing than the Arcadians. Thus the Athenians obtained the wing, and overcamethe Tegeans. (...)"

"Charles: Stay, stay thy hands! thou art an Amazon"

"And fightest with the sword of Deborah."

"Amazons were the embodiment of the strength of the feminine Principle, and now it is necessary to show the aspect of spiritual perfection of woman... it is time to change conditions in the world. 150."

"Amazon society, as mythology, history, and universal male nightmare, represents a culture in which women reign culturally supreme because of their gender. Amazon societies are also important because women were trained to be warriors—military and, presumably, in other ways as well..."

"In Amazon societies, women were mothers and their society's only warriors; mothers and their society's only hunters; mothers and their society's only political and religious leaders. No division of labor based on sex seems to have existed in such societies. Although Amazon leaders existed and queens were elected, the societies seem to have been...ones in which any woman could aspire to and achieve full human expression."

"The giant female body builder proves unthinking people wrong who believe feminine beauty can never be harmonious with well developed musculature."

"I discovered this realm by accident. I'm an old newspaper editor who has written nine books, including a novel about the legendary Amazons of Ancient Greece. While promoting it, I found sites named Amazon-Warriors.com, Deadly Amazons, Sexy Amazons, Sexy Latin Amazon, etc. — all selling brief movies of half-nude Amazons killing each other, with great attention paid to their arrow-riddled, sprawled, convulsing bodies. In Ancient Greek sculptures and ceramics, and later in Renaissance paintings, Amazons always were portrayed fighting Greek soldiers — but this new genre shows Amazons killing Amazons."

"We used to assume that the Amazons were legendary despite accounts by the ancient Greeks which placed them somewhere in Asia Minor. The Greeks were fascinated and horrified by the stories of such unnatural women, who were reputed to cut off their breasts in order to pull their bows better and to cripple their own male children. The Amazons were said to have fought successfully in battle against men until the right order was at last restored and they were defeated. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that the Amazons were not a fable believed by the ancient Greeks. Since it is now possible for archaeologists to determine the sex of skeletons, a lot of what had been assumed to be male warriors have had to be reclassified as women. Among the nomadic horse-riding warrior peoples from the steppes whom the Greeks called Scythians women appear to have been the equals of men, even when it came to fighting, and in death they lie with their weapons. Perhaps as many as 37 per cent of Scythian burials are of women warriors. Tombs of Viking women warriors from a later period have been found as well."

"The next 100 years will see the beginning of an American matriarchy—a nation of amazons in the psychological rather than the physical sense. In 500 years there will be a serious sex battle. And in 1000 years women will definitely rule this country."

"Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was inhabited by black women without a single man among them, and they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with strong passionate hearts and great virtue. The island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks."

"I have always loved Amazons. The word itself is exciting. I’ve invented variations such as the Tame-azons who tame men. Being short and a little shy as a young man, I loved the idea of big strong aggressive women who would use their strength to wrestle me down."

"Ugh, he spooned me"

"High diddle diddle, The Cat and the Fiddle, The Cow jump'd over the Moon, The little dog laugh'd to see such Craft, And the Dish ran away with the Spoon."

"Better take her to the White Queen, she'll be safe there. Spoon."

"She came in through the bathroom window, protected by a silver spoon."

"What did the fork say to the spoon? Who was that ladle I saw you with last night? That was no ladle that was my knife!"

"Do you know that's the third spoon I've heard drop this month?"

"And the cat's in the cradle with the silver spoon, Little Boy Blue, and the Man in the Moon When you coming home Dad? I don't know when — we'll get together then, Son, You know we'll have a good time then."

"Check it out, Guys. I got a Springfield spoon for my spoon collection... if it weren't for my spoons, I'd probably go insane."

"You there! What the hell is this?"

"You spoony bard!"

"A man that's fond precociously of stirring, Must be a spoon."

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I did an original sin. I poked a badger with a spoon."

"They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon."

"The Dolomphious Duck, who caught Spotted Frogs for her dinner with a Runcible Spoon"

"We found this spoon sir."

"Mike Wazowski: I think I have a plan here: using mainly spoons, we dig a tunnel under the city and release it into the wild. James P. Sullivan: … Spoons."

"A sweet lounge lizard, with a silver spoon,"

"Sheriff of Nottingham: Locksley! I'm gonna cut your heart out with a spoon. Guy of Gisbourne: Why a spoon cousin? Why not an axe? Sheriff of Nottingham: Because it's dull, you twit! It'll hurt more."

"Just when I thought things couldn't get any better... he spooned me."

"Marry, he must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil."

"That tall drink of water with the silver spoon up his ass."

"Australian: "You call that a knife? This is a knife!" Bart Simpson: "That's not a knife; that's a spoon." Australian: Alright, alright, you win. I see you've played knifey-spoony before."

"I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth"

"There is no spoon."

"They'll eat their words with a fork and spoon, and watch 'em! They'll hit the road and all be surfin' soon."

"The spoon came alive with spoon-ness and the ball with ball-ness and the block with block-ness, and the girl laughed."

"There is good evidence for a sensorimotor self, an emotional and motivational self probably represented in the right hemisphere, a social self-system, and perhaps an appetitive self. All these self-systems ordinarily work in reasonable coordination with each other, though they can be in conflict at times."

"One way to think of 'self' is as a framework that remains largely stable across many different life situations. The evidence for 'self as stable context' comes from many sources, but especially from the effects of deep disruptions of life goals. Contextual frameworks are after all largely unconscious intentions and expectations that have been stable so long that they have faded into the background of our lives. We take them for granted, just as we take our health and limbs for granted. It is only when those assumptive entitlements are lost, even for a moment, that the structure of the self seems to come into question. Losing a loved friend may be experienced as a great gap in oneself. ...It helps to take this common tragedy seriously as a basic statement about the self in human psychology."

"Oddly enough, in the sensorimotor area on top of the cortex there are four maps of a little upside-down person, distorted in shape, with every bit of skin and muscle represented in detail. This upside-down map is called the sensorimotor homunculus, the little human. The nervous system abounds in such maps, some of which appear to serve as 'self systems', organizing and integrating vast amounts of local bits of information."

"The Arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man’s self."

"The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind."

"Identities are not tangible anymore. If you look for an identity you find inequality. The self has been refracting."

"For in every action what is primarily intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of free will, it is the disclosure of his own image. Hence it comes about that every doer, in so far as he does, takes delight in doing; since everything that is desires its own being, and since in action the being of the doer is somehow intensified, delight necessarily follows... Thus, nothing acts unless [by acting] it makes patent its latent self."

"Cogito, ergo sum."

"I think, therefore I am."

"Identity is an illusion, a temporary state. Everyone is searching for it, but it’s only a brief reflection in a very shallow pool of time."

"And when you think of others, far away, think of yourself And say: I am a candle in the darkness."

"Human beings are so constituted that we take for granted the fact that a direct awareness of our past selves is preserved... We take for granted the durability of the individual self. ...But ...the preservation of memories ...is as great an exercise in magic as the transfer of memories from the dead to the living. ...How the magic works ...is still a dark mystery. ...When once the technology exists to read and write memories from one mind to another, the age of mental exploration will begin in earnest. ...[W]e will look at nature directly through the eyes of the elephant, the eagle and the whale. We will... feel in our own minds the pride of the peacock and the wrath of the lion. That magic is no greater than the magic that enables me to see the rocking horse through the eyes of the child who rode it sixty years ago."

"Everybody should fear only one person, and that person should be himself."

"If there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me."

"Self-correction begins with self-knowledge."

"The self really is an illusion—and realizing this is the basis of spiritual life."

"The best mirror is an old friend."

"It appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men to regard the self as a unit. However often and however grievously this illusion is shattered, it always mends again. The judge who sits over the murderer and looks into his face, and at one moment recognizes all the emotions and potentialities and possibilities of the murderer in his own soul and hears the murderer’s voice as his own, is at the next moment one and indivisible as the judge, and scuttles back into the shell of his cultivated self and does his duty and condemns the murderer to death. And if ever the suspicion of their manifold being dawns upon men of unusual powers and of unusually delicate perceptions, so that, as all genius must, they break through the illusion of the unity of the personality and perceive that the self is made up of a bundle of selves, they have only to say so and at once the majority puts them under lock and key, calls science to aid, establishes schizomania and protects humanity from the necessity of hearing the cry of truth from the lips of these unfortunate persons."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now — when?"

"How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!"

"In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down."

"Your identity changes with how you perceive reality."

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

"“A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation.”"

"Rose: Does something like a "self" exist inside of you?"

"Self: that invisible chain that snaps tight whenever we stray."

"Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing oneself is enlightenment."

"At the highest level of satori from which people return, the point of consciousness becomes a surface or a solid which extends throughout the whole known universe. This used to be called fusion with the Universal Mind or God. In more modern terms you have done a mathematical transformation in which your centre of consciousness has ceased to be a travelling point and has become a surface or solid of consciousness... It was in this state that I experienced "myself" as melded and intertwined with hundreds of billions of other beings in a thin sheet of consciousness that was distributed around the galaxy. A "membrane"."

"No Self, No Fear."

"The self is a simplification of the notion of soul, created to serve the purposes of the modern sciences of psychology and economics, both of which want you to be happy in a simple, straightforward way they can count."

"Music is reflection of self, we just explain it, and then we get our checks in the mail."

"Self-awareness is a complex, but carefully constructed illusion: we rightly place high value on the work of those mental agencies that appear able to reflect on the behavior of other agencies—especially our linguistic and ego-structure mechanisms."

"One's present personality cannot share all the thoughts of one's older personalities—and yet it has some sense that they exist. This is one reason why we feel that we possess an inner Self—a sort of ever-present person-friend, inside the mind, whom we can always ask for help."

"Should one think of a city as having a Self?"

"It strikes me that self, not just my self, but all self, the phenomenon of self, is perhaps one field, one consciousness – perhaps there is only one ‘I’, perhaps our brains, our selves, our entire identity is little more than a label on a waveband. We are only us when we are here. At this particular moment in space and time, this particular locus, the overall awareness of the entire continuum happens to believe it is Alan Moore. Over there – [he points to another table in the pizza restaurant] – it happens to believe it is something else. I get the sense that if you can pull back from this particular locus, this web-site if you like, then you could be the whole net. All of us could be. That there is only one awareness here, that is trying out different patterns. We are going to have to come to some resolution about a lot of things in the next twenty years time, our notions of time, space, identity."

"Self is the medium thro' which Judgment's ray Can seldom pass without being turned astray."

"We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers: and with good reason. We have never looked for ourselves — so how are we ever supposed to find ourselves? ...We remain strange to ourselves out of necessity, we do not understand ourselves, we must confusedly mistake who we are, the motto, 'everyone is furthest from himself' applies to us for ever, - we are not 'knowers' when it comes to ourselves…"

"Of course, "O'Blivion" was not the name I was born with. That's my television name. Soon, all of us will have special names — names designed to cause the cathode ray tube to resonate."

"Nosce te ipsum."

"I want to love the self that you say is you."

"May I not so much be lost as would have No time to look at myself Ever."

"I am tipsy after my own feelings themselves have become wine. I forget myself, world and all."

"The key to self-generated happiness (the only reliable kind) is the refusal to take oneself too seriously."

"This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

"Whether you become a daughter, sister, lover, partner, sister-in-law, daughter-in-law, mother, or anything else with complete honesty, the satisfaction you'll find in becoming yourself cannot be found in becoming any of these relative beings"

"I hope not to encounter such a person again on my path who is interested in everything about me except my true self."

"People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates."

"You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic; the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration."

"Human nature is so constituted that all see and judge better in the affairs of other people than in their own."

"What we do belongs to what we are; and what we are is what becomes of us."

"Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul."

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."

"Self-image is the beginning and ending of living, I think."

"I came here to offer a way to make peace with our Republican friends on this heated school lunch issue. Al Gore and I have discovered a reinventing government way, Mr. Armey, to get around this terrible rhetoric we've been flinging at you on school lunches. We have a way to save money through streamlining that does not require us to deprive our children of food. Instead of cutting food, we're going to cut the cutlery. And here's how—with a spork. Now, you know, I don't know how many of you know this, I've been eating off these things for years. I never knew they were called sporks. But that's what they are. This is the symbol of my administration. This is a cross between a spoon and a fork. No more false choice between the left utensil and the right utensil. This is not an ideological choice. This is a choice in the middle and a choice for the future. This is a big, new idea—the spork."

"Sporks, for those of you who have been spared, are the dreaded half-spoon, half-fork utensils handed out by some fast-food places that have tines too short to spear anything but are strategically placed to make sure anything liquid winds up on your necktie, blouse, shirt or navel - depending on your choice of attire."

"Get away from me fat man, or I'll spork your ass."

"The iPad falls between two stools – not quite a laptop, not quite a smartphone. In other words, it's the spork of the electronic consumer goods world."

"If there is a wrong way to do something, then someone will do it."

"If there's more than one way to do a job and one of those ways will end in disaster, then somebody will do it that way."

"If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way."

"Anything That Can Possibly Go Wrong, Does"

"Colonel Stapp's favorite takeoff on sober scientific laws — Murphy's Law, Stapp calls it — 'Everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong'"

"Murphy's Quantum Law: Anything that can, could have, or will go wrong, is going wrong, all at once."

"With diligent effort he has established that there is no statistical basis for Murphy’s Law. He has also established that he believes in it anyway."

"The cultural bias of the translator inevitably shapes his or her perception of the materials being translated, often in ways that he or she is unaware of. Culture is fundamentally a shaper of perception, after all, and perception is shaped by culture in many subtle ways. In short, it’s hard to see the forest when you’re a tree."

"Truth is universal. Perception of truth is not."

"Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you."

"That neither our Thoughts, nor Passions, nor Ideas formed by the Imagination, exist without the Mind, is what every Body will allow. And it seems no less evident that the various Sensations or Ideas imprinted on the Sense... cannot exist otherwise than in a Mind perceiving them... For as to what is said of the absolute Existence of unthinking Things without any relation to their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their Esse is Percipi, nor is it possible they should have any Existence, out of the Minds or thinking Things which perceive them."

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

"As men of inward light are wont To turn their optics in upon't."

"In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

"The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is."

"They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve."

"It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive."

"What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on what he does himself, what he sees, hears, feels, &c. or thinks, than by, any discourse of mine. Whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind, can-not miss it: and if he does not reflect, all the words in the world cannot make him have any notion of it."

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 22 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! 23"

"He gives us the very quintessence of perception."

"Whatever may have been written or thought about perception in literate cultures, it remains a special competency of consciousness, its essential faculty. Day by day, minute by minute, consciousness is preoccupied with perception. Through perception it is captivated by an external world. Without perception it would have to terminate its autopoiesis, and even dreams can occur only by suggesting perceptions."

"It seems that our age has exercised its power precisely on the level of feeling. Therefore, perhaps it could be defined as aesthetic: not because it has a privileged and direct relationship with the arts, but more essentially because its strategic field is neither cognitive nor practical, but that of feeling, of ‘aisthesis’. (p. 3)"

"That books do not take the place of experience, and that learning is no substitute for genius, are two kindred phenomena; their common ground is that the abstract can never take the place of the perceptive."

"I see the same sadness in the eyes of conformists as I do in the eyes of those convulsing radically in opposition. I talk to people that aren't like me, individually, thoughtfully. And I listen. If I walk away from a conversation thinking differently than before I entered into it, I have succeeded in doing something that doesn't compute. If I haven't interacted and challenged what I know, resulting in a change of perception, I am still running my own set of stupid old programs."

"You must choose: Do you wish to see (perceive) nothing, or do you want to see things as they really are? It is not hard to see things as they really are, it is simply a matter of tearing down walls, ridding oneself of defenses and presumption, rendering oneself vulnerable, an idiot, a fool. But it is not easy to see things as they really are, because it is painful, it is real, it requires response, it's an incredible commitment. To go nine-tenths of the way is to suffer at every moment utter madness. To go all the way is to become sane. Most people prefer blindness. But most people are a dying race."

"Being lifted out of your normal routine completely changes your perception of everything. I often think that this time twist is like taking a drug, it alters your consciousness."

"...and so in the evening released from facts I can think about distant ancient matters for example our friends beyond the sea I know they sincerely sympathize they send us flour lard sacks of comfort and good advice they don't even know their fathers betrayed us our former allies at the time of the second Apocalypse their sons are blameless they deserve our gratitude therefore we are grateful they have not experienced a siege as long as eternity those struck by misfortune are always alone the defenders of the Dalai Lama the Kurds the Afghan mountaineers..."

"It is said that by doing that [i.e abandoning Eastern Europe] they secured the imminent participation of Stalin in war against Japan. Already armed with the Atomic bomb, they did pay for Stalin so that he wouldn’t refuse to occupy Mandzhuria, to help Mao Zedong to gain power in China and Kim Ir Sen in half of Korea!… Oh, misery of political calculation! When later Mikolajczyk was expelled, when the end of Benesh and Masaryk came, Berlin was blocked, Budapest was in flames and turned silent, when ruins fumed in Korea and when the conservatives fleed from Suez – didn’t really some of those who had better memory recall for instance the case of giving away the cossacks?"

"Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids."

"If you are not ready, and did not know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways. It could knock you down, hard, or throw you against a tree or a wall. It is such a big explosion, it can smash in buildings and knock signboards over, and break windows all over town, but if you duck and cover, like Burt [the Turtle], you will be much safer."

"Protection is not a principle, but an expedient."

"To protect those who are not able to protect themselves is a duty which every one owes to society."

"A man wants no protection when his conduct is strictly right."

"Hiko Seijuro: Murder is the only art a swordsman may practice. No ornamental words can change that. You want to protect people with murder? You’ll slaughter legions so that a few may live. Many years, long before you were born, my sword was tearing asunder the lives of men. Yes, all of those men were evil, but they were human beings first and foremost, Kenshin. The world you ardently desire to enter will not know what to do with you. It will deceive you into believing that you are saving lives even as you destroy them. You will accept these lies all the while, your hands will be stained with the worst of offenses."

"It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other; that each man makes a free and purely voluntary contract with all others who are parties to the Constitution, to pay so much money for so much protection, the same as he does with any other insurance company; and that he is just as free not to be protected, and not to pay any tax, as he is to pay a tax, and be protected.But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.The proceedings of those robbers and murderers, who call themselves "the government," are directly the opposite of these of the single highwayman.In the first place, they do not, like him, make themselves individually known; or, consequently, take upon themselves personally the responsibility of their acts. On the contrary, they secretly (by secret ballot) designate some one of their number to commit the robbery in their behalf, while they keep themselves practically concealed."

"Creation means discovery of a new reality that exists but that has not yet been noticed. The word is alive again. The speaking word. The verbs are in revolt—a revolt of the masses against the representation that has always been the main weapon of the state. The power is not in the state but in the culture of the people, by the people, and for the people."

"The major element of creation is love, and the major action of love is Art."

"The artistic contribution of any nation and any age must be in terms of creation. Performers, symphony organizations, opera houses, museums, libraries - important as they are - are not enough. The arts, if they are to live, must be living arts."

"The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being."

"I made the earth and created man on it. I stretched out the heavens with my own hands, and I give orders to all their army. For this is what Jehovah says, the Creator of the heavens, the true God, the One who formed the earth, its Maker who firmly established it, who did not create it simply for nothing, but formed it to be inhabited: “I am Jehovah, and there is no one else.""

"In a time of destruction, create something: a poem, a parade, a community, a school, a vow, a moral principle; one peaceful moment."

"When a man begins to talk about creation and the origin of man, he is butting against the facts incessantly. Go on saying, Our planet and man were created — and you will be fighting against hard facts for ever, analyzing and losing time over trifling details—unable to even grasp the whole. But once admit that... both planets and man are —states for a given time; that their present appearance — geological and anthropological — is transitory and but a condition concomitant of that stage of evolution at which they have arrived in the descending cycle — and all will become plain. You will easily understand what is meant by the one and only element or principle in the universe and that androgynous; the seven-headed serpent Ananda of Vishnu, the Nag around Buddha, the great dragon eternity biting with its active head, its passive tail, from the emanations of which spring worlds, beings and things. You will comprehend the reason why the first philosopher proclaimed all — maya..."

"Man was created for the sole purpose of rejoicing in God and deriving pleasure from the splendor of His Presence; for this is true joy and the greatest pleasure that can be found."

"The history of creation, regarded by some in very early ages as probably "mythical," has, indeed, been proved to be certainly so, but the myth includes teaching of much more significance to us than the supposed history, and everyone should be glad to discover this additional proof that the aim of the writers of Scripture was not to satisfy our idle curiosity about facts which do not concern us. The doctrine of evolution promises to be of very easy assimilation by the Church."

"Creation does not cease just because there is darkness!"

"Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding."

"Say, (O Muhammad), "Travel through the land and observe how He began creation. Then Allah will produce the final creation. Indeed Allah, over all things, is competent.""

"Is not He who created the heavens and the earth Able to create the likes of them? Yes, (it is so); and He is the Knowing Creator."

"Not only did the lord make the world appear in its correct form, the lord who never changes the destinies which he determines – Enlil – who will make the human seed of the Land come forth from the earth – and not only did he hasten to separate heaven from earth, and hasten to separate earth from heaven, but, in order to make it possible for humans to grow in "where flesh came forth" [the name of a cosmic location], he first raised the axis of the world at . He did this with the help of the hoe -- and so daylight broke forth."

"If we find great difficulty from its admirable arrangement in conceiving that the Universe has existed from all eternity, and to resolve this difficulty suppose a Creator, how much more clearly must we perceive the necessity of this very Creator’s creation whose perfections comprehend an arrangement far more accurate and just."

"The genius is childlike. Like children he looks into the world as into a new creation and finds there a perennial source of wonder and delight."

"The nearest we approach God ... is as creative beings. The poet, by echoing the primary imagination, recreates. Through his work he forces those who read him to do the same, thus bringing them ... nearer to the actual being of God as displayed in action."

"All powers have two sides, the power to create and the power to destroy. We must recognize them both, but invest our gifts on the side of creation."

"After the rocket quits our air and really starts on its longer journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left."

"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances."

"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?"

"Hence, if it requires, say, a thousand years to fit for easy flight a bird which started with rudimentary wings, or ten thousand for one which started with no wings at all and had to sprout them ab initio, it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years--provided, of course, we can meanwhile eliminate such little drawbacks and embarrassments as the existing relation between weight and strength in inorganic materials. [Emphasis added.]"

"That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced."

"They'll never build them any bigger!"

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share."

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."

"But the real future of the laptop computer will remain in the specialized niche markets. Because no matter how inexpensive the machines become, and no matter how sophisticated their software, I still can't imagine the average user taking one along when going fishing."

"Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it."

"The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: " ... We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again ... My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep"."

"Democracy will be dead by 1950."

"The coming of the wireless era will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous."

"I do not myself think that any civilized nation will torpedo unarmed and defenceless merchant ships."

"No two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever fought a war against each other."

"With over fifteen types of foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself."

"Well-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires as may be done with dots and dashes of Morse code, and that, were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value."

"Every attempt to refer chemical questions to mathematical doctrines must be considered, now and always, profoundly irrational, as being contrary to the nature of the phenomena. . . . but if the employment of mathematical analysis should ever become so preponderant in chemistry (an aberration which is happily almost impossible) it would occasion vast and rapid retrogradation...."

"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Nevertheless, it has been found that there are apparent exceptions to most of these laws, and this is particularly true when the observations are pushed to a limit, i.e., whenever the circumstances of experiment are such that extreme cases can be examined. Such examination almost surely leads, not to the overthrow of the law, but to the discovery of other facts and laws whose action produces the apparent exceptions."

"No "scientific bad boy" ever will be able to blow up the world by releasing atomic energy."

"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now; All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

"640 K ought to be enough for anybody."

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

"From a little after four o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that – a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that sight and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them."

"I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent."

"You don't know about me without you have read a book called "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter."

"On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York."

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the riverbank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?'"

"I sing of arms and the man, he who, exiled by fate,first came from the coast of Troy to Italy, and to Lavinian shores – hurled about endlessly by land and sea, by the will of the gods, by cruel Juno’s remorseless anger, long suffering also in war, until he founded a city and brought his gods to Latium: from that the Latin people came, the lords of Alba Longa, the walls of noble Rome. Muse, tell me the cause: how was she offended in her divinity. how was she grieved, the Queen of Heaven, to drive a man, noted for virtue, to endure such dangers, to face so many trials? Can there be such anger in the minds of the gods?"

"To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new."

"The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door."

"My high school friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life."

"When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains."

"ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so."

"November, 1997. You take a deep breath of salty air as the first raindrops begin to spatter the pavement, and the swollen, slate-colored clouds that blanket the sky mutter ominous portents amongst themselves over the little coastal town of Anchorhead."

"Dirk Moeller didn't know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident. But he was ready to find out."

"Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes."

"One Wednesday afternoon in late September, Ann Veronica Stanley came down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite resolved to have things out with her father that very evening."

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

"Mrs Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladie's eardrops, and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs Rachel Lynde was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed any-thing odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof."

"Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file."

"Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression."

"Who is John Galt?"

"In July, my father left to take the waters; he left me with my mother and older brother at the mercy of the summer days, white from the heat and stunning."

"If you were going to give a gold medal to the least delightful person on Earth, you would have to give that medal to a person named Carmelita Spats, and if you didn’t give it to her, Carmelita Spats was the sort of person who would snatch it from your hands anyway."

"The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods."

"I've been called Bone all my life, but my name's Ruth Anne."

"Gotham City. Maybe it's all I deserve, now. Maybe it's just my time in Hell."

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."

"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."

"124 was spiteful."

"It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills."

"RIGHT HERE AND NOW, as an old friend used to say, we are in the fluid present, where clear-sightedness never guarantees perfect vision."

"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge."

"There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker."

"The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault."

"Prince Rupert rode his unicorn into the Tanglewood, peering balefully through the drizzling rain as he searched half-heartedly for the flea hiding somewhere under his breastplate."

"First the colors."

"The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp."

"A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words “Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre” and, in a shield, the World State's Motto: “Community, Identity, Stability”."

"This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast."

"I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world."

"Ba-room, ba-room, ba-room, baripity, baripity, baripity, baripity--Good."

"See the Child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire."

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

"In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the most gentle manners."

"Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse."

"Barry Fairbrother did not want to go out to dinner."

"Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space."

"It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

"I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way."

"To the east were moving waters, as far as eye could follow. To the west a sea of grass as far as wind might reach. / Waters restlessly, with every motion, slipping out of used colors for new. So that each fresh wind off the lake washed the prairie grasses with used sea-colors: the prairie moved in the light like a secondhand sea. / Till between the waters and the wind came the marked-down derelicts with the dollar signs for eyes. / Looking for any prairie portage at all that hadn't yet built a jail."

"They murdered him."

"If you're going to read this, don't bother."

"Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that."

"It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not."

"It was dark by the time I reached Bonn, and I forced myself not to succumb to the series of mechanical actions which had taken hold of me in five years of traveling back and forth: down the station steps, up the station steps, put down my suitcase, take my ticket out of my coat pocket, pick up my suitcase, hand in my ticket, cross over to the newstand, buy the evening newspaper, go outside and signal for a taxi."

"You better not never tell nobody but God."

"West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut."

"All of Gaul is divided into three parts. (Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres)"

"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom."

"A voice comes to one in the dark."

"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head."

"The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be."

"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge."

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

"One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary."

"It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed."

"It was a diamond all right, shining in the grass half a dozen feet from the blue brick wall."

"On Zothique, the last continent on Earth, the sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime, but was dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood."

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

"When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere."

"Conventions, like clichés, have a way of surviving their own usefulness."

"Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, 14 October 1905."

"This time there would be no witnesses."

"For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well."

"Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost."

"Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing."

"Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it."

"In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul."

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

"That's good thinking there, Cool Breeze."

"Elmer Gantry was drunk."

"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."

"A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead."

"In a sense, I am Jacob Horner."

"The beginning is simple to mark."

"I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story."

"By 1899 we had learned to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat."

"Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all."

"What about the teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me."

"It was a pleasure to burn."

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher."

"When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun."

"In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains."

"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death."

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die."

"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

"How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails."

"His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before."

"The Galactic Empire was dying."

"You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings."

"If youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn’t constantly run across folks today who claim that “a child don’t know anything.” A child’s brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult’s act, and figuring out its purport."

"We should start back,” Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them."

"It was like so, but wasn't."

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

"I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old."

"George is my name; my deeds have been heard of in Tower Hall, and my childhood has been chronicled in the Journal of Experimental Psychology."

"It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened."

"Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father."

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

"It was time to whip the god."

"Amergo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her."

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."

"It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one."

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard."

"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth."

"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife."

"A screaming comes across the sky."

"My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip."

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticising any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

"The old ram stands looking down over rock slides, stupidly triumphant."

"Gabby Gomez should have seen it coming. She had been blowing on that bubble for as long as anyone could remember, and it was bound to pop sooner or later. But how could Gabby have imagined that something as sweet and as simple as one teeny, tiny little piece of bubblegum could lead to such a terribly sticky situation? Even with her parents and teachers always warning that no good would come from so much gum chewing and bubble blowing. It would be hard to believe. But then again, Gabby was far from your normal, average, everyday gum chewer. She chewed bubble gum everywhere. She chewed it here. She chewed it there. She chewed it here. She chewed gum all day. Everyday. And all night. Every night."

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

"'Now what I want is, Facts.'"

"Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

"Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive."

"Harry Potter was a very unusual boy in many ways."

"The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it “the Riddle House,” even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there."

"The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive."

"It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind."

"The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane."

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream."

"In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together."

"The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest."

"The assassin came in and ordered waffles."

"Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror."

"If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me thought Moses Herzog."

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun."

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

"Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast table."

"One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister."

"In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of the three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes."

"All of this happened while I was walking around starving in Christiania – that strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him."

"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold."

""Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried, As he landed his crew with care;"

"On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back."

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

"I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled."

"When I was three and Bailey was four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed - "To Whom It May Concern" - that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson."

"I looked at my notes and I didn't like them. I'd spent three days at U.S. Robots and might as well have spent them at home with the Encyclopedia Tellurica."

"Silent as specters, the tall and the fat thief edged past the dead, noose-strangled watch-leopard, out the thick, lock-picked door of Jengao the Gem Merchant, and strolled east on Cash Street through the thin black night-smog of Lankhmar, City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes."

"The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there.""

"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler."

"For a long time, I went to bed early."

"In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mr. McKinley"

"It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man."

"I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles."

"I am an invisible man."

"The first time I read the ad, I choked and cursed and spat and threw the paper to the floor."

"Kidnapping children is never a good idea; all the same, sometimes it has to be done."

"The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain."

"—Money . . . in a voice that rustled."

"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day."

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

"Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians."

"One evening of late summer, before the present century had reached its thirteith year, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors on foot."

"It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to arrive."

"It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips."

""So you're all set for money, then?" the boy named Crow asks in his characteristic sluggish voice."

"He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum."

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

"I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination."

"In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town."

"The Scopuli had been taken eight days ago, and Julie Mao was finally ready to be shot."

"This book was born as I was hungry."

"The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was."

"The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth the effort."

"Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, "I have come from Alabama: a fur piece.""

""Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug."

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “As pretty as an airport.”"

"You wouldn’t think we’d have to leave Chicago to see a dead body."

"The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party."

"He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull."

"The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon."

"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."

"In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines."

"Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.""

"Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth."

"The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset."

"The captain never drank. Yet, toward nightfall in that smoke-colored season between Indian summer and December's first true snow, he would sometimes feel half drunken."

"My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into shapes of a different kind."

"As Gregor Samsa awoke from a night of uneasy dreaming, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

"Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress."

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

"I was born in the city of Bombay ..... once upon a time."

"When animal droppings and garbage and spoiled straw are piled up in a great heap, the rotting and moiling give forth heat."

"The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard."

"Call me Ishmael."

"The ghost was her father's parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge at Narita."

"On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window."

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."

"After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off Quinn's for an oyster supper."

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

"The night before he went to London, Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself."

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine."

"Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen."

"I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased."

"A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green."

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."

"I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army."

"Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter."

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

"He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters."

"The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge."

"As summer wheat came ripe, so did I, born at home, on the kitchen floor."

"The last drops of the thundershower had hardly ceased falling when the Pedestrian stuffed his map into his pocket, settled his pack more comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped out from the shelter of a large chestnut-tree into the middle of the road."

"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane"

"They shoot the white girl first."

"Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat"

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

"As I left the railway station at Worchester and set out on the three-mile walk to Ransom's cottage, I reflected that no one on that platform could possibly guess the truth about the man I was going to visit."

"All children, except one, grow up."

"One winter night, at half past nine, Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy, I had come home, too late to dine"

"The small boys came early to the hanging."

"The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope."

"Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."

"Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo..."

"Mr. Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder, into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust."

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."

"All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities."

"The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

"My wound is geography."

"In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful."

"Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten loreWhile I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."

"I have never begun a novel with more misgiving."

"Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest."

"The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse."

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

"The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting."

"I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte."

"I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing."

"The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

"A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment."

"Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this son of York"

"In the night-time heart of Beirut, in one of a row of general-address transfer booths, Louis Wu flicked into reality."

"When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him."

"Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the cornflake and peanut butter, not to mention caramel-cereal coffee, Bromose, Nuttolene and some seventy-five other gastronomically correct foods, paused to level his gaze on the heavyset women in front of him."

"I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me."

"Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."

"When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years."

"...and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that"

"'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.'"

"To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman."

"He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."

"I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands."

"When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen."

"Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: "Have they discovered evolution yet?""

"It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer's apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned."

"After twenty-two years of nightmare and terror, saved only by a desperate conviction of the mythical source of certain impressions, I am unwilling to vouch for the truth of that which I think I found in Western Australia on the night of July 17–18, 1935."

"This is what happened."

"There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad."

"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself."

"All this happened, more or less."

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Four shots ripped into my groin and I was off on the greatest adventure of my life!"

"Its freezing - an extraordinary 0 Fahrenfeit - and its snowing, and in the language that is no longer mine, the snow is qanik - big, almost weightless crystals falling in clumps and covering the ground with a layer of pulverized white frost."

"First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys."

"In the last years of the seventeenth century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and sting-taut with similes stretched to the snapping point."

"Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting."

"There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people."

"It was just about midnight when Stenham left Si Jaffar’s door."

"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away"

"Did you hear that? They've shut down the main reactor. We'll be destroyed for sure. This is madness!"

"I heard the mailman approach my office door, half an hour earlier than usual. He didn't sound right. His footsteps fell more heavily, jauntily, and he whistled. A new guy. He whistled his way to my office door, then fell silent for a moment. Then he laughed."

"Once upon a time when the world was young there was a Martian named Smith. Valentine Michael Smith was as real as taxes but he was a race of one."

"Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe."

"Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn."

"For a long time I would go to bed early."

"Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure."

"Probable-Possible, my black hen,She lays eggs in the Relative-when. She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive-now. Because she's unable to Postulate how."

"Less Bread! More Taxes!--and then all the people cheered again, and one man, who was more excited than the rest, flung his hat high into the air, and shouted (as well as I could make out) "Who roar for the Sub-Warden?" Everybody roared, but whether it was for the Sub-Warden, or not, did not clearly appear: some were shouting "Bread!" and some "Taxes!", but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

"True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?"

"On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor."

"Nick Naylor had been called many things since becoming the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, but until now no one had actually compared him to Satan."

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."

"The great gray beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive."

"Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond."

"Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar."

"Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man."

"In my earliest memory, my grandfather is as bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers."

"The bench on which Dobbs was sitting was not so good."

"I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life."

"Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while."

"One thing was certain, that the white kitten had nothing to do with it: -- it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it couldn't have had any hand in the mischief."

"The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us."

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."

"'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."

"The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling."

"Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested."

"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me."

"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living."

"Not every 13-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty."

"People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day."

"Granted: I AM an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me"

"The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves."

"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and razor lay crossed."

"Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P----, in Kentucky."

"Where now? Who now? When now?"

"I am the vampire Lestat."

"It's hot as hell in Martirio, but the papers on the porch are icy with the news."

"Mrs. Eva Marie Olinski always gave good answers."

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

"Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu."

"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only."

"‘He's just a pore lonesome wife-left feller,’ the more understanding said of Fitz Linkhorn, ‘losin' his old lady is what crazied him.’ / ‘That man is so contrary,’ the less understanding said, ‘if you throwed him in the river he'd float upstream.’ / For what had embittered him Fitz had no name."

"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes...."

"The telephone was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse."

"Jasper Maskelyne was drinking a glass of razor blades when the war began."

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."

"Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face."

"The primroses were over."

"Nothing ever begins."

"When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta."

"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home."

"She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him."

"Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife."

"The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east."

"It was a dark and stormy night."

"1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with."

"It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer."

"You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door."

"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."

"It is noteworthy that human concern about human extinction takes a different form from human concern (where there is any) about the extinction of non-human species. Most humans who are concerned about the extinction of non-human species are not concerned about the individual animals whose lives are cut short in the passage to extinction, even though that is one of the best reasons to be concerned about extinction (at least in its killing form). The popular concern about animal extinction is usually concern for humans –- that we shall live in a world impoverished by the loss of one aspect of faunal diversity, that we shall no longer be able to behold or use that species of animal. In other words, none of the typical concerns about human extinction are applied to non-human species extinction."

"We are now living in the era of the sixth extinction crisis in the history of the planet, the last one occurring 65 million years ago when a meteor struck the Gulf of Mexico and annihilated half of existing species including the dinosaurs. Unlike the last five, however, the sixth extinction crisis is caused by human activity."

"This time it is we who are the meteor crashing into the earth, and we keep crashing and crashing and crashing, never allowing the planet to recover. We are a meteor storm that continuously, repetitively keeps slamming into the planet, precluding adaptation and blocking recovery. If we cannot learn how to live on this planet and harmonize our existence with other species and the biocommunity as a whole, then, frankly, we have no right to live at all. If we can only exploit, plunder, and destroy, then surely our demise is for the greater good. Whereas worms, pollinators, dung beetles, and countless other species are vital to a flourishing planet, Homo sapiens is the one species the earth could well do without."

"While certainly no cultures, peoples, and social systems have been as devastating to animals and the environment as modern capitalism, there was no Edenic time, no Golden Era, when humans lived in peace and harmony with one another, other species, and their natural surroundings. Problems like species extinction, resource depletion, desertification, and overall mindless destruction of life and ecosystems did not originate in European modernity but rather have deep roots in antiquity and prehistory."

"The human species is driving itself [at] full speed into an evolutionary dead-end. We are destroying the planet and everything we do murders animals and dismantles ecosystems. We have lost our moral compass. We think in terms of profit and power rather than ethics and compassion. We no longer have reverence for life or any sense of connection with the natural world. We see ourselves as conquerors of nature rather than citizens of a vast biocommunity. We are technologically sophisticated and morally stunted. We have no conception of the importance of nonhuman life forms in sustaining ecosystems and no sensitivity to the inherent value of species outside of our exploitative purposes. We fail to realize that what we do to animals and the earth, we do to ourselves. And all the while, we live in a fantasy land of entertainment and distractions whereby we focus more on the sex lives and surgical makeovers of movie stars than the most consequential changes unfolding in this planet in the last sixty-five million years."

"We have since built museums to celebrate the past, and spent decades studying prehistoric lives. And if all this has taught us anything, it is this: no species lasts forever."

"EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future state."

"Global biodiversity decline is best understood as growing numbers of people and their rapidly expanding economic support systems crowding out other species. Conservation biologists standardly list five main direct drivers of biodiversity loss: habitat loss, of species, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. The ' found that in recent decades habitat loss was the leading cause of terrestrial , while overexploitation () was the most important cause of marine losses. All five direct drivers are important, on land and at sea, and all are made worse by larger and denser human populations."

"Much less frequently mentioned are, however, the ultimate drivers of those immediate causes of biotic destruction, namely, human overpopulation and continued population growth, and overconsumption, especially by the rich. These drivers, all of which trace to the fiction that perpetual growth can occur on a finite planet, are themselves increasing rapidly."

"Life has now entered a sixth mass extinction. This is probably the most serious environmental problem, because the loss of a species is permanent, each of them playing a greater or lesser role in the living systems on which we all depend . The species extinctions that define the current crisis are, in turn, based on the massive disappearance of their component populations, mostly since the 1800s. The massive losses that we are experiencing are being caused, directly or indirectly, by the activities of Homo sapiens. They have almost all occurred since our ancestors developed agriculture, some 11,000 y ago. At that time, we numbered about 1 million people worldwide; now there are 7.7 billion of us, and our numbers are still rapidly growing. As our numbers have grown, humanity has come to pose an unprecedented threat to the vast majority of its living companions."

"…we are fighting to leave as much biological heritage as we can for nature to do whatever it will do when we fall on our own sword and stop being the worst plague that ever existed—which is sadly what we are, collectively, in spite of the good and beautiful things that humans are also capable of."

"Let's not be too quick to blame the human race for everything. We must remember that a great many species of animals became extinct before man ever appeared on earth. At the same time it is probably true that when two husky representatives of Homo sapiens, with clubs, corner the last two birds of a species, no matter how far they have or have not evolved, both the phylogeny and the ontogeny of those birds are, to all intents and purposes, over."

"Capitalism is not necessarily more immoral than previous social systems with regard to cruelty to humans and the gratuitous destruction of nature. As a mode of production and a social system, however, capitalism requires people to be destructive of the environment. Three destructive aspects of the capitalist system stand out when we view this system in relation to the extinction crisis: 1) capitalism tends to degrade the conditions of its own production; 2) it must expand ceaselessly in order to survive; 3) it generates a chaotic world system, which in turn intensifies the extinction crisis."

"It is clear that only a giant change in human culture can significantly limit the extinction crisis. Humanity must face the need to reduce birth rates further, especially among the overconsuming wealthy and middle classes. In addition, a reduction of wasteful consumption will be necessary, accompanied by a transition away from environmentally malign technological choices such as private automobiles, plastic everything, and treating billionaires to space tourism. Otherwise growthmania will win; the human enterprise will not undergo the needed shrinkage, but will continue to expand, destroying most of biodiversity and further wrecking the life-support systems of humanity until global civilization collapses"

"The Brontosaurus had a brain no bigger than a crisp. The Dodo had a stammer, and the Mammoth had a lisp. The Auk was just too awkward. Now they're none of them alive; Each one, like Man, had shown himself unfitted to survive. Their story points a moral; now it's we who wear the pants. The extinction of these species holds a lesson for us ants."

"The human race currently consumes some 40% of the earth’s photosynthetic capacity. This monopoly on the earth’s resources is having a devastating effect. We are seeing the extinction of some 140 species every day, some thousands of times higher than the normal background rate. Today, right now, we are seeing extinction rates unparalleled in the history of the earth. We are undeniably in the midst of the seventh mass extinction event in the history of the earth — the Holocene Extinction. Unlikely previous extinction events, however, this one is driven by a single species. This is the true danger of overpopulation, not our inability to feed a growing population. As much as we would deny it, we depend on the earth to live. Dwindling biodiversity threatens the very survival of our species. We are literally cutting the ground out from under our feet. Increasing food production only increases the population; our current attitudes about food security has locked us into what Daniel Quinn called a “Food Race,” by comparison to the Arms Race of the Cold War."

"The introduction of a new alpha predator can have dramatic effects, even causing cascades of extinction. This is not necessarily because the alpha predators overhunt or are even in the least bit maladaptive; this is simply the nature of alpha predators and how they relate in any given ecology. When humans came to Australia and the Americas, they were as harmless as wolves, lions, or any other big mammalian predator. Their presence caused cascades of changes throughout the ecosystem. Given that it was also a period of major climate change, a great number of species that were already under stress adapting to the new climate were tipped over the edge into extinction by the further ecological changes created by the adaptation of a new alpha predator. Our ancestors were hardly noble savages; but neither were they bloodthirsty killers bent on the destruction of all life on earth. They were animals, like any other."

"Since 1970, overall numbers are down by 69%. Livestock and the human beings who farm them now account for 96% of all the mammals on Earth. The Sumatran tiger, the Bornean orangutan and the hellbender salamander are among the million animal and plant species judged perilously close to extinction."

"The extinction of the Australian Megafauna was probably the first significant mark Homo sapiens left on our planet."

"At the time of the Cognitive Revolution, the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over fifty kilograms. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution, only about one hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet's big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing or iron tools."

"The elephant bird and the giant lemurs, along with most of the other large animals of Madagascar, suddenly vanished about 1.500 years ago - precisely when the first humans set foot on the island."

"Don't believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology."

"The First Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the foragers, was followed by the Second Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the farmers, and gives us an important perspective on the Third Wave Extinction, which industrial activity is causing today. Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology. Perhaps if more people were aware of the First Wave and Second Wave extinctions, they’d be less nonchalant about the Third Wave they are part of. If we knew how many species we’ve already eradicated, we might be more motivated to protect those that still survive. This is especially relevant to the large animals of the oceans. Unlike their terrestrial counterparts, the large sea animals suffered relatively little from the Cognitive and Agricultural Revolutions. But many of them are on the brink of extinction now as a result of industrial pollution and human overuse of oceanic resources. If things continue at the present pace, it is likely that whales, sharks, tuna and dolphins will follow the diprotodons, ground sloths and mammoths to oblivion. Among all the world’s large creatures, the only survivors of the human flood will be humans themselves, and the farmyard animals that serve as galley slaves in Noah’s Ark."

"Nature cannot be destroyed. Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, but in so doing opened the way forward for mammals. Today, humankind is driving many [if not all] species into extinction and might even annihilate itself. But other organisms are doing quite well. Rats and cockroaches, for example, are in their heyday. These tenacious creatures would probably creep out from beneath the smoking rubble of a nuclear Armageddon, ready and able to spread their DNA. Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back gratefully on the decimation wrought by humankind, just as we today can thank that dinosaur-busting asteroid."

"SEVENTY THOUSAND YEARS AGO, HOMO sapiens was still an insignificant animal minding its own business in a corner of Africa. In the following millennia it transformed itself into the master of the entire planet and the terror of the ecosystem. Today it stands on the verge of becoming a god, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction. Unfortunately, the Sapiens regime on earth has so far produced little that we can be proud of. We have mastered our surroundings, increased food production, built cities, established empires and created far-flung trade networks. But did we decrease the amount of suffering in the world? Time and again, massive increases in human power did not necessarily improve the well-being of individual Sapiens, and usually caused immense misery to other animals. In the last few decades we have at last made some real progress as far as the human condition is concerned, with the reduction of famine, plague and war. Yet the situation of other animals is deteriorating more rapidly than ever before, and the improvement in the lot of humanity is too recent and fragile to be certain of. Moreover, despite the astonishing things that humans are capable of doing, we remain unsure of our goals and we seem to be as discontented as ever. We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles – but nobody knows where we’re going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction. Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?"

"We are experiencing an accelerated obliteration of the planet’s life-forms — an estimated 8,760 species die off per year — because, simply put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food and other resources. The , , , , , , and are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E. O. Wilson says, is "the monster on the land." Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear. Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the , the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic — the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."

"Life may be unique to Earth. Even if single-celled organisms can readily evolve in conditions that exist on millions or billions of other planets, we have no actual evidence that complex, multi-cellular life exists anywhere else in the vastness of space. Bacteria appeared on our planet roughly 3.7 billion years ago; by 2 billion years ago, the tree of life was branching into what would become a stunning web of creatures, huge and tiny. Plants, animals, and fungi proliferated, formed relationships, and produced ecosystems. The result was a planet full of life, and one whose atmosphere, temperature, chemical composition, and weather are all largely shaped by the side effects of the strategies that organisms use to thrive. However, in a matter of mere centuries, we humans are unraveling the web of life and triggering a mass extinction event that is likely to impact virtually all species on the Earth, and to destabilize the fundamental planetary systems upon which we too depend. Mass extinctions have happened before. The web of life is, paradoxically, both resilient and fragile. On five previous occasions (most recently the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction 65 million years ago) our world lost up to 95 percent of its species. The current wave of extinctions that’s being triggered by humans is, so far, not on the same scale, but it is proceeding far more rapidly than previous ones. We humans represent a new kind of threat to the rest of life: our development of language, tool-making, and fire-spreading rendered us hyper-effective hunters and foragers. Tens of thousands of years ago, we were already reshaping landscapes and impacting wildlife. Our ability to expand our own habitat has generated unwanted results: some prey animals were hunted to extinction, and in a process of competitive exclusion, humans caused many local extirpations by appropriating the resources of habitats for themselves. These unintended effects then impacted humans themselves, often by compromising their food supply. Therefore, over time, humans who stayed in any given ecosystem long enough to learn its limits embraced cultural traditions to moderate their demands on it. However, since the start of the European conquest of most of the rest of the world, and especially since society’s rapid adoption of fossil fuels starting around 1800, human impact on the biosphere has accelerated at a breathtaking pace. Expanding human populations and associated land use changes, industrial agriculture, industrial forestry, industrial-scale fishing, proliferation of toxic chemicals, and climate change are decimating native species of plants and animals around the world. According to some estimates, populations of many non-domesticated species have declined, on average, by 70 percent, and the pace of species extinctions has quickened to 100 or more times the usual or “background” rate. What will the world come to look like if these trends continue? In one scenario, Earth will have become fully domesticated in a century or two, so that humans and machines control planetary systems (including climate patterns, ocean currents, the water cycle, and the carbon cycle). In this possible case, very little of wild nature will be left. In the far more likely scenario, the unraveling of the web of life and the destabilization of planetary systems will lead to the collapse not just of biodiversity but civilization as well. Is it too late to save biodiversity and the living Earth? … I’ll argue that only a collective effort to put wild nature at the center of our priorities will prevent its devastation and the possible disappearance of our own species, among countless others."

"A few years ago, virtually no one was talking about this . . . everyone just assumed that the web of life would always be intact. Now the situation is so severe that the United Nations has set up a special task force to monitor it: the (IPBES). In 2019, it published its – a groundbreaking assessment of the planet's living species, drawing on 15,000 studies from around the world and representing the consensus of hundreds of scientists. It found an accelerating rate of global , unprecedented in human history."

"It's no wonder that we react so nonchalantly to the ever-mounting statistics about the crisis of mass extinction. We have a habit of taking this information with surprising calm. We don't weep. We don't get worked up. Why? Because we see humans as fundamentally separate from the rest of the living community. Those species are out there, in the environment. They aren't in here; they aren't part of us. It is not surprising that we behave this way. After all, this is the core principle of capitalism: that the world is not really alive, and it is certainly not our kin, but rather just stuff to be extracted and discarded – and that includes most of the human beings living here too. From its very first principles, capitalism has set itself at war against life itself."

"Humans have caused extinctions since leaving Africa 60,000+ years ago; in the last twelve millennia post-foraging societies have systematically increased their exploitation and control of the Earth. Humans groups rearrange the natural world in their own image, taking the homes and food of other species for their own."

"Our leaders willfully ignore the wisdom and the models of every other species on the planet—except of course those that have gone extinct."

"Beginnings, it’s said, are apt to be shadowy. So it is with this story, which starts with the emergence of a new species maybe two hundred thousand years ago. The species does not yet have a name—nothing does—but it has the capacity to name things. As with any young species, this one’s position is precarious. Its numbers are small, and its range restricted to a slice of eastern Africa. Slowly its population grows, but quite possibly then it contracts again—some would claim nearly fatally—to just a few thousand pairs. The members of the species are not particularly swift or strong or fertile. They are, however, singularly resourceful. Gradually they push into regions with different climates, different predators, and different prey. None of the usual constraints of habitat or geography seem to check them. They cross rivers, plateaus, mountain ranges. In coastal regions, they gather shellfish; farther inland, they hunt mammals. Everywhere they settle, they adapt and innovate. On reaching Europe, they encounter creatures very much like themselves, but stockier and probably brawnier, who have been living on the continent far longer. They interbreed with these creatures and then, by one means or another, kill them off. The end of this affair will turn out to be exemplary. As the species expands its range, it crosses paths with animals twice, ten, and even twenty times its size: huge cats, towering bears, turtles as big as elephants, sloths that stand fifteen feet tall. These species are more powerful and often fiercer. But they are slow to breed and are wiped out. Although a land animal, our species—ever inventive—crosses the sea. It reaches islands inhabited by evolution’s outliers: birds that lay footlong eggs, pig-sized hippos, giant skinks. Accustomed to isolation, these creatures are ill-equipped to deal with the newcomers or their fellow travelers (mostly rats). Many of them, too, succumb. The process continues, in fits and starts, for thousands of years, until the species, no longer so new, has spread to practically every corner of the globe. At this point, several things happen more or less at once to allow Homo sapiens, as it has come to call itself, to reproduce at an unprecedented rate. In a single century the population doubles; the doubles again, and then again. Vast forests are razed. Humans do this deliberately, in order to feed themselves. Less deliberately, they shift organisms from one continent to another, reassembling the biosphere."

"We are already experiencing huge cost externalities from population hypergrowth and profligate fossil fuel use in the form of environmental devastation. Of the earth’s estimated 10 million species, 300,000 have vanished in the past fifty years. Each year, 3,000 to 30,000 species become extinct, an all-time high for the last 65 million years. Within one hundred years, between one-third and two-thirds of all birds, animals, plants, and other species will be lost. Nearly 25 percent of the 4,630 known mammal species are now threatened with extinction, along with 34 percent of fish, 25 percent of amphibians, 20 percent of reptiles, and 11 percent of birds. Even more, species are having population declines. Environmental scientists speak of an “omega point” at which the vast interconnected networks of Earth’s ecologies are so weakened that human existence is no longer possible."

"We already have a planet -- Earth! Right here! And it's going to be here for at least another twenty years! Fifteen, if you use a plastic straw!"

"We are currently, in a systematic manner, exterminating all non-human living beings."

"There are no known complex organisms from other epochs that could throw long-range weapons they had fashioned. It allowed our ancestors to kill animals without touching them or they themselves being touched. To kill something, other organisms must catch them with their feet, claws, or teeth. Spiders could be considered an exception because of catching prey with webs. However, they still must kill their prey manually. The necessity of dispatching prey at close quarters levels the predator-prey playing field. The inability of any other known organism to throw was likely pivotal in providing relatively stable ecosystems for millions of years, before humans developed the throwing ability, only interrupted by geological or astrological events. While at first it was throwing rocks and spears, over the millennia we’ve gradually learned how to separate ourselves further and further from both predators and prey. The first improvement was the atlatl, or woomera, an implement allowing more energy and greater velocity to be applied to the throwing of a spear. The throwing arm together with the atlatl acts to increase the length of a lever. The premise is the same with fishing poles. Although challenging, it is possible to catch fish simply by hand-throwing a fishing line with a lure or bait. Native fishermen have been doing it for decades. However, much more line speed and distance can be attained using a fishing rod because it increases the length of the lever. Or look no further than your local park: ball throwers with those relatively new but already ubiquitous plastic grabbing sticks use the exact same principle for tossing balls for dogs to retrieve. The atlatl is believed to have been in use by early hominids in some parts of the world 30,000 years ago. The next significant step in weaponry was the bow and arrow. The oldest known evidence of arrows comes from the Sibudu Cave in South Africa. The bone-and-stone arrowheads found there are approximately 60,000–70,000 years old. Despite the early time frame, archery doesn’t appear to have been in widespread use until after the planet had lost most of its large mammals. The bow was an important weapon for both hunting and warfare from about 8,000 years ago to the mid-17th century. Bow-and-arrow use was almost certainly contributory to the uptick in animal and bird extinctions during that time frame. More recently, guns, bombs, and weaponized drones kill with limited or no interaction between the aggressor and victim. Humans have essentially turned killing into an enhanced video game."

"For the last 2.6 million years, the planet has experienced severe climatic fluctuations, during which the Earth waxed and waned between frigid ice ages and warm interglacial periods. Until approximately 60,000 years ago, there were few apparent extinctions. Suddenly, hundreds of species of mammals, flightless birds, and reptiles went extinct largely over the course of 50,000 years. These extinctions marked the beginning of a tidal wave of disappearing species that is cresting today. Because large body size is correlated with slow breeding, the largest animals are more susceptible to extinction."

"The numerous insults on the planet that humanity has created over the last 100 thousand years have achieved the capacity to greatly exacerbate any natural or human-caused event. We’re seeing this around the planet with more and more frequency. Global warming didn’t start the wildfires in Spain, Portugal, the United States, Canada, and Australia, but thanks to climate change, instead of inconsequential wildfires, they became roaring infernos. Hurricanes have always happened, but climate change is making their effect much more significant. Most people don’t understand that human population density, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity were the likely drivers of coronavirus becoming a pandemic. A loss in biodiversity usually results in a few species replacing many. These few species tend to be the ones hosting pathogens that can spread to humans and remaining animals. Rather than a loss of biodiversity, the problem is a highly contagious virus and a lack of commitment to wearing masks and social distancing. For most people […] those were wildfire, hurricane, and virus problems. When peering through the small keyhole of their existence, climate change, biodiversity loss, or population density is nowhere in sight."

"On a finite planet where a great number of organisms share the same space and depend on the same finite products of photosynthesis, the continuous expansion of one species results in the contraction of others. There is nothing more sacred to humans than our pets. While human overpopulation is occasionally mentioned in passing, pets always receive a free pass."

"Around two million years ago, a staggering ninety percent of the mammalian biomass in Africa and Asia was made up of elephants, hippos, and their rhinoceros-like buddies. This impressive lineup included at least nine species of elephants, four species of hippos, two species of rhinos, and a large cousin of the rhino-tapir-horse family known as Ancylotherium. The biggest shake-up in megafaunal species in Africa happened about 1.4 million years ago, roughly 300,000 years after Homo erectus made its debut and Australopithecus had disappeared. Since then, Africa and Asia have continued to experience megafaunal extinction events in fits and starts. Interestingly, during this two-million-year stretch, no large animal species went extinct on continents devoid of hominids, highlighting a unique and telling chapter in the evolutionary tale of the respective regions. The biodiversity of megafaunal species that roamed Europe and North America before humans showed up paints a fascinating picture—species like woolly mammoths, mastodons, and woolly rhinoceroses may have made up about 50% of the mammalian biomass in these regions. While this figure is less than what we saw in the Afroasian region, the megafaunal lineup in Europe and North America included some hefty ungulates that outclassed today’s bison in size. For instance, three species of bison, including the giant bison (Bison latifrons), were larger than the modern bison (Bison bison), but were swept away following the arrival of Homo sapiens. Although primary productivity remained unchanged with the extinction of the largest megafaunal animals, their loss created a vacuum that was quickly filled by a surge in populations of smaller critters, like bison and wildebeest. The absence of very large animals led to noticeably different effects on plants and soils, as more numerous smaller animals took their place. Overlooking the finite nature of the planet's primary productivity and the unique impacts of these smaller, more abundant species has fueled the persistence of [these] ecological myths […]. These misconceptions have led to a mixed bag of largely ineffective conservation efforts—some genuinely well-intentioned and others disingenuous."

"Megafaunal extinctions were just one act in the grand drama of the sixth mass extinction, which has been and will continue to include a plethora of plants and animals."

"When we look at the extinction of megafaunal animals in isolation, it ignores the chain reaction that led to the loss of tens of thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands, of soil microorganisms and other tiny creatures."

"Long before the 20th century, the trajectory was set. Mesopotamia formalized private property and profit. Rome industrialized deforestation, mining, and overfishing. Every civilization reshaped ecosystems to sustain its growth and eventually collapsed when the foundations that supported it were exhausted. Deep time offers an even harder truth: humans began erasing biodiversity more than two million years ago. Civilization didn’t invent destruction; it scaled it. What changed in the last century was the speed, the technology, and the reach of decision-makers who could alter entire biomes with a single signature."

"The most wretched of all current trends is of course the mass extinction of organisms, which has been escalating for decades and is still increasing in magnitude."

"We are such great innovators that we have devised a way to be so successful that we are eliminating other species by transforming their habitat into ours serving only us and a few (both domesticated and wild) species who can tolerate living with us. By doing so, we are sawing off the limb upon which we are perched because those species support our own existence. Is it really any surprise that we hear constantly about alligator attacks, bear attacks, whale attacks, and shark attacks? Those four links go mainly to fatal attacks and not just injuries sustained by such attacks, but it should be fairly obvious to even the casual observer that we often forget that we don't truly "own" the areas where these creatures live. They live there, too, and we are encroaching upon their habitat. We have created the illusion in our minds that we are "safe" in these areas simply because we have labeled the land "ours." Nature doesn't recognize our labels, unfortunately, and one must be aware of this fact whenever [we enter] areas where wild animals live."

"Humans… have pursued our distinctively destructive path for a sliver of the total biotime in this corner of the galaxy. This most recent reshaping of nature began 3.3 million years ago, when an australopithecine made stone tools to butcher animal carcasses on the shores of the Jade Sea, or Lake Turkana, in Kenya. Weapons came later, with the use of stone-tipped thrusting spears by another hominid in South Africa 500,000 years ago, and the development of the bow and arrow by early humans 71,000 years ago. Projectile weapons, like the bow and arrow, allowed us to kill large animals without being excessively brave. Through a combination of these weapons, coupled with traps and fire, humans saw to the extinction of woolly mammoths, mastodons, sabre-toothed cats and ground sloths as the ice sheets receded and we pursued the animals to their last redoubts. A South American armadillo-like animal called Glyptodon was another victim of the genocide. This slow-moving vegetarian was as big as a Volkswagen Beetle and served as an easy target for hunters who ate its meat and crawled into its enormous shells for shelter. For many years, biologists argued that climate change was the most important factor in these extinctions, but more and more evidence points to the correspondence between the arrival of humans and the disappearance of large mammals. The case was pretty obvious for the spectacular bird life of islands, with a giant turkey called Sylviornis disappearing from New Caledonia soon after the prehistoric Lapita people arrived in their canoes 3,500 years ago, and the elimination of numerous species of flightless moa when the Maori reached New Zealand around AD 1300. Extinction has been reworking nature from its beginnings, but no animal has come close to having the impact that humans have had. With remarkable speed, our evolution walloped life with the power of the asteroid that obliterated the dinosaurs. The average size of mammals increased steadily throughout the Cenozoic Era that followed the crash of the Chicxulub asteroid in the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago. Then, around 100,000 years ago, the big animals began to disappear. The extinctions accelerated 50,000 years ago and the total mass of wild mammals has now plunged to a sixth of its pre-human maximum. According to some models, the domestic cow is on track to become the largest remaining mammal. Scepticism surrounding these doom-laden predictions about the precarious nature of nature is understandable. It takes imagination to escape from the influence of the diminishing expectations of each generation. Nobody has seen a live moa since the fourteenth century and so their absence does not upset New Zealanders today. The last passenger pigeon, named Martha, died… in 1914, and the most recent sky-darkening mass migrations of these birds took flight in the nineteenth century. We cannot miss something that has never existed for us. We read about extinction as an approaching horror and ecosystem damage as a work in progress rather than a done deal. But the destruction is unabated. Despite the publicity given to deforestation, tropical woodlands continue to disappear at an annual rate of 2.7 million hectares in Brazil, 1.3 million hectares in Indonesia and 0.6 million hectares in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Turning to the direct effects of climate change, one-third of the world’s coral reefs were damaged by high water temperatures in 2016. More than 90 per cent of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef was affected by the process called bleaching, which happens when the dinoflagellate algae abandon their animal partners in the exquisite coral symbiosis. When reefs recover from bleaching, the original animals are replaced by sluggish coral species that support impoverished communities of marine life. This is not a normal phenomenon."

"In the 1970s, we started noticing extinctions taking place right before our eyes. Attenborough makes the point that no one wanted animals to become extinct, but that lack of awareness and a focus on personal benefits obscured the unfolding tragedy. Having largely eliminated or isolated ourselves from predators, achieved control over diseases, and mastered food to order, nothing was left to restrict or stop us."

"If we do not devise an intentional method of suppressing human exceptionalism, we will foul the nest to the point of self-harm (sound familiar?) by precipitating an ecosystem collapse. In this unfortunate, unwitting undoing, we will have answered evolution’s question: how far can intelligence be pushed as a survival strategy before it is self-terminating? Or worse than self-terminating: taking numerous other innocent species down with us."

"Our fossil fuel bonanza has left our ecosystem in a perilous state. We have destroyed vast forests and habitat, polluted water and soil, kicked off a rapid climate trend that natural systems may not adapt to quickly enough, and basically overrun the planet. […] 96% of mammal mass on the planet is now in the form of humans and our livestock, leaving a paltry 4% of wild mammals—land and sea. Roughly 70% of vertebrate numbers have vanished since 1970 (undoubtedly a higher fraction if the survey had started in 1700). Forests are also way down."

"…because of megafauna extinctions, being the only species to use fire, and the fact that an ability for symbolic representation and complex speech might be the recipe for a runaway species capable of rapid cultural evolution and technology development out of step with the rest of the community of life, and therefore maladapted to long-term co-existence in ecological relationship. If it looks like we’re winning the “battle against nature” right now, that’s actually what losing looks like."

"Compared to the human accomplishment of driving the globe into a sixth mass extinction... elephants are shamefully worthless and lacking a final goal, as are all 10 million species on the planet—including us."

"Having initiated a sixth mass extinction, carried out by access to energy, continued powering of modernity (via electricity, for instance) most likely means compounding ecological harm, piling up accelerating extinctions, under which conditions high-maintenance humans are unlikely to fare well."

"The scale and rapidity of these changes create credible concern that we are witnessing (causing) the beginning of a sixth mass extinction. Earth has been slapped hard, out of nowhere, at alarming speed. Although the evidence of its reeling is all around us, it is far too soon to appreciate the severity of what we have set in motion. A hard slap on the face looks red in the moment, but later appears bruised and might turn into a black eye. We are currently only seeing the instant, real-time response and not the protracted bruising to follow, which will take a long time to play out as many wild populations glide toward extinction and domino-effect failures pile up. […] Ecological collapse is extremely dangerous to large, complex, hungry, high-maintenance animals like humans. We are not likely to fare well in a sixth mass extinction of our own making."

"We have loads of evidence for rapidly declining ecological health, in virtually every measure. Accelerating biodiversity loss rates are consistent with the initiation of a sixth mass extinction. Modernity has every appearance of being grossly unsustainable."

"Extinction rates are up 100–1,000 times the background rate—and possibly higher [and] we are currently witnessing the highest extinction rate since the Chicxulub impact that took out dinosaurs 65 million years ago. […] Annual population declines tend to be in the 1–2% range among mammals, birds, fish, and insects, accumulating to average declines of more than half in less than half a century."

"Finding out that 1 million species face extinction without radical corrective changes in human behavior is akin to finding out you have a fatal disease. One day you have a thousand problems; the next, you have just one. Nothing in today’s headlines compares to the catastrophic potential posed by climate change and the decimating effects of careless consumerism around the globe."

"In what year will the human population grow too large for the Earth to sustain? The answer is about 1970, according to research by the . In 1970, the planet's 3 and a half billion people were . But on this New Year's Day, the population is 8 billion. Today, wild plants and animals are running out of places to live."

"Indeed, in the long run, extinctions of species are as inevitable as the deaths of individual animals, and it may be that the causes of extinctions are as varied as the causes of individual deaths. A wave of extinctions—a sudden diminution in the number of species—is analogous to a sudden big drop in the size of a human population, an event that deserves to be explained even though the individual people would inevitably have died sooner or later anyway. Catastrophes in human populations have many causes: war, famine, and pestilence are the possibilities that first spring to mind. There may be equally many causes for evolutionary catastrophes, as waves of extinctions could well be called. Another possibility, however, is that extinctions come in waves that are part of a recurring cycle. It would then be the cycle itself, rather than each individual wave in the cycle, that would need to be explained. If there is such a cycle, it presumably follows a cycle in the inorganic world, such as cyclic climactic changes."

"Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century."

"Given that human societies, before they migrated out of Africa, in significant numbers were as close to sustainable as we’re likely to get, that is the best we can hope for, at least for future generations. But let’s not pretend that there is some sustainable way of life for future humans (our species) that we could hope they would attain. We’ve done that experiment. Humans didn’t live in harmony with nature. They got close, but ultimately couldn’t restrain themselves from causing some extinctions and then many more extinctions when they followed their migratory traits."

"Species are threatened because of over-exploitation, habitat destruction, climate change, and so on. Efforts to reverse, or stall, a decline in population would have to go on indefinitely (i.e. would have to be sustainable) unless all of the factors involved in the decline are removed. But modernity is the cause of all of those factors so conservation will inevitably fail until modernity ends (and then there would be no conservation efforts with humans needing to be more involved in saving their own lives)."

"Long before the first kings, priests, or merchants inscribed their deeds in clay or papyrus, humans were altering ecosystems simply by moving through them. The great dispersal of our species out of Africa, beginning roughly 60,000–70,000 years ago, reshaped continents. Wherever humans arrived, waves of extinctions followed: giant marsupials in Australia, mammoths and mastodons across the Americas, enormous birds in New Zealand and Madagascar. These losses were not caused by Western civilization, or any civilization at all, but by small bands of foragers equipped with nothing more than stone tools, spears, and fire."

"Since after extinction no one will be present to take responsibility, we have to take full responsibility now."

"[The transition from Australopithecus to Homo] marked the shift from hominins that depend heavily on plants to ones that depend more on meat… Being a good predator is a general feature of our genus."

"[We] cannot bring back species from extinction… We are still driving 150 species to oblivion daily… Collapse will not change anything in our attitudes. As long as humans remain genetically identical to who they are today, I’m afraid they will collapse again, and again, after this coming collapse, and probably risk complete extinction. This is not speculation, but simply looking at historical evidence: over thousands of years we have collapsed pretty much constantly—anthropologists have documented the collapse of more than 82 (!!!) civilisations. We are now at the stage of a systemic, global collapse because we are one, united global economic machine that has used up everything on the planet. Our species is wired for growth, and we are designed to go through boom-and-bust cycles. What comes after the next bust will be a significantly smaller civilisation… There will be another, smaller boom, then collapse again. With each collapse many… “species” risk disappearance."

"[The Sixth Extinction] did not happen yesterday because we suddenly became aware of the dangers of global warming. It began 50,000 years ago when a relatively hairless primate stumbled out of equatorial Africa and began wiping out the megafauna of the time. Wherever this creature (our ancestor) went, their arrival was followed by large die-outs of megafauna. Primitive hominids were well-organized, efficient, slaughter crews. As they advanced, the mammoth, sabre-toothed cats, cave bears, giant sloths, camels, horses, and wholly rhinos fell to their stone weapons and deliberately set fires. The extinction of all of these great mega-species is directly attributable to "primitive" human hunters. The hunting down of the mega-fauna was followed by the advent of agriculture and the domestication of selected animals. Domesticated cows, goats, sheep, and pigs grew in numbers and denuded large areas of grasslands. Irrigation systems began to toxify land. Then agriculture was followed by industrial activities, and finally, by the burning off of vast amounts of fossil fuels."

"The diary ... is the unfathomable document of a life never lived, the book of a life in whose time everything that we experienced inadequately is transformed into experience perfected."

"DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate to himself without blushing."

"For practical rules for the culture of the intellect perhaps none can be given that are good for all but there are two expedients that may do such good service to very many young men that I will venture to name them."

"Diaries have been a rich source of material for me. Not the events recorded in such journals, but the mental attitude, the moral standards, and the feelings of people at the time. It is all right to imagine, but the imagination must have a takeoff point, it must have a basis in fact."

"If your journal consists of the best moments of your life and reading, then rereading it will be like walking a high mountain trail that goes from peak to peak without the intervening descent into the trough of routine. Just reading such a journal of high points will tighten your strings and raise your pitch."

"The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed suddenly into magnificent sense."

"When events and circumstances which have influenced us pass away in the course of time, we are unable to bring back and renew the particular mood or state of feeling which they aroused in us: but we can remember what we were led to say and do in regard to them; and thus form, as it were, the result, expression and measure of those events. We should, therefore, be careful to preserve the memory of our thoughts at important points in our life; and herein lies the great advantage of keeping a journal."

"When Boswell confessed to Johnson that he feared some things he was entering in his journal were too small, the latter advised him that nothing is too small for so small a creature as man."

"Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated. Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another."

"The thing we must do intensely is be human together. People are more important than things. We must get together. The best thing humans can have going for them is each other. We have each other. We must reject everything which humiliates us. Humans are not objects of consumption. We must develop an absolute priority of humans ahead of profit — any humans ahead of any profit. Then we will survive. … Together."

"What does one mean by humanitarian rules and humanity? Babaji says one should not have hatred towards anyone; one should try not to let down other people; one should try to help others; one should try to love all."

"Today, there are still political and social networks that seek to undermine full equality for all Americans. Their messages are spread using the standard tools: prejudice, fear, disdain, misinformation, trivialization, patronizing stereotypes, demonization and even scare-mongering conspiracy theories."

"To some extent we are all the prisoners of stereotypes; we see each other in terms of distorted and oversimplified images. Better communication in the realm of ideas, of the arts, and of science can help refashion these false images. And by seeing more clearly we may act more wisely."

"All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true."

"Can science ever be immune from experiments conceived out of prejudices and stereotypes, conscious or not?"

"All members of the world community should resolutely discard old stereotypes and motivations nurtured by the Cold War, and give up the habit of seeking each other's weak spots and exploiting them in their own interests."

"The historian... has to conform to official interpretations of the past, the philosopher to dogmas, the writer to stereotypes of human action, the craftsman to “production-schedules."

"Javier: Alright. We got an ex-Triad member, looking for work."

"Antisemitism"

"Talent must be protected, especially if it's viewed as a threat. And what's more threatening to the status quo than a visionary?"

"Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it."

"Talent is always queer-tempered."

"Genius … means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble."

"To THINK BIG and to use our talent doesn't mean we don't have difficulties on the way. We will - we all do. How we view those problems determines how we end up."

"Anyone with a normal brain has the capacity to do almost anything, but when one has special gifts or talents (and everyone has) and takes advantage of and develops these talents – that person is likely to excel."

"Access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steel-making."

"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life."

"...but talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force..."

"Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is."

"I thought as a kid that talent was God-given, but it’s not. God gives you talent and you should use that talent with the real meaning of that word. I was stubborn. Maybe being young had something to do with it."

"Medium talent."

"Just how rare is mathematical talent? Many observers believe that such talent is indeed rare and that we now come close to discovering all of it. According to them we cannot markedly increase the number of Ph.D.'s in mathematics if we wish to maintain traditional standards — the native ability just isn't there. Others (and might be in this group) believe that many more people could create mathematics if they had the proper instruction. It would be pretty hard to devise a controlled experiment to answer this question."

"It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent."

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. With people with only modest ability, modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent, it is hypocrisy."

"A man with talent eats, sweats, and cares for his children like any other. And if talent is a natural thing, remember that water is also, and fire, and wind; therefore flood and holocaust and hurricane are as natural as talent, and can consume and destroy you."

"Punitis ingeniis, gliscit auctoritas."

"Every one of us is born with some kind of talent. In early manhood or womanhood each individual begins to see a path, though perhaps dimly, that beckons to him or her. All of us have this leaning toward, or desire for doing ably, a certain kind of work, and only want an opportunity to prove our capacity in that direction. These hunches, these signs of one's natural trend, are usually right, and are not to be thrust aside without regret in later life."

"Magni est ingenii revocare mentem a sensibus, et cogitationem a consuetudine abducere."

"Occultæ musices nullus respectus."

"Ne forçons point notre talent; Nous ne ferions rien avec grâce: Jamais un lourdaud, quoi qu'il fasse, Ne saurait passer pour galant."

"The way to attain to larger gifts is to employ the gifts you have. Give Jesus the one talent, and then He may trust you with two. If you cannot speak glibly in a prayer-meeting, then stammer out your heart's thanks in the best fashion you can. It may be that your few broken words may accomplish more than another man's fluent harangues."

"Men of splendid talents are generally too quick, too volatile, too adventurous, and too unstable to be much relied on; whereas men of common abilities, in a regular, plodding routine of business, act with more regularity and greater certainty. Men of the best intellectual abilities are apt to strike off suddenly, like the tangent of a circle, and cannot be brought into their orbits by attraction or gravity — they often act with such eccentricity as to be lost in the vortex of their own reveries. Brilliant talents in general are like the ignes fatui; they excite wonder, but often mislead. They are not, however, without their use; like the fire from the flint, once produced, it may be converted, by solid, thinking men, to very salutary and noble purposes."

"The man that wrapped up his talent in the napkin and said, "Lo, there thou hast that is thine," was too sanguine. There was never an unused talent rolled up in a handkerchief yet, but when it was taken out and put into the scales, it was lighter than when it was committed to the keeping of the earth."

""Take therefore the talent from him." It is being taken away rapidly, and the shreds of it will very soon be all that is left. Your religious nature will finally become a virtually exterminated organ. The purpose you have at some future time to use your talent avails nothing. It is going from you, and, before you know it, will be utterly, irrevocably gone. My friends, there is not an hour to lose. Only with the greatest difficulty will you be able, now, to gather up yourself and open your closing gates to the entrance of God and His salvation."

"He was a loser, you know. Every high school has to have at least two: it's like a national law. One male, one female. Everyone's dumping ground."

"If the whole world were a party, Jeremy would not have ended up in the kitchen. He envied the people who had made it as far as the kitchen. There might be food in the kitchen, and even some wine if you could fish the cigarette butts out of the bottle. There might even be a girl in the kitchen, although Jeremy knew the limits of his imagination. But Jeremy would never even get an invite."

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."

"The time-honoured tradition of the human race ... is around and about us and within us; we cannot think except in the forms and processes of thought which it supplies. Is it possible to doubt and to test it? and if possible, is it right?We shall find reason to answer that it is not only possible and right, but our bounden duty; that the main purpose of the tradition itself is to supply us with the means of asking questions, of testing and inquiring into things; that if we misuse it, and take it as a collection of cut-and-dried statements to be accepted without further inquiry, we are not only injuring ourselves here, but, by refusing to do our part towards the building up of the fabric which shall be inherited by our children, we are tending to cut off ourselves and our race from the human line."

"Precedents are not mere dusty phrases, which do not substantially affect the question before us. A precedent embalms a principle. The principle may be right or may be wrong—that is a question for discussion; but at the first glance it is right to conclude that it is a principle that has been acted upon and recognised by those who preceded us."

"A tradition without intelligence is not worth having."

"Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back."

"When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity. The classical man is just a bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow — you are not understanding yourself."

"Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there."

"Alongside the modern evils, we are oppressed by a whole series of inherited evils, arising from the passive survival of archaic and outmoded modes of production, with their accompanying train of anachronistic social and political relations. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead"

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition."

"Belief has its structures, and its symbols change. Its tradition changes. All the relationships within these forms are inter-dependent. We look at the symbols, we hope to read them, we hope for sharing and communication."

"Traditions are answers that have been discovered to enduring questions."

"You do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others."

"Tradition serves as the link with prior generations, stretching into the distant and unknown past and at the same time into an equally distant and unknown future. It is a form of ritual, a constant form in a world that otherwise changes and dies, which by its very immutability serves as a reminder of and a link to the realm of the eternal and changeless. Just as attending the changeless rites of a liturgy transports the worshipper from the grimy streets into the realm of God, treating a novel or contemporary subject in a traditional form removes it from its current time and place and places it in the realm of ideas, eternal and changeless."

"The king ... like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives Just as his father did; the unconquered powers Of precedent and custom interpose Between a king and virtue."

"History teaches us that a given view has been abandoned in favor of another by all men, or by all competent men, or perhaps by only the most vocal men; it does not teach us whether the change was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected. Only an impartial analysis of the view in question, an analysis that is not dazzled by the victory or stunned by the defeat of the adherents of the view concerned—could teach us anything regarding the worth of the view and hence regarding the meaning of the historical change."

"Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them."

"“Our ideas” are only partly our ideas. Most of our ideas are abbreviations or residues of the thought of other people, of our teachers (in the broadest sense of the term) and of our teachers’ teachers; they are abbreviations and residues of the thought of the past. These thoughts were once explicit and in the center of consideration and discussion. It may even be presumed that they were once perfectly lucid. By being transmitted to later generations they have possibly been transformed, and there is no certainty that the transformation was effected consciously and with full clarity. … This means that the clarification of our political ideas insensibly changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of political ideas."

"It is of the essence of traditions that they cover or conceal their humble foundations by erecting impressive edifices on them."

"We appreciate that the frequent broadcast of the same, or similar, commercials can be annoying to some viewers. However, it is for the advertiser and broadcaster to decide how often a particular advertisement is shown."

"'Crazy Frog' is what the market persist on calling the character The Annoying Thing. I personally hate that name and deeply regret I didn't put a stop to that early on."

"From [the] reactions [to The Annoying Thing I've received] I think the absence of pants is a success (when it comes to annoyance). I will definitely keep them off."

"The Crazy Frog sound? That's my fault!"

"We don’t like the frog and it brings me out in hives. I go red. The point is that little thing should have its legs chopped off and I’d like to eat them in a restaurant."

""The non-existent was not; the existent was not at that time. The atmosphere was not nor the heavens which are beyond. What was concealed? Where? In whose protection? Was it water? An unfathomable abyss?"

"What is most needed today is a fundamental theological thinking, one centered upon the Godhead itself, and centered upon that which is most challenging or most offensive in the Godhead, one which has truly been veiled in the modern world, except by our most revolutionary thinkers and visionaries. If we allow Blake and Nietzsche to be paradigmatic of those revolutionaries, nowhere else does such a centering upon God or the Godhead occur, although a full parallel to this occurs in Spinoza and Hegel; but the language of Hegel and Spinoza is not actually offensive, or not in its immediate impact, whereas the language of Nietzsche and Blake is the most purely offensive language which has ever been inscribed. Above all this is true of the theological language of Blake and Nietzsche, but here a theological language is a truly universal language, one occurring in every domain, and occurring as that absolute No which is the origin of every repression and every darkness, and a darkness which is finally the darkness of God, or the darkness of that Godhead which is beyond “God.” Only Nietzsche and Blake know a wholly fallen Godhead, a Godhead which is an absolutely alien Nihil, but the full reversal of that Nihil is apocalypse itself, an apocalypse which is an absolute joy, and Blake and Nietzsche are those very writers who have most evoked that joy."

"I am too young to live through ten thousand years of darkness!"

"“You frighten me, when you say there isn't time." "I don't see why. Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia." "But it keeps not ending." "So far, so good.”"

"The Man Comes Around" is a song that I wrote, it's my song of the apocalypse, and I got the idea from a dream that I had — I dreamed I saw Queen Elizabeth. I dreamed I went in to Buckingham Palace, and there she sat on the floor. And she looked up at me and said, "Johnny Cash, you're like a thorn tree in a whirlwind." And I woke up, of course, and I thought, what could a dream like this mean? Thorn tree in a whirlwind? Well, I forgot about it for two or three years, but it kept haunting me, this dream. I kept thinking about it, how vivid it was, and then I thought, Maybe it's biblical. So I found it. Something about whirlwinds and thorn trees in the Bible. So from that, my song started and... "The Man Comes Around." The song turned out to be "The Man Comes Around."

"There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end."

"I believe in the premillenial, pre-tribulational coming of Christ for all of his church, and to summarize that, your first poll, do you believe Jesus coming the second time will be in the future, I would vote yes with the 59 percent and with Billy Graham and most evangelicals."

"The apocalypse is the way the world looks after the ego has disappeared."

"Listen," croaked Skuzz. "Got something important to tell you. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse … they're right bastards, all four of them."

"As for apocalypse, I was imprinted at an early age with the idea of The End of the World (this also courtesy of the Catholic Church). I can remember being terrified of thunderstorms — I'd think, Uh oh, THIS IS IT. I was born in 1957, and grew up in the metropolitan New York area with the Cold War as a backdrop. In kindergarten and first and second grade we had constant air raid drills, sirens going off and that whole "Duck 'n Cover" drill when you cower under your desk or else hide in the classroom cloak closet, waiting for the Atomic Bomb to drop. I had nightmares about that well into my twenties."

"Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison."

"And along with indifference to space, there was an even more complete indifference to time. "There seems to be plenty of it", was all I would answer when the investigator asked me to say what I felt about time. Plenty of it, but exactly how much was entirely irrelevant. I could, of course, have looked at my watch but my watch I knew was in another universe. My actual experience had been, was still, of an indefinite duration. Or alternatively, of a perpetual present made up of one continually changing apocalypse."

"Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world."

"To me, when we talk about the world, we are talking about our ideas of the world. Our ideas of organisation, our different religions, our different economic systems, our ideas about it are the world. We are heading for a radical revision where you could say we are heading towards the end of the world, but more in the R.E.M. sense than the Revelation sense. That is what apocalypse means – revelation. I could square that with the end of the world, a revelation, a new way of looking at things, something that completely radicalises our notions of the where we were, when we were, what we were, something like that would constitute an end to the world in the kind of abstract – yet very real sense – that I am talking about. A change in the language, a change in the thinking, a change in the music. It wouldn’t take much – one big scientific idea, or artistic idea, one good book, one good painting – who knows – we are at a critical point where the ideas are coming thicker and faster and stranger and stranger than they ever were before. They are realised at a greater speed, everything has become very fluid."

"His favorite apocalypse was a tide of McLitter, a thousand channels of television noise, a complete scrambling of politics and entertainment, proud-to-be-a-breadhead buttons, bright packaging around tasteless and nutrition-free product, audiovisual media devoid of anything approaching meaning, bellies swelling and IQs atrophying. In his preferred world, as in the songs, people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made, worked for Matthew and Son, were dedicated follower of fashion, and did what Simon said."

"The year 1999, seventh month, [or simply "sept"] From the sky will come a great King of Terror. To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols, Before and after Mars to reign by good luck."

"There are Seven Seals to be opened, that is to say, Seven mysteries to know, and Seven difficulties to overcome, Seven trumpets to sound, and Seven cups to empty. The Apocalypse is, to those who receive the nineteenth degree, the Apotheosis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone, and despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer. Lucifer, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish Souls! Doubt it not! for traditions are full of Divine Revelations and Inspirations: and Inspiration is not of one Age nor of one Creed. Plato and Philo, also, were inspired."

"Insistendo sul fatto che il logos insieme ontologico e dialogico è il solo vero fondamento autosufficiente del pensiero filosofico, e non ve ne sono altri sovraimposti o integrativi, la saggezza greca rifiuta l'ipotesi che vi sia anche una apokalypsis, cioè una rivelazione segreta dei progetti della divinità monoteistica."

"Just what is the meaning of the four beasts — the man, the lion, the bull, and the eagle — whether in the Christian Book of the Apocalypse or as used by early and medieval Christian artists? The question is not hard to answer. In the first place the Christian Book of Revelation was written by a Qabbalist, a student of the early, not the late, Qabbalah. It was edited or touched up at a later date by a later Christian editor. No one knows what he took out, what he kept in. But it was touched up and given a more Christian coloring..."

"Chapter four of this Christian book called Revelation or the Apocalypse... mentions these four beasts "full of eyes within," who proclaimed truths and unsealed seals, and they are stated to have encompassed the throne of the Hierarch. Whether through this Qabbalistic book, or by early tradition now forgotten, or in some other way at present unknown to scholars, possibly through neo-Platonic sources, or neo-Pythagoric, the early Christians ascribed the same meaning to these four 'beasts' of the Apocalypse, and to the writers of the four Gospels, to wit, the man, the lion, the bull, and the eagle, that the Hindus ascribed to what they called their four Loka-palas, or guardians of the worlds, the four Maharajas if you like; albeit in simple justice be it said, the Hindu conception even today is incomparably vaster and more spiritually mystical than is the strongly anthropomorphic picture presented in the Christian book of Revelation."

"Surely the Hour is coming--I am about to make it manifest--so that every soul may be rewarded as it strives. So let not him, who believes not in it and follows his low desire, turn thee away from it, lest thou perish."

"Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal?"

"Christians, and some Jews, claim we're in the "end times," but they've been saying this off and on for more than two thousand years. According to Hindu cosmology, we're in the Kali Yuga, a dark period when the cow of history is balanced precariously on one leg, soon to topple. Then there are our new-age friends who believe that this December we're in for a global cage-rattling which, once the dust has settled, will usher in a great spiritual awakening. Most of this apocalyptic noise appears to be just wishful thinking on the part of people who find life too messy and uncertain for comfort, let alone for serenity and mirth. The truth, from my perspective, is that the world, indeed, is ending – and is also being reborn. It's been doing that all day, every day, forever. Each time we exhale, the world ends; when we inhale, there can be, if we allow it, rebirth and spiritual renewal. It all transpires inside of us. In our consciousness, in our hearts. All the time. Otherwise, ours is an old, old story with an interesting new wrinkle. Throughout most of our history, nothing – not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons – has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed. The new wrinkle is that escalating advances in technology are nourishing the narcissistic ego the way chicken manure nourishes a rose bush, while exploding worldwide population is allowing its effects to multiply geometrically. Here's an idea: let's get over ourselves, buy a cherry pie, and go fall in love with life."

"The great decisive Battle between the Forces of Light and darkness. It was predicted in all the ancient scriptures, and the name, "Armageddon" as well as the description of it, can be found in the Apocalypse....It is interesting to note that these calculations are also found in the pyramid of Cheops. Thus, today we find ourselves in the midst of this Battle, which will increase. This Battle is still more fearful in the Subtle World, but eventually its reflections will be intensified on the earthly plane... As it is said, "The hostile elements of the race refuse to submit to destiny. The departing race seeks to destroy the chosen successors, but we must save them. Destiny may be eased and the Battle ended sooner."... Yes, the New Epoch requires spiritual cognition. The New Epoch must manifest due respect to the Mother of the World, to the Feminine Element. “The bird of the spirit of Humanity cannot fly with only one wing” —these are words of Vivekananda, who meant to affirm the great significance of the Feminine Principle. Man does not willingly give full rights to woman. However, this opposition but intensifies the forces; and woman, fighting for her cosmic rights, will acquire the knowledge of her power. (LHR I, p 325) (10 September 1934)"

"The predicted great Armageddon of our race is in full swing... victory is always with the forces of Light, but dreadful cataclysms are unavoidable... the destiny of the world is in the hands of humanity. The planet can be saved only if there is a resurrection of the spirit, only if the consciousness is liberated from the phantoms of the past and directed toward the construction of the New World on the basis of a new understanding of cooperation and knowledge. (16 July 1935) ...At present the whole world is passing through thrice difficult days, and it was indicated to read in the Apocalypse the first verse, chapter 21—"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth" so it is, and with the old consciousness one cannot enter the New World. (11 February 1938)"

"I myself once heard intelligent people trying to prove that the Bolsheviks were predicted in the Apocalypse, and that even the number of the days of their power was mentioned, and that the Michael mentioned there was none other than the Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich! I certainly do not mention this to discredit Bajenov's book, but simply to warn those who are greatly attracted by research into Biblical prophecies. (22 June 1936)"

"The Last Judgement is generally thought of as a procedure undertaken by God. Actually it will be undertaken by man, with my help. It is a Final Healing, rather than a meting out of punishment, however much man may think that punishment is deserved. Punishment is a concept in total opposition to right-mindedness. The aim of the Last Judgement is to restore right-mindedness to man. The Last Judgement might be called a process of right evaluation. It simply means that finally all men will come to understand what is worthy and what is not. After this, their ability to choose can be directed reasonably. Until this distinction is made, however, the vacillations between free and imprisoned will cannot but continue. The first step toward freedom must entail a sorting out of the false from the true. This is a process of division only in the constructive sense, and reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse. Man will ultimately look upon his own creations and will to preserve only what is good, just as God Himself looked upon what He had created and knew that it was good. The term “Last Judgement” is frightening not only because it has been falsely projected onto God, but also because of the association of “last” with death. This is an outstanding example of upside-down perception. Actually, if the meaning of the Last Judgement is objectively examined, it is quite apparent that it is really the doorway to life p. 43"

"The inspiration for the title of this book came from a Bible prophecy that seems more applicable now than at any other time in human history. It occurs in both the Old and the New Testament and speaks of the collapse of the existing world order and the arising of a new heaven and a new earth. We need to understand here that heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness. This is the esoteric meaning of the word, and this is also its meaning in the teachings of Jesus. Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected. “A new heaven” is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and “a new earth” is its reflection in the physical realm."

"The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens, Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light— Were all like workings of one mind, the features Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree, Characters of the great Apocalypse, The types and symbols of Eternity, Of first and last, and midst, and without end."

"The Lambes uyves in blysse we bene, A hondred and forty thowsande flot As in the Apocalyppes hit is sene. Sant John hem syy al in a knot On the hyl of Syon, that semly clot; The apostel hem segh in gostly drem, Arayed to the weddyng in that hyl-coppe, The nwe cyté o Jerusalem."

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man!"

"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice."

"His feet were like fine copper when glowing in a furnace; and his voice was as the sound of many waters."

"And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel."

"It has been granted to her to be clothed with bright, clean, fine linen—for the fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the holy ones."

"At your mouth, white and milk-warm sphinx, I taste a strange apocalypse:"

"Real survivalists don’t run off into the woods; they stay and work to prevent disaster."

"After all, it has yet to be proved that intelligence has real survival value."

"There walked a lonely man, silent, mute, the only man"

"Most people, it seems, think that Robinson Crusoe, when he landed on his Island, had nothing to keep him from starvation or anything else. As a matter of fact, he had twelve raft loads of supplies that he took off the wrecked ship. He had as much food and furniture as if he had had a delicatessen store and Fifth Avenue outside his hut."

"Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. But to survive, we must learn."

"The entire modern deification of survival per se, survival returning to itself, survival naked and abstract, with the denial of any substantive excellence in what survives, except the capacity for more survival still, is surely the strangest intellectual stopping-place ever proposed by one man to another."

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

"What doesn't kill you makes you stranger."

"Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference — those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older — know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change."

"Survival is the greatest gift of love."

"Humanity will ever seek but never attain perfection. Let us at least survive and go on trying."

"During the darkest days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when Republicans and religious conservatives controlled the federal government and were doing everything in their power to harm the sick and dying, queers organized and protested and volunteered and mourned. We also made music and theater and art. We took care of each other, and we danced and loved and fucked. Embracing joy and art and sex in the face of fear and uncertainty made us feel better—it kept us sane—and it had the added benefit of driving our enemies crazy. They couldn’t understand how we could be anything but miserable, given the challenges we faced—their greed, their indifference, their bigotry—but we created and experienced joy despite their hatred and despite this awful disease. We turned to each other—we turned to our lovers and friends and sometimes strangers—and said, "Fuck them. Now fuck me.""

"If survival calls for the bearing of arms, bear them you must. But the most important part of the challenge is for you to find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow man."

"The survival of the fittest."

"Until now, human intelligence, which is no more than a minute aspect of universal intelligence, has been distorted and misused by the ego. I call that “intelligence in the service of madness.” Splitting the atom requires great intelligence. Using that intelligence for building and stockpiling atom bombs is insane or at best extremely unintelligent. Stupidity is relatively harmless, but intelligent stupidity is highly dangerous. This intelligent stupidity, for which one could find countless obvious examples, is threatening our survival as a species."

"Most humans are still in the grip of the egoic mode of consciousness: identified with their mind and run by their mind. If they do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience increasing confusion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, madness. Egoic mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don't get off, you will go down with it. The collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity ever to inhabit this planet."

"Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may have noticed, they are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. For those who hold on to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion, and madness.Most humans are still in the grip of the egoic mode of consciousness: identified with their mind and run by their mind. If they do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience increasing confusion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, madness. Egoic mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don't get off, you will go down with it."

"'Cursed is the man who makes an engraved or molten image, an abomination to Yahweh, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up in secret.' All the people shall answer and say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who sets light by his father or his mother.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who removes his neighbor's landmark.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who makes the blind to wander out of the way.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who wrests the justice due to the foreigner, fatherless, and widow.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who lies with his father's wife, because he has uncovered his father's skirt.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who lies with any manner of animal.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who lies with his mother-in-law.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who strikes his neighbor in secret.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who takes a bribe to kill an innocent person.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.' 'Cursed is he who doesn't confirm the words of this law to do them.' All the people shall say, 'Amen.'""

"Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. "When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is too great to bear! "Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me."

"We smile in the faces of some people while our hearts curse them."

"It's interesting, isn't it? There are many stories about trees giving curses (Tatari) in the Western part of Japan. Such folklore, or something that goes back to our distant memories, remains strongly in Japanese culture. People on Yakushima Island didn't cut the trees. They thought that cutting trees would bring about a curse. Trees are beings that make us feel that way. I learned it when I went to Yakushima. When they decided to cut and sell trees because they were too poor to eat, there was a monk who recommended cutting the trees. It was not the case that they started cutting tress because a certain person happened to be on the island and said so, but rather to do with the changes in the society itself."

"Our Lord! Give them double Penalty and curse them with a very great Curse!"

"Here, I have hidden the secret of powerful runes, strong runes. The one who breaks this memorial will be eternally tormented by anger. Treacherous death will hit him. I foresee perdition."

"Some sources report that he (Solomon) encountered the Karina one night. He found her dusky of countenance, and her eyes were deep blue in color. He asked her: 'Whether do you go?' She replied: 'I go to the on who lies in his mother's womb and eat his flesh, drink his blood and crush his bones.' Then he said: 'The curse of Allah be upon you, o accursed one.' And she said: 'Do not curse me, for I have twelvenames. Whosoever knows them and hangs them round himself, him will I not go near. Whosoever writes them down has nothing to fear, by the will of Allah, the Almighty."

"May Christmas bring to you its traditional combination of good food and violent stomach cramps."

"May the Yuletide log slip from your fire and burn your house down."

"Double portion of my shame be on you, Terence Mulvaney, that think yourself so strong! By Mary and the saints, by blood and water an' by ivry sorrow that came into the world since the beginnin', the black blight fall on you and yours, so that you may niver be free from pain for another when ut's not your own! May your heart bleed in your breast drop by drop wid all your friends laughin' at the bleedin'! Strong you think yourself? May your strength be a curse to you to dhrive you into the divil's hands against your own will! Clear-eyed you are? May your eyes see clear ivry step av the dark path you take till the hot cindhers av hell put thim out! May the ragin' dry thirst in my own ould bones go to you that you shall niver pass bottle full nor glass empty. God preserve the light av your onderstandin' to you, my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver forget what you mint to be an' do, whin you're wallowin' in the muck! May ye see the betther and follow the worse as long as there's breath in your body; an' may ye die quick in a strange land, watchin' your death before ut takes you, an' onable to stir hand or foot!"

"You are a tactful swordsman, so I will not renege on our wager. I grant you the kiss of eternal life, but, for your arrogance and pride I will temper my gift with this curse. You will be a mere shell of yourself as I strip you of most of your powers. Each nightfall, evils will be shown to you, and the pain of their victims will be your pain. You will never know rest as you wander this world searching to slay the horrors that haunt your sleeping world. You will suffer grievous wounds, but you will not die, and as eternity rolls on, you will crave my touch. Your face will bear my visage, and your eyes will burn with hellfire. But...let it not be said that I am without mercy. There shall be an end to your curse. If all the beasts of the dark are slain, then you may find rest."

"Mercutio: Help me into some house, Benvolio, Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses! They have made worms' meat of me: I have it, And soundly too. Your houses!"

"This isn’t your power. It’s my curse and I’m taking it back."

"Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to."

"Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket."

"To whose gain? [Cui bono]"

"No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic, also."

"With the catching end the pleasures of the chase."

"People find gold in fields, veins, river beds and pockets. Whichever, it takes work to get it out."

"The more there is in the world to have, the more people want it."

"The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes."

"No man divulges his revenue, or at least which way it comes in; but everyone publishes his acquisitions."

"We go to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name."

"The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it."

"An end to our gettings is the only end to our losses."

"Wisdom and spirit of the Universe! Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought! And giv'st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion! Not in vain By day or star-light thus from by first dawn Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul, Not with the mean and vulgar works of man, But with high objects, with enduring things, With life and nature, purifying thus The elements of feeling and of thought, And sanctifying, by such discipline Both pain and fear, until we recognize A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.#"

"I chanced recently to be glancing over … a book on Japanese Buddhism, and I read among other things that several centuries ago there was a sect of Japanese Buddhism known as the Way of Hardships, and that shortly after there arose another sect known as the Easy Way which at once gained great popularity and tended to supplant the Way of Hardships. But the Japanese Way of Hardships is itself an easy way if one compares it with the original way of Buddha. One can follow indeed very clearly the process by which Buddhist doctrine descended gradually from the austere and almost inaccessible height on which it had been placed by its founder to the level of the prayer mill."

"Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure."

"The middle gear of any man is self-discipline."

"If we only have love Then we'll only be men And we'll drink from the Grail To be born once again — Then with nothing at all But the little we are We'll have conquered all time All space, the sun, and the stars."

"I simply state that I'm a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation — with every reason to throw my mind and pen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were all blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at various times, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't seeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game."

"I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it, So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't. (I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion."

"Only the worthy can find the Grail, Leigh. You told me that."

"Okay, maybe there is no proof. Maybe the Grail is lost forever. But, Sophie, the only thing that matters is what you believe. History shows us Jesus was an extraordinary man, a human inspiration. That's it. That's all the evidence has ever proved. But... when I was a boy... when I was down in that well Teabing told you about, I thought I was going to die, Sophie. What I did, I prayed. I prayed to Jesus to keep me alive so I could see my parents again, so I could go to school again, so I could play with my dog. Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't alone down there. Why does it have to be human or divine? Maybe human is divine. Why couldn't Jesus have been a father and still be capable of all those miracles?"

"The search for the Cup of Christ is the search for the divine in all of us. But if you want facts, Indy, I've none to give you."

"The quest for the Grail is not archeology, it's a race against evil. If it is captured by the Nazis the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth. Do you understand me?"

"You must choose. But choose wisely, for as the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you."

"We all been playing those mind games forever Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil. Doing the mind guerrilla, Some call it magic — the search for the grail.'Love is the answer and you know that for sure. Love is a flower, you got to let it — you got to let it grow."

"As the dreaded Black Beast lunged forward, escape for Arthur and his Knights seemed impossible. Then suddenly the animator suffered a fatal heart attack. The cartoon peril was no more. The Quest for the Holy Grail could continue."

"It begins with the king as a boy, having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he can become king. Now while he is spending the night alone he's visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire appears the holy grail, symbol of God's divine grace. And a voice said to the boy, "You shall be keeper of the grail so that it may heal the hearts of men." But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty. And in this state of radical amazement he felt for a brief moment not like a boy, but invincible, like God, so he reached into the fire to take the grail, and the grail vanished, leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded. Now as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper. Until one day, life for him lost its reason. He had no faith in any man, not even himself. He couldn't love or feel loved. He was sick with experience. He began to die. One day a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple minded, he didn't see a king. He only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king, "What ails you friend?" The king replied, "I'm thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat". So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, filled it with water and handed it to the king. As the king began to drink, he realized his wound was healed. He looked in his hands and there was the holy grail, that which he sought all of his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement, "How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?" And the fool replied, "I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty.""

"The sweet vision of the Holy Grail Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries, And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out Among us in the jousts, while women watch Who wins, who falls; and waste the spiritual strength Within us, better offered up to Heaven."

"The Holy Grail! — … What is it? The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?"

"The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord Drank at the last sad supper with his own.… If a man Could touch or see it, he was healed at once, By faith, of all his ills. But then the times Grew to such evil that the holy cup Was caught away to Heaven, and disappeared."

"Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail… The Holy Thing is here again Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray, And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray, That so perchance the vision may be seen By thee and those, and all the world be healed."

"No bravery is such a virtue as the Graele may gain. For Arthour never gained it — Launcelot Could not achieve it. Only three there were: Galahad, Bors, and Percival; of these Their spotless souls had ne'er been flecked by sin."

"Then came a maiden in — though all the doors Were closed. She, in her hands, the Sangrael bore. Then was a table o'erlaid with goodly fare: Red wine in crystal cups, and meat and fruit. "Peace be to thee and thine," she said, "Sir Bors, Go to the perilous siege, the siege of death! But first the Sangrael Galahad shall achieve; His father he excels in purity." Then kneeled they down, while wafted on the air Was incense of such savour, as the world Had never known; and, when the dove took flight, The maiden vanished, as the mists of morn — Vanished before the rays of that red sun, The source of life. Thus vanished and was gone The maid — the cup of sacred wine remained."

"Sir Bors de Ganis, he of Launcelot The nephew, brave as lions, pure as snow, With Galahad and Percival was destined The Holy Grail to witness and to taste Wine from the Sacred Chalice. Only these, Of all the Table Round, had purity Which gift alone the sangrael could win."

"Character in many ways is everything in leadership. It is made up of many things, but I would say character is really integrity. When you delegate something to a subordinate, for example, it is absolutely your responsibility, and he must understand this. You as a leader must take complete responsibility for what the subordinate does. I once said, as a sort of wisecrack, that leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well. ~ General Dwight D. Eisenhower"

"Dependability, integrity, the characteristic of never knowingly doing anything wrong, that you would never cheat anyone, that you would give everybody a fair deal. Character is sort of an all inclusive thing. If a man has character everyone has confidence in him. Soldiers must have confidence in their leader. ~ General Omar N. Bradley"

"I would put character way up on the list. If you want to select an officer for your command you want one who is confident of his abilities, who is loyal and who has good character. It is the man of good character that I am going to seek out. There are a lot of good people who know the 'smart' way of getting things done, but they also ride roughshod over people that they are supposed to be working with. I don't want that. ~ General Mark Clark"

"Character as we used to say when I was in elementary school, is what you are. Reputation is what others think you are. The reason that some fail to climb the ladder of success, or of leadership if you want to call it that, is that there is no difference between reputation and character. The two do not always coincide. A man may be considered to have sterling character. Opportunity might come to that man; but if he has the reputation for something he is not, he may fail that opportunity. I think character is the foundation of successful leadership. ~ General Lucian K. Truscott"

"You can't be wishy-washy as a military leader. You must be able to size up the situation and make a decision. Indecisiveness is weakness of character. You must be able to have confidence in what a leader tells you. ~ General Carl Spaatz"

"I would place character as the absolutely number one requirement in leadership. By character, I mean primarily integrity. A man whose superiors and, even more important, whose subordinates can depend upon that leader taking action based on honesty and judgment. If he does not base his action on honor, he is worthless as a leader. ~ General J. Lawton Collins"

"There are many qualities that go into a man of sterling character. I don't know how to break it down. A man of high character has integrity, he is honest, he is reliable, he is straightforward in dealing with people. He is loyal to his family, his friends, his superiors. ~ General Wiiliam H. Simpson"

"I get accused all the time of using the word integrity when I mean character and character when I mean integrity. I think character is everything in leadership. It is what we try to build in all our young officers. It means the truth to me. That's the only way I can put it. To stand up and tell the truth and not be in the gray areas. ~ General Jacob Devers"

"An officer who stands up under fire, who has the courage to defend his convictions, not arrogantly, not stubbornly, but intelligently. Someone who does not believe he knows all the answers, who will listen to others with different experiences and different knowledge. It means a deep sense of loyalty. Unless an officer has character nothing he can do can cause his men to love and respect him. ~ General Albert Wedemeyer"

"Character plays a tremendous role in military leadership. It's a combination of many things -- personality, clean living, presence. I just don't know; it's a very difficult word to describe because, as everyone knows, leaders come in all shapes and sizes and all sorts of personalities. I don't suppose I ever knew two men whom I knew well who differed as much as General MacArthur and General Patton, yet both were tremendous leaders of mass armies, both were men of great character. ~ General Anthony "Nuts" McAuliffe"

"Ah! my wang is hateful to you; or is it I, madam, that enjoys that privilege?"

"There was Molly Sullivan's wreath-twigs interspersed with small bits of typewritten paper — which was said to symbolize the "challenge of expressing natural phenomena through the written word." Of all the artists to have grappled with this age-old dilemma, Sullivan was perhaps the first to do so with a wreath."

"And of all the artists to have grappled with this age-old dilemma, Sullivan was perhaps the first to do so with a wreath of peace, and also goodwill for all, symbolising what Christmas truly means."

"Weave garlands, maiden, from the strands Of dill, and with soft gentle hands Set the delicious leafage round your head. The Goddess and the happy Graces Love to look on flower-crown’d faces, But turn aside from the ungarlanded."

"What would be the real damage if Washington stopped spying on Moscow and Moscow stopped spying on Washington, and both on Beijing? The result would be a draw. Immense sums of money would be saved, since a large part of the efforts of every spy agency is devoted to obstructing the intrigues of the competition. How many diseases could be overcome? How many hungry people fed, how many illiterates taught to read and write?"

"Because something is not what it is said to be, Ma'am, does not mean it is a fake. It may just have been wrongly attributed."

"Satellite reconnaissance and other intelligence breakthroughs also contributed to the obsolescence of major wars by diminishing the possibility of surprise in starting them, and by eliminating opportunities for concealment in waging them. Surprises could still happen, like Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990, but only because the interpretation of intelligence failed, not its collection. Once the liberation of that country began early in 1991, Saddam Hussein found his military deployments so visible, and therefore so exposed to attack, that he had no choice but to withdraw. Transparency—a by-product of the Cold War strategic arms race—created a wholly new environment that rewarded those who sought to prevent wars and discouraged those who tried to begin them."

"Eric Swalwell's spy scandal underscores the URGENT need for a ban on enemy foreign nationals as congressional interns!"

"Need I say the C.I.A. be Criminals In Action Cocaine crack unpacking, high surveillance tracking Prominant blacks and whites giving orders for mass slaughters but I want all my daughters to be like Maxine Waters When they flooded the streets with crack cocaine, I was like Noah now they lower cause the whole cold war is over Communism fell to the dollars you were grabbing All the assault and battering in the name of intelligence gathering?"

"Mrs O'Grady has been sentenced to death. Personally I doubt whether she is guilty of anything more than collecting information. She probably pictured herself as a master spy, and cannot bring herself to say that there was really nothing behind it all."

"I played it slightly tongue-in-cheek because I never quite believed that James Bond was a spy because everybody knew him, they all knew what he drank. He’d walk into a bar and it would always be, 'Ah, Commander Bond, martini, shaken not stirred.’ Spies are faceless people."

"Excuse me, can you help me? I'm a spy."

"The Espionage Act is being abused by the government to selectively prosecute sources and whistleblowers."

"“We’re the intelligence community,” he said. “We don’t have rules. You don’t play by rules and win this game. And we don’t have emotions. We’re soldiers. If we wench a girl at night, and the orders come through to shoot her next day, we shoot. “When you’re laying your life on the line to protect the country you love, you don’t ask if what you do is fair—or even pretty. We take orders that are no more than a flick of an eyebrow, and we don’t ask questions—we get the job done. “I don’t think you know how to play that way. I don’t think you belong in the intelligence community.”"

"His spies are seated round about."

"No spy, however astute, is proof against relentless interrogation. Some unforseen circumstance, some trivial lapse, is pounced upon, exploited by the interrogator, until a break is complete."

"The spies of the underworld are legion. Craven crooks, for the most part, they are prey to blackmail."

"Indeed, there may well be many who will agree that death by hanging is almost too good for a sailor who will encompass the death of thousands of his shipmates without qualm."

"An awful symbiosis emerged between the main actors of the Cold War, a rhythm of escalation between the Pentagon and the Soviet strategic rocket forces, and along secret war between the KGB and the CIA which helped make the spy thriller into the distinctive cultural genre of the period. The two sides became locked into the roles of hero and villain in one another's morality play, as two distinct theories of social and political organisation believed they were grappling for nothing less than the inheritance of the planet."

"And we did have fun. For five years we bugged and burgled our way across London at the State's behest, while pompous bowler-hatted civil servants in Whitehall pretended to look the other way."

"To MI5, if you steam this open you are dirty buggers."

"There's something gratifying about volunteering. Whenever I work a charity event—which I try to do with some regularity—I often get more out of it than I give. I already knew about the mental health benefits of volunteering. Studies have shown that volunteering helps people who donate their time feel more socially connected, thus warding off loneliness and depression. But I was surprised to learn that volunteering has positive implications that go beyond mental health. A growing body of evidence suggests that people who give their time to others might also be rewarded with better physical health—including lower blood pressure and a longer lifespan. Evidence of volunteerism's physical effects can be found in a recent study from Carnegie Mellon University, published this month in Psychology and Aging. Adults over age 50 who volunteered on a regular basis were less likely to develop high blood pressure than non-volunteers. High blood pressure is an important indicator of health because it contributes to heart disease, stroke, and premature death. It's impossible for this study to prove that volunteering was directly responsible for the lower blood pressure readings. People who volunteer may be more likely to do other things, like eat a healthy diet or exercise, that lower blood pressure. But the results are in line with other findings on the topic."

"How might volunteering contribute to lower blood pressure? Performing volunteer work could increase physical activity among people who aren't otherwise very active, says lead study author Rodlescia Sneed, a doctoral candidate in social and health psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. It may also reduce stress. "Many people find volunteer work to be helpful with respect to stress reduction, and we know that stress is very strongly linked to health outcomes," she says. As with any activity thought to improve health, researchers are trying to identify the specific characteristics of volunteering that provide the greatest benefit. For example, how much time would you need to put into volunteer work to lower your blood pressure or live longer? In the Carnegie Mellon study, 200 hours of volunteering per year correlated to lower blood pressure. Other studies have found a health benefit from as little as 100 hours of volunteering a year. Which types of volunteer activities improve health the most? No one really knows. Sneed speculates that mentally stimulating activities, like tutoring or reading, might be helpful for maintaining memory and thinking skills, while "activities that promote physical activity would be helpful with respect to cardiovascular health, but no studies have really explored this.""

"One key for deriving health benefits from volunteering is to do it for the right reasons. A 2012 study in the journal Health Psychology found that participants who volunteered with some regularity lived longer, but only if their intentions were truly altruistic. In other words, they had to be volunteering to help others—not to make themselves feel better. The Greek philosopher Aristotle once surmised that the essence of life is "To serve others and do good." If recent research is any indication, serving others might also be the essence of good health."

"Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me.""

"Well before a global pandemic tore us away from our loved ones, and the Omicron variant threatened to upend holiday plans, experts were warning of “an epidemic of loneliness” in the United States. Three in five Americans surveyed in 2019 reported feeling lonely, which the researchers attributed to a variety of factors, including a lack of social support, infrequent meaningful social interactions, poor physical and mental health and an imbalance in daily activities. In addition, nearly one quarter of those 65 and older are considered socially isolated, according to the National Health and Aging Trends Study. Loneliness often stems from unwanted solitude. But it is also driven by a discrepancy between how you perceive your relationships versus what you want (or expect) from them. That disconnect is why you can be surrounded by family at Christmas and still feel like an outsider. A potential cure? Kindness toward others. Something as simple as volunteering can improve our health, ease feelings of loneliness and broaden our social networks, studies suggest. Opportunities to give back — both in person and virtually — are more commonplace than they were last year, and the need for volunteers hasn’t let up, especially at food pantries. “Volunteering is one of the best, most certain ways we can find a purpose and meaning in our life,” said Val Walker, the author of “400 Friends and No One to Call: Breaking Through Isolation and Building Community.”"

"Among older adults, social isolation and loneliness are associated with higher rates of mortality, depression and cognitive decline. Experts say that volunteering not only helps people feel less lonely, it can also improve physical well-being. A five-year study of more than 800 people in Detroit found that helping others who don’t live with you can act as a buffer against the negative effects of stress. Although the study participants encountered stressful life events like illness, job loss or financial difficulties, those who spent time doing tasks for others — like errands, child care and housework — were less likely to die than those who had not helped others. AARP Foundation Experience Corps, an intergenerational tutoring program, found numerous benefits to volunteering: More than 85 percent of volunteers felt that their lives had improved because of their involvement with the program and 98 percent reported that the program helped them stay physically and mentally active, said Lisa Marsh Ryerson, president of AARP Foundation, the charitable affiliate of AARP. “People want to matter and to be valued across their life,” Ms. Ryerson said."

"Gary Bagley, executive director of New York Cares, the largest volunteer organization in New York City, suggested setting a small goal at first, like volunteering once a week or even once a month, and building from there. “One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to decide ‘I will volunteer twice everyday for the next year’ because you’ll burn yourself out on it,” he said. “So think of something that’s manageable for you — not frightening in its scope of commitment — and just take the first step.” Research suggests that volunteering consistently is what appears to reap the most benefits. In one study, widowers ages 51 and above who volunteered two or more hours a week felt less lonely — and were no lonelier than the married volunteers. Meg Goble, 68, a real estate lawyer who lives in Brooklyn, began volunteering with New York Cares 17 years ago. “In my other life, I’m a lawyer,” she said. “I like my job,” she added, but “it’s not as fulfilling as it used to be.” Ms. Goble lives alone, but in her work as a volunteer — helping elementary school students with their homework and arranging flowers with BloomAgainBklyn — she is continually socializing. During the pandemic, she also found ways to volunteer from a distance by doing virtual mock interviews with immigrants preparing to take the U.S. citizenship test and writing over 400 letters to seniors in nursing homes and assisted living facilities."

"Some volunteers are driven to heal others — and themselves. Robyn Houston-Bean, 52, said when her 20-year-old son Nick died of an accidental overdose in 2015 after participating in a drug-treatment program, she went from being “a real go-getter always doing a million things” to sitting numb on the couch for months. “The last thing I expected was for him to die,” she said. Her friends and extended family were also in shock, she said, and she found it hard to process her grief with them, largely because this kind of loss was not something any of them had ever experienced. Several months after his death, Ms. Houston-Bean discovered a volunteer organization that distributed clothing, food and other supplies to drug users living on the streets. She was intrigued. Her sister urged her to check it out in person. When she finally did, she found a nonjudgmental space full of volunteers whose loved ones had also been touched by addiction. Soon, she was heading out once a month to help those in need. “I felt like I could give my mothering to them that I couldn’t give to Nick anymore,” Ms. Houston-Bean said. Later that year she started a peer grief support group for those who have lost someone they love to substance abuse — the first of its kind in Braintree, Mass., her hometown. It became so popular that she created a nonprofit and found enough volunteer facilitators to run 13 groups in different parts of the state. “It takes the focus off of my grief and puts it somewhere else,” she said. “I have this whole real purpose now.”"

"Volunteering is a window into the passions of the soul."

"You will learn more about the people you work with in three minutes by asking them what they do for nothing, than by working with them for three years in the same team."

"Volunteering is a universal feature of human society, independent of wealth, status, language or culture."

"Be aware that volunteer time is different from paid time. Staff need to begin their public work as soon as they possibly can (sooner!), and to build in lots of elapsed time for community discussion. Community members have other priorities: school, jobs, families. You can’t expect them to make your work their top priority, so you need to give them the biggest-possible window in which to contribute."

"Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of my Ranger Regiment."

"One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people."

"Combat was getting closer, and I took it upon myself to learn every gun that I could get my hands on. Taking initiative is part of what makes a person a little better. No one tells you to do it, but you do it."

"I drove trucks. I drove Jeeps. I tried to be versatile. I didn't say a word to nobody. I just did it. If I told them, they'd have me all over the damn place. So I played dumb like a fox. Keep your mouth shut, never volunteer. You got to learn that real fast. When you first come in everybody volunteers. Once you volunteer, you think, What the hell did I do that for? I said to myself, Keep your mouth shut, you dummy. You don't know what the hell they're going to throw at you. It's usually the worst thing in the world. Never volunteer. Turn your back and run the other way. Say you didn't hear it."

"Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves! With our flesh and blood, let us build a new Great Wall! As China faces its greatest peril From each one the urgent call to action comes forth: Arise! Arise! Arise! Millions of but one heart Braving the enemies' fire! March on! Braving the enemies' fire! March on! March on! March, march on!"

"The heart of a volunteer is not measured in size, but by the depth of the commitment to make a difference in the lives of others."

"The power of volunteering has been documented for the last 2,500+ years, however a slew of recent research is shedding even more light onto its surprising benefits. Science now proves what great leaders and philosophers have known for years: “One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served.” - Gordon Hinckle"

"Volunteering your experience helps build your experience. We consistently see this with highly skilled professionals like investment bankers and business consultants. Also, volunteering in a new industry will give you knowledge to help you switch fields. And if you want to move from the corporate world to the nonprofit sector, volunteering first can help prove your commitment."

"Volunteering your love makes you feel more love. Admittedly, love is a hard thing to measure. But when researchers at the London School of Economics examined the relationship between volunteering and measures of happiness, they found the more people volunteered, the happier they were. Volunteering builds empathy, strengthens social bonds and makes you smile — all factors that increase the feeling of love."

"I am a recipient of unconditional love, I am a volunteer"

"We make a living by what we do, but we make a life by what we give."

"Don't expect your halo to shine immediately. However, the good feelings you'll get from helping will start right away. You'll find you're gaining more from your good works than you're investing. This psychic income, the feelings of joy and satisfaction always reported by those serving others, will far outweigh the time and energy you devote to volunteering."

"Remember, when you become involved, when you lead with your heart as well as your head, the result is always good. And given the halo effect that we know is out there, you'll not only become a better person, but your career will also benefit in wonderful and unexpected ways."

"Being a volunteer expands, complements, and ehances your professional resume. Prospective bosses not only notice this kind of service, but it influences their hiring decisions. And when you help others, you help yourself, because you build character, and character is one of the keys to a successful career."

"Growing a career can be difficult. Few people show up at a job with their talents full blown. You need to learn so much, and yet learning experiences can be hard to come by. But you can pick up these skills by volunteering."

"With busy lives, it can be hard to find time to volunteer. However, the benefits of volunteering can be enormous. Volunteering offers vital help to people in need, worthwhile causes, and the community, but the benefits can be even greater for you, the volunteer. The right match can help you to find friends, connect with the community, learn new skills, and even advance your career. Giving to others can also help protect your mental and physical health. It can reduce stress, combat depression, keep you mentally stimulated, and provide a sense of purpose. While it’s true that the more you volunteer, the more benefits you’ll experience, volunteering doesn’t have to involve a long-term commitment or take a huge amount of time out of your busy day. Giving in even simple ways can help those in need and improve your health and happiness."

"One of the more well-known benefits of volunteering is the impact on the community. Volunteering allows you to connect to your community and make it a better place. Even helping out with the smallest tasks can make a real difference to the lives of people, animals, and organizations in need. And volunteering is a two-way street: It can benefit you and your family as much as the cause you choose to help. Dedicating your time as a volunteer helps you make new friends, expand your network, and boost your social skills. One of the best ways to make new friends and strengthen existing relationships is to commit to a shared activity together. Volunteering is a great way to meet new people, especially if you are new to an area. It strengthens your ties to the community and broadens your support network, exposing you to people with common interests, neighborhood resources, and fun and fulfilling activities. While some people are naturally outgoing, others are shy and have a hard time meeting new people. Volunteering gives you the opportunity to practice and develop your social skills, since you are meeting regularly with a group of people with common interests. Once you have momentum, it's easier to branch out and make more friends and contacts. Children watch everything you do. By giving back to the community, you'll show them firsthand how volunteering makes a difference and how good it feels to help other people and animals and enact change. It's also a valuable way for you to get to know organizations in the community and find resources and activities for your children and family."

"Volunteering provides many benefits to both mental and physical health. Volunteering helps counteract the effects of stress, anger, and anxiety. The social contact aspect of helping and working with others can have a profound effect on your overall psychological well-being. Nothing relieves stress better than a meaningful connection to another person. Working with pets and other animals has also been shown to improve mood and reduce stress and anxiety. Volunteering combats depression. Volunteering keeps you in regular contact with others and helps you develop a solid support system, which in turn protects you against depression. Volunteering makes you happy. By measuring hormones and brain activity, researchers have discovered that being helpful to others delivers immense pleasure. Human beings are hard-wired to give to others. The more we give, the happier we feel."

"Volunteering increases self-confidence. You are doing good for others and the community, which provides a natural sense of accomplishment. Your role as a volunteer can also give you a sense of pride and identity. And the better you feel about yourself, the more likely you are to have a positive view of your life and future goals. Volunteering provides a sense of purpose. Older adults, especially those who have retired or lost a spouse, can find new meaning and direction in their lives by helping others. Whatever your age or life situation, volunteering can help take your mind off your own worries, keep you mentally stimulated, and add more zest to your life. Volunteering helps you stay physically healthy. Studies have found that those who volunteer have a lower mortality rate than those who do not. Older volunteers tend to walk more, find it easier to cope with everyday tasks, are less likely to develop high blood pressure, and have better thinking skills. Volunteering can also lessen symptoms of chronic pain and reduce the risk of heart disease."

"Volunteers are not paid not because they are worthless, but because they are priceless."

"There are few things as rewarding as working toward a purpose that is greater than one person. Virginia State Parks unite people in a common effort to supports its mission: To conserve the natural, scenic, historic and cultural resources of the Commonwealth, and provide recreational and educational opportunities consistent with the good stewardship of these lands, water and facilities that leave them unimpaired for future generations. You can play an important role in advancing the mission."

"A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose."

"I am working in everybody and whatever men may think or do, they can do nothing but help in my purpose."

"Not result is the purpose of action, but God's eternal delight in becoming, seeing and doing."

"The great rule of life is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose."

"All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."

"In day-to-day life it is easy for the utilitarian lens of metrics to eclipse the moral lens that drew us to our work in the first place."

"Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility. But we have seen that it is one of the lies of the serious mind to attempt to give the word “useful” an absolute meaning; nothing is useful if it is not useful to man; nothing is useful to man if the latter is not in a position to define his own ends and values, if he is not free. Doubtless an oppressive regime can achieve constructions which will serve man: they will serve him only from the day that he is free to use them; as long as the reign of the oppressor lasts, none of the benefits of oppression is a real benefit. Neither in the past nor in the future can one prefer a thing to man, who alone can establish the reason for all things."

"Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct."

"Poetry has historically been allied with religion and morals; it has served the purpose of penetrating the mysterious depths of things."

"I would rather work with five people who really believe in what they are doing rather than five hundred who can't see the point."

"There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer."

"We look upon this shaken Earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose — the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails. The building of such a peace is a bold and solemn purpose. To proclaim it is easy. To serve it will be hard."

"I need to have a purpose in life and for that I might sacrifice some of the luxuries that I enjoy; fortunately I am fairly adaptable. I try to be aware, flexible and unbiased in my thinking. If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?"

"I, too, believed it was impossible to change the existing society into one that would be for the benefit of all; neither could I espouse any given ideal for society. But [...] I felt that even if one did not have an ideal vision of society, one could have one’s work to do. Whether it was successful or not was not our concern; it was enough that we believed it to be a valid work. The accomplishment of that work, I believed, was what our real life was about. Yes. I want to carry out a work of my own; for I feel that by so doing our lives are rooted in the here and now, not in some far-off ideal goal."

"Even flies, parasites and microbes have their purpose to fulfil, and there is nothing superfluous in creation."

"Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction."

"The final goal of the human race is independence and mutual aid, the realization of freedom, equality, and fraternity. If we look at the evolution of politics, law, religion, and ethics, they have been developing from heteronomy toward autonomy; thus after attaining self-governance the people will use their eventual individual surpluses to compensate for other’s inefficiencies. This is natural evolution, and this is also the ultimate ideal of life. Everyone should fight and strive toward this goal."

"Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself."

"Purpose has no place in biology, but history has no meaning without it."

"The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance."

"Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them."

"Every nation, like every individual, has received a mission that it must fulfil."

"Everyone has a goal which appears to be great, at least to himself, and is great when deepest conviction, the innermost voice of the heart, pronounces it great. ... This voice, however, is easily drowned out, and what we thought to be inspiration may have been created by the fleeting moment and again perhaps destroyed by it. ... We must seriously ask ourselves, therefore, whether we are really inspired about a vocation, whether an inner voice approves of it, or whether the inspiration was a deception, whether that which we took as the Deity’s calling to us was self-deceit. But how else could we recognize this except by searching for the source of our inspiration?"

"Our purpose is to educate as well as to entertain."

"Purposes are deduced from behaviour, not from rhetoric or stated goals."

"We all engage in purposeful activity, and we judge ourselves and others in terms of success in achieving the purposes that we set before ourselves. Yet we accept as the final product of this purposeful activity a picture of the world from which purpose has been eliminated. Purpose is a meaningful concept in relation to our own consciousness of ourselves, but it is allowed no place in our understanding of the world of facts."

"The hypothesis will lead to our thinking of features of each Universe as purposed; and this will stand or fall with the hypothesis. Yet a purpose essentially involves growth, and so cannot be attributed to God. Still it will, according to the hypothesis, be less false to speak so than to represent God as purposeless."

"There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright."

"A union of indomitable resolution in the achievement of a given purpose, with patience and moderation in the policy pursued, and with kindly charity and consideration and friendliness to those of opposite belief, marks the very spirit in which we of to-day should approach the pressing problems of the present."

"No matter how stormy the ocean is, the river still knows its way."

"There's no escaping reason, no denying purpose, for as we both know, without purpose we would not exist. It is purpose that created us, purpose that connects us, purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us; it is purpose that defines us, purpose that binds us."

"There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. [...] Live being true to the single purpose of the moment."

"I take great satisfaction in seeing people and organizations achieve goals they might have originally believed to be beyond their reach."

"Risk is the companion of innovation. As the Chinese proverb says, ”Unless you enter the tiger’s den you cannot take the cubs.”"

"Innovation is more than having new ideas: it includes the process of successfully introducing them or making things happen in a new way. It turns ideas into useful, practicable and commercial products or services."

"Walter Isaacson’s new book ‘Innovators’, a book featuring solely white inventors, says that true innovation happens when the government, military and academia work together. Isaacson says that the biggest motive for innovation is profit. The concept of money being the sole motive for innovation is bullshit. It is an idea promoted by those in power in order to manipulate humanity."

"He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator."

"As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all Innovations, which are the births of time."

"Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities."

"Innovation is usually not a gigantic step but a series of small jumps involving various enterprising people whose names are soon forgotten."

"Customers don't have a clue what you're talking about, and you don't have a clue if they will behave as you assume."

"Most often, the idea is a small part of the overall company. That's what has been screwed up with the last 30 years of grant funding. A good idea is not going to help anyone unless it succeeds in getting to the commercialization stage."

"Any conversation I have about innovation starts with the ultimate goal."

"The task facing philosophy today is to examine its filiations to its most hallowed concepts and to consider anew their productivity. ... The result of this task might be to see old concepts as more productive than new ones, which suffer not merely from the fact that they are inevitably expressions of the general conditions of possibility of the present moment, but also because of the way in which the eternal production of the new is linked more strongly than ever to the basic drive of capitalism."

"To innovate is not to reform."

"Defined simply, innovation is, of course, the introduction of something new. We presume that the purpose of introducing something new into a process is to bring about major, radical change. Process innovation combines a structure for doing work with an orientation to visible and dramatic results. It involves stepping back from a process to inquire into its overall business objective, and then effecting creative and radical change to realize order-of-magnitude improvements in the way that objective is accomplished."

"The paradox of innovation is this: CEO's often complain about lack of innovation, while workers often say leaders are hostile to new ideas."

"I always stress to my clients that they have to be ready to change. You have to be prepared to make your innovation obsolete. But many companies aren’t prepared to do that."

"Innovation implies high risk, and with high risk comes failure, so you’ve got to be prepared for that, but if you don’t risk, then your business goes stale very quickly."

"No decision in business provides greater potential for the creation of wealth (or its destruction, come to think of it) than the choice of which innovation to back."

"Here lies one of the world's rare generalized TINAs. There Is No Alternative to creativity and innovation: these days, obscurantism and conservatism will do for you every time."

"Successful innovation has consistently proved to be fluid and flexible, fast and furious — that is, passionate."

"The key to success for Sony, and to everything in business, science and technology for that matter, is never to follow the others."

"Change is not made without inconvenience, even for worse to better."

"At a time when the United States is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build creative digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness, imagination, and sustained innovation. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology, so he built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. He and his colleagues at Apple were able to think differently. They developed not merely modest product advances based on focus groups, but whole new devices and services that consumers did not yet know they needed."

"There seems to be this almost innate desire to tell stories about innovation in terms of eureka moments. For some reason, we just want to ... condense them to these moments of sudden clarity, where a light bulb pops over someone's head and they ... suddenly see the world differently. The apple falls from the tree — and they have a theory of gravity — whatever the trigger is. But when you actually go back and look at it ... in the historical record of innovation, eureka moments are the exception and not the rule. Almost always, there is a very long incubation period that goes into a breakthrough idea."

"Science has political aspects just like anything else does. And what often happens is the money is flowing in such a way as to discourage innovation."

"Innovation is new stuff that is made useful."

"Creativity can only survive in organizations in which the climate is empathetic to the whole process."

"Our need for innovation has shifted power closer to the source of that power—Us. We are the future."

"Stay one step ahead of the crowd—and you invite a kick in the pants."

"The stone that is rolling can gather no moss; For master and servant oft changing is loss."

"At the end of the day, the goal of building something is to build something, not to not make mistakes."

"This list of the superhero’s “uses” —which one could lengthen substantially— demonstrates the genre’s appeal (popular, sociocultural, political), its flexible expediency for various ends. An inviting mode of representation, a "costume” easily appropriated and donned, the superhero in recent years has indeed received unprecedented (and long overdue) attention from scholars."

"Sad list, isn't it? Further proof of what I have always said: too many (male) writers seem able to think of only two things to do with female characters -- rape 'em or knock 'em up. The dead ones might be the lucky ones. At least I made Wonder Woman MORE powerful."

"...all our theories about how comics are put together are invariably about time. The duration of a panel's action and the duration between one panel and the next. We haven't added very much to the Eisner-Steranko concept of "sequential art.""

"...if the form is to say something important, rather than just involve itself in the kinetic thrill of drawn characters chasing each other, then we have to think harder."

"An illustrator is someone who takes a story and visualizes it. In a comic, the drawing is the story; it doesn’t illustrate it."

"I don't think that we should seek to define comics on a formal basis. I think that some of the best comics do not involve "sequential images" which is the basis of every formal definition of comics."

"...the concept of what comics is gets narrower as we go along. Each writer on the subject who defines comics wants to exclude something. McCloud excludes the single panel so Family Circus and Far Side are out. Blackbeard says there must be word balloons so Prince Valiant is out. Harvey says there has to be a visual-verbal balance. Somebody else says there must be no redundancy of information with words and pictures repeating each other. This is crap. Pictures have illustrated words and words have explained pictures since the beginning of time. Somebody reads a dull comic and extrapolates rules from it. Who do they think they are? There are all these people trying to be the rule-makers and the end result is bad for the art of Comics."

"The form restricts itself at every turn. For instance, the artist sits before his blank page. If his first picture is a big square one all the way across then he has severely limited his second panel to having to fit in the letterbox space along the bottom. If he divides that in two then that third panel is looking like a sad and defeated cornered animal. That's about all i see when I look at comic books now. Obviously the artist doesn't do it that way; he plans the whole page simultaneously. But it tends to read like he planned it that way, and that's all that counts."

"The syllogism that says "Comics are sequential art, Trajan's column is sequential art, therefore Trajan's column is comics" is such a glaring fallacy that I'm surprised it's gotten this far."

"...the whole small press movement...[is] the first real upheaval in this country of Comics as a genuine Art - Art being to me a thing which is a lively part of life while commenting on life - as opposed to comics as journalism-cartooning or comics as a collecting-hobby or comics as boys power fantasies."

"[t]he standards of comics include inventiveness, originality, and consistency. The best comics really are great artworks — great by the intrinsic standards of that art form."

"Her husband had been willing to indulge her affection for the comics so long as it was just her, but now their children were growing up and starting to read and he was not convinced that people having adventures in skintight costumes were altogether appropriate. His feeling was that his wife would have to stop reading it, and she was heartbroken because she had an equally strong commitment to the fictional characters she had been enjoying all these years. When you come face to face with that kind of circumstance, it has to be treated with respect. It's like singing on stage and realizing you had an impact on your audience, and using that as an excuse to do your craft better than before."

"You can go into slow motion or fast motion in a comic book in a way you can't in a movie without drawing attention to it. You can have six panels in a row where the actions are a half second apart, or you can skip years between panels and it just doesn't have the same egregious quality, where, in a movie, Peckinpah slows down the murder and it seems that the body collapse in slow motion; it seems like an entirely different thing when you do that on film and when you do that on the comics page."

"The viewer is a 'co-producer" of the comics text at a level of involvement and intensity just through the nature of the medium itself."

"...in a visual medium, a comics format … the writer works for the artist, in the same that the writer in a movie works for the director."

"In movies, television, and comics, the operative factor is what some film semiologists have taken to calling 'the gaze.' The gaze is a combination of the gaze of the viewer at the comics page, or television tube, or film screen, modulated and directed by the looks that the characters give to each other and by various objects. I look at character X who looks at situation Y (and character X) in a way that I wouldn't have before. The point, of course, is that the movie gaze, the TV gaze, and the comics gaze are three very different processes. What makes the comic book gaze the priveleged one in my estimation is that the viewer has the greatest control over the comic book gaze, greater than any of the other two. Viewers can control how far way or close to hold the page, whether to go backwards and re-gaze -- and going back in a comic book is a very different process from going back in a novel to re-read a previous paragraph or chapter."

"You know, I distrust people who 'read' comics … you don't read a comic book. You look at a comic book. While you're looking at a comic, sure, you read the words; as well, you learn to look at the panels in a certain order, in a certain way … if you start out to 'read' a comic book, you're starting out with the wrong mind-set."

"Both companies could be more judicious in pairing artists and writers for sustained periods, promoting series outside of the usual channels, and warmly engaging with fans. Instead of simply telling people to buy their books, they could instruct new audiences how. And they could listen to what new audiences say they want: diversity not just in racial, religious, or sexual terms, but also in terms of the types of stories told: Is there really any more harm in publishing a comic where Captain America has a romantic cup of coffee with his boyfriend Bucky than one where he’s a Nazi?"

"What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not ... We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against."

"The (Communist) "Daily Worker" of July 13, 1953 said that comics play the conscious role of: "...Brutalizing American youth, the better to prepare them for military service in implementing our government's aims of world domination, and to accept the atrocities now being perpetrated by American soldiers and airmen in Korea under the flag of the United Nations." This article also quotes Gershon Legman (who claims to be a ghost writer for Dr. Fredrick Wertham, the author of a recent bast against comics published in "The Ladies Home Journal"). This same G. Legman, in issue #3 of "Neurotica," published in autumn 1948, said: "The child's natural character...must be distorted to fit civilization . . . fantasy violence will paralyze his resistance, divert his aggression to unreal enemies and frustrations, and in this way prevent him from rebelling against parents and teachers . . . this will siphon off his resistance against society, and prevent revolution.""

"WE BELIEVE: Your editors sincerely believe that the claim of these crusaders . . . that comics are bad for children...is nonsense. If we, in the slightest way, thought that horror comics, crime comics, or any other kind of comics were harmful to our readers, we would cease publishing them and direct our efforts toward something else! And we're not alone in our belief. For example: Dr. David Abrahamsen, eminent criminologist, in his book, "Who Are The Guilty?" says, "Comic books do not lead to crime, although they have been widely blamed for it . . . In my experience as a psychiatrist, I cannot remember having seen one boy or girl who has committed a crime, or who became neurotic or psychotic . . . because he or she read comic books." A group led by Dr. Freda Kehm, Mental Health Chairman of the Ill. Congress of the P.T.A., decided that living room violence has "a decided beneficial effect on young minds." Dr. Robert H. Feli, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said that horror comic do not originate criminal behavior in children . . . in a way, the horror comics may do some good . . . children use fantasy, as simulated by the "comics" as a means of working out natural feelings of aggressiveness. We also believe that a large portion of our total readership of horror and crime comics is made up of adults. We believe that those who oppose comics are a small minority. Yet this minority is causing the hysteria. The voice of the majority . . . you who but comics, read them, enjoy them, and are not harmed by them . . . has not been heard!"

"Something in his mind had snapped and he began collecting comics."

"...'comic' simply means funny, so the word is inadequate. To tack on the word 'adult' has resulted in a style of magazine suitable for only some adults, glossy comics barely containing their airbrushed breasts, leaving little room for genuine content."

"...the history of comics is mostly just a history of crap."

"I reserve the right to refuse to like a comic just because there is a girl/woman in it, or someone's decided to take a limp stab at marketing it to girls/women. (...) Push past those posters of giant titties and that one of the impossible pose where some gal is displaying her butt, crotch AND breasts, and that one where the girl looks like she's been oiled up and spanked. Push past all that, my sisters! (...) There, my sisters, under all those eye lemons and tree-killers are comics you will like. Don't hold it against your retailer if he or she is keeping the store going with chromium multi-variant oops-my-tittie-fell-out 1-to-4 short-packed speculator specials — get in there and grab that Previews and you will find something for you, and by God order it and get all your girlfriends to do the same and your store will still be in business after the superhero readers turn 18 and start reading the Mangerotica books and the speculators have left to sell their Beanie Babies to pay the rent! (...) Of course, always give your business to the store that makes it easy to get what you want, and doesn't offended your eyeballs with faux-core (as opposed to soft core) porn. Thank you."

"Justin Wadlow, a professor at the French (UPJV) in Amiens and a well-known scholar of comics, explained how books combining texts and comics as a new form of art have been used to spread deep ideas and raise awareness of social issues. He suggested that the essence of [the] Tai Ji Men culture may also be illustrated and presented to the world through these new media."

"The episodic nature of Black Jack’s medical experiments backed up by accurate medical detail, bear more resemblance to television shows such as ER or House MD than to any North American comic book; medical narratives such as these simply do not exist in the US or Canadian comic media."

"By mid-1942 nearly all comic book heroes had changed into patriotic citizens that were willing...to accept their new societal roles."

"As regards the female characters thing, I'm afraid I think it's giving male creators a bum deal. The list does read pretty shocking at first until you think of everything the male heroes have gone through, too, in terms of deaths/mutilations/etc. Granted, the female stuff has more of a sexual violence theme and this is something people should probably watch out for, but rape is a rare thing in comics and is seldom done in an exploitative way."

"Boys young and old satisfy their wish thoughts by reading comics. If they go crazy for Wonder Woman it means they're longing for a beautiful exciting girl who's stronger than they are."

"Comics speak, without qualm or sophistication, to the innermost ears of the wishful self. The response is like that of a thirsty traveler who suddenly finds water in the desert - he drinks to satiation."

"There are one or two rules of thumb which are useful in distinguishing sadism from exciting adventure in the comics. Threat of torture is harmless, but when the torture it’s self is shown it becomes sadism. When a lovely heroine is show bound to the stake, comics followers are sure that the rescue will arrive just in the nick of time. The readers wish is to see save the girl, not to see her suffer. A bound or chained person does not suffer even embarrassment in the comics, and the reader, therefore is not being taught to enjoy suffering."

"Oh yes, but not until women control men. Wonder Woman – and the trend toward male acceptance of female love power, which she represents, indicates that the first psychological step has actually been taken. Boys, young and old, satisfy their wish thoughts by reading comics. If they go crazy over Wonder Woman, it means they’re longing for a beautiful, exciting girl who is stronger than they are. These simple, highly imaginative picture stories satisfy longings that ordinary daily life thwarts and denies. Superman and the army of male comics characters who resemble him satisfy the simple desire to be stronger and more powerful than anybody else. Wonder Woman satisfies the subconscious, elaboratedly disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them."

"Comics, they say, are not literature – adventure strips lack artistic form, mental substance, and emotional appeal to any but the most moronic of minds. Can it be that 100,000,000 Americans are morons? Possibly so; but there seems to be a simpler explanation. Nine humans out of ten react first with their feelings rather than with their minds; the more primitive the emotion stimulated, the stronger the reaction. Comics play a trite but lusty tune on the C natural keys of human nature. They rouse the most primitive, but also the most powerful, reverberations in the noisy cranial sound-box of consciousness, drowning out more subtle symphonies. Comics scorn finesse, thereby incurring the wrath of linguistic adepts."

"If you do [one] black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren’t just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can’t be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people."

"I despise the comic industry, but I will always love the comic medium."

"To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children's characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence. It looks to me very much like a significant section of the public, having given up on attempting to understand the reality they are actually living in, have instead reasoned that they might at least be able to comprehend the sprawling, meaningless, but at-least-still-finite 'universes' presented by DC or Marvel Comics. I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times."

"Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented? Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety."

"I haven’t read any superhero comics since I finished with Watchmen. I hate superheroes. I think they’re abominations. They don’t mean what they used to mean. They were originally in the hands of writers who would actively expand the imagination of their nine- to 13-year-old audience. That was completely what they were meant to do and they were doing it excellently. These days, superhero comics think the audience is certainly not nine to 13, it’s nothing to do with them. It’s an audience largely of 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-year old men, usually men."

"I think it’s a rather alarming sign if we’ve got audiences of adults going to see the Avengers movie and delighting in concepts and characters meant to entertain the 12-year-old boys of the 1950s."

"My main point about films is that I don't like the adaptation process, and I particularly don't like the modern way of comic book film adaptations, where, essentially, the central characters are just franchises that can be worked endlessly to no apparent point. In most cases, the original comic books were far superior to the film."

"I stopped reading the comics page a long time ago. It seems that whoever is in charge of what to put on that page is given an edict that states: “For God’s sake, try to be as bland as possible and by no means offend any one!” Thus, whenever something like Doonesbury would come along, it would be continually censored and, if lucky, eventually banished to the editorial pages. The message was clear: Keep it simple, keep it cute, and don’t be challenging, outrageous or political. And keep it white! It’s odd that considering all the black ink that goes into making the comics section (and color on Sundays) that you rarely see any black faces on that page. Well, maybe it’s not so odd after all, considering the makeup of most newsrooms in our country. It is even more stunning when you consider that in many of our large cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago where the white population is barely a third of the overall citizenry, the comics pages seem to be one of the last vestiges of the belief that white faces are just…well, you know…so much more happy and friendly and funny! Of course, the real funnies are on the front pages of most papers these days."

"The British novel has become so thin-blooded and out of touch with anything. And television drama's been pretty much emasculated. Comics is one place where no one's looking. And you get this work out, which would once have been some bizarre film by Lindsay Anderson, but now there'd be no possible way of getting that funded. Comics' marginalisation allows you to do a lot that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise."

"As for all this talk I keep hearing about how 'ordinary people' can't handle the weird layouts in comics - well, time for another micro-rant, but that's like your granddad saying he can't handle all the scary, fast-moving information on Top of the Pops and there's really only one answer. Fuck off, granddad. If you're too stupid to read a comic page, you shouldn't be trying to read comic books and probably don't."

"The comics medium is a very specialized area of the Arts, home to many rare and talented blooms and flowering imaginations and it breaks my heart to see so many of our best and brightest bowing down to the same market pressures which drive lowest-common-denominator blockbuster movies and television cop shows. Let's see if we can call time on this trend by demanding and creating big, wild comics which stretch our imaginations. Let's make living breathing, sprawling adventures filled with mind-blowing images of things unseen on Earth. Let's make artefacts that are not faux-games or movies but something other, something so rare and strange it might as well be a window into another universe because that's what it is."

"All the comics are sigils. "Sigil" as a word is out of date. All this magic stuff needs new terminology because it's not what people are being told it is at all. It's not all this wearying symbolic misdirection that's being dragged up from the Victorian Age, when no-one was allowed to talk plainly and everything was in coy poetic code. The world's at a crisis point and it's time to stop bullshitting around with Qabalah and Thelema and Chaos and Information and all the rest of the metaphoric smoke and mirrors designed to make the rubes think magicians are "special" people with special powers. It's not like that. Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. "Life" plus "significance" = magic."

"We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be."

"Before being able to comment on the tragedies which have befallen only female comic characters as any kind of a trend, I would need to see a similar list of the kinds of tragedies which have befallen MALE characters in direct proportion to the number of female characters vs. male which exist throughout the entire industry. (...) As a writer with at least over 500 story credits (I stopped counting. Math isn't my strong suit), I will say that professionally speaking, I believe in treating ALL my characters, male, female, black, white or Kryptonian with equal measure respect and abuse. Basically, you have to respect them enough to abuse them in order to see how they will handle the adversity. Remember, monthly comics publishing is akin to a soap opera with more punches thrown. Characters HAVE to be made to endure both physical and emotional adversity in order for the lifeblood of the genre -- i.e. MONTHLY serial stories -- to work. When you've done more work on the subject, I'd be glad to discuss your results."

"Comics are an international language, they can cross boundaries and generations. Comics are a bridge between all cultures."

"The children face problems such as violence, abuse, suicide etc. that medicine can not heal. It will never help these children psychologically and be his support ...? Even when they are in difficulty, in principle they do not speak with adults, or confide about their true intentions. However, expect some serious messages from adults. I will continue to send messages through manga. Children avoid them what force or what they want to impose anything. That is why I will continue to look for those things that [...] inspire their hearts."

"The new readers have mentality, fashions, feelings completely different from those of previous readers. Should I draw comics following my first readers in their growth? Or should I stop doing the cartoonist? ... More or less every three years a cartoonist for children is cornered. I, too, every three years, living a crisis. So I decide and I get back to work for my new readers as if they were the first. ... This is why I am certain that the good work that will draw able to make happy readers of all time."

"The science fiction and manga readers had the same ... Most fiction writers then had had some experience in the comic and some of it had even been absorbed completely ... I can not understand why those who love science fiction also loves the manga and vice versa. There are two kinds characterized by a biting satire and at worst are called "extravagant". ... Both are aimed toward the future, and therefore contain romantic adventures for young people."

"I am convinced that comics should not only make people laugh. For this in my stories found tears, anger, hatred, pain and end not always happy."

"Anyone who reads comics can tell you, every main character has an origin story -- the fateful and usually expectations sequence of events that made them who they are."

"As for some characters being dead and then alive again -- that happens to both genders in comics. Look at Wonder Man. The thing that, to my mind, separates the male and female characters are the sex crimes. Only the female characters are victims of sex crimes; male characters are never subjected to that. (There may be one or two exceptions when the male character was sexually abused as a child, but that's about it.) It is the number and frequency of THAT which troubles me. (...) A female soldier in battle may suffer wounds; that's different than a woman being stalked, kidnapped, and having violence done to her in civilian life. The former incurs the physical damage because of her occupation; the latter, strictly because of her gender. A female cop may be shot because she is a cop, not because she is a female. That, to me, is part of the difference."

"Of course, to work alone is both harder and easier. There's nothing fabulous about drawing comic books. When you finish, you're relieved and happy, but it's the middle of the night and there is no one to share your joy with. With filmmaking you have a party with your crew and then the premiere. All that stuff you miss when you just draw manga. But there are drawbacks to filmmaking too: sometimes it's really difficult to get your ideas across to your crew."

"After World War II readership dwindles for popular superhero titles, such as Superman, Wonder Woman, and The Spirit, and many comics turn to gory, true-life stories, or tales of horror and the supernatural. E.C. Comics' Vault of Horror, Crypt of Terror, and Haunt of Fear cram their pages with severed heads, drug use, and graphic violence. Some of the most popular of these extreme stories come from the pen of comic artist Jack Cole. Throughout the decade, attacks against the violent comics mount. Citizens' groups and religious organizations pressure publishers and news dealers to drop the most offensive lines. Newspaper editorial pages and national magazines debate the influence of comics on the young. In 1954 the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency holds hearings on whether comic books inspire juvenile delinquency. A lead witness, psychologist Dr. Frederick Wertham, testifies that comics "create a mental readiness for temptation" and create "an atmosphere of deceit and cruelty" for children. He even attacks Superman for "arousing fantasies of sadistic joy in seeing others punished while you yourself remain immune." E.C. Comics publisher William Gaines speaks in the comics defense, emphasizing his stories' endings, in which the criminals always pay for their crimes. "Good taste" is his only criterion. Senator Estes Kefauver asks if an E.C. Comics' cover displaying a woman's severed head and a bloody axe is Gaines' idea of good taste. Backed into a corner, Gaines boldly answers 'yes.' The exchange makes the front page of the next day's New York Times."

"PBS, “The Comic Book Code”, Culture Shock: Flashpoints."

"It's a pretty scary list, scary mostly for what it says about (male) comics creators. What I think about this is the guys have good intentions, to use more female characters, and they try consciously to make them strong and positive role models and all that good stuff, but unconsciously it's very hard for many men to see women as something other than victims. (...) And where it comes from in many men is that men are real and women are vehicles for men's needs. One of those needs is to feel strong emotions such as grief, anger, pain, maturity. There are any number of movies and books in which a weak man becomes a hero, or faces up to life, because a woman has been raped or murdered or has committed suicide. Did the writer realize he was (once more) victimizing women? (...) I just checked out the web site after all, to see the reactions of (some of) the other creators. It was interesting to see how many of the men felt called on to defend (or apologize for) their own murdered female characters. You know, I assume, of the point made by people like Trina Robbins that the powers of female characters in the '60s showed a good deal about the male creators-- a "girl" who turns invisible, another who makes herself tiny and buzzes around men annoyingly (when she's not shopping)..."

"Whether or not they know how to say it, superheroes don't kill because they believe the system needs help, but isn't irreparably broken. We know this for two reasons: one, they talk about it so dang much. Fixing Gotham. Saving Hell's Kitchen. And two: If they didn't believe the system was ultimately fixable and desirable, they wouldn't be punching criminals and corrupt officials while befriending the good cops and lawyers. They'd be tearing that system down. They'd be Nolan's Two-Face, Moore's V, they'd be Ra's al Ghul or Magneto. They'd be the Punisher."

"I think it's sad and terrible. I think that too many creators got on the "Bad Girl" bandwagon and did nothing but pander and exploit their own creations. To be honest, many creators that I've talked to solely created those characters to be exploited and exploitative. Now mind you I don't see this as a gender thing as much as I see it as a genre thing. Everybody is out for the quick buck and too many are too lazy to try to come up with something original. I know it's scary but if tomorrow's hot comics are about one-legged Mongolian dwarfs, than you can be sure that more than one respected creator will be jumping all over the concept but will claim to be giving it "their spin." (...) The worst news is that it's a million times worse in other parts of the entertainment field, mainly because there is more money involved and fewer morals."

"Female comic book characters are often treated as secondary to the main male character whom they assist in their current endeavour. They are often transformed into the Other, objects acted upon by the male character for his own ends through sub-par plot writing, as evidenced by such tropes as the ‘damsel-in-distress’. There have been a few characters treated as active subjects capable of continued growth. X-Men featured both Kitty Pryde and Jubilee as young female characters with complex emotions and desires. Kitty’s desire to be treated as an adult is blatantly expressive of Levinas’ concept of recognition. Their costumes, while occasionally sexualized, are overall more expected with elements that can be loose fitting and functional over showing off their sexuality. The interesting problem is that both of these characters are very young; teenagers in fact. By placing them below the legal and moral age of consent, the publishers essentially free themselves from the expectation of sexualizing them for their readers. They fit into an Otherness that shields them in a way similar to Haraway’s cyborg."

"If I were a better artist, I'd be a painter, and if I were a better writer, I'd write books — but I'm not, so I draw cartoons!"

"Stan Lee was the first to do a "longform" comic book with a continuing story line, and I wanted to do for Saturday morning TV exactly what Stan did for comics in the sixties."

"When it comes to heroes of color in comic books such as Miles Morales, Semper's fine with it. But what he really cares more about is giving black creators more attention. "Let them create what they want to," he says. "It doesn't necessarily mean having a black face behind the mask, which is great. But let's instead turn to a black creator and say, 'What do you want to make?' Black creators matter, and that's the thing that I think is more important.""

"I'd chalk most of what's on your list up to lame writing. In desperate search of drama, and unable to obtain it any other way, some writers will resort to obvious emotional triggers/easy pickin's. You can always get a bang by killing Aunt May, or for that matter, Superman. The biggest crime is that many of these stories are unfolded badly, baldly and pathetically, by writers who don't have a clue. People looking for Freudian motives, i.e., hatred of Mother, etc., are wasting their time. Most of these writers sweated cannonballs trying to think of something SO SHOCKING that it would evoke a response from readers, and violence to women was the most horrifying thing they could come up with. Usually, the response to these badly told tales is boredom. Sometimes, they succeed in mobilizing folks like you, who wonder if these writers are sick. Nah. They just suck."

"I came to comic books through Heavy Metal magazine. I was into fantasy art when I was a youngun, and my mom used to buy me Heavy Metal not really realizing it was an adult illustrated fantasy magazine, thought it was just cute and never opened it, thank god. I'm like a ten-year-old or younger at the time, and she would say things like, "You know this is quite a provocative cover." I'd say, "Yeah, I don't know." She'd say, "Huh, okay." So what happened is my aesthetic got warped pretty early. I would get comic books for Christmas and stuff from my mother--X-men or whatever--and I would say, "No one has sex or gets killed in this. It's not that exciting. It's not really doing it for me." That was disturbing to her, I could tell."

"It is as important a serious piece of work as Strindberg or Ibsen. You don’t shortchange the work because it is a comic book franchise for a studio. I think entertaining is a serious business and shouldn’t be taken half-heartedly."

"When someone asks me, 'Why do you write comics?' I tell them, for the same reason I write editorials, essays, and articles; the same reason I give speeches; the same reason I appear on TV programs, and give interviews. Same message; different forum. There is no universal forum, so the more outreach we can do, the better the chance of forming coalitions."

"I think it generally means killing female heroes is supposed to elicit more emotions from readers than killing male readers. (...) I think the wholesale slaughter is because there's a lot of writers who think all major character motivation is made by killing folk and women characters are easier to kill than male characters since so few of them are major heroes on their own. (...) I fear, that most boys want to read stories about big muscled guy heroes showing off than gal heroes. They want the girl heroes there in the background, and even important to books, but they rarely if ever buy a book starring a female. Younger boys I think are frightened to some degree by the overly muscled women even while they may find a sexual delight in them."

"Having always created lots of female characters, and doing some good work on them, I think, by making them all individuals (whether someone liked the Titans or not, Starfire, Wonder Girl and Raven were not in any way the same person in different latex costumes), I find most female heroes that other writers do are simply cookie-cut outs. Since a very few of these are anything special, it's easy to knock them off. Acknowledging that does not condone it. It merely explains it."

"It is a crucial mistake, a snob's error, to think that illustrated stories aimed at a juvenile audience automatically lack a storyteller's genius. Indeed, since juvenile stories need to be stripped down for an inexperienced audience to understand, some approach the elegant simplicity of mythology."

"The Chinese Communist Party will not only prohibit comics that support democracy or “separatism” in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet but will also ban what it will perceive as promotion of religious movements banned as ', superstition, or “illegal” religion."

"Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals."

"If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity."

"Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority."

"Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation."

"In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds."

"Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, the gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated."

"No comic magazine shall use the words "horror" or "terror" in its title."

"All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted."

"All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated."

"Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader."

"Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited."

"Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden."

"Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure."

"Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable."

"Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities."

"Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Rape scenes, as well as sexual abnormalities, are unacceptable."

"Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested."

"Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden."

"Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted in the advertising of any product; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals."

"RINGGENBERG: Well, given that the Comics Code expressly forbid the use of the words Weird, Horror and Terror, did you feel that your company was being particularly targeted?"

"RINGGENBERG: Let's jump ahead a little bit, to the New Direction comics. In Impact #4 you had a story called "The Lonely One", which was about prejudice against Jews. The Jewish in the story had a very bland name. It was "Miller"."

"Chief Counsel Herbert Beaser asked: "Then you think a child cannot in any way, shape, or manner, be hurt by anything that the child reads or sees?""

"RINGGENBERG: Do you think there are any limits about what should be published in a comics format?"

"Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici"

"Violence … is the last refuge of the incompetent."

"But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. "Might makes right," and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies."

"Power is not a star war but a war of hawks If you want to overcome any predatory animal you must hold on to your strength relax your fertility and act completely normally If you feel fear on your face you will become prey."

"The real strength of a person is when you control yourself during anger You may lose everything because in some matters there is no need to use force."

"Moreover, force, gravity, and words of that kind, are often, and not unwisely, used in the concrete; in such a way that they know the movement of the body, the difficulty of resistance, etc. But when they are used by philosophers to signify certain natures, precise and abstract from all these, which are neither subject to the senses, nor can be understood by any power of the mind, nor can they be shaped by the imagination, they in turn give rise to errors and confusion."

"Violence is the repartee of the illiterate."

"Force is no remedy."

"The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men."

"The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered."

"The danger is becoming greater. As the arsenals of the superpowers grow in size and sophistication and as other governments—perhaps even, in the future, dozens of governments—acquire these weapons, it may be only a matter of time before madness, desperation, greed or miscalculation lets loose the terrible force."

"Force cannot be explained without stating a law of nature concerning momentum, viz.:— Suppose a body with a certain momentum to be the only body in the universe; it will go on with the same momentum. The case of bodies in contact is no exception to this law, but only a particular case. Here the change of motion is called pressure. The case of bodies not in contact is illustrated by the motion of the earth about the sun [under the force of gravitation, as we call it]. In all cases change of motion is connected by invariable laws with the position of surrounding bodies. Force, then, has a definite direction [at every instant] at any point in space, and depends on the position of surrounding bodies, and may be described as the change of momentum of a body considered as depending upon its position relative to other things. It embodies the quality of direction as well as magnitude. In other words, it is a quantity having direction. ...Force, defined as above, is not conserved at all. It may appear and disappear; it is continually being created and destroyed. "Conservation of force" is, mathematically speaking, a contradiction in terms."

"What we know as moral forces are even more important than guns and battleships. These forces would constantly grow stronger if nations relied upon them and cultivated them instead of the munitions of warfare."

"Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious."

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. You cannot subjugate a nation forcibly unless you wipe out every man, woman, and child. Unless you wish to use such drastic measures, you must find a way of settling your disputes without resort to arms."

"An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels."

"I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow-men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally."

"Churches and universities — insofar as they live up to their true function — serve the ennoblement of the individual. They seek to fulfill this great task by spreading moral and cultural understanding, renouncing the use of brute force."

"There are many changes in what concepts are important when we go from classical to quantum mechanics. ... In particular, the force concept gradually fades away, while the concepts of energy and momentum become of paramount importance. You remember that instead of particle motions, one deals with probability amplitudes which vary in space and time. In these amplitudes there are wavelengths related to momenta, and frequencies related to energies. The momenta and energies, which determine the phases of wave functions, are therefore the important quantities in quantum mechanics. Instead of forces, we deal with the way interactions change the wavelength of the waves. The idea of a force becomes quite secondary—if it is there at all. When people talk about nuclear forces, for example, what they usually analyze and work with are the energies of interaction of two nucleons, and not the force between them. Nobody ever differentiates the energy to find out what the force looks like."

"La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure."

"Personally I do not resort to force — not even the force of law — to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example — of fashion. Until these resources are exhausted I would not think of force."

"Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people."

"Vis consili expers mole ruit sua."

"The laws of motion of visible and tangible, or molar, matter had been worked out to a great degree of refinement and embodied in the branches of science known as Mechanics, Hydrostatics, and Pneumatics. These laws had been shown to hold good... throughout the universe on the assumption that all such masses of matter possessed inertia and were susceptible of acquiring motion, in two ways, firstly by impact, or impulse from without; and, secondly, by the operation of certain hypothetical causes of motion termed 'forces,' which were usually supposed to be resident in the particles of the masses themselves, and to operate at a distance, in such a way as to tend to draw any two such masses together, or to separate them more widely."

"To all appearance, the phenomena exhibited by the pendulum are not to be accounted for by impact: in fact, it is usually assumed that corresponding phenomena would take place if the earth and the pendulum were situated in an absolute vacuum, and at any conceivable distance from one another. If this be so, it follows that there must be two totally different kinds of causes of motion: the one impact—a vera causa [true cause], of which, to all appearance, we have constant experience; the other, attractive or repulsive 'force'—a metaphysical entity which is physically inconceivable."

"Newton expressly repudiated the notion of the existence of attractive forces, in the sense in which that term is ordinarily understood; and he refused to put forward any hypothesis as to the physical cause of the so-called 'attraction of gravitation.'"

"It seems safe to look forward to the time when the conception of attractive and repulsive forces, having served its purpose as a useful piece of scientific scaffolding, will be replaced by the deduction of the phenomena known as attraction and repulsion, from the general laws of motion."

"A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit upon it."

"A riot is at the bottom the language of the unheard."

"Roger Smith: A negotiator only uses force as a last resort."

"Whenever you employ a force of any sort, to carry a point of real importance, reject all nice calculations of economy. Better to be a thousand per cent over the mark, than the smallest fraction of a unit under it."

"There is little to choose morally between beating up a man physically and beating him up mentally."

"Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe."

"A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion."

"Let there be no violence in religion."

"I have always been fond of the West African proverb "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.""

"Not only is democracy mystical nonsense, it is also immoral. If one man has no right to impose his wishes on another, then ten million men have no right to impose their wishes on the one, since the initiation of force is wrong (and the assent of even the most overwhelming majority can never make it morally permissible). Opinions—even majority opinions—neither create truth nor alter facts. A lynch mob is democracy in action. So much for mob rule."

"The idea that Anarchy can be inaugurated by force is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by force. Force cannot preserve Anarchy; neither can it bring it."

"Thus to the plain man there may be no metaphor in... Newtonian "force" and "attraction," Thomas Young's "kinetic energy" and Michelangelo's figure of Leda. Placed in their customary contexts these present nothing to him but the face of literal truth. To the initiated, however, who are aware of the "gross original" senses as well as the now literal senses , they may become metaphors. There are no metaphors per se...."

"Where force is necessary, one should make use of it boldly, resolutely, and right to the end. But it is as well to know the limitations of force; to know where to combine force with manoeuvre, assualt with conciliation."

"Vencer no es convencer."

"He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate. Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice."

"Der imperialistische Machtgedanke muß, von welcher Seite er auch kommen möge, für alle Zeit unschädlich gemacht werden."

"Occult historians generally agree that V.V.V.V.V. signified Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici ("By the force of truth I have conquered the universe"), one of the eleven magic mottoes of Aleister Crowley."

"The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations — there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole, — an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself — is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations."

"I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community."

"Nations, like men, have their infancy."

"Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed. But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the rest!"

"If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us."

"The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation."

"Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together."

"The honor of a nation is an important thing. It is said in the Scriptures, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” It may be said, also, What doth it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, but lose its honor?"

"When the architect intends a grand structure, he makes the foundation broad and strong. We should imitate this prudence in laying the foundations of the future republic. There is a law of harmony in all departments of nature. The oak is in the acorn. The career and destiny of individual men are enfolded in the elements of which they are composed. The same is true of a nation. It will be something or it will be nothing. It will be great, or it will be small, according to its own essential qualities. As these are rich and varied, or pure and simple, slender and feeble, broad and strong, so will be the life and destiny of the nation itself. The stream cannot rise higher than its source. The ship cannot sail faster than the wind. The flight of the arrow depends upon the strength and elasticity of the bow, and as with these, so with a nation."

"The essence of nationalistic ideology is to hold homeland and nation as supreme values, conceiving them as mystical entities almost with a life of their own and having an absolute claim on the individual; whereas, in reality, they are only dissociated and formless realities, by way of their negation of any true hierarchical principle, and of any symbol or warrant of a transcendent authority. In general, the foundation of political unities that have taken form in this direction is antithetical to the traditional state. In fact, as I have said, the cement of the latter was a loyalty and fidelity that could dispense with the naturalistic fact of nationality; it was a principle of order and sovereignty that, by not being based on this fact, could even be valid in areas including more than one nationality. It was the dignities, particular rights, and castes that united or divided individuals "vertically," beyond the "horizontal" common denominator of "nation" and "homeland." In a word, it was unification from above, not from below."

"Nation states were a comparative novelty in European history. Much of the continent in 1900 was still dominated by the long-established and ethnically mixed empires of the Habsburgs, Romanovs and Osmanli. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was another such entity. Some smaller countries were also ethnically heterogeneous: Belgium and Switzerland, for example. And there were numerous petty principalities and grand duchies, like Luxembourg or Lichtenstein, that had no distinct national identity of their own, yet resisted absorption into bigger political units. These patchwork political structures made practical sense at a time when mass migration was increasing rather than reducing ethnic intermingling. Yet in the eyes of political nationalists, they deserved to be consigned to the past; the future should belong to homogeneous nation states. France, which had nurtured in the Swiss political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau the prophet of popular sovereignty, also provided a kind of model for nation-building. A republic forged and re-forged in repeated revolutions and wars, France by 1900 seemed to have subsumed all its old regional identities in a single 'idea of France'. Auvergnais, Bretons and Gascons alike all considered themselves to be Frenchmen, having been put through the same standardized schooling and military training."

"As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, And you will be the father of a multitude of nations. "No longer shall your name be called Abram, But your name shall be Abraham; For I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. "I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you.…"

"The Russian past offers many lessons for the present and not just those the current powers that be want people to draw. Among those unlearned lessons, Sergey Lozenko of Sovershenno Sekretno says, is one that comes from the disasters that followed from Aleksandr Kolchak’s failure to take the nationality question seriously. In a 2,000-word article entitled “Kolchak’s Nationality Question,” the historian says what the leaders of the White Movement routinely underestimated the importance of ethnic issues and believed that any problems in that area could be solved by force alone. The result was disaster (sovsekretno.ru/articles/istoriya/natsionalnyy-vopros-kolchaka100624/)."

"And I will shake all the nations, and the precious things of all the nations will come in; and I will fill this house with glory,’ says Jehovah of armies."

"The nation that can, in the next century, show the greatest output of spiritual strength, that is the nation that shall lead the world."

"Honesty, decency, faithfulness, and comradeship, ... must be shown when dealing with those of like blood but to no one else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. . . . Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death like cattle interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our culture. . . . Whether 10,000 Russian females collapse from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch interests me only insofar as the antitank ditch for Germany is finished."

"Like most serious students, I do not regard the 'nation' as a primary nor an unchanging social entity. It belongs exclusively to a particular, and historically recent, period. It is a social entity only insofar it relates to a certain kind of modern territorial state, the 'nation-state', and it is pointless to discuss nation and nationality except insofar as both relate to it."

"A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbours."

"Look! The nations are like a drop from a bucket, And as the film of dust on the scales they are regarded. Look! He lifts up the islands like fine dust."

"Nations will certainly go to your light, and kings to the brightness of your shining forth."

"The little one will become a thousand, and the small one a mighty nation. I myself, Jehovah, will speed it up in its own time."

"She gave birth to a son, a male, who is to shepherd all the nations with an iron rod. And her child was snatched away to God and to his throne."

"Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation!"

"[T]hough affluence is a good thing, and the spirit of compassionate reform is a good thing, in the end a nation survives only to the extent that the spirit of self-discipline and self-sacrifice is strong and vital."

"The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes."

"There are various ways to protect the nation, but nothing more is patriotic than giving one's life for the nation. This is the best patriotism."

"The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint."

"Come all you true friends of the nation, attend to humanity's call!"

"The nation is worth fighting for."

"Every nation, like every individual, has received a mission that it must fulfil."

"Consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a Nation not slow and dull, but of quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, suttle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that humane capacity can soar to."

"If it is worth a bloody struggle to establish this nation, it is worth one to preserve it."

"No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country - thus far shalt thou go and no further."

"What do we call a nation? – People who are of the same origin and who speak the same words and who live and make friends of each other, who have the same customs and songs and entertainment are what we call a nation, and the place where that people lives is called the people's country."

"The disappearance of whole nations would impoverish us no less than if all the people were to become identical, with the same character and the same face. Nations are the wealth of humanity, its generalized personalities. The least among them has its own special colors, and harbors within itself a special aspect of God's design."

"Humanity without Nationality is empty, nationality without humanity is blind."

"This is the vanity of every principality—and notable for a nation—that the principality is sovereign in history; which is to say, that it presumes it is the power in relation to which the moral significance of everything and everyone else is determined."

"No nation can plan its future without coming to terms with its past."

"We shall have to learn again to be one nation, or one day we shall be no nation."

"You can construct a nation on an idea; but you cannot reconstruct a nation on the basis of one."

"From a single crime know the nation."

"A nation is created by families, a religion, traditions: it is made up out of the hearts of mothers, the wisdom of fathers, the joy and the exuberance of children."

"No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation."

"In those days ten men out of all the languages of the nations will take hold, yes, they will take firm hold of the robe of a Jew, saying: “We want to go with you, for we have heard that God is with you people."

"Many of the countries that achieved formal sovereignty through decolonization in the post-World War II period emerged as extremely weak States. That is, they emerged with a level of institutional capacity-of "infrastructural power," in Michael Mann's useful conceptualization-well below the minimum level one usually associates with the notion of "sovereign State." Looking at the phenomenon from the perspective of the international system, Robert Jackson has suggested that decolonization brought with it an unprecedented disjunction between "negative" and "positive" sovereignty-that is, between sovereignty in the traditional sense and empirical Statehood, producing "quasi-States." Whereas in the past, States gained sovereignty only if they mustered the internal capacity to withstand the challenges of other States at the international level, in the contemporary world the situation is partially reversed, in that some of the new States are able to maintain their sovereignty only with the support of the international system. While decolonization has certainly resulted in the proliferation of "weak States," Jackson exaggerates the newness of the phenomenon; indeed he himself acknowledges that the "new sovereignty game" originated under the League of Nations, when the application of the principle of national self-determination produced a plethora of countries in the Balkans and northern Europe whose capacity for "empirical" Statehood was open to question. In any case, it is quite evident that the resumption of imperial disintegration within eastern Europe following the collapse of Communism is producing additional "quasi-States." Weak States are prone to protracted internal conflicts, and due to the widespread availability of cheap, rapid-fire weapons, such conflicts are likely to involve high levels of violence."

"Not gold but only men can make A people great and strong; Men who for truth and honor's sake Stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep, Who dare while others fly— They build a nation's pillars deep And lift them to the sky."

"Cleanse the body of this nation Through the glory of the Lord."

"Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations—such is the national program that Marxism, the experience of the whole world, and the experience of Russia, teach the workers."

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last."

"A nation that can not preserve itself ought to die, and it will die—die in the grasp of the evils it is too feeble to overthrow."

"What defines a people is not race, not tradition, not geography, but the free choice of a group of human beings to live together as fellow citizens."

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."

"I know three things must always be To keep a nation strong and free. One is a hearthstone bright and dear, With busy, happy loved ones near. One is a ready heart and hand To love, and serve, and keep the land. is a worn and beaten way where the people go to pray. long as these are kept alive, Nation and people will survive. God keep them always, everywhere— The home, the heart, the place of prayer."

"Waldorf education places the development of the individual child in the focal point, convinced that the healthy individual is a prerequisite for a healthy society."

"The advent of the Waldorf Schools was in my opinion the greatest contribution to world peace and understanding of the century."

"Those in the public school reform movement have some important things to learn from what Waldorf educators have been doing for many years. It is an enormously impressive effort toward quality education, and schools would be advised to familiarize themselves with the basic assumptions that under gird the Waldorf movement. Art as it helps to reveal the use of language, art as it can be revealed in numbers, and certainly in nature"

"My own experience with Waldorf-educated children is overwhelmingly positive. Although a public school teacher myself for 30 years, I've been fortunate enough as a public speaker on school reform to have been invited to lecture at Waldorf schools all over the country. What I've seen on these trips has been a revelation to me of what might be possible."

"My past three decades (of teaching) have been marked by change. From time to time a unique stabilizing influence would appear in my classes: a Waldorf graduate. They were different from the others. Without exception they were, at the same time, caring people, creative students, individuals with indefinable values, and students who when they spoke made a difference."

"There is no task of greater importance than to give our children the very best preparation for the demands of an ominous future, a preparation that aims at the methodical cultivation of their spiritual and their moral gifts. As long as the exemplary work of the Waldorf School Movement continues to spread its influence as it has done over the past decades, we can all look forward with hope. I am sure that Rudolf Steiner's work for children must be considered a central contribution to the twentieth century and I feel it deserves the support of all freedom-loving thinking people"

"I first heard of Waldorf education about five years ago, after having carried out extensive study of the neurological aspects of cognition, movement, and maturation. I was delighted to discover such a neurologically sound curriculum. I heartily support efforts to spread the awareness of Waldorf education and hope that it will spawn not only an increase in Waldorf schools, but an infusion of at least some of the ideas into the mainstream where they are so sorely needed. In Colorado, I am working with several districts to incorporate various Waldorf strategies into the teaching of reading and mathematics. The ideas are very well received and very much needed."

"I used to think Waldorf education the most undamaging education, but then the more I looked into it, I found it the most beneficial system we have. People ask, "What will happen to my child in the world if he doesn't learn to read and write very early?" . . . The issue is that the child's greatest strength for survival in a world of madness is to be whole, sane and in touch with the heart. The beauty of the Waldorf School is that it keeps children intact until they are ready to move out into the world as whole individuals."

"I am deeply grateful for Waldorf education, which woke me up and helped me rediscover my imagination."

"Waldorf education has been an important model of holistic education for almost a century. It is one of the very few forms of education that acknowledges the soul-life of children and nurtures that life. It is truly an education for the whole child and will continue to be an important model of education as we move into the 21st century."

"Steiner was a free-spirited school that encouraged creativity and individualism."

"Waldorf schools generally turn out young people who get into the colleges of their choice, but more importantly are well prepared for life. I hope this form of education becomes the basis for public school curriculum throughout the United States. And I hope it happens soon."

"Waldorf education enables young people to be in love with the world as the world should be loved."

"How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis of all law?"

"He who believes this (atomism) may as well believe that if a great quantity of the one-and-twenty letters, composed either of gold or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them."

"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."

"The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."

"Events may appear to us to be random, but this could be attributed to human ignorance about the details of the processes involved."

"Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word."

"Randomness is a very, very subtle concept with its study properly belonging to statisticians more than mathematicians."

"Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen."

"Fretting about a dearth of randomness seems like worrying that humanity might use up its last reserves of ignorance."

"The fact that randomness requires a physical rather than a mathematical source is noted by almost everyone who writes on the subject, and yet the oddity of this situation is not much remarked."

"Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe — in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance."

"Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random."

"The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random."

"A random sequence is a vague notion in which each term is unpredictable to the uninitiated and whose digits pass a certain number of tests traditional with statisticians and depending somewhat on the uses to which the sequence is to be put."

"Quand une regle est fort composée, ce qui luy est conforme, passe pour irrégulier."

"For I do not believe that it is through the interference of Divine Providence … that the spittle of a certain person moved, fell on a certain gnat in a certain place, and killed it."

"Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us."

"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."

"One of us recalls producing a 'random' plot with only 11 planes, and being told by his computer center's programming consultant that he had misused the random number generator: 'We guarantee that each number is random individually, but we don’t guarantee that more than one of them is random.' Figure that out."

"The definition of random in terms of a physical operation is notoriously without effect on the mathematical operations of statistical theory because so far as these mathematical operations are concerned random is purely and simply an undefined term."

"While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information."

"The only way to win is cheat."

"Doubtless the pleasure is as great Of being cheated as to cheat."

"Everyone cheats in sports. It's like my father used to tell me — if you're not cheating, you're not trying."

"When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat; Yet, fooled with hope, men favor the deceit; Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay. Tomorrow's falser than the former day. None would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly running could not give."

"Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his marketcare into a chariot of the sun. What a day dawns, when we have taken to heart the doctrine of faith!"

"I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break."

"One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory."

"L'intention de ne jamais tromper nous expose à être souvent trompés."

"“You cheated.” “That’s such a low word. Let’s just say I employed certain skills which are not necessarily observed within the strictest canon of the game.”"

"No treaty is ever an impediment to a cheat."

"Hey, no fair! You’re cheating!"

"That’s cheating! Why, that turtle spilled more than he drank! Round here there’s only one thing we do with cheaters. Turn on the fence, Bruce. It’s time we gave these cheaters a beating!"

"Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work." John 4:34"

""I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." John 5:30"

""For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." John 6:38"

""I know Him; because I am from Him, and He sent Me." John 7:29"

""And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him." John 8:29"

""We must work the works of Him who sent Me, as long as it is day; night is coming, when no man can work." John 9:4"

"And Jesus cried out and said, "He who believes in Me does not believe in Me, but in Him who sent Me. And he who beholds Me beholds the One who sent Me." John 12:44-45"

""For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me commandment, what to say, and what to speak." John 12:49"

""Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me." John 13:20"

""And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." John 17:3"

""For the words which Thou gavest Me I have given to them; and they received them, and truly understood that I came forth from Thee, and they believed that Thou didst send Me." John 17:8"

""As Thou didst send Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world." John 17:18"

"Jesus therefore said to them again, "Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you." John 20:21"

""Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Matthew 28:19-20"

""For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." Mark 10:45"

""For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." Luke 19:10"

""For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him." John 3:16-17"

""But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." Acts 1:8"

""For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." Romans 1:16"

""Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." 2 Corinthians 5:20"

""...in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord." Ephesians 3:10-11"

""And we proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man complete in Christ." Colossians 1:28"

"Every heart with Christ, a missionary; every heart without Christ, a mission field."

"Mission cannot be something separate from or added to the essence of the Church. The essential nature of the local congregation is, in and of itself, mission, or else the congregation is not really the Church."

"Mission [is] a radiation of the love of the heart of Christ."

"The church is missionary by nature because God has sent it on a mission in the world under the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is to bear witness to God's redemptive reign. Just as God is a missionary God, so the church is to be a missionary church."

"God’s church falters from exhaustion because Christians erroneously think that God has given them a mission to perform in the world. Rather, the God of mission has given his church to the world. It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission who has a church in the world. The church’s involvement in mission is its privileged participation in the actions of the triune God."

"The church exists, in other words, for what we sometimes call "mission": to announce to the world that Jesus is its Lord."

"When the church is in mission, it is the true church. The church itself is not only a product of that mission but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God's purposes in and through his people."

"It is not the local church that will change the world; it is Jesus. Attendance on Sundays does not transform lives; Jesus within their hearts is what changes people."

"It's possible to be a missionary without ever leaving your zip code."

"Missional means actually doing mission right where you are. Missional means adopting the posture of a missionary, learning and adapting to the culture around you while remaining biblically sound."

"The church exists for the sake of the world....The ultimate goal of all ministry is to reach others for Christ."

"Christ's strategy is to scatter His people throughout the world between Sundays, penetrating society's structure from within. They are the true ministers of Jesus Christ in the world. Rightly understood, every believer is in full-time service for Jesus Christ. That movement is a lay movement, and the church's impact is the aggregate of all the laity's impac as they carry out their common tasks between Sundays."

"Our mission has not life of its own: only in the hands of the sending God can it truly be called mission. Not least since the missionary initiative comes from God alone."

"Jesus was the first apostle. He was sent by his Father. He, in turn, sent the Twelve. They went to people who would then take the gospel to the rest of the world. Whoever received it would understand that they, too, had been sent. With the gospel being what it is, the church as bearer of the gospel is bound to be apostolic."

"The essence of any church is its mission. The essence of God's mission is extravagant love, which Jesus Christ communicated and displayed for us on the cross."

"The calling of the church in every culture is to be mission. That is, the work of the church is not to be an agent or servant of the culture. The churches’ business is not to maintain freedom or to promote wealth or to help a political party or to serve as the moral guide to culture. The church’s mission is to be the presence of the kingdom. . . . The church’s mission is to show the world what it looks like when a community of people live under the reign of God."

"If we want to be on mission with God we simply must pause long enough to understand how God is on mission. Only then can we know with some degree of certainty that we are aligned as his instruments and not misaligned as his obstacles."

"The church doesn't exist for itself; it exists to serve the world. It is not ultimately about the church; it's about the people God wants to bless through the church. When the church loses sight of this, it loses its heart."

"At the core, it is not the number of activities a church is involved in that defines success, but whether those activities result in accomplishing God's mission for His church."

"It is imperative that Christians be like Jesus, by living freely within the culture as missionaries who are as faithful to the Father and his gospel as Jesus was in his own time and place."

"It is in the very being of God that the basis for the missionary enterprise is found. God is a sending God, with a desire to see humankind and creation reconciled, redeemed, and healed. The missional church, then, is a sent church. It is a going church, a movement of God through his people, sent to bring healing to a broken world."

"The time for getting people to come to church is over. It is time now to get people to come to Christ."

"The church was first established and organized with a world-wide mission for a world-wide work."

"The Church is sent into the world to continue that which he came to do, in the power of the same Spirit, reconciling people to God (John 20:19-23)."

"Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity, But worship abides forever."

"The Church exists by mission, just as fire exists by burning."

"The life of the church is the heart of God. The heart of God is to serve a broken world. When Jesus wrapped a towel around his waist, he reminded us that only he could wash away our sin. The church cannot live when the heart of God is not beating within her. God's heartbeat is to seek and save that which is lost. The church exists to serve as the body of Christ, and it is through this commitment to serve that we are forced to engage the culture."

"Jesus came to ignite a fire within you that would consume you and ignite you. Jesus the King came to fight for your heart. If He has won your heart, then to follow your heart will always lead you to follow the heart of God. He will always lead you to advance forward behind enemy lines to win the hearts of those who do not yet know Him or love Him."

"A mission focus looks first at those who are outside the church before it ever looks at the internal needs of the church."

"Success is achieving an intended outcome. Success in God’s Church is achieving the outcome God intends. Another word for this outcome is mission."

"If the Church is to be missional rather than institutional, we must begin with a clear understanding of what that mission is....Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, the Lord of the Church. Christ cast the only ballot that counts. Since Jesus Christ is the owner of his Church and thus all of its local expressions, we do not get to dream up the mission for our congregation."

"Christians living in modern culture face a fundamental challenge. That challenge is to learn to think about their culture in Missional terms."

"To fulfill the Great Commission, we need to stop doing ministry by addition and start doing ministry by multiplication...planting churches that plant churches that plant churches that plant churches."

"Mission is no longer about crossing the oceans, jungles and deserts, but about crossing the streets of the world's cities."

"Remember, you are never more like God than when you are living in relationships with God's people and working in partnerships for the re-creation and redemption of God's world."

"The Church is by nature missionary to the extent that, if it ceases to be missionary, it has not just failed in one of its tasks, it has ceased being Church."

"Participating in the mission of God means leaving our place of security, to travel to the place where other are. This is the heartbeat of the incarnation....Mission is always in the direction of the other, and away from ourselves."

"When the church ceases to reach out to all people, it ceases to be a true church. This is why the Great Commission is a controlling and central command. All these metaphors and commands spring out of one profound reality: the church is a result of and a participant in the mission of God."

"Tolerance, openness and understanding towards other peoples' cultures, social structures, values and faiths are now essential to the very survival of an interdependent world."

"Pluralism is no longer simply an asset or a prerequisite for progress and development, it is vital to our existence."

"A secure pluralistic society requires communities that are educated and confident both in the identity and depth of their own traditions and in those of their neighbours."

"Pluralist societies are not accidents of history. They are a product of enlightened education and continuous investment by governments and all of civil society in recognizing and celebrating the diversity of the world’s peoples."

"I believe leadership everywhere must continuously work to ensure that pluralism, and all its benefits, become top global priorities. In this effort, civil society has a vital role. By its very nature, civil society is pluralist because it seeks to speak for the multiple interests not represented by the state. I refer, for example, to organisations which ensure best practices such as legal societies and associations of accountants, doctors and engineers. The meritocracy they represent is the very foundation of pluralism. And meritocracy is one of the principles of democracy itself."

"We cannot make the world safe for democracy unless we also make the world safe for diversity."

"The spirit of the Knowledge Society is the spirit of Pluralism—a readiness to accept the Other, indeed to learn from him, to see difference as an opportunity rather than a threat."

"All earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it."

"Cultural pluralism is the only thing we all have in common."

"Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade."

"Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate"

"At few periods in modern history, has the mission of building pluralistic societies been more important than at present. Celebrating the diversity of perspectives and opinions, faiths and cultures, languages and traditions is a prerequisite to building harmonious and successful societies."

"The real intent of my writing is not to say, you must think in this way. The real intent is: here are some of the many important facets of this extraordinary Kosmos; have you thought about including them in your own worldview? My work is an attempt to make room in the Kosmos for all of the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum. I have one major rule: everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. To Freudians I say, Have you looked at Buddhism? To Buddhists I say, Have you studied Freud? To liberals I say, Have you thought about how important some conservative ideas are? To conservatives I say, Can you perhaps include a more liberal perspective? And so on, and so on, and so on... At no point I have ever said: Freud is wrong, Buddha is wrong, liberals are wrong, conservatives are wrong. I have only suggested that they are true but partial. My critical writings have never attacked the central beliefs of any discipline, only the claims that the particular discipline has the only truth — and on those grounds I have often been harsh. But every approach, I honestly believe, is essentially true but partial, true but partial, true but partial. And on my own tombstone, I dearly hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial..."

"The French writer, Albert Camus, once lamented that "man eventually becomes accustomed to everything". I have always believed that this is an unjustly pessimistic view of our human condition; and in recent weeks I have seen enough to convince me that Camus, on this point at least, was wrong: 30,000 East Germans abandoning home, friends, jobs, everything, to escape to a new life of opportunity but also uncertainty in the West; thousands of Soviet miners striking not for more pay, but for better supplies; the joy of Poles as they greet their first non-Communist Prime Minister in 40 years; over a million inhabitants of the Baltic states forming a human chain to protest against the forced annexation of their nations; demonstrators in Prague braving the security forces to mark the 21st anniversary of the Warsaw Pact invasion; or in Leipzig calling for freedom of speech. Clearly the peoples of the East have not become accustomed to their lot. Totalitarian rule has not made people less attracted by freedom, democracy and self-determination. The opposite is true. Nor has it made them incapable of exercising these values through political organization and self-expression: look at the debates in the new Congress of the People's Deputies, the activities of the popular fronts, Solidarity in Poland or the opposition parties in Hungary. The demand for pluralism and reform can now be heard in every Eastern nation."

"Without the good will of manipulators and audience alike, puppets cannot sustain an illusion of life."

"And although I'm not exactly sure what [Jim Henson] did, whatever it was really moved me."

"I had never worked with puppets before so just the concept of talking to this green, grungy-lookin' rag comin' out of a trash can was totally alien to me."

"We have a ways to go in understanding the power of puppetry … Our problem is for too long we have thought of puppets being for children. … The appeal of puppetry to me is it's much more freeing for an artist … Puppetry is a completely controllable means to attack your characters in every possible way. The artist has the possibility to create a much larger landscape with puppetry. The human becomes more human in that sense. Another of the great things about puppetry is the ability to transform."

"My excitement about making the [puppet] team was slightly tempered by the fact that everyone who auditioned had made the team."

"When I hear the art of puppetry discussed, I often feel frustrated in that it's one of those pure things that somehow becomes much less interesting when it is overdiscussed or analyzed."

"One of the nice things about puppets is that it's your own hand in there. You can make it do anything you want it to."

"A good character is almost always derived from an aspect of the performer's personality."

"Parents are concerned that if kids see that a person operates the Muppet, an illusion will be shattered. But I think kids see us as just the people who carry their friends around."

"I feel that almost everyone maintains a childlike quality throughout their adulthood. One of the nice things about the puppet form is that it has the ability to communicate with this childlike side of the audience."

"Working as I do with movement of puppet creatures, I'm always struck by the feebleness of our efforts to achieve naturalistic movement. Just looking at the incredible movement of a lizard or a bird, or even the smallest insect, can be a very humbling experience."

"It was interesting and kind of fun to do--but I wasn't really interested in puppetry then. It was just a means to an end."

"A lot of people build very stiff puppets--you can barely move the thing--and you can get very little expression out of a character that you can barely move. Your hand has a lot of flexibility to it, and what you want to do is to build a puppet that can reflect all that flexibility."

"Kids come to visit the [Sesame Street] studio and they and the puppets are old friends. Those puppets are in their living rooms every day. As soon as a puppet goes up on somebody's arm, the puppeteer ceases to exist. The child comes right up to talk to Grover or the Count. They don't look at the puppeteer. They don't look at the monitor."

"Jim [Henson] had a lot of respect for puppetry, but not much for the puppet as a physical object. It was a means to an end. If he was giving a live demonstration, he didn't care if people saw him put his hand in the puppet, and he didn't try to sustain the illusion once the performance was over."

"And so that he can tell what’s happening, a puppeteer always watches his performance in a television monitor. In a way, the puppeteer becomes an audience to his own performance."

"Well, the thing to remember here is that my own personality has absolutely nothing to do with this weirdo."

"For decades, Israeli and Western leaders have dehumanised Palestinians, but the response cannot now be to dehumanise Israelis. Explaining the political context of the Hamas attacks and the principles of strategic armed struggle is a world away from endorsing an indiscriminate massacre. For if you think that war crimes from Hamas last Saturday are acceptable, how are you going to argue that war crimes from Israel today are not? To lose moral consistency weakens the moral core of the Palestinian cause. To see these indiscriminate Hamas attacks as an acceptable outcome of Palestinian suffering is not a sign of solidarity; it is a form of moral relativism. To cast oppressed Palestinians as having special clearance for brutality is not a liberation struggle; it is specifically intertwining the cause with violence against civilians. And to say that all Israeli citizens are fair game (as I have seen repeatedly online) is a level of permissibility that is extraordinary. It is the same logic applied now to Palestinians in Gaza by the extremist Israeli government and its cheerleaders."

"What's new is that Jew-hatred (disguised as anti-Zionism) has itself become ‘politically correct’ among these so-called intellectuals. They have one standard for Israel: an impossibly high one. Meanwhile, they set a much lower standard for every other country, even for nations in which tyranny, torture, honor killings, genocide, and every other human rights abuse go unchallenged. // Today anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism."

"The "New Antisemitism": A volatile mix of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hostility, from the World Jewish Congress"

"A recent third type of anti-Jewish odium is something different. It is a strange mixture of violent hatred by radical Islamists and the more or less indifference to it by Westerners."

"Irwin concisely describes the new antisemitism which manifests itself as a diabolical representation of the State of Israel and a systemic methodology that makes Israel into an outcast and pariah among the nations."

"The new p.c. anti-Semitism mixes traditional blame-the-Jews boilerplate with a fevered opposition to Israel. In this worldview, the ‘Zionist entity’ has no legitimacy and as a result no right to do what other nations do, like protect itself and its citizens. The Return of Antisemitism"

"One would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to recognize that this hate of Israel is profoundly anti-Semitic. Such hostile sentiments, sometimes disguised as a 'legitimate' critique of Israeli politics, has been called the "new" anti-Semitism."

"This brings me to my final and very painful point. It has unfortunately become in vogue, among the "chattering classes", to speak about, excuse and even understand 'anti-Zionism'. This is the new antisemitism, which is basically anti-Israel, covered by a guise."

"But since this new anti-Semitism manifests itself so clearly now as political rejection of the Jewish state, it is worth examining the historical record for a moment."

"Requests for specialized facilities and minor notational improvements are very common. When provided, they rarely fail to win applause. After all, if a feature is a direct solution to a problem and doesn’t significantly interact with other facilities, it is easy to explain, often easy to implement, and typically has a logically minimal expression leading to very concise pieces of code. People comparing languages using lists love such features. The snag is that the problems we face are essentially infinite, so we need an infinity of such specialized features."

"The term "creeping featurism" was used in a 1976 Programmer's Workbench paper written by John Mashey, and in a talk by him first done in 1977, and later gave (as an ACM National Lecture) about 50-70 times through 1982. The original foils were scanned in 2002, and the phrase is used on Slide 033 within the talk. Mashey says "I can't recall if I actually coined this myself or heard it somewhere, but in any case, the phrase was certainly in public use by 1976.""

"He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed."

"Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners."

"If you always live with those who are lame, you will yourself learn to limp."

"The discipline of piety nourishes the soul with divine thoughts."

"Every age and degree of understanding should have its proper measure of discipline. With regard to boys and adolescents, therefore, or those who cannot understand the seriousness of the penalty of excommunication, whenever such as these are delinquent let them be subjected to severe fasts or brought to terms by harsh beatings, that they may be cured."

"The Ancients … subjected themselves to a fierce discipline of detachment from public opinion. Although they inevitably had to try to influence political life in their favor, they never seriously thought of themselves as founders or lawgivers. The mixture of unwise power and powerless wisdom, in the ancients’ view, would always end up with power strengthened and wisdom compromised. He who flirts with power, Socrates said, will be compelled to lie with it."

"The ascetic Gotama … avoids watching dancing, singing, music and shows. He abstains from using garlands, perfumes, cosmetics, ornaments and adornments. … He refrains from running errands, from buying and selling."

"Whoever desires that his intellect may grow up to soundness, to healthy vigor, must begin with moral discipline. Reading and study are not enough to perfect the power of thought. One thing above all is needful, and that is, the disinterestedness which is the very soul of virtue. To gain truth, which is the great object of the understanding, I must seek it disinterestedly. Here is the first and grand condition of intellectual progress. I must choose to receive the truth, no matter how it bears on myself. I must follow it, no matter where it leads, what interests it opposes, to what persecution or loss it lays me open, from what party it severs me, or to what party it allies. Without this fairness of mind, which is only another phrase for disinterested love of truth, great native powers of understanding are perverted and led astray."

"Ah, you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win You know the way to stop me, but you don't have the discipline How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin."

"My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, to accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power. ... This single principle seemed to me sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future anything which I could not obtain, and thus render me contented. ... But I confess there is need of prolonged discipline and frequently repeated meditation to accustom the mind to view all objects in this light; and I believe that in this chiefly consisted the secret of the power of such philosophers as in former times were enabled to rise superior to the influence of fortune, and, amid suffering and poverty, enjoy a happiness which their gods might have envied."

"I believe, as I always have, in freedom. The freedom which rests on the sense of responsibility. I consider discipline indispensable, but it must be inner discipline, motivated by a common purpose and a strong feeling of comradeship."

"I consider discipline indispensable, but it must be inner discipline, motivated by a common purpose and a strong feeling of comradeship."

"Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many common features. They share these features also with other enterprises such as art, literature and music. The most salient features of all these enterprises are discipline and diversity. Discipline to submerge the individual fantasy in a greater whole. Diversity to give scope to the infinite variety of human souls and temperaments. Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity there can be no freedom. Greatness for the enterprise, freedom for the individual—these are the two themes, contrasting but not incompatible, that make up the history of science and the history of religion."

"To be disciplined does not mean being silent, abstaining, or doing only what one thinks one may undertake without risk; it is not the art of eluding responsibility; it means acting in compliance with orders received, and therefore finding in one's own mind, by effort and reflection, the possibility to carry out such orders. It also means finding in one's own will the energy to face the risks involved in execution."

"Discipline is, in a manner, nothing else but the art of inspiring the soldiers with greater fear of their officers than of the enemy. This fear has often the effect of courage: but it cannot prevail against the fierce and obstinate valor of people animated by fanaticism, or warm love of their country."

"In formal battle, discipline is more important than courage."

"There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men."

"A person must take care to exercise moderate discipline over the body and subject it to the Spirit by means of fasting, vigils, and labor. The goal is to have the body obey and conform—and not hinder—the inner person and faith. Unless it is held in check, we know it is the nature of the body to undermine faith and the inner person."

"One must manifest discipline of spirit; without it one cannot become free. To the slave discipline of spirit will be a prison; to the liberated one it will be a wondrous healing garden. So long as the discipline of spirit is as fetters the doors are closed, for in fetters one cannot ascend the steps. One may understand the discipline of spirit as wings."

"If you desire ease, forsake learning."

"The church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds. Its practice, its remedy is castration. It never inquires, “How can a desire be spiritualized, beautified, deified.” In all ages it has laid the weight of discipline in the process of extirpation. The extirpation of sensuality, pride, lust of dominion, lust of property, and revenge. But to attack the passions at the roots means attacking life itself at its source. The method of the church is hostile to life."

"I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small but precious measure of the freedom from the accidents of incarnation, and charity, and that detachment which preserves the world which it renounces. I believe that through discipline we can learn to preserve what is essential to our happiness in more and more adverse circumstances, and to abandon with simplicity what would else have seemed to us indispensable; that we come a little to see the world without the gross distortion of personal desire, and in seeing it so, accept more easily our earthly privation and its earthly horror — But because I believe that the reward of discipline is greater than its immediate objective, I would not have you think that discipline without objective is possible: in its nature discipline involves the subjection of the soul to some perhaps minor end; and that end must be real, if the discipline is not to be factitious. Therefore I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war, and personal hardship, and even the need for subsistence, ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude, for only through them can we attain to the least detachment; and only so can we know peace."

"No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown."

"Moses … takes one form of desire, that one whose field of activity is the belly, and admonishes and disciplines it as the first step, holding that the other forms will cease to run riot as before and will be restrained by having learnt that their senior and as it were the leader of their company is obedient to the laws of temperance."

"My son, do not reject the discipline of Jehovah, and do not loathe his reproof, for those whom Jehovah loves he reproves, Just as a father does a son in whom he delights."

"Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge."

"Laborare est orare. [To work is to pray.] By the Puritan moralist the ancient maxim is repeated with a new and intenser significance. The labor which he idealizes is not simply a requirement imposed by nature, or a punishment for the sin of Adam. It is itself a kind of ascetic discipline, more rigorous than that demanded of any order of mendicants—a discipline imposed by the will of God, and to be undergone, not in solitude, but in the punctual discharge of secular duties. It is not merely an economic means, to be laid aside when physical needs have been satisfied. It is a spiritual end, for in it alone can the soul find health, and it must be continued as an ethical duty long after it has ceased to be a material necessity."

"Knowledge must grow or perish; and it can grow only in a free mind, that is to say a mind which is sufficiently strong to create its own discipline."

"Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all."

"Nothing can be more hurtful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another."

"Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he’s always ready to escape their control."

"A true cultivation of the mind is fitted to forward you in your worldly concerns, and you ought to use it for this end. Only, beware lest this end master you; lest your motives sink as your condition improves; lest you fall victims to the miserable passion of vying with those around you in show, luxury, and expense. Cherish a true respect for yourselves. Feel that your nature is worth more than every thing which is foreign to you."

"Economy, in the estimation of common minds, often means the absence of all taste and comfort."

"Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people's property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored."

"I worship freedom; I abhor restraint, trouble, dependence. As long as the money in my purse lasts, it assures my independence; it relieves me of the trouble of finding expedients to replenish it, a necessity which has always inspired me with dread; but the fear of seeing it exhausted makes me hoard it carefully. The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing."

"People who originally have no means but are ultimately able to earn a great deal, through whatever talents they may possess, almost always come to think that these are permanent capital and that what they gain through them is interest. Accordingly, they do not put aside part of their earnings to form a permanent capital, but spend their money as fast as they earn it. But they are then often reduced to poverty because their earnings decrease or come to an end after their talent, which was of a transitory nature, is exhausted, as happens, for example, in the case of almost all the fine arts; or because it could be brought to bear only under a particular set of circumstances that has ceased to exist."

"But as they all say if we sell our home what will we have for it, money, and what is the use of that money, money goes and after it is gone then where are we, beside we have all we want, what can we do with money except lose it, money to spend is not very welcome, if you have it and you try to spend it, well spending money is an anxiety, saving money is a comfort and a pleasure, economy is not a duty it is a comfort, avarice is an excitement, but spending money is nothing, money spent is money non-existent, money saved is money realised..."

"Many people pay lip service to the ideals of frugality and simplicity, but you still don't see many politicians trying to get elected on a platform of policies shaped by the principle that the good life is the simple life. On the contrary, politicians promise and governments strive to raise their society's levels of production and consumption. The value of continual economic growth is a given. The majority of individuals everywhere...seem to associate happiness more with extravagance than with frugality."

"Imposing an alleged uniform general method upon everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very exceptional. And measuring originality by deviation from the mass breeds eccentricity in them."

"The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them."

"The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind."

"Sometimes the elaborate, the learned method, the grown-up method is not as good as the simple and childishly naîve method."

"Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best 20-20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go."

"If every college teacher taught his courses in the manner we have suggested, there would be no needs for a methods course. Every course would be a course in methods of learning and, therefore, in methods of teaching. For example, a "literature" course would be a course in the process of learning how to read. A history course would be a course in the process of learning how to do history. And so on. But this is the most farfetched possibility of all since college teachers, generally speaking, are more fixated on the Trivia game, than any group of teachers in the educational hierarchy. Thus we are left with the hope that, if methods courses could be redesigned to be model learning environments, the educational revolution might begin."

"The quality of striving after the ideal, that is, the quality which makes men reformers, and the quality of so striving through practical methods—[is] the quality which makes men efficient. Both qualities are absolutely essential. The absence of either makes the presence of the other worthless or worse."

"In some places, the darkness was so great, that persons could not see to read common print in the open air, for several hours together: but I believe this was not generally the case. The extent of this darkness was very remarkable."

"The darkness of the following evening was probably as gross as ever has been observed since the Almighty fiat gave birth to light. It wanted only palpability to render it as extraordinary, as that which overspread the land of Egypt in the days of Moses .... if every luminous body in the universe had been shrouded in impenetrable shades, or struck our of existence, the darkness could not have been more complete. A sheet of white paper held within a few inches of the eyes was equally invisible with the blackest velvet. Considering the small quantity of light that was transmitted by the clouds, by day, it is not surprising that, by night, a sufficient quantity of rays should not be able to penetrate the same strata, brought back the shifting of winds. to afford the most obscure prospect even of the best reflecting bodies."

"The 19th of May, 1780, was a remarkable day. Candles were lighted in many houses; the birds were silent and disappeared, and the fowls retired to roost. The legislature of Connecticut was then in session at Hartford. A very general opinion prevailed, that the day of judgment was at hand. The house of Representatives, being unable to transact their business, adjourned. A proposal to adjourn the Council was under consideration. When the opinion of Colonel Davenport was asked, he answered, "I am against an adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause of an adjournment: if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.""

"The famous Dark Day of New England, May 19, 1780, was a physical puzzle for many years to our ancestors, but its occurrence brought something more than philosophical speculation into the minds of those who passed through it. The incident of Colonel Abraham Davenport's sturdy protest is a matter of history."

"'T was on a May-day of the far old year Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring, Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, A horror of great darkness, like the night In day of which the Norland sagas tell, — The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs The crater's sides from the red hell below. Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died; Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked A loving guest at Bethany, but stern As Justice and inexorable Law.Meanwhile in the old State House, dim as ghosts, Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut, Trembling beneath their legislative robes. "It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn," Some said; and then, as if with one accord, All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport. He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice The intolerable hush. "This well may be The Day of Judgment which the world awaits; But be it so or not, I only know My present duty, and my Lord's command To occupy till He come. So at the post Where He hath set me in His providence, I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face, — No faithless servant frightened from my task, But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls; And therefore, with all reverence, I would say, Let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles." And they brought them in."

"Victory belongs to those who can say 'Victory is mine'. Success belongs to those who can begin saying 'I will succeed' and say 'I have succeed' in the end."

"One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness."

"Victory belongs to the most persevering."

"The most dangerous moment comes with victory."

"It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood."

"There is good, in one view, in feeling that we have crossed the Rubicon and are in for it; then we shall hold stoutly on; otherwise, we may be advancing with only half a heart. And there are important cases in which the difference between half a heart and a whole one makes just the difference between signal defeat and splendid victory."

"Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, O'er a' the ills o' life victorious."

"As always, victory will have a hundred fathers, but defeat will never be acknowledged by anyone at all."

"You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

"The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult."

"Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today Can tell the definition So clear of victoryAs he defeated – dying – On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear!"

"The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides."

"Victory is sweetest when you've known defeat."

"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary."

"We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. There must be contests, and you must win."

"All victories breed hate, and that over your superior is foolish or fatal."

"If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory."

"Woe to the Christian Church when it will have been victorious in this world, for then it is not the Church that has been victorious but the world. Then the heterogeneity between Christianity and the world has vanished, the world has won, and Christianity has lost."

"There's feasting spread in gorgeous halls, The lamps flash round the city walls, And many a flood of lustre falls O'er many an honoured name. Turn thou from this, and enter where Some mother weeps o'er her despair, Some desolate bride rends her rich hair, Some orphan joins the cry ! Then back again to the death plain, Where lie those whom they weep in vain, And ask, in gazing on the slain, What art thou, Victory ?"

"Easy victories aren’t worth winning."

"Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward and give us victories."

"Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived."

"Not in the clamour of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat."

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

"In war there is no substitute for victory."

"Who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe."

"There are some defeats more triumphant than victories."

"Some of my followers will remain victorious (and on the right path) till the Last Day comes, and they will still be victorious."

"I have been given the keys of eloquent speech and given victory with awe (cast into the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping last night, the keys of the treasures of the earth were brought to me till they were put in my hand."

"I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the world were brought to me and put in my hand."

"I have been sent with Jawami al-Kalim (i.e., the shortest expression carrying the widest meanings), and I was made victorious with awe (caste into the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the earth were brought to me and were put in my hand."

"There is no god but Allah, the One Who conferred upon His armies the honour of victory and helped His servant rout the clans; there is nothing after that."

"None has the right to be worshipped but Allah; He is One and has no partner. All the kingdoms is for Him, and all the praises are for Him, and He is Omnipotent. We are returning with repentance, worshipping, prostrating, and praising our Lord. He has kept up His promise and made His slave victorious, and He Alone defeated all the clans of (nonbelievers)."

"On the day of Khaibar, Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "Tomorrow I will give this flag to a man through whose hands Allah will give us victory. He loves Allah and His Apostle, and he is loved by Allah and His Apostle." The people remained that night, wondering as to who would be given it. In the morning the people went to Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) and everyone of them was hopeful to receive it (i.e. the flag). The Prophet said, "Where is `Ali bin Abi Talib?" It was said, "He is suffering from eye trouble O Allah's Apostle." He said, "Send for him." `Ali was brought and Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) spat in his eye and invoked good upon him. So `Ali was cured as if he never had any trouble. Then the Prophet (ﷺ) gave him the flag. `Ali said "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! I will fight with them till they become like us." Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "Proceed and do not hurry. When you enter their territory, call them to embrace Islam and inform them of Allah's Rights which they should observe, for by Allah, even if a single man is led on the right path (of Islam) by Allah through you, then that will be better for you than the nice red camels."

"God willing, when Allah has granted us victory, our halt tomorrow will be at Khaif, where they (the unbelievers of Mecca) had taken an oath on unbelief."

"The problem after a war is the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay."

"O Death where is thy sting, O Grave where is thy victory?"

"There are two kinds of defeat. Whether in chains or in laurels, Liberty knows nothing but victories."

"Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories."

"Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone."

"Et primo ferri motu prosternite mundum; sitque palam, quas tot duxit Pompeius in urbem curribus, unius gentes non esse triumphi."

"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life. … Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

"An attitude of moderation is apt to be misunderstood when passions are greatly excited and when victory is apt to rest with the extremists on one side or the other; yet I think it is in the long run the only wise attitude."

"I will appoint captains to rule my cities, for it is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys."

"With each loss, new buds of victory unfold in our hearts."

"If I win, lose or draw? It's a victory for all!"

"You win the victory when you yield to friends."

"Minds are conquered not by arms, but by love and magnanimity."

"The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities... It is best to win without fighting."

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."

"If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph."

"Victory belongs to those that believe in it the most and believe in it the longest. We're going to believe."

"The people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered."

"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat".… You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

"No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who've no retreat."

"There's an old saying that victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan."

"Upon the fields of friendly strife Are sown the seeds That, upon other fields, on other days Will bear the fruits of victory."

"The New York Times is going to quote Bernadette so that the people can be heard, and the Times can demonstrate they're not the media elite. I prefer when they were elite — I'm a fan of credentials. It's like we've all spent the last five years living a Roger Corman film called Revenge of the Hack. I have to care about the Internet, Sim — you know why? Because everybody else does."

"I remember. I blogged the whole thing."

"I've been inspired by José Saramago's extraordinary blogs, which he posted when he was 85 and 86 years old. They were published this year in English as The Notebook. I read them with amazement and delight. I never wanted to blog before. I've never liked the word blog — I suppose it is meant to stand for bio-log or something like that, but it sounds like a sodden tree-trunk in a bog, or maybe an obstruction in the nasal passage... But seeing what Saramago did with the form was a revelation. Oh! I get it! I see! Can I try too? My trials/attempts/efforts (that's what "essays" means) so far have very much less political and moral weight than Saramago's and are more trivially personal. Maybe that will change as I practice the form, maybe not. Maybe I'll soon find it isn't for me after all, and stop. That's to be seen. What I like at the moment is the sense of freedom."

"Skimmability, write like an idiot. Skimability: definitely a real word. People are lazy. People online are even lazier. So don't write like your turning in your AP English paper - write like an idiot. Keep your sentences short, and your paragraphs shorter. Short Paragraphs help people read, skim & enjoy articles."

"The untransacted destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent — to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean — to animate the many hundred millions of its people, and to cheer them upward — to set the principle of self-government at work — to agitate these herculean masses — to establish a new order in human affairs — to set free the enslaved — to regenerate superannuated nations — to change darkness into light — to stir up the sleep of a hundred centuries — to teach old nations a new civilization — to confirm the destiny of the human race — to carry the career of mankind to its culminating point — to cause stagnant people to be re-born — to perfect science — to emblazon history with the conquest of peace — to shed a new and resplendent glory upon mankind — to unite the world in one social family — to dissolve the spell of tyranny and exalt charity — to absolve the curse that weighs down humanity, and to shed blessings round the world! Divine task! immortal mission! Let us tread fast and joyfully the open trail before us! Let every American heart open wide for patriotism to glow undimmed, and confide with religious faith in the sublime and prodigious destiny of his well-loved country."

"In reaffirming our heritage as a free nation, we must remember that America has always been a frontier nation. Now we must embrace the next frontier, America’s manifest destiny in the stars."

"In 1845, John O’Sullivan coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny” to justify and celebrate America’s violent annexation of North America. “All this will be our future history,” he wrote in 1839, “to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man – the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen...” On the basis of such exalted views of its own beneficence, the US engaged in mass enslavement until the Civil War and mass apartheid thereafter; slaughtered Native Americans throughout the nineteenth century and subjugated them thereafter; and, with the closure of the Western frontier, extended Manifest Destiny overseas. Later, with the onset of the Cold War, anti-communist fervor led the US to fight disastrous wars in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) in the 1960s and 1970s, and brutal wars in Central America in the 1980s. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the evangelical ardor was directed against “radical Islam” or “Islamic fascism,” with four US wars of choice – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya – all of which remain debacles to this day. Suddenly, the supposed existential threat of radical Islam has been forgotten, and the new crusade targets the CPC."

"Teaching Native American studies, I always begin with a simple exercise. I ask students to quickly draw a rough outline of the United States at the time it gained independence from Britain. Invariably most draw the approximate present shape of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific-the continental territory not fully appropriated until a century after independence. What became independent in 1783 were the thirteen British colonies hugging the Atlantic shore. When called on this, students are embarrassed because they know better. I assure them that they are not alone. I call this a Rorschach test of unconscious 'manifest destiny,' embedded in the minds of nearly everyone in the United States and around the world. This test reflects the seeming inevitability of US extent and power, its destiny, with an implication that the continent had previously been a land without people"

"Manifest Destiny saw Yankee conquest as the inevitable result of a confrontation between enterprise and progress (white) versus passivity and backwardness (Indian, Mexican)."

"The concept of Manifest Destiny, with its assertion of racial superiority sustained by military power, has defined U.S. identity for 150 years. Only the Vietnam War brought a serious challenge to that concept of almightiness. Bitter debate, moral anguish, images of My Lai and the prospect of military defeat for the first time in U.S. history all suggested that the long-standing marriage of virtue and violence might soon be on the rocks."

"The daimonic (unlike the demonic, which is merely destructive) is as much concerned with creativity as with negative reactions. A special characteristic of the daimonic model is that it considers both creativity on one side, and anger and rage on the other side, as coming from the same source. That is, constructiveness and destructiveness have the same source in human personality. The source is simply human potential … The more conflict, the more rage, the more anxiety there is, the more the inner necessity to create. We must also bear in mind that gifted individuals, those with a genius (incidentally, genius was the Latin word for daimon, the basis of the daimonic concept) for certain things, feel this inner necessity even more intensely, and in some respects experience and give voice not only to their own demons but the collective daimonic as well. So they are kind of like little oracles of Delphi, or canaries in a coal mine, sensing the dangers, the conflicts, the cultural shadow, and trying to give it some meaningful expression. Who wouldn't be a little neurotic having that kind of responsibility? But, as Freud recognized, we're all neurotic to some degree. And as Jung once said, we all have complexes. That is not the question. The only question is whether we have complexes or they have us."

"The organizing center from which the regulatory effect stems seems to be a sort of 'nuclear atom' in our psychic system. One could also call it the inventor, organizer, and source of dream images. Jung called this center the 'Self' and described it as the totality of the whole psyche, in order to distinguish it from the 'ego', which constitutes only a small part of the total psyche. Throughout the ages men have been intuitively aware of the existence of such an inner center. The Greeks called it man's inner daimon."

"The Greek words daimon and daimonion express a determining power which comes upon man from outside, like providence or fate, though the ethical decision is left to man."

"The daimonic (unlike the demonic, which is merely destructive) is as much concerned with creativity as with negative reactions. A special characteristic of the daimonic model is that it considers both creativity on one side, and anger and rage on the other side, as coming from the same source. That is, constructiveness and destructiveness have the same source in human personality. The source is simply human potential."

"The daimonic needs to be directed and channeled. … Our age is one of transition, in which the normal channels for utilizing the daimonic are denied; and such ages tend to be times when the daimonic is expressed in its most destructive form."

"One uses depression as one utilizes anxiety: by blindly following its lead into -- and hopefully out of -- the daimonic labyrinth. Depression -- like anxiety -- does, when correctly related to, redirect the individual back toward his or her suppressed daimonic passions, and thus, to life."

"I was born human, but it was an accident of fate. … Humanity can change itself but hopefully it will be an individual choice. Those who want to stay human can and those who want to evolve into something much more powerful with greater capabilities can. There is no way I want to stay a mere human."

"Let's get to what I really would like, which is world peace. And, I know what you're thinking — you're thinking "that poor girl up there, she thinks she's at a beauty pageant, she's not, she's at the TED prize"… but I really do think it makes sense. And the first step to world peace is for people to meet each other."

"In this age images are powerful. Powerful enough to divide, to spread fear, to remove hope. Powerful enough to unite, to build trust, to inspire action. Until now images of the many have been held in the hands of the few. Finally that is changing. Millions of people around the world are telling their own stories. For the first time in history we have the chance to see the world differently, to see it through the eyes of the other."

"A project like Pangea, which enables us to enter in to the situations of others, imaginatively, is fulfilling what the religions call the Golden Rule... going into one's own experience, and going into other's experience, and seeing the world from another perspective — that's what we desperately need in our dangerously polarized world."

"We need to understand each other better — because we all share the same planet — and we only have one of them."

"I wish to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film."

"I am doing this because it is a great idea — to realize the language of film is so beautiful, and very personal — the most beautiful films of all are made from the heart the soul and beyond — and that is why I want to be a part of Pangea..."

"O Plato! O Pythagoras! ages ago you heard these harmonies, surprised these moments of inward ecstasy, — knew these divine transports! If music thus carries us to heaven, it is because music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven."

"Ancient belief in a cosmos composed of spheres, producing music as angels guided them through the heavens, was still flourishing in Elizabethan times. ...There is a good deal more to Pythagorean musical theory than celestial harmony. Besides the music of the celestial spheres (musica mundana), two other varieties of music were distinguished: the sound of instruments...(musica instrumentalis), and the continuous unheard music that emanated from the human body (musica humana), which arises from a resonance between the body and the soul. ...In the medieval world, the status of music is revealed by its position within the Quadrivium—the fourfold curriculum—alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Medieval students... believed all forms of harmony to derive from a common source. Before Boethius' studies in the ninth century, the idea of musical harmony was not considered independently of wider matters of celestial or ethical harmony."

"I'd like to teach the world to sing In perfect harmony I'd like to hold it in my arms and keep it company. I'd like to see the world for once All standing hand in hand And hear them echo through the hills "Ah, peace throughout the land." That's the song I hear..."

"A battle line occurs at these critical points in time. The heaven born leader must fight the onslaught with vigor and courage. Yet, no person alone can avenge a malevolent enemy. A grain of sand cannot consider itself a beachfront nor can a single drop of rain claim to be a raging river. However, when all the forces combine in harmony, then rocks crumble into dust, the earth shakes, and mountains move."

"Virtue is harmony, and health, and universal good, and God; on which account everything owes its existence and consistency to harmony."

"…genuine values and freedom know no boundaries, and only through them can harmony be attained."

"Only with the inception of the mind does evolution enter into the speeded-up process of development, and this mind, when in harmony with the Guiding Forces, can raise the planet to a great flowering or, adversely it will hasten its disintegration or downfall."

"After all, every sensible human being well understands the significance of the inviolability of marriage and of the harmony of the family for the growing generation and in the structure of the state. It is said in the Teaching that the family is the prototype of the state. The welfare and the well-being of the state rest upon the firm foundations of the family."

"Relativity does set limits on what humans can ultimately do. But the universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human aspirations."

"If a relationship lacks harmony, even the words that reach the tip of the tongue, unable to be spoken, retreat back into the heart and settle into knots."

"There is a spirit in man and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. Always he must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; he must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that he will not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. He will know that for all men to be alike is the death of life in man, and yet perceive harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance."

"Each and every master, regardless of the era or the place, heard the call and attained harmony with heaven and earth. There are many paths leading to the top of Mount Fuji, but there is only one summit — love."

"My temper leads me to peace and harmony with all men; and it is peculiarly my wish to avoid any personal feuds or dissensions with those, who are embarked in the same great national interest with myself, as every difference of this kind in its consequence must be very injurious."

"Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and Morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it?"

"So the shortest day came, and the year died, And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world Came people singing, dancing, To drive the dark away. They lighted candles in the winter trees; They hung their homes with evergreen; They burned beseeching fires all night long To keep the year alive, And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake They shouted, reveling. Through all the frosty ages you can hear them Echoing behind us — Listen!! All the long echoes sing the same delight, This shortest day, As promise wakens in the sleeping land: They carol, feast, give thanks, And dearly love their friends, And hope for peace. And so do we, here, now, This year and every year. Welcome Yule!"

"The grate had been removed from the wide overwhelming fireplace, to make way for a fire of wood, in the midst of which was an enormous log glowing and blazing, and sending forth a vast volume of light and heat; this I understood was the Yule-log, which the Squire was particular in having brought in and illumined on a Christmas eve, according to ancient custom."

"It is Christmas in the mansion, Yule-log fires and silken frocks; It is Christmas in the cottage, Mother's filling little socks. It is Christmas on the highway, In the thronging, busy mart; But the dearest, truest Christmas Is the Christmas in the heart."

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

"Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions."

"A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life."

"Pierre Del Rio: What happens when she reaches 100%? Professor Norman: I have no idea. But she is the key — to everything."

""Lock him up and throw away the key." This is one you hear a lot from men. Men like to talk that way; it makes 'em feel tough. A guy sees a rapist on the TV news, he says, "You see that guy? They oughta lock him up, and throw away the key." This is really stupid. First of all, every time the guy's gotta take a shit, you're gonna have to call the locksmith. If he's in prison thirty years, even if he's eatin' government cheese, it's gonna cost you a fortune. Second, where do you throw the key? Right out in front of the jail? His friends'll find it! How far can you throw a key? Fifty, sixty feet the most. Even if you hold it flat on its side and scale it, whaddaya get? An extra ten feet, tops! This is a stupid idea that needs to be completely rethought."

"This kid may be the key not just to all human potential, but to all spiritual unexplained paranormal phenomena. The key to everything in The X-Files."

"Symbolically, Ganesha represents the basic unity of the macrocosm and microcosm, the immense being (the elephant) and the individual being (man). This highly implausible identity is however a fundamental reality and the key to all mystic or ritual experience as well as to Yogic possibilities. Without being aware of Ganesha, and without worshipping him, no accomplishment is possible."

"When God has sent his angel to me, then I know of a surety. … When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure. Not for nothing did God give the keys into St. Peter's keeping, for Peter stands for knowledge, and knowledge is the key that unlocks the door, presses forward and breaks in, to discover God as he is."

"The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best."

"These are the things he says who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens so that no one will shut and shuts so that no one opens."

"My body is a cage That keeps me from dancing with the one I love But my mind holds the key."

"If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because man, they're gone."

"Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward."

"Prophets hold a key to the lock in a language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them. This is not a mechanical universe."

"Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!"

"I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

"Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last, and the living one, and I became dead, but look! I am living forever and ever, and I have the keys of death and of the Grave."

"We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world."

"In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself."

"I got a brand new pair of roller skates, You got a brand new key. I think that we should get together and try them out, to see ... I roller skated to your door at daylight [...] I'm okay alone, but you got something I need."

"Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all."

"People say money is not the key to happiness, but I've always figured if you have enough money you can get a key made."

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

"The key to self-generated happiness (the only reliable kind) is the refusal to take oneself too seriously."

"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension—a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone."

"Children are the keys of Paradise … They alone are good and wise, Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer."

"Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity."

"AWARENESS is the path to better choices. Self-AWARENESS is the key to peace. AWARENESS opens the mind and heart to new possibilities."

"The problem can usually be solved by verbalizing the tasks as we do them . . . When you wind the clock and set the alarm, say, ‘I have wound the clock and set the alarm.’ When you lock the door, say to yourself, ‘I have locked the door."

"I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air. If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore, The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key, The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words. No shutter'd room or school can commune with me, But roughs and little children better than they."

"He is the Answerer, What can be answer'd he answers, and what cannot be answer'd he shows how it cannot be answer'd. A man is a summons and challenge, (It is vain to skulk — do you hear that mocking and laughter? do you hear the ironical echoes?) Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down seeking to give satisfaction, He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also. Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely by day or by night, He has the pass-key of hearts, to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs. His welcome is universal, the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is, The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed."

"Of these States the poet is the equable man, Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns, Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad, He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less, He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key, He is the equalizer of his age and land, He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking, In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality, government, In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood, The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith, He is no arguer, he is judgment, (Nature accepts him absolutely,) He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun failing round helpless thing, As he sees the farthest he has the most faith, His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things, In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent, He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement, He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots. (10)"

"I present you with a Key."

"We receive His peace when we ask Him for it. We keep His peace by extending it to others. Those are the keys and there are no others. Spiritual wisdom is now available to everyone, disseminated to the masses as never before in world history."

"Jig Saw: Hello, Michael. I want to play a game. So far, in what loosely could be called your life, you have made a living watching others. Society would call you an informant, a rat, a snitch. I call you unworthy of the body you possess. Of the life you've been given. Now we will see if you are willing to look inward, rather than outward, to give up the one thing you rely on in order to go on living. The device around your neck is a death mask. The mask is on a string timer. If you do not locate the key in time, the mask will close. Think of it like a Venus Flytrap. What you're looking at right now is your own body, not more than two hours ago. Don't worry. You're sound asleep, and can't feel a thing. Taking into account that you are at a great disadvantage here, I am going to give you a hint as to where I have hidden the key. So listen carefully. The hint is this: [TV screen shows an x-ray.] It's right before your eyes. How much blood would you shed to stay alive, Michael? Live or die, make your choice."

"Man has always been afraid of anything mysterious, forgetting that the key to the mystery is within himself. One must free oneself from all impeding conditions or circumstances, which are different for everyone. Progress depends upon free will that is directed toward good."

"Augustine discussed the Trinity by means of an analogy with the three fundamental phases of personality—knowing, willing, and feeling—although ultimately he believed it to be a mystery beyond human comprehension. God is the perfection of knowledge, power, and good will. His attributes are omniscience, omnipotence, and ."

"I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification."

"Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers."

"I want to hear you laugh. Don't let the mystery go now."

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”"

"It seems to me there is so much more to the world than the average eye is allowed to see. I believe if you look hard, there are more wonders in this universe than you could ever have dreamed of. It's colour! Colour that holds the key! I can hear the colours, listen to them. Every time I step outside, I feel nature is shouting at me. Come on! Come and get me! Come on! Capture my mystery!"

"Everybody is wonderin' what and where they all came from. Everybody is worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done. But no one knows for certain 'n' so it's all the same to me. I think I'll just let the mystery be."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

"It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature."

"There are some mysteries so big that they will take the whole world to solve them."

"Reason quite properly rejects contradiction, but rationalism abhors mystery, which every heresy attempts in its own way to resolve."

"The angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets."

"I'm for mystery, not interpretive answers. … The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."

"The personal mystery of medieval man has been largely destroyed by capitalistic technicism and bourgeois scientism. There was always something mystical in personal creation as well as a "secret" in manual, artistic skills; convents and monasteries jealously kept the secret of their liquors; craftsmen had their secrets and so had doctors, alchemists, astrologers, and pharmacists in their more or less dark trades. Mystics, hermits, midwives, cooks, and violin builders harbored their secrets. Nature was full of unpenetrable mysteries and strange events; the scarcity of written documents furthered the growth of sagas, folklore, and legends. But not only man, nature, and life had their mysteries; even today we speak of the mysteries of the Rosary, of the Mass. In the Armenian Rite of the Catholic Church a veil is spread between the altar and audience during the Consecration of the Host. These mysteries on the other hand, personal as they might be, were far from creating walls between human beings who were by them not less magnetically attracted than by distance. Bodies are mutually attracted by nearness, knowledge, and pleasure but souls by distance, mystery, and suffering."

"We met in secret : mystery is to love Like perfume to the flower ; the maiden's blush Looks loveliest when her cheek is pale with fear."

"Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery."

"Tao can be talked about, but not the Eternal Tao. Names can be named, but not the Eternal Name. As the origin of heaven-and-earth, it is nameless: As "the Mother" of all things, it is nameable. So, as ever hidden, we should look at its inner aspects. As always manifest, we should look at its outer aspects. These two flow from the same source, though differently named; And both are called mysteries. The Mystery of mysteries is the Door of all essence."

"Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding."

"Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery. By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real. Yet mystery and reality emerge from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness born from darkness. The beginning of all understanding."

"The unwanting soul sees what's hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants. Two things, one origin, but different in name, whose identity is mystery. Mystery of all mysteries! The door to the hidden."

"Mysteries are irritated by facts."

"Mystery is an emotion which is repugnant to a political animal."

"Why else lead a life of bad banquet dinners, cigar smoke, camp chairs, foul breath, and excruciatingly dull jargon if not to avoid the echoes of what is not known."

"Sex and death have in common the fact that they are the two biological aspects of the mysterium tremendum. Mystery—defined here as a situation in which the data impinge on the problem—has its ultimate meaning in these two human experiences."

"Some things must needs gain in mystery before we can at all undertake to think upon them. Without mystery they are all obscure. Who can think, for instance, of the infinity of space without adding inconceivable things to his meditation?"

"The ultimate gift of conscious life is a sense of the mystery that encompasses it."

"A mystery is only a mystery for a time, for it relies upon a sense of wonder and curiosity to maintain its air, and that needs energy. If it is not revealed before the energy runs out, then the mystery becomes a conundrum, a problem, an annoyance, and a pestilence."

"Tao mystics never talk about God, reincarnation, heaven, hell. No, they don't talk about these things. These are all creations of human mind: explanations for something which can never be explained, explanations for the mystery. In fact, all explanations are against God because explanation de-mystifies existence. Existence is a mystery, and one should accept it as a mystery and not pretend to have any explanation. No, explanation is not needed – only exclamation, a wondering heart, awakened, surprised, feeling the mystery of life each moment. Then, and only then, you know what truth is. And truth liberates."

"Homage to you, O ye divine Lords of things, ye holy beings, whose seats are veiled! Homage to you, O ye Lords of Eternity, whose forms are concealed, whose sanctuaries are mysteries, whose places of abode are not known!"

"It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge."

"Ride, captain ride, upon your mystery ship, Be amazed, at the friends, you have here on your trip. Ride, captain ride, upon your mystery ship, On your way, to a world, that others might have missed."

"Can you think of any reason why someone would kill him?" The troll scratched his head. "Well, 'cos dey wanted him dead, I reckon. Dat's a good reason."

"Luke, this reminds me of a puzzle"

"A true gentleman leaves no puzzle unsolved"

"Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance."

"Just as nature abhors a vacuum, our minds abhor a mystery.""

"A prohibition and a mystery are the same—a locked room whose inscrutable door beckons us closer. Human curiosity impels us to open it, and the enlightenment we find inside—if it's truly worth our while—will invariably devastate us."

"But the divine mystery is inherent in the divine, a part of the nature of God, and can never disappear. And this means that it is still a mystery even to the mystic who has directly experienced it, nay, even to God Himself. That is why it is ineffable. The mystery and the ineffability of God are one and the same thing."

"Between the mysteries of death and life Thou standest, loving, guiding,— not explaining; We ask, and Thou art silent,— yet we gaze, And our charmed hearts forget their drear complaining; No crushing fate, no stony destiny! Thou Lamb that hast been slain, we rest in Thee."

"微乎微乎，至於無形；神乎神乎，至於無聲；故能為敵之司命。"

"There is no mystery whatever — only inability to perceive the obvious."

"Today for real mystery one has to look to cosmology and elementary particle physics."

"Whoever believes in a God at all, believes in an infinite mystery; and if the existence of God is such an infinite mystery, we can very well expect and afford to have many of His ways mysterious to us."

"There is no religion without mysteries. God Himself is the great secret of Nature."

"Where is the subject that does not branch out into infinity? For every grain of sand is a mystery; so is every daisy in summer, and so is every snow-flake in winter. Both upwards and downwards, and all around us, science and speculation pass into mystery at last."

"Augustine, the father of [[theologians], was walking on the ocean shore and pondering over the truth, "three distinct persons, not separate, but distinct; and yet but one God;" and he came upon a little boy that was playing with a colored sea-shell, scooping a hole in the sand, and then going down to the waves and getting his shell full of water and putting it into the hole. Augustine said, "What are you doing, my little fellow? " The boy replied, "I am going to pour the [sea]] into that hole." "Ah," said Augustine, "that is what I have been attempting. Standing at the ocean of infinity, I have attempted to grasp it with my finite mind.""

"Were there no mysteries in the Bible, we should doubt its being the transcript of the Eternal Mind. The "mystery of godliness" adapts it to our ruined race. Those mysteries of the Bible are like the mountains of the world; they give grandeur to the landscape and fertility to the soil."

"The mysteries of the Bible should teach us, at one and the same time, our nothingness and our greatness; producing humility, and animating hope. I bow before these mysteries. I knew that I should find them, and I pretend not to remove them. But whilst I thus prostrate myself, it is with deep gladness and exultation of spirit. God would not have hinted the mystery, had He not hereafter designed to explain it. And, therefore, are my thoughts on a far-off home, and rich things are around me, and the voices of many harpers, and the shinings of bright constellations, and the clusters of the cherub and the seraph; and a whisper, which seems not of this earth, is circulating through the soul, " Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.""

"The Bible tells me explicitly that Christ was God; and it tells me, as explicitly that Christ was man. It does not go on to state the modus or manner of the union. I stop, therefore, where the Bible stops. I bow before a God-man as my Mediator, but I own as inscrutable the mysteries of His person."

"In viewing the scheme of redemption, I seem like one viewing a vast and complicated machine of exquisite contrivance; what I comprehend of it is wonderful, what I do not, is, perhaps, more so still."

"Providence is a greater mystery than revelation."

"That great chain of causes, which, linking one to another, even to the throne of God Himself, can never be unraveled by any industry of ours."

"We know, and we feel, that the vast business of our redemption, arranged in the councils of the far-back eternity, and acted out amid the wonderings and throbbings of the universe, could not have been that stupendous transaction which gave God glory by giving sinners safety, if the inspired account brought its dimensions within the compass of a human arithmetic, or denned its issues by the lines of a human demarcation."

"The nature of Christ is, I grant it, from one end to another, a web of mysteries; but this mysteriousness does not correspond to the difficulties which all existence contains. Let it be rejected, and the whole world is an enigma; let it be accepted, and we possess a wonderful explanation of the history of man."

"Can any thing be more mysterious than the union of soul and body, unless it be the still greater mystery, which some have professed to believe, that matter can be so organized as to produce the amazing intellectual results which we witness in man? In believing our own existence we believe a mystery as great as any that the Christian religion presents."

"At some turning point of your life, when some great joy flashed, or some great shadow darkened upon you all at once; when some crisis that wanted an instantaneous decision appeared,— why, what regions of thought, purpose, plan, resolution, what wildernesses of desolate sorrow, and what paradises of blooming gladness, your soul has gone through in a moment."

"We live in the midst of infinite existence; and widely as we can see, and vastly as we have discovered, we have but crossed the threshold, we have but entered the vestibule of the Creator's temple. In this temple there is an everlasting worship of life, an anthem of many choruses, a hymn of incense that goes up forever."

"We are children shut up as yet in the narrow hollow of our native valley, with all the universe, outside the closely engirdling hills, for a great wonderland, of which we dream childish dreams, as the light of morning or evening kindles from beyond. "Laws of Nature" — what dost thou know of them, O man? Look out on the great miracles of nature, blooming in flowers and stars, away to the gates of the city of God, what dost thou know of its laws and wonders?"

"But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty."

"In Einstein’s corrected formula m has the value m=\frac {{m}_}{\sqrt} where the “rest mass” m0 represents the mass of a body that is not moving and c is the speed of light, which is about 3×105 km⋅sec−1 or about 186,000 mi⋅sec−1."

"LT Pete "Maverick" Mitchell: I feel a need… a need for speed."

"Be wise with speed; A fool at forty is a fool indeed."

"Ares (The God of War) hates those who hesitate."

"It would be relevant … to point out the sinister part played by speed, by belief in speed as a value, by, in a word, a kind of impatience that has had a profound effect in changing even the very rhythms of the life of the spirit for the worse."

"Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty."

"Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets you."

"Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions."

"DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep."

"Australia's distance from Europe was probably only tolerable because it had strategic commodities which England, threatened by changing European alliances, might some day be unable to produce in the northern hemisphere. Flax was the first conqueror — a hollow conqueror — of the distance which so often shaped Australia's destiny."

"I see not a step before me as I tread on another year; But I've left the Past in God's keeping,—the Future His mercy shall clear; And what looks dark in the distance may brighten as I draw near."

"'T is distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue."

"In notes by distance made more sweet."

"As distant prospects please us, but when near We find but desert rocks and fleeting air."

"From a distance, there is harmony And it echoes through the land It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace It's the voice of every man."

"From a distance we are instruments Marching in a common band Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace They're the songs of every man."

"From a distance you look like my friend Even though we are at war From a distance I just cannot comprehend What all this war is for."

"From a distance there is harmony And it echoes through the land And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves It's the heart of every man (Every man). It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves This is the song of every man."

"Remote fountains are of little help to nearby fires."

"Love is like a landscape which doth stand Smooth at a distance, rough at hand."

"Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it."

"Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance."

"By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes."

"Already, the distance between what I was and am is insurmountable — like an ant contemplating the Cosmos. I knew it would be so … yet still I hoped. I guess there is really nothing left to say."

"Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence. Following this thought we now realize, forcibly enough to dispense with argument, that of all other conquests of man, without exception, that which is most desirable, which would be most helpful in the establishment of universal peaceful relations is — the complete ANNIHILATION OF DISTANCE."

"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."

"Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright, But look'd too near have neither heat nor light."

"Sweetest melodies. Are those that are by distance made more sweet."

"Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice; Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye, Frozen by distance."

"We're charm'd with distant views of happiness, But near approaches make the prospect less."

"When I saw my new gown all full of rolls of tissue-paper, packed by poor dear Bee, I went to my trunk and pulled out my smart Charvet tie. I handed it to her in silence. "Take it," I said. "I hate to give it up, but you deserve it." Bee accepted it gratefully."

"He stopped at a shady spot, and Nguvu, his gunbearer, pulled out a round mirror three inches in circumference and a Charvet cravat, which his master tied very carefully over a flannel shirt which had been fresh in the early morning."

"The pale tones of shirt and cravat and out-peeping pochette bespoke the genius of the well-known M. Charvet of the rue de la Paix."

"She calls me a chic type because I wear a Charvet tie."

"Marçais is a charming man and so distinguished! Charvet makes exclusive ties for him."

"… tightening from time to time the knot of my magnificent Charvet tie and taking care not to soil my polished boots..."

"... as becoming as a Charvet cravat ..."

"Telegrams to Poole, Charvet, Briggs, Thomas and Lock, to tell them to send my summer wardrobe on here."

"Andre started to unhook the pot, burned his fingers, and, after wrapping a Charvet silk handkerchief around its greasy handle, carried it off gingerly ..."

"He had on a straw hat with a club ribbon (what club I haven't the foggiest idea), a bright blue Charvet cravat and linen spats, and he was swinging a thick Malacca cane."

"Shady young men in Charvet shirts sit round the bar repairing with powder-puff and lipstick the ravages of grenadine and crème de cacao."

"He had brought his presents for them down to breakfast — the Dunhill pipe and the Charvet dressing-gown for Harry ..."

"He was a very good-looking young man indeed, shaped to be annoyed. His voice was intimate as the rustle of sheets, and he kissed easily. There was no tallying the gifts of Charvet handkerchiefs, art moderne ash-trays, monogrammed dressing-gowns, gold key-chains, and cigarette-cases of thin wood, inlaid with views of Parisian comfort-stations, that were sent him by ladies too quickly confident, and were paid for by the money of unwitting husbands, which is acceptably any place in the world. Every woman who visited his small, square apartment promptly flamed with the desire to assume charge of its redecoration. During his tenancy, three separate ladies had achieved this ambition. Each had left behind her, for her brief monument, much too much glazed chintz."

"… the Charvet tie was dashing — black china silk with orange and emerald-green splotches."

"Bernie occupied the great leather chair by the fire, a modish semi-invalid in his Charvet dressing gown of maroon faille brought from Paris by Lotta."

"He googled at a bill from Cye for two dozen voile shirts: $312. There was another from Charvet; thirty cravats: $225."

"The good ties, Charvet and Saks Fifth Avenue. If he had taken all these away I would have suffocated in an emptiness."

"He was wearing a purple dressing-gown that was obviously a creation of Charvet, and a purple expression that was obviously the creation of acid."

"His necktie was practically what Charvet calls a scarf. I thought maybe he was intelligent."

"Charvet was showing summer ties. I bought a couple from an elegant and hollow-chested salesman. I didn't want to talk to him about the war, because he looked sad enough already, but he began to talk about it himself. "We are an indolent people, monsieur", he said pleasantly."

"We walked through the Place Vendôme and he asked if I would mind going in to Charvet's for a moment; he had ordered some things and wanted to know if they were ready. It appeared that he was having some vests made, and some drawers, and he was having his initials embroidered on them. The vests had not come in yet, but the drawers were there and the shop assistant asked Elliott if he would like to see them. 'I would', he said, and when the man had gone to fetch them added to me: 'I have them made to order on a pattern of my own'. They were brought, and to me, except that they were of silk, looked exactly like the drawers I had frequently bought for myself at Macy's; but what caught my eye was that above the intertwined E. T. of the initials was a count's crown. I did not say a word. 'Very nice, very nice' said Elliott. 'Well, when the undershirts are ready you'll send them along'. We left the shop and Elliott, as he walked away, turned to me with a smile. 'Did you notice the crown? To tell you the truth, I'd forgotten about it when I asked you to come in to Charvet's'."

"[H]is feet limp in their polished handmade shoes, with a Charvet tie under his double chins and a Paris- monogrammed handkerchief peeping from one sleeve ..."

"His immediate impression had been that here was a ward heeler in a Charvet tie."

"Sebastian entered — dove-grey flannel, white crepe-de-Chine shirt, a Charvet tie, my tie as it happened, a pattern of postage stamps."

"He has— or had— 3000 Charvet neckties … which is more than Charvet has now."

"[T]he private detective, with his mocking smile and cold wit, his chivalry, his magic appeal to women, his Charvet ties..."

""He wasn't literary; he himself made jokes about the writers of "nine-dollar words," he worked the homespun line in public as religiously as he wore Charvet shirts."

"Hortense shook her head. She had noticed that this extraordinarily relaxed man had fine, well-kept hands and that his tie, however the worse for mauling, had upon it the unmistakable Charvet stamp. She couldn't imagine a man in a Charvet tie rifling her luggage."

"[A] man lying on one of the couches with his coat off and his shirt open over a Charvet scarf you could have found in the dark by listening to it purr."

"[H]is clothes might have cost a lot even if they were badly cut, and his tie, though rather loud, she recognized as a Charvet."

"I've brought you a tie from Charvet, Daddy." "Is it loud?" "Very." "Good." They were all so pleased with one another that they burst out laughing."

"I note that my New Yorker's clothes have become duller, and that his haberdashers' has dimmed from Charvet to washable nylon."

"Old Nick had taken out a cambric handkerchief, one of a set of twelve he had bought a year ago, if you call it buying, at the establishment of M. Charvet in Paris."

"Augustus sat hunched on the sofa, strangely shrunken; even the Charvet dressing gown had an air of ruin."

"Around his neck directly, a Charvet cravat. (A theory of the Doctor's. Ties are made of fine silk, shirts at best of inferior silk, ergo wear the best next to the skin.) This, as most of the Doctor's theories, he held in private."

"At half past ten, Don Otavio issues from the house, splendid like the moon, all in white silk, his silvery hair brushed upwards, a Charvet tie over his holy shirt, bearing nothing."

"All he learned — from the clothes — was that the Count was a much-traveled man— shirts from Charvet..."

"1 put down his night glasses, took a Charvet handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his white sharkskin jacket and dabbed gently at his forehead and temples."

"[T]he idea of calling the society the Purple Cows emanated from Mr. Straight. Monsieur Casenave sent to Paris for purple Charvet dressing gowns with orange collars and cuffs that the male members wore over their suits at meetings ..."

"The batiste ties from Charvet in Paris … bespoke a certain kind of decadent taste"

""I don't know Charvet. I know Jean Goudal." Maurice Sachs switched on more lamps. Charvet is the greatest shirtmaker in Paris, my dear..."

"I sold some more things, a dressing gown and two pairs of Charvet pajamas, and got ready to leave."

"His Majesty would drink the glass in three or four installments and then eat the strawberries with his fingers, daintily touching up his mustaches with a huge Charvet handkerchief."

"The simple thing is to consider the French as an erratic and brilliant people, dressed either in blue blouses and berets or trick suits and Charvet ties, who have all the gifts except that of running their country."

"A mouth wash, half a dexedrine, a morsel of anchovy toast and a Charvet dressing-gown — all in the order named — ..."

"Of course I missed Titina and the children, but I had been granted an experience that more than compensated for the lack of a new Charvet tie."

"She sat shortly after, rosy-footed, in a pair of my black Charvet pajamas, sipping warm milk."

"[S]ilk dressing-gown and Charvet pyjamas for the murder, and a very natty check lounge suit for the England interludes."

"Armand was wearing striped silk pajamas, purchased at Charvet, and the somewhat oversize Russian collar gave him more than ever the look of a plucked bird."

"He wore an expensive-looking blue suit cut in Parisian business style, a white broadcloth shirt, and a very English-looking tie, probably from Charvet."

"They did striped shirts for him, brought the cotton from Charvet in Paris..."

""Watch out! I cried- and a column of vomit fell diagonally across his bed. Look what you've done to my Charvet dressing-gown!"

"For Julian, making love to each new leading lady was as easy as tying his Charvet tie."

"… Hocken in the village turned a white-dotted navy silk Charvet dressing gown into "a best dress" for Sunday."

"The dining room was empty except for a few country people eating their dinners, all of whom looked up at us [...], at our dark suits and spectacles, at Francis's monogrammed cufflinks and his Charvet tie, at Camilla with her boyish haircut and sleek little Astrakhan coat."

"All the while Horowitz felt himself under close scrutiny. The collar of his very expensive Charvet shirt felt tight suddenly."

"I dressed the part to perfection: old but good houndstooth jacket, Jermyn Street shirt and Charvet tie — red, just to be mischievous ..."

"Every Christmas Alec received a tie from Charvet and a check drawn on a bank he had never heard of."

"Absently, he picked up a gayish tie that was laid out beside a heavy silk shirt. 'Charvet' said the label. Where had he read of Charvet?"

"You should always carry a handkerchief. Two, even. One for show and one for blow, my father, the ambassador, used to say. Here. Charvet, Paris. You can keep it. Nice color, don't you think? Go ahead, cry. No one's looking. Get it out of your system. I think it's marvelous to cry."

"The sun was very hot, so I took off my coat. It got hotter still, so I took off my shirt. It went on getting hotter, so I took off my vest and my pants, and there I was, my dear, practically in the nude, apart from a dainty little number by Charvet, which cost the earth considering that nobody ever sees it..."

"[T]he richest-looking ensemble he possessed: a navy hard-finished worsted suit with pinstripes, nipped at the waist, a tab-collared shirt with a white collar and spaced-out pale-blue stripes on the shirtfront, a solid French-blue crepe de chine silk necktie from Charvet in Paris..."

"He stopped in the Charvet shop and bought a dozen shirts and neckties [...] instructing that his old clothing be discarded."

"At seven o'clock he took a shower and put on a clean white shirt and a Charvet tie — a gift from a grateful client."

"In Liechtenstein, the plumage of an international business man - the Kiton double-breasted suit, the Hermes tie, and the Charvet shirt — was protective coloration, nothing more."

"We'll get you dressed up in the finest dark suits and white stiff collars — no color except for a gorgeous Charvet tie."

"Charvet, the legendary chemisier opposite the Ritz hotel. He could happily have lived in Paris forever. He did not know where he had acquired such tastes."

"[T]he dinner guests were undoubtedly rail-thin young things in perfect Boldini-portrait tailored frock coats and Charvet floppy bow ties."

"Mitchell wore a gray Savile Row suit and a Charvet oxford so tightly woven it shimmered like mica."

"[N]or by the hundred-dollar pink Charvet shirts from Paris he could ill afford on the clerk's salary he earned at the French embassy in Knightsbridge."

""I want you to wear something conservative and elegant, made by a gentile tailor." Rothstein gave him hundreds of neckties from the house of Charvet ..."

"Jeszcze Polska nie umarła, Kiedy my żyjemy Co nam obca moc wydarła, Szablą odbijemy."

"Jeszcze Polska nie zginóła. Bziałoczerwóna kukarda. Mniejwa łufnoszcz w Bogu, Nam została tylko wzgarda, Bo Bóg dobry spraziedliwy Nie dopuszczy tego, Żeby Polok nieszczeszliwy Ni mniał kraju swego."

"Hej, dziesięciu! czas do dzieła, Ciemna zgliszcz drużyno! Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, Gdy za Polskę giną!"

"Staś wypoczywał i polował. Znalazłszy wśród narzędzi karawany dłuta i młotki zajmował się prócz tego w chłodniejszych godzinach wykuwaniem na wielkiej gnejsowej skale napisu: "Jeszcze Polska...", albowiem chciał, żeby pozostał jakiś ślad pobytu ich w tych stronach. Anglicy, którym przetłumaczył napis, dziwili się, że chłopcu nie przyszło na myśl uwiecznić na tej afrykańskiej skale swego nazwiska. Ale on wolał wyryć to, co wyrył."

"Uderzenie tak sztuczne, tak było potężne, Że struny zadzwoniły jak trąby mosiężne I z trąb znana piosenka ku niebu wionęła, Marsz tryumfalny: Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła!... Marsz Dąbrowski do Polski! I wszyscy klasnęli, I wszyscy: "Marsz Dąbrowski!" chorem okrzyknęli!"

"Let this great day of concord come, when Russians will be united with you with the same feelings and, fighting for the same cause and against a common enemy, they will have the right to intone with you your national song, this hymn of Slavic unity: Poland is not yet lost."

"Obecne niepowodzenie jest chwilowe, zwycięstwo będzie po naszej stronie. I pamiętajcie: Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, póki my żyjemy. I to, co nam obca przemoc wzięła, siłą odbierzemy."

"Rodacy! Wobec całego narodu polskiego i wobec całego świata pragnę powtórzyć te nieśmiertelne słowa: Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, póki my żyjemy."

"Wy jesteście na tym froncie zbrojnym ramieniem Polski, wy jesteście odpowiedzią daną Niemcom za dzień 1 września 1939 roku, wy jesteście jednym żywym dowodem, że jeszcze Polska nie zginęła i nie zginie!"

"[E]ven though Poland had made a major contribution to the victory which put an end to the Second World War, in June 1945 a representative of our country was not allowed to put his signature to the United Nations Charter. We remember that event when Artur Rubinstein, seeing that there was no Polish delegation at the concert to mark the signing of the Charter, decided to play the "Dąbrowski Mazurka", Poland's national anthem, to demonstrate that "Poland was not lost yet", that Poland lived on. I am recalling this because I had a very touching moment a few days ago in the same San Francisco opera house, to which I was invited for the opening of the season. This time it was the orchestra that played the "Dąbrowski Mazurka", and at that moment the memories of the great Artur Rubinstein and his performance came back with full force and it was very touching indeed for me."

"Pokud matička Praha, perla západního slovanského světa, se začíná ztrácet v německém moři, co asi čeká Slovensko, mou drahou vlast, pro kterou je Praha zdrojem duchovní kultury? Zatížen touto myšlenkou, vzpomněl jsem si na starou polskou píseň „Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, póki my żyjemy“. Tato známá melodie vyvolala v mém srdci vzdorné „Hej, Slovaci, ešte naša slovenska reč žije“… Běžel jsem do svého pokoje, zapálil svíci a tužkou napsal do svého deníku tři verše. Píseň byla hotova v okamžiku."

"Sławna pieśń legionów polskich poczyna się od wierszy, które są godłem historii nowej: Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, kiedy my żyjemy. Słowa te mówią, że ludzie mający w sobie to, co istotnie stanowi narodowość, zdolni są przedłużać byt swojego kraju niezależnie od warunków politycznych tego bytu, i mogą nawet dążyć do urzeczywistnienia go na nowo..."

"The Star-Spangled Banner celebrates the fact that, after a night of battle, the country's flag was still there. The Polish national anthem celebrates the fact that, after centuries of battle, the country is still there. This cautious, realistic anthem — "Poland is not yet lost"..."

"Polish national anthem reminds me primarily of victory. Surely every athlete will confirm my words."

"A man in the right, with God on his side, is in the majority, though he be alone, for God is multitudinous above all populations of the earth."

"If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it."

"Supreme power rests in the will of all or of the majority."

"A majority can do anything."

"One with the law is a majority."

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong."

"The man who is right is a majority. We, who have God and conscience on our side, have a majority against the universe."

"Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time."

"Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as "right" in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as "brute force.""

"There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth."

"The majority represents a mass of cowards, willing to accept him who mirrors its own soul and mind poverty."

"The majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is display."

"The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, so long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster."

"The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population—the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority."

"I'm plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie."

"The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority. Yes, the damned, compact, liberal majority."

"As for the Minority, its very existence proves that it does not recognise the Authority of the Majority, since forming a minority means precisely being opposed to the majority, and so 'reacting' (in one way or another) against its acts. But, where there is no Authority, 'reactions' can only be removed by force. Therefore, wherever the Majority claims a sui generis would-be 'Authority' resulting form its sheer number, it is in fact claiming pure and simple force. (A regime that is based purely and solely on a majority is a regime founded on force only. The 'majority' regime can therefore be contrasted with the 'authoritarian' one; the latter rests on Authority, while the former rests on force.)"

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

"A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people."

"The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force."

"It is quite plain that your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy."

"In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority."

"In republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority."

"Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so tonight—to you, the great of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support."

"Majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But—like other precious, sacred things, such as the home and the family—it's not only worth dying for; it can make you wish you were dead. Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a suit, would be stonewashed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And—since women are a majority of the population—we’d all be married to Mel Gibson."

"In God's world, there are no majorities, no minorities; one, on God's side, is a majority."

"How a minority, Reaching majority, Siezing authority, Hates a minority!"

"In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them."

"People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be."

"Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys."

"A “strange coincidence,” to use a phrase By which such things are settled nowadays."

"This is just too much of a coincidence to be coincidence."

"Of course, I’m only indulging in mankind’s vice of trying to make a symbol out of coincidence."

"“It was a coincidence.” “I don’t believe in coincidences.” “Neither do I. That’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”"

"My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidences? My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidences?"

"By the laws of statistics we could probably approximate just how unlikely it is that it would happen. But people forget—especially those who ought to know better, such as yourself—that while the laws of statistics tell you how unlikely a particular coincidence is, they state just as firmly that coincidences do happen."

"Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which — miraculously, it seems — merge into a significant event."

"Coincidence is a pimp and a cardsharper in ordinary fiction but a marvelous artist in the patterns of facts recollected by a non-ordinary memorist."

"If Tom had learned anything, it was that you can't ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple Earthly event. Coincidence, that's all anything ever is. Nothing more, than coincidence. Tom had finally learned there are no miracles, there is no such thing as fate, nothing is meant to be. He knew, he was sure of it now. Tom was.. he was pretty sure."

"Most coincidences are simply chance events that turn out to be far more probable than many people imagine."

"It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur."

"The First Insight occurs when we become conscious of the coincidences in our lives... Coincidences are happening more and more frequently and that, when they do, they strike us as beyond what would be expected by pure chance... They feel destined, as though our lives had been guided by some unexplained force. The experience induces a feeling of mystery and excitement and, as a result, we feel more alive.... More people every day are convinced that this mysterious movement is real and that it means something, that something else is going on beneath everyday life. This awareness is the First Insight... a reconsideration of the inherent mystery that surrounds our individual lives on this planet. We are experiencing these mysterious coincidences, and even though we don't understand them yet, we know they are real. We are sensing again, as in childhood, that there is another side of life that we have yet to discover, some other process operating behind the scenes. p. 8"

"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."

"The laws of probability not only permit coincidences; they absolutely insist on them."

"In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted."

"I have told you before there is no escaping the nature of the universe. it is that nature that has again brought you to me. Where some see 'coincidence', I see 'consequence'. Where others see 'chance', I see 'cost'."

"“Fifty-nine,” Mr. Mowen said. “That’s too many coincidences to just be a coincidence.”"

"An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

"I long to create something that can’t be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other."

"Entertainment, in the form in which it is enjoyed today, is a vain escape from the problems of life towards the immediate acceptance of the most striking aspects of life itself. It does not seek serenity but oblivion, not peace but agitation, not enjoyment but orgy. And so the underlying problems remain hidden and the possibilities for their solution recede. It is not the marginal forms, labelled “escapism”, that constitute the most serious form of escapism, but the dominant forms, preferred by the multitude, accepted without question, encouraged by success. And in the face of these, the question arises: what will “entertain” us from entertainment?"

"Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business."

"Fun without sell gets nowhere, but sell without fun tends to become obnoxious."

"Live and work but do not forget to play, to have fun in life and really enjoy it."

"People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing."

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."

"Don't ever become a pessimist … a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."

"Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. Islam does not allow swimming in the sea and is opposed to radio and television serials."

"Wonder Woman: Poor child! You've lived a terrible life- gloomy. tragic. You're fun starved! You must learn to play!"

"Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human."

"I shit on the chest of Fun."

"If it's not fun, you're not doing it right."

"The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people — that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature."

"The Beatles, "She's leaving home""

"O print-clad damsel, fresh and fair, Bending above the threshold there On supple knees and swaying line, And honeyed curve—dear maid, be mine."

"Now the wooers turned to the dance and to gladsome song, and made them merry, and waited till evening should come; and as they made merry dark evening came upon them. Then they went, each man to his house, to take their rest. But Telemachus, where his chamber was built in the beautiful court, high, in a place of wide outlook, thither went to his bed, pondering many things in mind; and with him, bearing blazing torches, went true-hearted Eurycleia, daughter of Ops, son of Peisenor, Her long ago Laertes had bought with his wealth, when she was in her first youth, and gave for her the price of twenty oxen; and he honoured her even as he honoured his faithful wife in his halls, but he never lay with her in love, for he shunned the wrath of his wife. She it was who bore for Telemachus the blazing torches; for she of all the handmaids loved him most, and had nursed him when he was a child."

"Now when they came to the beautiful streams of the river, where were the washing tanks that never failed—for abundant clear water welled up from beneath. and flowed over, to cleanse garments however soiled—there they loosed the mules from under the waggon and drove them along the eddying river to graze on the honey-sweet water-grass, and themselves took in their arms the raiment from the waggon, and bore it into the dark water, and trampled it in the trenches, busily vying each with each. Now when they had washed the garments, and had cleansed them of all the stains, they spread them out in rows on the shore of the sea where the waves dashing against the land washed the pebbles cleanest; and they, after they had bathed and anointed themselves richly with oil, took their meal on the river’s banks, and waited for the clothing to dry in the bright sunshine."

"The Principle of Sharing which will eventually rule all these arrangements will produce an attitude to property and possessions impossible to visualize to-day. If a person has more than his share he will feel as uncomfortable and ashamed as one now does who has insufficient. The misfortune of not knowing how to give and to share will produce the inferiority complex of the future. The Christian admonition that “if a person ask of thee thy coat give him thy cloak also” will be understood by all. Those who need something will not rob, but will state their need at their Community Centre and will thereby be given by their neighbors a much greater choice of goods than they could attain by attempted theft. Furthermore, tastes and requirements will become successively reduced and simplified in measure as peoples’ needs become choice and few."

"Give with a heart glowing with generous sentiments; give as the fountain gives out its waters from its own swelling depths; give as the air gives its vital breezes, unrestrained and free; give as the sun gives out its light, from the infinite abysses of its own nature."

"Poverty is the load of some, and wealth is the load of others, perhaps the greater load of the two. It may weigh them to perdition. Bear the load of thy neighbor's poverty, and let him bear with thee the load of thy wealth. Thou lightenest thy load by lightening his."

"The governments are tapped out. This is why and this is when ... the billionaires need to step up now on a one-time basis, $6 billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don't reach them. It's not complicated... I'm not asking them to do this every day, every week, every year... We have a one-time crisis: a perfect storm of conflict, climate change and COVID. ...Just help me with them one time... The world's in trouble and you're telling me you can't give me .36% of your net worth increase to help the world in trouble, in times like this?... What if it was your daughter starving to death? What if it was your family starving to death? Wake up, smell the coffee, and help... My god, people are dying out there... We have a vaccine for this. It's called money, food."

"The gap between rich and poor can't be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these... Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist."

"Be charitable before wealth makes thee covetous."

"The fact is, people work hard and rely on Food Stamps—or SNAP Program—to be able to feed their families. When they work full-time they still live in poverty. That's wrong in our nation. Students who are losing hope because of the difficulty of finding jobs in this tough economy. What we need to do, what is best for America, is to raise wages, create jobs, and then we will move forward. Hard-working people are trying their best, but those who hold on to capital are not sharing the wealth, and there is the problem."

"Do you wish to honor... He who said, “This is my body,” and made it so by his word, is the same that said, “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.” Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls."

"When the Great Dao (Tao, perfect order) prevails, the world is like a Commonwealth State shared by all, not a dictatorship. Virtuous, worthy, wise and capable people are chosen as leaders. Honesty and trust are promoted, and good neighborliness cultivated. All people respect and love their own parents and children, as well as the parents and children of others. The aged are cared for until death; adults are employed in jobs that make full use of their abilities; and children are nourished, educated, and fostered... orphans... the disabled and the diseased are all well taken care of...."

"I have heard of a monk who in his cell, had a glorious vision of Jesus revealed to him. Just then, a bell rang, which called him away to distribute loaves of bread among the poor beggars at the gate. He was sorely tried as to whether he should lose a scene so inspiring. He went to his act of mercy; and when he came back, the vision remained more glorious than ever."

"The eight top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders made over $10 billion last week when their stock holdings skyrocketed after the discovery of the new Omicron variant. This comes as global public health advocates warn the world will keep seeing more coronavirus variants unless wealthy nations and vaccine manufacturers do more to address vaccine inequity. “The companies that make the most are doing the least to share their technology,” says Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now U.K., which is documenting Big Pharma’s profits. “The priority is making enormous amounts of money for some of the richest people in the world.”"

"As the coronavirus variant Omicron spreads across the world at an unprecedented rate, a group of vaccine experts has just released a list of over 100 companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America with the potential to produce mRNA vaccine. They say...[sharing] is the one of the most viable solutions to fight vaccine inequity around the world and combat the spread of coronavirus variants, including Omicron."

"In a shared fish, there are no bones."

"I command you shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and the poor in the land."

"You shall not turn away the needy, but shall share everything with your brother, and shall not say that it is your own, for if you are sharers in the imperishable, how much more in the things which perish?"

"A beneficent person is like a fountain watering the earth and spreading fertility: it is therefore more delightful and more honourable to give than receive."

"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, And the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."

"The new coronavirus variant Omicron is spreading across the world at an unprecedented rate. The World Health Organization warns cases of the heavily mutated variant have been confirmed in 77 countries, and likely many others that have yet to detect it. With international infections climbing, the Biden administration is facing renewed demands to follow through on his now seven-month-old pledge to ensure companies waive intellectual property protections on coronavirus vaccines and share them with the world."

"The conflicts today with our fellow human beings are over opposing values and limited access to the necessities of life. If we manage to arrive at a saner future civilization... rather than having conflicts between nations, the challenges we will face will be overcoming scarcity, restructuring damaged environments, creating innovative technologies, increasing agricultural yield, improving communications, building communications between nations, sharing technologies, and living a meaningful life."

"As we enhance the lives of others, protect our environment, and work toward abundance, all our lives can become richer and more secure... [and will] enable all of us to achieve a much higher standard of living within a relatively short period of time; a standard of living that would be continuously improved... When education and resources are available to all without a price tag, there will be no limit to human potential. p.81"

"Open your hands, ye Whose hands are full! The world is waiting for you! The whole machinery of the Divine beneficence is clogged by your hard hearts and rigid fingers. Give and spend, and be sure that God will send; for only in giving and spending do you fulfill the object of His sending."

"What do you think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around and see how many are in absolute need of that which you do not need? Can you not take the hint?"

"If you pour yourself out for the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness, and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.""

"“What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”"

"The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, In whatso we share with another's need,— Not that which we give, but what we share,— For the gift without the giver is bare; Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,— Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me."

"Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back."

"The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference."

"The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need."

"My plan is to show you that the way out of your problems is to listen again to the true voice of God within your hearts, to share the produce of this most bountiful of worlds among your brothers and sisters everywhere... you must make the choice ---- whether you share and learn to live peacefully as true men, or perish utterly. My heart tells Me your answer, your choice, and is glad."

"My Teaching is simple: Justice, Sharing and Love are divine aspects. To manifest his divinity, man must embrace these three."

"My task will be to show you how to live together peacefully as brothers. This is simpler than you imagine, My friends, for it requires only the acceptance of Sharing. Sharing, indeed, is divine. It underlies all progress for man. By its means, My brothers and sisters, you can come into correct relationship with God; and this, My friends, underlies your lives. When you share, you recognise God in your brother. This is a truth, simple, but until now difficult for man to grasp. The time has come to evidence this truth. By My Presence, the Law of Sharing will become manifest. By My Presence, man will grow to God. By the Presence of Myself and My Brothers, the New Country of Love shall be known. Take, My friends, this simple Law to your hearts. Manifest Love through Sharing, and change the world. Create around you the atmosphere of peace and joy, and with Me make all things new."

"Not only do we have no real right to the things of the world, because belonging always essentially to God they can never belong to creatures; but we are also limited by the laws of God in the use of those possessions; for it must not be imagined that God gives them to us so that we may dispose of them as we wish. He is too just to have made such an unequal distribution. These goods being the means destined by his Providence for the subsistence of men, he gives to some more than they need only so that they may distribute it to others. A rich man, in so far as he is rich, is thus no more than steward of God's good things."

""Not for ourselves, but for others," is the grand law inscribed on every part of creation."

"The new coronavirus variant Omicron is spreading across the world at an unprecedented rate. The World Health Organization warns cases of the heavily mutated variant have been confirmed in 77 countries, and likely many others that have yet to detect it. With international infections climbing, the Biden administration is facing renewed demands to follow through on his now seven-month-old pledge to ensure companies waive intellectual property protections on coronavirus vaccines and share them with the world. Now a group of vaccine experts has just released a list of over a hundred companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America with the potential to produce mRNA vaccines to fight COVID-19. They say it’s one of the most viable solutions to fight vaccine inequity around the world and combat the spread of coronavirus variants, including Omicron."

"These vaccines were created through public money — nearly $500 million of German public money from taxpayers to BioNTech, nearly a billion dollars in money from U.S. taxpayers through the government to Moderna, several billions of dollars after that in exchange for buying back vaccines at high prices. So these are very much the people’s vaccines. It’s just that they are private property.... when the Moderna CEO says, “Oh, anyone can make the Moderna vaccine,” he’s being a bit disingenuous... It’s not really possible to do that. The way vaccines work and the way regulation around vaccines work is that they need to be made with authorization and a license. Moderna and Pfizer or BioNTech... need to authorize companies to make their vaccine... to share an instruction manual as to how to do it... The problem is... it loosens Moderna and Pfizer and BioNTech’s stranglehold on these vaccines... It undercuts the massive tens of billions of dollars of profit and revenue that they can earn off selling to poor countries in the next couple of years, once they’re done with rich countries... We’re asking the U.S. and German governments instead to say, “Look, in the face of this intransigence, it’s time to use emergency laws... that you can use, that you have the moral and legal power to put into effect, and end this pandemic for us and bring us out of this incredible cycle of hell."

"If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink."

"Proportion thy charity to the strength of thy estate, lest God proportion thy estate to the weakness of thy charity. Let the lips of the poor be the trumpet of thy gift, lest in seeking applause thou lose thy reward. Nothing is more pleasing to God than an open hand and a close mouth."

"At the time of the Prophet's call to risalah, Arab society was devoid of proper distribution of wealth and devoid of justice. A small group monopolized all wealth and commerce, which increased through usury. The great majority of the people were poor and hungry. The wealthy were also regarded as noble and distinguished, and the common people were not only deprived of wealth but also of dignity and honor.It can be said that Muhammad—peace be on him—was capable of starting a social movement, declaring war against the class of nobles and the wealthy, taking away their wealth and distributing it among the poor."

"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased — thus do we refute entropy."

"By the Lord before whom this sanctuary is holy, I will to N. be true and faithful, and love all which he loves and shun all which he shuns, according to the laws of God and the order of the world. Nor will I ever with will or action, through word or deed, do anything which is unpleasing to him, on condition that he will hold to me as I shall deserve it, and that he will perform everything as it was in our agreement when I submitted myself to him and chose his will."

"Contrast the position in 1066. England was by then a nation-state. It is highly improbable that any European rulers enjoyed closely organised authority over so wide an area as did its kings. The dominions of the German King Henry IV were far more extensive, but the extent of his authority varied from area to area; his government was by no means uniformly integrated; and he did not rule a state in the sense that Edward the Confessor did. There is no question of there having been anything comparable to the English state in France, Spain or Italy. In four centuries a position had been completely reversed. The area of the former Western Roman Empire where authority had disintegrated furthest had become the largest area of integrated power."

"Bede himself insists that three different Germanic peoples came to Britain – the Saxons, the Angles and the Jutes – and that they set up a whole series of distinct kingdoms, the Jutes in Kent, the Saxons in various southern districts, the Angles in East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria. Nevertheless by the time he is writing – some three hundred years after the early migrations and a hundred years after their Christian conversion – he takes it for granted that this whole medley of peoples and kingdoms has become a single nation, "gens Anglorum", the people of the English, and he regularly uses the name "English" to include not only Northumbrians and other Angles, but Saxons and Jutes. He does not, however, for one moment, think that it includes the other peoples of Britain – Britons, Scots and Picts. Britain is one but it includes four peoples with four languages. The English, he had no doubt at all – meaning Saxons, Angles and Jutes – are now a single nation with a single language and a single church."

"The process of Britain’s departure from the Roman Empire was hastened not only by turbulence across the sea in Gaul and Italy, but by the arrival in Britain of significant numbers of warriors and their families from another part of Europe, well outside the empire. The eastern seaboard of Britain had long been a tempting entry point for raiding parties of Picts, Scots, and Germanic tribes known collectively (if imprecisely) as Anglo-Saxons. There had been a serious invasion crisis in 367-8, known as the Great Conspiracy, in which a troop mutiny on Hadrian’s Wall preceded a massive series of coastal raids by non-Roman aligned northern British tribes, apparently in league with Saxons and others from outside the province. Now the same route lay open again. From the early fifth century Britain was steadily settled by war-bands and migrant groups from the North Sea fringe. There was no single, co-ordinated military invasion such as the Romans had landed in the time of Claudius, or the Normans would stage in 1066; the invasions were piecemeal and staggered over many years. Some of the names later applied to the peoples who arrived included the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. But ethnic terminology would have mattered much less to fifth-century Britons than observed reality: Roman functionaries and soldiers had disappeared across the sea in one direction, while Germanic settlers bringing new languages, cultures and beliefs arrived from another."

"Bleed, Saxon blood, and bare old tales of winning wars, westward thrust, killing Celts, keeping lands, eager-storming, ever-taking, battle-sweating, strong-sure Thanes! Folk-hearts proud, forging hard, sweeping through, sowing deep."

"[T]he glory of the late Anglo-Saxon period was its English writing. At a time when no vernacular prose of any distinction had appeared on the Continent, the Anglo-Saxons had developed a language of great copiousness and flexibility, capable of rendering Latin works on theology, philosophy and science. They had translated the gospels, most of the first seven books of the Old Testament, the Benedictine Rule and that of Chrodogang of Metz, some of Alcuin's treatises, and of the canonical writings of Amalarius of Metz and Theodulf of Orelans, and some of Bede's scientific work."

"CONFIDANT, CONFIDANTE, n. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B, confided by him to C."

"Whatever, in connection with my professional service, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret."

"Let those who are friendly to you be many, <br"

"If citizens were permitted privately owned courts and armies, then they would possess the means to defend themselves against invasive acts by the government as well as by private individuals."

"In practice, once anarcho-capitalist institutions were well established, protection agencies would anticipate such difficulties and arrange contracts in advance, before specific conflicts occurred, specifying the arbitrator who would settle them."

"A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms and will lead to ever more taxes and less protection."

"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way."

""Serendipity is the gift of finding the things we did not know we were looking for" w:pt:Glauco Ortolano as quoted in Humaniqueness: The Gift of you Inner God, p 56."

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny.""

"Sindbad the Sailor had no quarrel with the caliph's project, though he'd never before set sail with any motive nobler than restless greed. As he knew from hard experience, however — and will presently declare to his dinner guests, at the end of their monthlong fast — you don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings… serendipitously."

"Serendipity is the way to make discoveries, by accident but also by sagacity, of things one is not in quest of. Based on experience, knowledge, it is the creative exploitation of the unforeseen."

"Synergy and serendipity often play a big part in medical and scientific advances."

"Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for."

"Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer's daughter."

"It is true that my discovery of LSD was a chance discovery, but it was the outcome of planned experiments and these experiments took place in the framework of systematic pharmaceutical, chemical research. It could better be described as serendipity."

"We owe to an eighteenth century Persian poet the marvelous concept of "serendipity." It is a word born in the delightful Persian tale entitled "The Three Princes of Serendip." Webster's Dictionary defines "serendipity" as the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable things not sought for." It represents a type of "accidental sagacity; the faculty of making fortunate discoveries of things you were not looking for.""

"Serendipity is when you find things you weren't looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damned difficult."

"In reality, serendipity accounts for one percent of the blessings we receive in life, work and love. The other 99 percent is due to our efforts."

"In the field of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind."

"Serendipity is putting a quarter in the gumball machine and having three pieces come rattling out instead of one — all red."

"I must tell you a critical discovery of mine àpropos: in an old book of Venetian arms, there are two coats of Capello, who from their name bear a hat; on one of them is added a fleur-de-lis on a blue ball, which I am persuaded was given to the family by the Great Duke, in consideration of this alliance; the Medicis, you know, bore such a badge at the top of their own arms. This discovery I made by a talisman, which Mr. Chute calls the Sortes Walpolianæ, by which I find every thing I want, à pointe nommee, whenever I dip for it. This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavour to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called "The Three Princes of Serendip;" as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right — now do you understand Serendipity? One of the most remarkable instances of this accidental sagacity, (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for comes under this description,) was of my Lord Shaftsbury, who, happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's, found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table. I will send you the inscription in my next letter; you see I endeavour to grace your present as it deserves."

"It is human self-renunciation when a man denies himself and the world opens up to him. But it is Christian self-renunciation when a denies himself and, because the world precisely for this shuts itself up to him, he must as one thrust out by the world seek God's confidence. The double-danger lies precisely in meeting opposition there where he had expected to find support, and he has to turn about twice; whereas the merely human self-resignation turns once."

"Just as the serpent does not hesitate to fulfill the biological "law of its kind" in shedding its old skin, so right renunciation will not waver or shrink from those acts of giving up which right understanding of reality demands. Just as the serpent does not mourn over the loss of its worn-out slough, so right renunciation has no regrets when it discards what has been seen as void of value and substance and replaces it by something new and more beautiful: the happiness of letting go, the exhilaration of the freedom won, the serenity of insight and the radiance of a mind purified and calmed. It is the growing strength of this new experience which will gradually clear the road to final emancipation."

"The whole world knows that virtue consists in the subjugation of one´s passions, or in self-renunciation. It is not just the Christian world, against whom Nietzsche howls, that knows this, but it is an eternal supreme law towards which all humanity has developed, including Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the ancient Persian religion. And suddenly a man appears who declares that he is convinced that self-renunciation, meekness, submissiveness and love are all vices that destroy humanity (he has in mind Christianity, ignoring all the other religions).One can understand why such a declaration baffled people at first. But after giving it a little thought and failing to find any proof of the strange propositions, any rational person ought to throw the books aside and wonder if there is any kind of rubbish that would not find a publisher today. But this has not happened with Nietzsche´s books. The majority of pseudo-enlightened people seriously look into the theory of the Übermensch, and acknowledge its author to be a great philosopher, a descendant of Descartes, Leibniz and Kant. And all this has come about because the majority of pseudo-enlightened men of today object to any reminder of virtue, or to its chief premise: self-renunciation and love&mdash;virtues that restrain and condemn the animal side of their life. They gladly welcome a doctrine, however incoherently and disjointedly expressed, of egotism and cruelty, sanctioning the idea of personal happiness and superiority over the lives of others, by which they live."

"All adventure, all love, every success is resumed in the supreme energy of an act of renunciation. It is the uttermost limit of our power; it is the most potent and effective force at our disposal on which rest the labours of a solitary man in his study, the rock on which have been built commonwealths whose might casts a dwarfing shadow upon two oceans. Like a natural force which is obscured as much as illuminated by the multiplicity of phenomena, the power of renunciation is obscured by the mass of weaknesses, vacillations, secondary motives and false steps and compromises which make up the sum of our activity. But no man or woman worthy of the name can pretend to anything more, to anything greater."

"The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world."

"Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation. "A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!" Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole."

"A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation."

"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery."

"Tao has reality and evidence but no action or physical form. It may be transmitted but cannot be received. It may be obtained but cannot be seen. It is based in itself, rooted in itself. Before Heaven and Earth came into being, Tao existed by itself for all time. It gave spirits and rulers their spiritual powers. It created Heaven and Earth. It is above the zenith but is not high. It is beneath the nadir but is not low. It is prior to Heaven and Earth but is not old. It is more ancient than the highest antiquity but is not regarded as long ago."

"The sage roams freely in the realm in which nothing can escape and all endures. Those who regard dying a premature death, getting old, and the beginning and the end of life as equally good are followed by others. How much more is that to which all things belong and on which the whole process of transformation depends (that is, Tao)?"

"Take, for instance, a twig and a pillar, or the ugly person and the great beauty, and all the strange and monstrous transformations. These are all levelled together by Tao. Division is the same as creation; creation is the same as destruction. There is no such thing as creation or destruction, for these conditions are again levelled together into One. Only the truly intelligent understand this principle of the levelling of all things into One. They discard the distinctions and take refuge in the common and ordinary things. The common and ordinary things serve certain functions and therefore retain the wholeness of nature. From this wholeness, one comprehends, and from comprehension, one comes near to Tao. There it stops. To stop without knowing how it stops – this is Tao."

"From each a mystic silence Love demands."

"Mysticism consists, according to a beautiful definition I find in Plotinus], in seeing with closed eyes [...] in seeing with the eyes of the soul, while the eyes of the body are closed. The essential phenomenon of mysticism is what is called ecstasy, a state in which, with all communication with the external world interrupted, the soul has the sense of communicating with an internal object, which is the infinite being, God. (La psicologia del misticismo, pp. 58-59)"

"Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both."

"A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both."

"The ingenuity of man is coterminous with his cupidity. Out of the claptrap of law came the confusion-confounding device of corporate ownership. Thereby a man-made person, utterly soulless and therefore without moral identity, nevertheless serves to absorb the personal responsibility of moral beings. That this contraption prospers under an imperialistic venture must be sheer accident; for, surely, one cannot associate the stock holding widow with the exploitation of some worker in Iran or India. Nor can the directors be individually charged with moral turpitude, since they act only in a collective capacity and everybody knows that a collectivity is without moral responsibility. In Russia the cartel, or trust, has attained beatification by way of “common ownership,” thus absolving all and sundry, especially the commissars, from conscious complicity in the exploitation of Finnish miners or Polish peasants. If “everybody” is an imperialist, nobody is."

"Social power resides in every individual. Just as you put personal responsibility on political behavior, so must you assume personal responsibility for social behavior. It is your job. You think poorly of legislator Brown not because he has violated a tenet of the Tax Reform Society to which you belong, but because he's voting for a tax levy is in your estimation an act of robbery. It is not a peace society which passes judgment on the war maker, it is the individual pacifist. All values are personal. The good society you envision by the decline of the state is a society of which you are an integral part; your campaign is therefore your obligation."

"Public bodies feel no personal responsibility and give full play to intrigue and cabal."

"Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his lies."

"What does it mean to live esthetically, and what does it mean to live ethically? The esthetic in a person is that by which he spontaneously and immediately is what he is; the ethical is that by which he becomes what he becomes."

"In a spiritual sense that by which a person gives birth is the formative striving of the will and that is within a person’s power. What are you afraid of then? After all, you are not supposed to give birth to another human being; you are supposed to give birth only to yourself. And yet I am fully aware that there is an earnestness about this that shakes the entire soul; to become conscious in one’s eternal validity is a moment that is more significant than everything else in the world."

"There is only one thing I do not want to fail to stress, that as soon as the ethical person’s gymnastics become an imaginary construction he has ceased to live ethically. All such imaginary constructing is equivalent to sophistry in the realm of knowledge."

"Freedom brings men rudely and directly face to face with their responsibility for their free actions."

"“What a man does by another, he does by himself is a maxim.”"

"The Framers did not pioneer the concept of man as a personally responsible agent. That notion, arguably the greatest of all Western ideas, dates to line 32 of Homer’s Odyssey, where Zeus asks people to stop blaming their bad choices on the gods."

"The conservatism I grew up around was a combination of lower taxes, less government spending, freer trade, freer markets, individual liberty, personal responsibility, and a strong anti-Communist foreign policy."

"To liberals and leftists, the message would be equally blunt. In particular, your insistent, almost pathological, fear of understanding the importance of personal responsibility astonishes us. … [W]hat makes us one nation morally is an insistence on a set of values capacious enough to be inclusive but demanding enough to uphold standards of personal responsibility."

"There is no means by which anyone can evade his responsibility. Whoever neglects to examine to the best of his abilities all the problems involved voluntarily surrenders his birthright to a self-appointed elite of supermen. In such vital matters blind reliance upon “experts” and uncritical acceptance of popular catchwords and prejudices is tantamount to the abandonment of self-determination and to yielding to other people’s domination. As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His fate and that of his progeny are at stake."

"I believe this thought, of the possibility of death — if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going."

"I've got a message out there for those people who have abandoned you and written you off. You are NOT inferior. Your grades may be. Your school may have been. But you can turn all that around and make liars out of those bastards in exactly one hour, when you take that test, pass it, and win!"

"The United States strongly seeks a lasting agreement for the discontinuance of nuclear weapons tests. We believe that this would be an important step toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to further agreement on substantial measures of disarmament."

"This is a test. Take notes. This will count as 3/4 of your final grade. Hints: remember, in chess, kings cancel each other out and cannot occupy adjacent squares, are therefore all-powerful and totally powerless, cannot affect each other, produce stalemate. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion; the sect of Atman worships the divine spark of life within Man; in effect saying, "Thou art God." Provisos of equal time are not served by one viewpoint having media access to two hundred million people in prime time while opposing viewpoints are provided with a soapbox on the corner. Not everyone tells the truth. Operational note: these sections may be taken out of numerical sequence: rearrange to suit yourself for optimum clarity. Turn over your test papers and begin."

"This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There's a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!"

"Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in "final exam" as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe."

"Most people can bear adversity; but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never used it except on the side of mercy."

"Doubt is useful, it keeps faith a living thing. After all, you cannot know the strength of your faith until it has been tested."

"I agree as to the doubtful value of competitive examination. The qualities which you really want, viz., self-control, self-reliance, habits of accurate thought, integrity and what you generally call trustworthiness, are not decided by competitive examination, which test little else than the memory."

"Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles on a standardized test; we know that's not true."

"As far as I can see, this is a system that has enriched multiple companies and that pays and fires teachers with a cattle birthing formula, confuses children with talking pineapples, and has the same kind of rules regarding transparency as Brad Pitt had for Fight Club."

"There was a lot of protest after Bravo, from countries like India, for example. India was the first country which came forward and proposed at the United Nations that all of these nuclear tests should be stopped, that there should be a complete ban on nuclear testing."

"All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to analysis in the soul, Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges, They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions, They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves, and touches themselves; For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far and near without one exception."

"Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs, equally to the honest man and to the gentleman: to the first, as doing to others as we would ourselves be done by; to the last, as indispensable to the liberality of the character. By candor we are not to understand trifling and uncalled for expositions of truth; but a sentiment that proves a conviction of the necessity of speaking truth, when speaking at all; a contempt for all designing evasions of our real opinions; and a deep conviction that he who deceives by necessary implication, deceives willfully. In all the general concerns, the publick has a right to be treated with candor. Without this manly and truly republican quality, republican because no power exists in the country to intimidate any from its exhibition, the institutions are converted into a stupendous fraud."

"The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind: he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse. In parrhesia, the speaker is supposed to give a complete and exact account of what he has in mind so that the audience is able to comprehend exactly what the speaker thinks. The word "parrhesia" then, refers to a type of relationship between the speaker and what he says. For in parrhesia, the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks. Instead, the parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. Whereas rhetoric provides the speaker with technical devices to help him prevail upon the minds of his audience (regardless of the rhetorician's own opinion concerning what he says), in parrhesia, the parrhesiastes acts on other people's mind by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes."

"It seems to me that even the bluntest word, the bluntest letter is still more good-natured, still more honest, than silence. . . . All who remain silent are dyspeptic. Clearly I would not have bluntness underestimated: it is by far the most humane form of contradiction and, amid modern pampering, one of our foremost virtues."

"Candor is a compliment; it implies equality. It's how true friends talk."

"Noble souls, whose brightness the greed of fortune cannot dim, have a kingly something, which urges them to contend on equal footing with persons of the most massive dignity and pits freedom of speech against arrogance."

"Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities."

"Candor is always a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate."

"Candor and generosity, unless tempered by due moderation, leads to ruin."

"How beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor."

"APPLAUSE, n. The echo of a platitude."

"Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones."

"Popular Applause! what heart of man Is proof against thy sweet, seducing charms?"

"The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause."

"I live for the applause, applause, applause I live for the applause-plause, live for the applause-plause Live for the way that you cheer and scream for me The applause, applause, applause."

"The applause of a single human being is of great consequence."

"Anybody's applause is better than nobody’s."

"Like Cato, give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause."

"Vos valete et plaudite."

"In a word, he had a head to contrive, and a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute, any mischieve, and his death appeared to be a great deliverance to the nation."

"If the Government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received or all the advantages that would accrue from them. The essence of the whole thing is that the spirit of self-reliance, the spirit of true and genuine manly independence, should be preserved in the minds of the people, in the minds of the masses of the people, in the mind of every member of the class. If he loses his self-denial, if he learns to live in a craven dependence upon wealthier people rather than upon himself, you may depend upon it he incurs mischief for which no compensation can be made."

"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime."

"The only punishment of those who oppose God and His Messenger and strive to make mischief on the earth is that they should be executed, or crucified, or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides, or they should be imprisoned. This shall he a disgrace for them in this world, and in the Hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement. Except those who repent before you overpower them; so know that Allah is Forgiving, Merciful."

"In life it is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best."

"What plaguy mischief and mishaps Do dog him still with after claps!"

"Let them call it mischief: When it is past and prospered 'twill be virtue."

"When to mischief mortals bend their will, How soon they find it instruments of ill."

"Now let it work: Mischief, thou art afoot, Take thou what course thou wilt."

"To mourn a mischief that is past and gone Is the next way to draw new mischief on."

"O mischief, thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!"

"Certainty is the mother of quiet, which is the end of the law, and tho' it falls out that some particular cases may light very hard, yet better that mischief than an inconvenience."

"Certainty is the mother of repose, and therefore the common law aims at certainty."

"The policy of the law of England, and indeed the true principles of all government, will rather suffer many private inconveniences, than introduce one public mischief."

"It is a general rule of Judgment, that a mischief should rather be admitted than an inconvenience."

"And the law says, better is a mischief than an inconvenience. By a mischief is meant, when one man or some few men suffer by the hardship of a law, which law is yet useful for the public. But an inconvenience is to have a public law disobeyed or broken, or an offence to go unpunished."

"As the sun arising in the horizon shews not the figure so clear, as when it is beholden in the meridian; so by mixing many impertinences with the case in judgment, it hath been apprehended to be of a far tenderer consequence than indeed it is: yet tender and weighty it is."

"It is impossible for the Court to foresee when a sentence begins how it will end, and, sometimes, mischief is done before we are sure that the sentence will conclude in an offensive manner."

"A bird is the swiftest, a tortoise the slowest of animals : the blood of a bird is remarkable for its heat and the briskness with which it circulates, that of a tortoise for its coldness and sluggishness : the respiration of a bird is remarkable for its perfection, that of a tortoise for its imperfection : a bird is most susceptible of hunger and thirst, a tortoise most enduring : a bird is most readily killed, a tortoise most tenacious of life. The Almighty has scarcely created animals whose characters present so complete a contrast."

"Let us leave our old friend in one of those moments of unmixed happiness which, if we seek them, there are ever some, to cheer our transitory existence here. There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. (896)"

"To attempt an understanding of Muad'Dib without understanding his mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be."

"Of several colors, all equally white, that will look whitest which is against the darkest background. And black will look intensest against the whitest background. And red will look most vivid against the yellowest background; and the same is the case with all colours when surrounded by their strongest contrasts."

"Mallory "Trace Sterling's phone and scramble every available field agent. I want them all converging on his location!" Gillette "They kinda already are." Carol/Cheryl "There are only like two of them." Pam "So why are these dam peer reviews so hard? Only like 10 people work in this whole goddamn chickenshit outfit.""

"Gorman: Any questions? [Hudson raises his hand.] What is it, private? Hudson: [grinning] How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit? Apone: You secure that shit, Hudson!"

"I can't wait to get out of this chickenshit outfit."

"When he reported to the 761st in October 1943, the colonel briefed him and concluded by asking if he had any questions."Just one," Geist said. "How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit? I don't want to serve with Negroes.""

"How do you get a transfer out of this chicken-shit outfit?" Harry demanded. "Well, you have to fuck up &mdash;" "Fuck up. That's my problem. All this time I tried to fuck off."

"Mr. Grey: "Some Girl Scout chickenshit outfit I'm in here.""

"We like to picture to ourselves the field of law as accurately mapped and plotted. We draw our little lines, and they are hardly down before we blur them. As in time and space, so here. Divisions are working hypotheses, adopted for convenience. … So also the duty of a judge becomes itself a question of degree, and he is a useful judge or a poor one as he estimates the measure accurately or loosely. He must balance all his ingredients, his philosophy, his logic, his analogies, his history, his customs, his sense of right, and all the rest, and adding a little here and taking out a little there, must determine, as wisely as he can, which weight shall tip the scales."

"God estimates us, not by the position we are in, but by the way in which we fill it."

"An estimated value is a precarious measure of justice, compared with the specific thing."

"But in our waking hours we must, if we are rational, make our decisions on the basis of the most objective and cold-blooded estimates that we can make: estimates of the forces and tendencies in the world about us; estimates of the realities with which we must deal; remembering always that nothing is likely to happen just because we think it's good, or unlikely to happen just because we think it's evil."

"Our leaders attempt to blame their failures on circumstances beyond their control, on false estimates by unknown, unidentifiable experts who rewrite modern history in an attempt to convince us our high standard of living, the result of thrift and hard work, is somehow selfish extravagance which we must renounce as we join in sharing scarcity."

"Our estimates vary with our moods; the time may be much longer than our hopes and much shorter than our fears."

"James T. Kirk: How much refit time before we can take her out again? Montgomery Scott: Eight weeks, Sir, [Kirk opens his mouth] but ya don't have eight weeks, so I'll do it for ya in two. James T. Kirk: Mr.Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four? Montgomery Scott: Certainly, Sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker? James T. Kirk: [over the intercom] Your reputation is secure, Scotty."

"The spirit of Freemasonry is the spirit of Judaism in its most fundamental beliefs; it is its ideas, its language, it is mostly its organization, the hopes which enlighten and support Israel. It’s crowning will be that wonderful prayer house of which Jerusalem will be the triumphal centre and symbol."

"Freemasonry, in its development, in its growing power at first and later in its decadence, represented in a way the development, power, and moral and intellectual decadence of the bourgeoisie. Today, fallen to the sad position of a senile old intriguer, it is a useless, sometimes malevolent and always ridiculous nullity, whereas, before 1830 and especially before 1793, having gathered together at its core, with very few exceptions, all the minds of the elite, the most ardent hearts, the proudest spirits, the most audacious personalities, it had constituted an active powerful, and truly beneficial institution. It was the energetic incarnation and implementation of the humanitarian ideal of the eighteenth century. All those great principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, of reason and human justice, elaborated theoretically at first by the philosophy of that century, became in the hands of the Freemasons practical dogmas and the foundations of a new moral and political program, the soul of a gigantic enterprise of demolition and reconstruction. In that epoch, Freemasonry was nothing less than the universal conspiracy of the revolutionary bourgeoisie against the feudal monarchical and divine tyranny. It was the International of the bourgeoisie."

"Freemasons, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucius, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids — always by a Freemason."

"I believe that the future of humanity, which sees the realisation of the global society, must be governed by a community of wise men who express the One, the enlightened tyrant."

"Th' Almighty said, 'Let there be light,' Effulgent rays appearing. Dispell'd the gloom, the glory bright To this new world was cheering; But unto Masonry alone, Another light, so clear and bright, In mystic rays then shone; From east to west it spread so fast, That, Faith and Hope unfurl'd, We hail with joy sweet Charity, The darling of the world. Then while the toast goes round, Then mirth and glee about, Let's be happy to a man; We'll laugh a little, we'll drink a little, We'll work a little, and play a little."

"La Santa is the watershed between the old and new 'Ndrangheta. Founded in 1969-1970, it allows for the dual affiliation of a member of the 'Ndrangheta, that is, to be part of the 'Ndrangheta and participate in a deviant Masonic lodge. This means that by joining a Masonic lodge, a member of the 'Ndrangheta is able to have direct contact with senior figures in the public administration. I remember that years ago, a collaborator of justice told me that three hooded figures were whispering in the Grand Master's ear, and among them were magistrates. So you can understand the huge leap in quality for the 'Ndrangheta, i.e., what it meant to be a member of La Santa."

"We cannot help but greet socialism (Marxism – Communism) as an excellent comrade of Freemasonry for ennobling mankind, for helping to further human welfare. Socialism and Freemasonry, together with Communism are sprung from the same source."

"Masonry is a Jewish institution whose history, degrees, charges, passwords and explanations are Jewish from the beginning to the end."

"The technical language, symbolism, and rites of freemasonry are full of Jewish ideas and of terms (...). In the Scottish Rite the dates of all official documents are given according to the Hebrew months and Jewish era, and use is made of the older form (Samaritan or Phenician) of the Hebrew alphabet."

"The truth is, the Jesuits of Rome have perfected Freemasonry to be their most magnificent and effective tool, accomplishing their purposes among Protestants."

"The science of the sexual magic is the key to the development and the underlying secret of all Masonic symbols.…[I]t is certain that the sexual question has become the most burning question of our time."

"Each Lodge is and must be a symbol of the Jewish Temple: each Master in the chair a representative of the Jewish king; and every Mason a personation of the Jewish workman."

"Masonry is based on Judaism. Eliminate the teachings of Judaism from the Masonic ritual and what is left?"

"The most important duty of the Freemason must be to glorify the Jewish Race, which has preserved the unchanged divine standard of wisdom. You must rely upon the Jewish race to dissolve all frontiers."

"Freemasonry is founded on the ancient law of Israel. Israel has given birth to the moral beauty which forms the basis of Freemasonry."

"The influence of the Jewish Sanhedrin is today more powerful than ever in Freemasonry."

"Why had the merchants, artists, bankers, officials, and lawyers, from the first quarter of the seventeenth century on, begun to call themselves masons and tried to recreate the ritual of the medieval guilds? What was all this strange masquerade about? Gradually the picture grew clearer. The old guild was more than a producing organization; it regulated the ethics and mode of life of its members as well. It completely embraced the life of the urban population, especially the guilds of semi-artisans and semi-artists of the building trades. The break-up of the guild system brought a moral crisis in a society which had barely emerged from medieval. The new morality was taking shape much more slowly than the old was being cut down. Hence, the attempt, so common in history, to preserve a form of moral discipline when its social foundations, which in this instance were those of the industrial guilds, had long since been undermined by the processes of history. Active masonry became theoretical masonry. But the old moral ways of living, which men were trying to keep just for the sake of keeping them, acquired a new meaning. In certain branches of freemasonry, elements of an obvious reactionary feudalism were prominent, as in the Scottish system."

"In the eighteenth century, freemasonry became expressive of a militant policy of enlightenment, as in the case of the Illuminati, who were the forerunners of revolution; on its left, it culminated in the Carbonari. Freemasons counted among their members both Louis XVI and the Dr. Guillotin who invented the guillotine. In southern Germany, freemasonry assumed an openly revolutionary character, whereas at the court of Catherine the Great it was a masquerade reflecting the aristocratic and bureaucratic hierarchy. A freemason Novikov was exiled to Siberia by a freemason empress. Although in our day of cheap and ready-made clothing hardly anybody is still wearing his grandfather’s surtout, in the world of ideas the surtout and the crinoline are still in fashion. Ideas are handed down from generation to generation, although, like grandmother’s pillows and covers, they reek of staleness. Even those who are obliged to change the substance of their opinions force them into ancient moulds."

"The revolution in industry has been much more far-reaching than it has in ideas, where piecework is preferred to new structures. That is why the French parliamentarians of the petty bourgeoisie could find no better way of creating moral ties to hold the people together against the disruptiveness of modern relations than to put on white aprons and arm themselves with a pair of compasses or a plumbline. They were really thinking less of erecting a new building than of finding their way back into the old one of parliament or ministry."

"To enlarge the sphere of social happiness is worthy of the benevolent design of a Masonic institution; and it is most fervently to be wished, that the conduct of every member of the fraternity, as well as those publications, that discover the principles which actuate them, may tend to convince mankind that the grand object of Masonry is to promote the happiness of the human race."

"It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am. The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of seperation). That Individuals of them may have done it, or that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects; and actually had a seperation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned."

"So far as I am acquainted with the principles & Doctrines of Free Masonry, I conceive it to be founded in benevolence and to be exercised only for the good of mankind. If it has been a Cloak to promote improper or nefarious objects, it is a melancholy proof that in unworthy hands, the best institutions may be made use of to promote the worst designs."

"Most historians merely mention that Bruno was charged with the heresy of teaching Copernican astronomy, but Frances Yates, a historian who specialized in the occultt aspects of the scientific revolution, points out that Bruno was charged with 18 heresies and crimes, including the practice of sorcery and organizing secret societies to oppose the Vatican. Yates thinks Bruno may have had a role in the invention of either Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry or both. Bruno's teachings combined the new science of his time with traditional Cabalistic mysticism. He believed in a universe of infinite space with infinite planets, and in a kind of dualistic pantheism, in which the divine is incarnate in every part but always in conflicting forms that both oppose and support each other. Whatever his link with occult secret societies, he influenced Hegel, Marx, theosophy, James Joyce, Timothy Leary, Discordianism, and Dr. Wilhelm Reich."

"Although Masonry is often denounced as either a political or religious "conspiracy", Freemasons are forbidden to discuss either politics or religion within the lodge. Gary Dryfoos of the Massachusetts Institute of technology, who maintains the best Masonic site on the web, always stresses these points and also offers personal testimony that after many years as a Mason, including high ranks, he has not yet been asked to engage in pagan or Satanic rituals or plot for any reason for or against any political party. The more rabid anti-Masons, of course, dismiss such testimony as flat lies. The enemies of Masonry, who are usually Roman Catholics or Fundamentalist Protestants, insist that the rites of the order contain "pagan" elements, e.g., the Yule festival, the Spring Solstice festival, the dead-and-resurrected martyr (Jesus, allegedly historical, to Christians; Hiram, admittedly allegorical, to Masons). All these and many other elements in Christianity and Masonry have a long prehistory in paganism, as documented in the 12 volumes of Sir James George Frazer's Golden Bough. The major offense of Masonry to orthodox churches is that it, like our First Amendment, encourages equal tolerance for all religions, and this tends, somewhat, to lessen dogmatic allegiance to any one religion. Those who insist you must accept their dogma fervently and renounce all others as devilish errors, correctly see this Masonic tendency as inimitable [sic] — to their faith."

"Though Masonry neither usurps the place of, nor apes religion, prayer is an essential part of our ceremonies. It is the aspiration of the soul toward the Absolute and Infinite Intelligence, which is the One Supreme Deity, most feebly and misunderstandingly characterized as an "architect." Certain faculties of man are directed toward the Unknown — thought, meditation, prayer. The unknown is an ocean, of which conscience is the compass. Thought, meditation, prayer, are the great mysterious pointings of the needle. It is a spiritual magnetism that thus connects the human soul with the Deity. These majestic irradiations of the soul pierce through the shadow toward the light. It is but a shallow scoff to say that prayer is absurd, because it is not possible for us, by means of it, to persuade God to change His plans. He produces foreknown and foreintended effects, by the instrumentality of the forces of nature, all of which are His forces. Our own are part of these. Our free agency and our will are forces. We do not absurdly cease to make efforts to attain wealth or happiness, prolong life, and continue health, because we cannot by any effort change what is predestined. If the effort also is predestined, it is not the less our effort, made of our free will."

"The Bible is an indispensable part of the furniture of a Christian Lodge, only because it is the sacred book of the Christian religion. The Hebrew Pentateuch in a Hebrew Lodge, and the Koran in a Mohammedan one, belong on the Altar; and one of these, and the Square and Compass, properly understood, are the Great Lights by which a Mason must walk and work. The obligation of the candidate is always to be taken on the sacred book or books of his religion, that he may deem it more solemn and binding; and therefore it was that you were asked of what religion you were. We have no other concern with your religious creed."

"A Freemason, therefore, should be a man of honor and of conscience, preferring his duty to everything beside, even to his life; independent in his opinions, and of good morals, submissive to the laws, devoted to humanity, to his country, to his family; kind and indulgent to his brethren, friend of all virtuous men, and ready to assist his fellows by all means in his power. (p. 113)"

"It is not the mission of Masonry to engage in plots and conspiracies against the civil government. It is not the fanatical propagandist of any creed or theory; nor does it proclaim itself the enemy of kings. It is the apostle of liberty, equality, and fraternity; but it is no more the high-priest of republicanism than of constitutional monarchy."

"Masonry teaches that all power is delegated for the good, and not for the injury of the People; and that, when it is perverted from the original purpose, the compact is broken, and the right ought to be resumed; that resistance to power usurped is not merely a duty which man owes to himself and to his neighbor, but a duty which he owes to his God, in asserting and maintaining the rank which He gave him in the creation."

"Masonry is not a religion. He who makes of it a religious belief, falsifies and denaturalizes it."

"No man, it holds, has any right in any way to interfere with the religious belief of another. To that great Judge, Masonry refers the matter; and opening wide its portals, it invites to enter there and live in peace and harmony, the Protestant, the Catholic, the Jew, the Moslem; every man who will lead a truly virtuous and moral life, love his brethren, minister to the sick and distressed, and believe in the One, All-Powerful, All-Wise, everywhere-Present God, Architect, Creator and Preserver of all things...."

"The great distinguishing characteristic of a Mason is sympathy with his kind. He recognizes in the human race one great family, all connected with himself by those invisible links, and that mighty net-work of circumstance, forged and woven by God."

"Let the Mason never forget that life and the world are what we make them by our social character; by our adaptation, or want of adaptation to the social conditions, relationships, and pursuits of the world. To the selfish, the cold, and the insensible, to the haughty and presuming, to the proud, who demand more than they are likely to receive, to the jealous, ever afraid they shall not receive enough, to those who are unreasonably sensitive about the good or ill opinions of others, to all violators of the social laws, the rude, the violent, the dishonest, and the sensual, — to all these, the social condition, from its very nature, will present annoyances, disappointments, and pains, appropriate to their several characters. The benevolent affections will not revolve around selfishness ; the cold-hearted must expect to meet coldness; the proud, haughtiness; the passionate, anger; and the violent, rudenesa Those who forget the rights of others, must not be surprised if their own are forgotten; and those who stoop to the lowest embraces of sense must not wonder, if others are not concerned to find their prostrate honor, and lift it up to the remembrance and respect of the world."

"The practical object of Masonry is the physical and moral amelioration and the intellectual and spiritual improvement of individuals and society."

"Masonry represents the Good Principle and constantly wars against the evil one,... at everlasting and deadly feud with the demons of ignorance, brutality, baseness, falsehood, slavishness of soul, intolerance, superstition, tyranny, meanness, the insolence of wealth, and bigotry."

"No one Mason has the right to measure for another, within the walls of a Masonic Temple, the degree of veneration which he shall feel for any Reformer or the Founder of any Religion. We teach a belief in no particular creed, as we teach unbelief in none."

"The true Mason labors for the benefit of those that are to come after him, and for the advancement and improvement of his race. That is a poor ambition which contents itself within the limits of a single life. All men who deserve to live, desire to survive their funerals, and to live afterward in the good that they have done mankind, rather than in the fading characters written in men's memories. Most men desire to leave some work behind them that may outlast their own day and brief generation. That is an instinctive impulse, given by God, and often found in the rudest human heart; the surest proof of the soul's immortality, and of the fundamental difference between man and the wisest brutes. To plant the trees that, after we are dead, shall shelter our children, is as natural as to love the shade of those our fathers planted."

"The desire to do something that shall benefit the world, when neither praise nor obloquy will reach us where we sleep soundly in the grave, is the noblest ambition entertained by man. It is the ambition of a true and genuine Mason. Knowing the slow processes by which the Deity brings about great results, he does not expect to reap as well as sow, in a single lifetime. It is the inflexible fate and noblest destiny, with rare exceptions, of the great and good, to work, and let others reap the harvest of their labors."

"If not for slander and persecution, the Mason who would benefit his race must look for apathy and cold indifference in those whose good he seeks, in those who ought to seek the good of others. Except when the sluggish depths of the Human Mind are broken up and tossed as with a storm, when at the appointed time a great Reformer comes, and a new Faith springs up and grows with supernatural energy, the progress of Truth is slower than the growth of oaks; and he who plants need not expect to gather. The Redeemer, at His death, had twelve disciples, and one betrayed and one deserted and denied Him. It is enough for us to know that the fruit will come in its due season. When, or who shall gather it, it does not in the least concern us to know. It is our business to plant the seed. It is God's right to give the fruit to whom He pleases; and if not to us, then is our action by so much the more noble."

"To sow, that others may reap; to work and plant for those that are to occupy the earth when we are dead; to project our influences far into the future, and live beyond our time; to rule as the Kings of Thought, over men who are yet unborn; to bless with the glorious gifts of Truth and Light and Liberty those who will neither know the name of the giver, nor care in what grave his unregarded ashes repose, is the true office of a Mason and the proudest destiny of a man."

"Thus Masonry disbelieves no truth, and teaches unbelief in no creed, except so far as such creed may lower its lofty estimate of the Diety, degrade Him to the level of the passions of humanity, deny the high destiny of man, impugn the goodness and benevolence of the Supreme God, strike at those great columns of Masonry, Faith, Hope, and Charity, or inculcate immorality, and disregard of the active duties of the Order."

"Masonry propagates no creed except its own most simple and Sublime One; that universal religion, taught by Nature and by Reason. It reiterates the precepts of morality of all religions. It venerates the character and commends the teachings of the great and good of all ages and of all countries. It extracts the good and not the evil, the truth, and not the error, from all creeds; and acknowledges that there is much that is good and true in all."

"Merciful and Eternal God: We thank Thee for the peace and serenity that comes to us in times of grief when we stop and realize that Thou art ever in our presence. We pray Thee, Our Father, to teach us day by day that we are but pilgrims and strangers upon this earth, that here we have no continuing city. As the ties of family are broken one by one and kindred and friends pass from our sight, give us the grace to place our affections more and more upon the things that are spiritual and enduring now and forever more. Amen."

"The Lord bless us and keep us; the Lord make His face to shine upon us and be gracious unto us; the Lord lift up His countenance upon us, and give us peace, both now and forever more. Amen."

"Great Artificer of the Universe, teach us how to use the three great lights in Masonry to guide us in discharging our duty to You, our neighbor, and to ourselves. Show us how to make use of the Holy Bible in learning and doing out duty to You, O God. Assist us in squaring our actions through virtuous living in all our relations with our fellow human beings. Enable us to use the compasses in marking out our duty to self. Guide us with the light from these three helps as we conduct our business in this assembly. All this we pray for Your Name's sake. Amen. (Delivered at the opening of the 15 March 1986 Stated Meeting at Weatherford, Texas)"

"Living God, remind us as we prepare to depart just who we are as Masons. We are supposed to be men who would rather yield up our lives than forfeit our integrity. We are supposed to be men who believe that selfishness must die in us if we are truly to live. We are supposed to be men who believe that the soul is immortal, and that this has consequences for our lives on this earth right now. Keep us ever mindful of those teachings from the Sublime Degree and enable us to put them into practice in our daily living. Amen. (Closing prayer given during the 16 January 1988 Meeting at Weatherford, Texas)"

"Gracious and Great God Almighty, the Masonic cornerstone lies in the northeast corner, between the north, the place of darkness, and the east, the place of light. Thus it reminds us that we are ever to be progressing from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge. Help us in the next twelve months to enable those of our fraternity on whose lives the shadow of our influence may fall to know more about Freemasonry. Guide the leadership we will elect today so that nothing may interrupt the light which flows from the Great Light in Masonry upon the Holy Altar to the station of the Master in the East. We pray all of this for Your name's sake, Amen. (Opening prayer at the 18 March 1989 Stated Meeting at Waco, Texas)"

"May the Great Architect of the Universe bless His gifts to our use, and whilst partaking of His benefits, make us ever mindful of the needs of others. So mote it be."

"We thank Thee, Architect Above, For good food and brotherly love. Relief for all in need we pray, Thy Truth, our Aid from day to day."

"We thank Thee, Father, for the happy fellowship of our Fraternity, and for all Thy bounties spread before us. Grant that through these blessings we may be strengthened and refreshed for Thy service."

"If the Freemasons had wanted to take a saint of the Catholic Church as their patron, they would have designated exactly who they chose. On the contrary, they remain vague: they call themselves Brothers of St. John, but which St. John, the Precursor or the Apostle Evangelist? They do not care and solemnly commemorate both of these figures, St. John of Winter and St. John of Summer."

"The Masonic year begins in March because the Egyptian mysteries were celebrated at the spring equinox and were related to the cult of the sun: in fact, although the sun is reborn at the winter solstice, it does not begin to exert its fertilizing power on the universe until the spring equinox."

"Blessings. Under this heading should come the various types of blessings such as are given in the Church, in Freemasonry, and by the pupils of our Masters.... The second type of blessing is that which is uttered by an official appointed for the purpose, through whom power flows from some higher source..."

"An occult fraternity, which has endured from very ancient times, having a hierarchy of officers, secret signs, and passwords, and a peculiar method of instruction in science, religion, and philosophy. . . . If we may believe those who, at the present time, profess to belong to it, the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, the art of invisibility, and the power of communication directly with the ultramundane life, are parts of the inheritance they possess. The writer has met with only three persons who maintained the actual existence of this body of religious philosophers, and who hinted that they themselves were actually members. There was no reason to doubt the good faith of these individuals -- apparently unknown to each other, and men of moderate competence, blameless lives, austere manners, and almost ascetic in their habits. They all appeared to be men of forty to forty-five years of age, and evidently of vast erudition . . . their knowledge of languages not to be doubted. . . . They never remained long in any one country, but passed away without creating notice."

"Though Masonry neither usurps the place of, nor apes religion, prayer is an essential part of our ceremonies. It is the aspiration of the soul toward the Absolute and Infinite Intelligence, which is the One Supreme Deity, most feebly and misunderstandingly characterized as an "architect." Certain faculties of man are directed toward the Unknown — thought, meditation, prayer. The unknown is an ocean, of which conscience is the compass. Thought, meditation, prayer, are the great mysterious pointings of the needle. It is a spiritual magnetism that thus connects the human soul with the Deity. These majestic irradiations of the soul pierce through the shadow toward the light. p. 1."

"A Freemason, therefore, should be a man of honor and of conscience, preferring his duty to everything beside, even to his life; independent in his opinions, and of good morals, submissive to the laws, devoted to humanity, to his country, to his family; kind and indulgent to his brethren, friend of all virtuous men, and ready to assist his fellows by all means in his power. (p. 113) The great distinguishing characteristic of a Mason is a sympathy with his kind, He recognizes in the human race one great family, all connected with himself by those invisible links, and that mighty network of circumstance, forged and woven by God. (p. 176) The practical object of Masonry is the physical and moral amelioration and the intellectual and spiritual improvement of individuals and society. (p.218) Masonry represents the Good Principle and constantly wars against the evil one,... at everlasting and deadly feud with the demons of ignorance, brutality, baseness, falsehood, slavishness of soul, intolerance, superstition, tyranny, meanness, the insolence of wealth, and bigotry. (p.221) The true Mason labors for the benefit of those that are to come after him.. To plant the trees that, after we are dead, shall shelter our children, is as natural as to love the shade of those our fathers planted. p. 312."

"The desire to do something that shall benefit the world, when neither praise nor obloquy will reach us where we sleep soundly in the grave, is the noblest ambition entertained by man. It is the ambition of a true and genuine Mason. Knowing the slow processes by which the Deity brings about great results, he does not expect to reap as well as sow, in a single lifetime. It is the inflexible fate and noblest destiny, with rare exceptions, of the great and good, to work, and let others reap the harvest of their labors. (p. 316) Masonry propagates no creed except its own most simple and Sublime One; that universal religion, taught by Nature and by Reason. It reiterates the precepts of morality of all religions. It venerates the character and commends the teachings of the great and good of all ages and of all countries. It extracts the good and not the evil, the truth, and not the error, from all creeds; and acknowledges that there is much that is good and true in all. (p.718)"

"Some of you may perchance wonder that the war against the Catholic Church extends so widely. Indeed each of you knows well the nature, zeal, and intention of sects, whether called Masonic or some other name. When he compares them with the nature, purpose, and amplitude of the conflict waged nearly everywhere against the Church, he cannot doubt but that the present calamity must be attributed to their deceits and machinations for the most part. For from these the synagogue of Satan [cf. Book of Revelation 2,9 and 3,9] is formed which draws up its forces, advances its standards, and joins battle against the Church of Christ."

"As regards the lodges of Freemasons. It is quite certain that among them are many that are purely political and very harmful. In some countries, with the rarest exceptions, Masonry has degenerated into buffoonery. Such a degeneration of originally highly moral and beautiful inceptions is very tragic, and the Great Teachers feel inexpressible grief because of it. Bear in mind also that today there is an unprecedented amount of the most terrible black magic and sorcery, and this is almost everywhere. Often, not bad but ignorant people are caught in this black trap. (17 February 1934)"

"The Druids were the Masons of very ancient times... At the head of the Druids was a woman, who bore the title of Mother of the Druids."

"The masonic Religion should be, by all of us initiates of the higher degrees, maintained in the Purity of the Luciferian doctrine.… The true and pure philosophic religion is the belief in Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good, struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of Darkness and Evil."

"This year the most Holy and significant event in human history will take place in America."

"This is a festival not for you or me. It is for the whole world and maybe the whole universe."

"Isn't it about time you all get together and help me bring peace to this Earth?"

"It's really fantastic and really beautiful to see you here, the Millennium program will start tomorrow and it'll really be fantastic, it'll be incredible ... and soon people will get together and finally understand God. ... There's so much trouble in the world, Watergate is not only in America, it exists everywhere."

"You want to be the richest man in the world? I can make you rich. I have the only currency that doesn't go down ... People think I'm a smuggler. You betcha I am. I smuggle peace from one country to another. This currency is really rich. But if you think I'm a smuggler then Jesus Christ was a smuggler and so was Lord Krishna and Mohammed."

"Try it, you'll like it."

"Imagine if you wanted a Superman comic real bad. And you go all over asking people if they've got one. You go to all the bookstores and to all the kids in the colleges, and all the people on the streets and no one has one anywhere. And you're real depressed and you're sitting there in the park and this little kid comes up and says "Hey man, how'd you like a Superman comic." And you say, "G'wan. You don't have one." And this kid pulls it from out of his shirt and it is a genuine; a gen-u-ine Superman comic: and you look at it and say, "Hey man; this must be very expensive," and he says, "No, take it, it's yours. It's free." And you don't believe him but then you take it. He just gives it to you. Well if you can imagine that, you can imagine what Knowledge would mean to you."

"The thing is that this life is a big car, and inside the car there is a big engine. And in the engine there is a carburetor, which is hooked up to a fuel line. In some cars, before the fuel line hits the carburetor, there is a thing called a filter that makes sure the fuel going into the carburetor is pure. So in this life, the filter for our minds is the Knowledge, and if we are not being filtered properly, many dirty particles enter our minds and eventually the whole engine is destroyed."

"They must be drunk. When the real antichrist comes they won't even recognize him. He'll be too professional."

"I don't know whether it's the air conditioning, but you can really feel something. [emphasis in original]"

"A bearded premie from Boston, though no Krishna-symp, voiced disillusionment with the Divine Light treatment of the Krishnas. 'Rennie Davis, who is supposed to be such an advocate of free speech, isn't letting these folks have theirs. He's working with the police against these people.'"

"It's the great spiritual energy that Goom Rodgie gives off. When he is giving a talk, you'll see lots of premies just dozing off to sleep. His energy simply stuns them."

"I am meditating right now, as I talk to you ... But I cannot describe to you the Divine Knowledge any further than that if you haven't experienced it. Our Knowledge is not a religion, but an experience. Can I describe to you the taste of a mango before you have tasted it?"

"Lila, did you see that lila? [a young girl runs out of the landing strip waving her arms excitedly.] He surprised us, he played with us by coming down on the wrong landing strip!"

"'I haven't been into acid much', a boy lying next to me says, 'just about a hundred trips or so.'"

"This is nothing, should have seen us in India, mate. We had to carry batons there. Loving words won't always stop people from comin' onstage y'know. Sometimes you got to bonk 'em."

"I've come to the point where I know there is a Supreme Being and He is one with that 15-year-old boy."

"These people are feeling better-that's why you don't see any scowl lines on their faces. I think one of the greatest evils in the world is the phrase 'I need. It comes from our ego, the 'me' position, the 'my' position. Now, notice these people in the Divine Light Mission. You won't hear them saying, 'I want this' and 'This is for me,' and they won't be fighting with each other. Watch the traffic guards in the hallways, and watch how the devotees listen to their authority. There's no battle with authority."

"You couldn't help being a little 'blissed-out' yourself watching thousands of people freak out of their minds."

"One T-shirted youth, trying to find an unlocked entrance so he could leave the stadium, said angrily. 'I came to check it out. but this is a real bummer. No one who was really God would let himself be put up on a throne like that.'"

"And then, nodding out toward the arena, [the uniformed policeman] said, real friendly-like: 'Ain't this just the damnedest thang you have ever saw?'[sic]"

"I'm going to check out this Knowledge, [a prepremie in a crazy cowboy outfit says,] because it's like putting your cock into a new woman, you've got to do it before you know what it's like."

"I don't like this movement!"

"Most of the devotees with whom we spoke reported a significant drop in the number of people receiving knowledge starting from late 1973. This created a condition of financial strain which became critical when Millennium '73, an all-out extravaganza held in the Houston Astrodome where Guru Maharaj Ji was crowned 'Lord of the Universe,' proved to be an economic flop. ... DLM underwent significant organizational and ideological transformations. It no longer projected itself as a movement that would include all of humanity in its membership."

"The ancient Greek "oral poets" all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember. The invocation of the muses may have been a purely formal element by the time we encounter it, but it very likely reflected a real sense of the anxiety that the memory of forgetting could induce in a sensitive artist of an "oral society.""

"The Muses are turned gossips; they have lost The buskined step, and clear high-sounding phrase, Language of gods. Come, then, domestic Muse, In slip-shod measure loosely prattling on, Of farm or orchard, pleasant curds and cream, Or droning flies, or shoes lost in the mire By little whimpering boy, with rueful face— Come, Muse, and sing the dreaded washing day."

"CLIO, n. One of the nine Muses. Clio's function was to preside over history -- which she did with great dignity, many of the prominent citizens of Athens occupying seats on the platform, the meetings being addressed by Messrs. Xenophon, Herodotus and other popular speakers."

"Whether on Ida’s shady brow Or in the chambers of the East, The chambers of the Sun, that now From antient melody have ceas’d;Whether in Heav’n ye wander fair, Or the green corners of the earth, Or the blue regions of the air Where the melodious winds have birth;Whether on chrystal rocks ye rove, Beneath the bosom of the sea, Wand’ring in many a coral grove, Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry!How have you left the antient love That bards of old enjoy’d in you! The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forc’d, the notes are few!"

"To feed your Muse, then, you should always have been hungry about life since you were a child. If not, it is a little late to start."

"On a hill there growes a flower, Faire befall the dainty sweete: By that flower there is a Bower Where the heavenly Muses meete."

"When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back!"

"Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d muse, The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die."

"Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll."

"It is through the Muses and far-shooting Apollo that there are singers and harpers upon the earth; but princes are of Zeus, and happy is he whom the Muses love: sweet flows speech from his mouth. For though a man have sorrow and grief in his newly-troubled soul and live in dread because his heart is distressed, yet, when a singer, the servant of the Muses, chants the glorious deeds of men of old and the blessed gods who inhabit Olympus, at once he forgets his heaviness and remembers not his sorrows at all ; but the gifts of the goddesses soon turn him away from these."

"The soft, lute-finger’d Muses chaunting clear,"

"The mother of the Muses, we are taught, Is Memory: she has left me; they remain, And shake my shoulder, urging me to sing About the summer days, my loves of old."

"There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse."

"O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!"

"I see Calliope speede her to the place, Where my Goddesse shines: And after her the other Muses trace, With their Violines. Bene they not Bay braunches, which they doe beare, All for Elisa, in her hand to weare? So sweetely they play, And sing all the way, That it a heaven is to heare."

"Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses."

"I have always believed that opera is a planet where the muses work together, join hands and celebrate all the arts."

"Esquire is neither a profession nor occupation."

"When a man is asked if he is an esquire, and he answers that he is an esquire, the general understanding is that he is a person of no profession or occupation."

"Considering the laxity with which the title of Esquire has been used, as is the subject of remark by Sir Thomas Smith, in his days, as to the title of gentleman . . . the Court cannot take upon itself in this case to define, whether it has been improperly assumed."

"These, Sir Edward Coke says, are all the names of dignity in this kingdom (alluding to the peerage, baronetage and knights), esquires and gentlemen being only names of worship.""

"The term esquire has no relation whatever to landed property."

"I know of no privileged class of society, and I do not know an esquire has any privileges a yeoman has not."

"( Esquires and gentlemen are confounded together by Sir Edward Coke, who observes, that every esquire is a gentleman, and a gentleman is defined to be one qui arma gerit. … It is indeed a matter somewhat unsettled, what constitutes the distinction, or who is a real esquire; for it is not an estate, however large, that confers this rank upon its owner."

"Upon the best English authorities, yeoman is a title of courtesy."

"A yeoman is he that hath free land of forty shillings by the year; who was antiently thereby qualified to serve on juries, vote for knights of the shire, and do any other act, where the law requires one that is probus et legalis homo."

"There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men."

"Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error—not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself."

"The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search after truth."

"Radical errors in the first concoction of the mind are not to be cured by the excellence of functions and remedies subsequent."

"The truth is perilous never to the true, Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool, And to the false, error and truth alike, Error is worse than ignorance."

"Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense."

"Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors. And errors are of two kinds: errors that turn out to be true and errors that turn out to be false (which are most of them). But they both have the same character of being an imaginative speculation. ...it seems to me terribly important to say this in an age in which most nonscientists are feeling a kind of loss of nerve. ...by the time science becomes a closed—that is, computerizable—project, it is not science anymore. It is not in the area of the exploration of errors."

"Have too rashly charged the troops of error and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth."

"It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare."

"Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, from which we must first erase. Ignorance is content to stand still with her back to the truth, but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the same direction."

"It is the abortive movement of man toward being which is his very existence, it is through the failure which he has assumed that he asserts himself as a freedom. To want to prohibit a man from error is to forbid him to fulfill his own existence, it is to deprive him of life."

"The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

"If you hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will not escape error."

"Why is error so popular?[…]In the first place, error is often more attractive than truth. Real life is apt to be a drab, humdrum, unglamorous business; but things-that-aren't-so are usually spectacularly exciting and fill us with a tingling sense of wonder and awe.[…]Another thing that makes error popular is that we like life to be nice and simple. Of course, life isn't like that; it's complex, irregular, hard to understand, and generally a messy thing to deal with. But error has a wonderful neatness.[…]A third reason for our wrong beliefs goes deeper. We believe what is comfortable to believe. If problems are troublesome, there must be an easy solution; if we are worried, there must be something that will make us feel good. This, I think, is at the bottom of the last two on my little list of errors."

"[E]rror is popular because people are afraid to grow up. Clear thinking means facing the fact that life is full of difficult problems, that we cannot escape from pain, discomfort and uncertainty, that we cannot attain happiness by turning away from reality. As Sigmund Freud said, we need "education to reality.""

"La propagande de l'erreur est libre: liberté de pensée!"

"Error is to the mind what poison is to the body."

"The proper method for hastening the decay of error is not by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself."

"Nicht vor Irrthum zu bewahren, ist die Pflicht des Menschenerziehers, sondern den Irrenten zu leiten, ja, ihn seinen Irrthum aus vollen Bechern ausschlürfen zu lassen, das ist Weisheit der Lehrer. Wer seinen Irrthum nur kostet, hält lange damit Haus, er freuet sich dessen als eines seltenen Glücks; aber wer ihn ganz erschöpft, der muß ihn kennen lernen, wenn er nicht wahnsinnig ist."

"Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt."

"Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein- oder die andere Weise unbegränzt."

"Der Irrthum verhält sich gegen das Wahre wie der Schlaf gegen das Wachen. Ich habe bemerkt, daß man aus dem Irren sich wie erquickt wieder zu dem Wahren hinwende."

"Es ist so gewiß als wunderbar, daß Wahrheit und Irrthum aus Einer Quelle entstehen; deßwegen man oft dem Irrthum nicht schaden darf, weil man zugleich der Wahrheit."

"En un descuido puede caer el mayor sabio, pero en dos no; y de paso, que no de asiento."

"On of the most frequent errors we all commit in life is the valuing a thing according to the difficulty of attaining it. And this error is universal. I do not believe that anybody is free from it."

"Believe truth! Shun error!—these, we see, are two materially different laws; and by choosing between them we may end by coloring differently our whole intellectual life. We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may, on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and let truth take its chance."

"Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors than from his virtues."

"Twenty errors in practice are as nothing compared with one error in principle. Twenty errors in practice may be corrected, and the twenty-first may never be committed; but one erroneous principle is like a damaged wheel in a machine. It can never work correctly afterwards. One speculative error will produce an infinite series of practical errors. The series is inexhaustible, until the machine itself is either amended or destroyed."

"In the ideological field, the question of who will win in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has not been really settled yet. We still have to wage a protracted struggle against bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology. It is wrong not to understand this and to give up ideological struggle. All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism; in no circumstance should they be allowed to spread unchecked. However, the criticism should be fully reasoned, analytical and convincing, and not rough, bureaucratic, metaphysical or dogmatic."

"While every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. ... For in proportion to a man’s want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibly of “the world” in general. And the world, to each individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his party, his sect, his church, his class of society. ... Nor is his faith in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. ... It never troubles him that mere accident has decided which of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance."

"Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think."

"Just as the mind the erring sense believes, The erring mind, in turn, the sense deceives."

"In prison.—My eye, however strong and weak it may be, only encompasses a certain distance, and within this distance I move and live; this horizontal line is my immediate greater and lesser fate, from which I cannot escape. Thus round every being a concentric circle is drawn, which has a centre and which is peculiar to him. In a similar way our ear encloses us in a small space, and so does our touch. By these horizons, wherein our senses are confined as in prison-walls, we measure the world, calling one thing near and another far off, one thing large and another small, one thing hard and another soft: this measuring we call feeling—it is all, in itself, an error! According to the number of experiences and excitements which we may possibly experience during a certain period, we value our lives as short or long, poor or rich, full or void: and in correspondence to the average human life we value that of all other beings—all this is an error in itself! Were our eyes a hundred times quicker with regard to our surroundings, human beings would appear enormously tall to us; nay, we might conceive senses by which mortals might be felt to be of immeasurable size. On the other hand, orligans could be imagined such as to allow whole solar systems to be viewed as if contracted and closely packed together like a single cell: and to beings of the opposite order, one cell of the human body might present itself as a solar system in motion, construction, and harmony. The habits of our senses have plunged us into the lies and deceptions of feeling: these, again, are the foundations of all our judgments and "knowledge," there is no escape whatever, no back-way or by-way into the real world. We spiders are caught in our own nets, and whatever we may catch in them, we cannot catch anything but what allows itself to be caught in our net."

"Sometimes a way seems right,but the end of it leads to death!"

"[T]here is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

"Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil wisdom."

"The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error. Satisfied if they themselves can escape from the hard labour of thought, they willingly abandon to others the guardianship of their thoughts."

"For the robust, an error is information."

"He who thinks little, errs much."

"Every sect, as one knows, is a ground of error; there are no sects of geometers, algebraists, arithmeticians, because all the propositions of geometry, algebra and arithmetic are true. In every other science one may be deceived."

"Love truth, but pardon error."

"Logic is a law which must be obeyed, and man realizes himself only in so far as he is logical. He finds himself in cognition.All error must be felt to be crime. And so man must not err."

"Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses."

"It's lack that gives us inspiration. It's not fullness. Not ever having driven, I can write better about automobiles than the people who drive them. I have a distance here. ... Space travel is another good example. I'm never going to go to Mars but I've helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars. So it's always a lack that causes you to write that type of story."

"I got on with the task of turning myself into a brief professional writer. The term professional is not meant to imply a high standard of commitment and attainment: it meant then, as it still does, the pursuit of a trade or calling to the end of paying the rent and buying liquor. I leave the myth of inspiration and agonised creative inaction to the amateurs. The practice of a profession entails discipline, which for me meant the production of two thousand words of fair copy every day, weekends included. I discovered that, if I started early enough, I could complete the day’s stint before the pubs opened. Or, if I could not, there was an elated period of the night after closing time, with neighbours banging on the walls to protest at the industrious clacking. Two thousand words a day means a yearly total of 730,000. Step up the rate and, without undue effort, you can reach a million. This ought to mean ten novels of 100,000 words each. This quantitative approach is not, naturally, to be approved. And because of hangovers, marital quarrels, creative deadness induced by the weather, shopping trips, summonses to meet state officials, and sheer torpid gloom, I was not able to achieve more than five and a half novels of very moderate size in that pseudo-terminal year. Still, it was very nearly E.M.Forster’s whole long life’s output."

"Greatness is more than potential. It is the execution of that potential. Beyond the raw talent. You need the appropriate training. You need the discipline. You need the inspiration. You need the drive."

"Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognised for some time."

"I've described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better — when you can get it."

"If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works more of the time."

"Wherever we are, God’s in that moment, God’s speaking to us, and if we’ve just got our ears open and our antennas up, there’s no lack of inspiration. He’s not silent. We just have to be listening."

"The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space."

"Totalitarian art must be a form of classicism: the state which is founded on order and subordination demands an art with a similar basis. Romantic painting, however popular, expresses the revolt of the individual. The State also requires an art of reason by which appropriate works may be produced as required. Inspiration is outside state control. The classic attitude toward subject matter — that it should be clear and unequivocal — supports the attitude of unquestioning belief. Add the fact that totalitarian art must be real enough to please the ignorant, ideal enough to commemorate a national hero, and well enough designed to present a memorable image, and one sees how perfectly The Death of Marat fills the bill. That it happens also to be a great work of art makes it dangerously misleading."

"I always thought that inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show and get to work. If you’re going to wait a around for the clouds to open up and lightning to strike you in the brain you’re not going to make an awful lot of work."

"When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back!"

"I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament — temperament is the word — I know nothing."

"I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour."

"There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning."

"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."

"I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research."

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."

"I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it."

"It is with just that hope that we welcome everything that tends to strengthen the fibre and develop the nature on more sides. When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy."

"What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophecy or as poesy. … and should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth. Let us be wise, and not impede the soul. Let her work as she will. Let us have one creative energy, one incessant revelation. Let it take what form it will, and let us not bind it by the past to man or woman, black or white."

"Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts. Woman the poem, man the poet; woman the heart, man the head; such divisions are only important when they are never to be transcended. If nature is never bound down, nor the voice of inspiration stifled, that is enough."

"Yes, Shakespeare foremost and forever (Darwin too). But also teach about the excellence of pygmy bushcraft and Fuegian survival in the world's harshest climate. Dignity and inspiration come in many guises. Would anyone choose the tinhorn patriotism of George Armstrong Custer over the eloquence of Chief Joseph in defeat?"

"Darwin grasped the philosophical bleakness with his characteristic courage. He argued that hope and morality cannot, and should not, be passively read in the construction of nature. Aesthetic and moral truths, as human concepts, must be shaped in human terms, not “discovered” in nature. We must formulate these answers for ourselves and then approach nature as a partner who can answer other kinds of questions for us—questions about the factual state of the universe, not about the meaning of human life. If we grant nature the independence of her own domain—her answers unframed in human terms—then we can grasp her exquisite beauty in a free and humble way. For then we become liberated to approach nature without the burden of an inappropriate and impossible quest for moral messages to assuage our hopes and fears. We can pay our proper respect to nature's independence and read her own ways as beauty or inspiration in our different terms."

"Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll."

"He gave us his "Curves and Functions", in the form of lectures; and sometimes, even while stating his propositions, he would be seized with some mathematical inspiration, would forget pupils, notes, everything, and would rapidly dash off equation after equation, following them out with smaller and smaller chalk-marks into the remote corners of the blackboard, forsaking his delightful task only when there was literally no more space to be covered, and coming back with a sigh to his actual students. There was a great fascination about these interruptions; we were present, as it seemed, at mathematics in the making; it was like peeping into a necromancer's cell, and seeing him at work; or as if our teacher were one of the old Arabian algebraists recalled to life."

"They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor."

"Poetical composition results from two intellectual phenomena, meditation and inspiration. Meditation is a faculty ; inspiration is a gift. All men, to a certain degree, can meditate; very few are inspired. Spiritus flat ubi vult. In meditation, the spirit acts; in inspiration, it oheys ; because the first is of men, the second comes from a higher source. He who gave us this power is stronger than we. These two processes of thoughts are intimately linked in the soul of the poet. The poet invites inspiration by meditation, as the prophets raised themselves to ecstacies by prayer. That the muse should reveal herself to him, he must in some sort have passed all his material existence in repose, in silence, and in meditation. He must be isolated from external life, to enjoy in its fullness that inward life, which developes in bim a new existence; and it is only when the physical world has utterly vanished from before his eyes, that the ideal world is fully revealed to him. It seems that poetic inspiration has in it some- thing too sublime for~the common nature of man. Genius can compass its greater efforts only when the soul is released from the vulgar cares that follow it in life ; for thought cannot take its wings till it has laid aside its burden. Thence comes it, doubtless, that inspiration is born only of meditation. Among the Jews, the people whose history is so rich in mysterious symbols when the priest had built the altar, he lighted upon it an earthly flame -- and it was then only that the divine ray descended from Heaven."

"Happy he who possesses this double power of meditation and inspiration, which is genius! Whatever may be the age on which he is, or the country -- be he born in the bosom of domestic calamities, be he thrown on a time of popular convulsions, or, what is still more to be lamented, on a period of stagnant indifference --let him trust himself to the future; for, if the present belong to other men, the future is for him. He is of the number of chosen beings for whom a day is allotted. Sooner or later, the day comes ; and it is then -- fed by sublime thought, and elevated by divine inspiration -- that he throws himself boldly before the world, with the cry of the poet upon his lips ‘Voici mon Orient: peuples levez les yeux!’"

"Let my inspiration flow, in token lines suggesting rhythm, that will not forsake me, till my tale is told and done"

"Inspiration, move me brightly, light the song with sense and color, hold away despair"

"This is Paris. And I'm an American who lives here. My name Jerry Mulligan. And I'm an ex-GI. In 1945, when the Army told me to find my own job, I stayed on and I'll tell you why. I'm a painter. All my life, that's all I've ever wanted to do. And for a painter, the Mecca of the world for study, for inspiration, and for living is here on this star called Paris. Just look at it. No wonder so many artists have come here and called it home. Brother, if you can't paint in Paris, you'd better give up and marry the boss's daughter. Back home everyone said I didn't have any talent. They might be saying the same thing over here, but it sounds better in French."

"Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it."

"Desire itself is an inspiration. Every man desires to do something in life.Where there is no desire no way would open out.Yet too much of desire creates problems.If we understand where to draw the limits to our ambition then we would experience a constant need to keep our inspiration alive and the desire to make something of one's life would never be ignored."

"Everyone has a goal which appears to be great, at least to himself, and is great when deepest conviction, the innermost voice of the heart, pronounces it great. ... This voice, however, is easily drowned out, and what we thought to be inspiration may have been created by the fleeting moment and again perhaps destroyed by it. ... We must seriously ask ourselves, therefore, whether we are really inspired about a vocation, whether an inner voice approves of it, or whether the inspiration was a deception, whether that which we took as the Deity’s calling to us was self-deceit. But how else could we recognize this except by searching for the source of our inspiration?"

"Everything great glitters, glitter begets ambition, and ambition can easily have caused the inspiration or what we thought to be inspiration. But reason can no longer restrain one who is lured by the fury of ambition. He tumbles where his vehement drive calls him; no longer does he choose his position, but rather chance and luster determine it."

"I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live."

"A breath of our inspiration Is the life of each generation; A wondrous thing of our dreaming Unearthly, impossible seeming — The soldier, the king, and the peasant Are working together in one, Till our dream shall become their present, And their work in the world be done."

"I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact."

"You who are sitting before me have the power to change my consciousness into painting, poem, melody or anything else!"

"If you're going to make a living at this business - more importantly, if you're going to write anything that will last - you have to realise that a lot of the time, you're going to be writing without inspiration. The trick is to write just as well without it as with. Of course, you write less readily and fluently without it; but the interesting thing is to look at the private journals and letters of great writers and see how much of the time they just had to do without inspiration. Conrad, for example, groaned at the desperate emptiness of the pages he faced; and yet he managed to cover them. Amateurs think that if they were inspired all the time, they could be professionals. Professional know that if they relied on inspiration, they'd be amateurs."

"Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development."

"My inspirations don't come from outer space, they just come to me. I have no idea why they come when they do."

"Courage is never born with a person; time and circumstances inject it into a person and bring it forth from within."

"I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean."

"I believe that music can be an inspirational force in all our lives — that its eloquence and the depth of its meaning are all-important, and that all personal considerations concerning musicians and the public are relatively unimportant — that music come from the heart and returns to the heart — that music is spontaneous, impulsive expression — that its range is without limit — that music is forever growing — that music can be one element to help us build a new conception of life in which the madness and cruelty of wars will be replaced by a simple understanding of the brotherhood of man. Music can be all things to all men. It is like a great dynamic sun in the center of a solar system which sends out its rays and inspiration in every direction. … It is as if the heavens open and a divine voice calls. Something in our souls responds and understands. We are speaking here of the most inspired music."

"The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories...Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration."

"Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know.""

"While I was held prisoner, sweet inspiration educated me and laws were imparted to me in a speech which had no words..."

"The Cauldron of Wisdom and Inspiration must be kept boiling for a year and a day, and then the first three drops from it would impart ultimate knowledge to the one who drank them. But the rest of the liquid would be deadly poison. Long labored Ceridwen, roaming far to find the rare and exotic herbs she required, and so it chanced that she fell asleep on the last day of the spell. The boy Gwion was stirring the brew when three drops flew out onto his thumb, and they were scalding hot, so that he thrust it into his mouth to stop the burning. Instantly, he had the wisdom and inspiration of ages, and the first thing that occurred to him was that Ceridwen would be very angry."

"Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses."

"Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard."

"I invented something called The Oxford Muse. The Muses were women in mythology. They did not teach or require to be worshipped, but they were a source of inspiration. They taught you how to cultivate your emotions through the different arts in order to reach a higher plane. What is lacking now, I believe, is somewhere you can get that stimulation not information, but stimulation where you can meet just that person, or find just that situation, which will give you the idea of invention, of carrying out some project which interests you, and show how it can become a project of interest to other people."

"ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws."

"Chapter of accidents."

"Great discoveries are made accidentally less often than the populace likes to think."

"Accidents will occur in the best regulated families."

"To what happy accident is it that we owe so unexpected a visit?"

"Our wanton accidents take root, and grow To vaunt themselves God's laws."

"Nichts unter der Sonne ist Zufall—am wenigsten das wovon die Absicht so klar in die Augen leuchtet."

"At first laying down, as a fact fundamental, That nothing with God can be accidental."

"By many a happy accident."

"Was der Ameise Vernunft mühsam zu Haufen schleppt, jagt in einem Hui der Wind des Zufalls zusammen."

"I have shot mine arrow o'er the house And hurt my brother."

"Moving accidents by flood and field."

"A happy accident."

"The accident of an accident."

"While this wasn’t the first accident involving a self-driving car, it was the first time the car was found to be at fault. Yes, the car was at fault."

"The chapter of accidents is the longest chapter in the book."

"History has a way of reducing individuals to flat, two-dimensional portraits. it is the enemy of subjectivity, which is why Stephen Dedalus called it "a nightmare from which I am trying to awake". If we think of Kierkegaard, of Nietzsche, of Hölderlin, we see them standing alone, outside of history. They are spotlighted by their intensity, and the background is all darkness. They intersect history, but are not a part of it. There is something anti-history about such men; they are not subject to time, accident and death, but their intensity is a protest against it. I have elsewhere called such men "Outsiders" because they attempt to stand outside history. which defines humanity on terms of limitation, not of possibility."

"Don't judge a book by its cover."

"Handsome is that handsome does."

"She had always thought she would be like her father, and fancied a tall, dark, and handsome face."

"Those who take a superficial and unreflecting view of things observe the outward appearance of anything they meet, e.g. of a man, and then trouble themselves no more about him. The view they have taken of the bulk of his body is enough to make them think that they know all about him. But the penetrating and scientific mind will not trust to the eyes alone the task of taking the measure of reality; it will not stop at appearances, nor count that which is not seen among unrealities. It inquires into the qualities of the man's soul."

"Do not be afraid because of their appearance, for ‘I am with you to save you,’ declares Jehovah."

"All hoods make not monks."

"All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told; Many a man his life hath sold But my outside to behold."

"Gold all is not that doth golden seem."

"Will she pass in a crowd? Will she make a figure in a country church?"

"She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth."

"Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the nearby rock. Now follow in this direction, now turn a different hue."

"The most important thing I learned on [[w:Tralfamadore|] was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.""

"A man of sense can artifice disdain, As men of wealth may venture to go plain. * * * * * * I find the fool when I behold the screen, For 'tis the wise man's interest to be seen."

"Esse quam videri."

"Non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum."

"O wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as ithers see us! It wad fræ monie a blunder free us. And foolish notion; What airs in dress and gait wad lea'e us, And ev'n devotion!"

"Think not I am what I appear."

"As large as life, and twice as natural."

"But every thyng which schyneth as the gold, Nis nat gold, as that I have herd it told."

"Hyt is not al golde that glareth."

"Habit maketh no monke, ne wearing of guilt spurs maketh no knight."

"Appearances to save, his only care; So things seem right, no matter what they are."

"Que tout n'est pas or c'on voit luire."

"We understood Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought. That one might almost say her body thought."

"All, as they say, that glitters is not gold."

"Cucullus (or Cuculla) non facit monachum."

"He was one of a lean body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting for anger at the clog of his body, desired to fret a passage through it."

"By outward show let's not be cheated; An ass should like an ass be treated."

"Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream."

"Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts is lawful prize, Nor all that glisters gold."

"Gloomy as night he stands."

"Judge not according to the appearance."

"Fronti nulla fides."

"Garde-toi, tant que tu vivras, De juger des gens sur la mine."

"Même quand l'oiseau marche on sent qu'il a des ailes."

"All is not golde that outward shewith bright."

"All is not golde that shewyth goldishe hewe."

"He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked."

"Whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones."

"All is not gold that glisteneth."

"Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsæ."

"Non semper ea sunt, quæ videntur; decipit Frons prima multos: rara mens intelligit Quod interiore condidit cura angulo."

"L'habit ne fait le moine."

"Looked as if she had walked straight out of the Ark."

"A fair exterior is a silent recommendation."

"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum."

"Of the terrible doubt of appearances, Of the uncertainty after all, that we may-be deluded, That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all, That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only. May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters, The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known."

"'Twas in the central chamber had been spread, For her, the bride divine, the nuptial bed; Of Indian ivory form'd, it shunned the eye, Veiled by its covering of the crimson dye."

""Or he might say: 'Whereas some recluses and brahmins, while living on food offered by the faithful, enjoy the use of high and luxurious beds and seats, such as: spacious couches; thrones with animal figures carved on the supports; long-haired coverlets; multi-colored patchwork coverlets; white woollen coverlets; woollen coverlets embroidered with flowers; quilts stuffed with cotton; woollen coverlets embroidered with animal figures; woollen coverlets with hair on both sides or on one side; bedspreads embroidered with gems; silk coverlets; dance-hall carpets; elephant, horse or chariot rugs; rugs of antelope-skins; choice spreads made of kadali-deer hides; spreads with red awnings overhead; couches with red cushions for the head and feet — the recluse Gotama abstains from the use of such high and luxurious beds and seats.'"

"People who think of beds only in terms of sexual exercise or sleep simply do not understand that a bed is the best of all places for a philosophical discussion, an argument, and if necessary a showdown. It was not by chance that so many kings of old administered justice from their beds, and even today there is something splendidly parliamentary about an assembly of concerned persons in a bed."

"I give men assertive training out of bed and they give me more assertive training in bed."

"If it's softer than ground and has a roof over it, I call it a bed."

"The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The railroads are good enough for me."

"It is amazing how few people are conscious of the importance of the art of lying in bed... I believe one of the greatest pleasures of life is to curl up one's legs in bed. The posture of the arms is also very important, in order to reach the greatest degree of aesthetic pleasure and mental power. I believe the best posture is not lying flat on the bed, but being upholstered with big soft pillows at an angle of thirty degrees with either one arm or both arms placed behind the back of one's head."

"Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, The bed be blest that I lye on."

"Théâtre des ris et des pleurs Lit! où je nais, et où je meurs, Tu nous fais voir comment voisins Sont nos plaisirs et chagrins."

"To rise with the lark, and go to bed with the lamb."

"Like feather-bed betwixt a wall And heavy brunt of cannon ball."

"O bed! O bed! delicious bed! That heaven upon earth to the weary head."

"Rise with the lark and with the lark to bed."

"Saturday morning, jumped out of bed and put on my best suit. Got in my car and raced like a jet, all the way to you."

"The bed has become a place of luxury to me! I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world."

"BENEFACTOR, n. One who makes heavy purchases of ingratitude, without, however, materially affecting the price, which is still within the means of all."

"Beneficium non in eo quod fit aut datur consistit sed in ipso dantis aut facientis animo."

"Eodem animo beneficium debetur, quo datur."

"Qui dedit beneficium taceat; narret, qui accepit."

"Inopi beneficium bis dat, qui dat celeriter."

"Beneficia usque eo læta sunt dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere pro gratia odium redditur."

"Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream."

"Like the watermen that row one way and look another."

"On the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar."

"All in the golden afternoon Full leisurely we glide; For both our oars, with little skill, By little arms are plied, While little hands make vain pretense Our wanderings to guide."

"And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept the time."

"Learn of the little nautilus to sail, Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale."

"The oars were silver: Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke."

"Oh, swiftly glides the bonnie boat, Just parted from the shore, And to the fisher's chorus-note, Soft moves the dipping oar!"

"But oars alone can ne'er prevail To reach the distant coast; The breath of Heaven must swell the sail, Or all the toil is lost."

"We lie and listen to the hissing waves, Wherein our boat seems sharpening its keel, Which on the sea's face all unthankful graves An arrowed scratch as with a tool of steel."

"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat."

"Like the watermen who advance forward while they look backward."

"Faintly as tolls the evening chime, Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time, Soon as the woods on shore look dim, We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn; Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast, The rapids are near and the daylight's past!"

"Gracefully, gracefully glides our bark On the bosom of Father Thames, And before her bows the wavelets dark Break into a thousand gems."

"Like watermen who look astern while they row the boat ahead."

"Cause means"

":(a) in one sense, that as the result of whose presence something comes into being—e.g., the bronze of a statue and the silver of a cup, and the classes which contain these [i.e., the material cause];"

":(b) in another sense, the form or pattern; that is, the essential formula and the classes which contain it—e.g. the ratio 2:1 and number in general is the cause of the octave—and the parts of the formula [i.e., the formal cause]."

":(c) The source of the first beginning of change or rest; e.g. the man who plans is a cause, and the father is the cause of the child, and in general that which produces is the cause of that which is produced, and that which changes of that which is changed [i.e., the efficient cause]."

":(d) The same as "end"; i.e. the final cause; e.g., as the "end" of walking is health. For why does a man walk? "To be healthy," we say, and by saying this we consider that we have supplied the cause [the final cause]."

":(e) All those means towards the end which arise at the instigation of something else, as, e.g., fat-reducing, purging, drugs and instruments are causes of health; for they all have the end as their object, although they differ from each other as being some instruments, others actions [i.e., necessary conditions]."

"With ignorance as proximate cause, volitional formations come to be; with volitional formations as proximate cause, consciousness; with consciousness as proximate cause, name-and-form; with name-and-form as proximate cause, the six sense bases; with the six sense bases as proximate cause, contact; with contact as proximate cause, feeling; with feeling as proximate cause, craving; with craving as proximate cause, clinging; with clinging as proximate cause, existence; with existence as proximate cause, birth; with birth as proximate cause, suffering; with suffering as proximate cause, faith; with faith as proximate cause, gladness; with gladness as proximate cause, rapture; with rapture as proximate cause, tranquillity; with tranquillity as proximate cause, happiness; with happiness as proximate cause, concentration; with concentration as proximate cause, the knowledge and vision of things as they really are; with the knowledge and vision of things as they really are as proximate cause, revulsion; with revulsion as proximate cause, dispassion; with dispassion as proximate cause, liberation; with liberation as proximate cause, the knowledge of destruction."

"Causa latet: vis est notissima."

"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas."

"Causation is defined by some modern philosophers as unconditional uniformity of succession, e.g., existence of fire follows from putting a lighted match to the fuel. This idea must be got rid of to understand force. All universally true laws of nature are laws of co-existence, not succession."

"Since therefore ‘tis possible for all objects to become causes or effects to each other, it may be proper to fix some general rules, by which we may know when they really are so."

":(1) The cause and effect must be contiguous in space and time."

":(2) The cause must be prior to the effect."

":(3) There must be a constant union betwixt the cause and effect. ‘Tis chiefly this quality, that constitutes the relation."

":(4) The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises but from the same cause. This principle we derive from experience, and is the source of most of our philosophical reasonings. For when by any clear experiment we have discovered the causes or effects of any phaenomenon, we immediately extend our observation to every phenomenon of the same kind, without waiting for that constant repetition, from which the first idea of this relation is deriv’d."

":(5) There is another principle, which hangs upon this, viz. that where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality, which we discover to be common amongst them. For as like effects imply like causes, we must always ascribe the causation to the circumstance, wherein we discover the resemblance."

":(6) The following principle is founded on the same reason. The difference in the effects of two resembling objects must proceed from that particular, in which they differ. For as like causes always produce like effects, when in any instance we find our expectation to be disappointed, we must conclude that this irregularity proceeds from some difference in the causes."

":(7) When any object encreases or diminishes with the encrease or diminution of its cause, ‘tis to be regarded as a compounded effect, deriv’d from the union of the several different effects, which arise from the several different parts of the cause. The absence or presence of one part of the cause is here suppos’d to be always attended with the absence or presence of a proportionable part of the effect. This constant conjunction sufficiently proves, that the one part is the cause of the other. We must, however, beware not to draw such a conclusion from a few experiments. A certain degree of heat gives pleasure; if you diminish that heat, the pleasure diminishes; but it does not follow, that if you augment it beyond a certain degree, the pleasure will likewise augment; for we find that it degenerates into pain."

":(8) The eighth and last rule I shall take notice of is, that an object, which exists for any time in its full perfection without any effect, is not the sole cause of that effect, but requires to be assisted by some other principle, which may forward its influence and operation. For as like effects necessarily follow from like causes, and in a contiguous time and place, their separation for a moment shews, that these causes are not compleat ones."

"If reason (I mean abstract reason, derived from inquiries a priori) be not alike mute with regard to all questions concerning cause and effect, this sentence at least it will venture to pronounce, That a mental world, or universe of ideas, requires a cause as much, as does a material world, or universe of objects; and, if similar in its arrangement, must require a similar cause. For what is there in this subject, which should occasion a different conclusion or inference? In an abstract view, they are entirely alike; and no difficulty attends the one supposition, which is not common to both of them."

"To all facts there are laws, The effect has its cause, and I mount to the cause."

"No suffering is self-caused. Nothing causes itself. If another is not self-made, How could suffering be caused by another? If suffering were caused by each, Suffering could be caused by both. Not caused by self or by other, How could suffering be uncaused?"

"Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad."

"Your cause doth strike my heart."

"Find out the cause of this effect, Or rather say, the cause of this defect, For this effect defective comes by cause."

"God befriend us, as our cause is just!"

"Mine's not an idle cause."

"Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the "old one." I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."

"Principle of causality is fundamental to human thinking, and it has been observed experimentally that this assumption leads to complex hypothesis formation by human subjects attempting to solve comparatively simple problems involving a causal randomly generated events."

"The atoms in the philosophy of do not move merely by chance. Leucippus seems to have believed in complete determinism, since he is known to have said: "Naught happens for nothing, but everything from a ground and of necessity." The atomists did not give any reason for the original motion of the atoms, which just shows that they thought of a causal description of the atomic motion; causality can only explain later events by earlier events, but it can never explain the beginning."

"We do not know as a matter of actual observation how organic forms of energy originate. We do know, however, that such energy units exist, and that any life-processing unit exercises spontaneous influences over inorganic matter throughout its life span. These influences are in every sense vitalistic-type causes. Even inorganic matter may spontaneously generate causes of this same type. Radio-active metals, for instance, emenate energy particles regardless of the nature of the environment in which these emanations take place. Physical science, without doubt, is held accountable for a full description of these phenomena. At the same time, life-possessing units of matter, such as plants and animals, are constantly undergoing modification as a result of stimuli which impinge upon their organisms from the less complex material units of their environment. Simple, but intensely energized forces like wind or waves may destroy plant or animal organisms altogether ; or such forces may influence in conclusive manner the growth or movements of the more complex animal and plant organisms. In the case of inorganic matter, acids or single chemical elements vastly less complex in themselves than the radio active metals, may, attack and destroy the latter, or may hasten or retard the radio activity. These are mechanistic-type causes acting determinately upon energy units more complex than themselves."

"Probabilistic causality is a branch of philosophy that attempts to explicate causal relationships in terms of probabilistic relationships. This attempt is motivated by several ideas and expectations. First and foremost, probabilistic causality promises a solution to the centuries-old puzzle of causal discovery — that is, how humans discover genuine causal relationships from bare empirical observations, free of any causal preconceptions. ... Second, in contrast to deterministic accounts of causation, probabilistic causality offers substantial cognitive economy. ... Third, probabilistic causality is equipped to deal with the modern (i.e. quantum-theoretical) conception of uncertainty, according to which determinism is merely an epistemic fiction and nondeterminism is the fundamental feature of physical reality."

"What is easier to remember, a collection of facts glued together, or a story, something that offers a series of logical links? Causality is easier to commit to memory. ...What is induction exactly? ...It is very handy, as the general takes much less room in one's memory than a collection of particulars. The effect of such compression is the reduction in the degree of detected randomness."

"[Varys:] What do we have left once we abandon the lie? Chaos, a gaping pit waiting to swallow us all. [Petyr Baelish:] Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but they refuse. They cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real; the climb is all there is."

"Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:— Chaos of ruins!"

"The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay."

"The chaos of events."

"Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos."

"The classic example of chaos at work is in the weather. If you could measure the positions and motions of all the atoms in the air at once, you could predict the weather perfectly. But computer simulations show that tiny differences in starting conditions build up over about a week to give wildly different forecasts. So weather predicting will never be any good for forecasts more than a few days ahead, no matter how big (in terms of memory) and fast computers get to be in the future. The only computer that can simulate the weather is the weather; and the only computer that can simulate the Universe is the Universe."

"In the higher degrees of Scottish Freemasonry, there are two mottos whose meaning is related to some of the considerations we have outlined above: one is Post Tenebras Lux and the other Ordo ab Chao; and in truth their meanings are so closely connected as to be almost identical, although Ordo ab Chao is perhaps susceptible to a broader application. In fact, they both refer to initiatory "enlightenment", the first directly and the second consequentially, since it is the original vibration of Fiat Lux that determines the beginning of the cosmogonic process as a result of which "chaos" will be ordered to become the "cosmos". In traditional symbolism, darkness always represents the state of undeveloped potentialities that constitute chaos; and correlatively, light is related to the manifested world, in which these potentialities will be actualised, that is, to the “cosmos”, an actualisation that is determined or measured, at each moment of the process of manifestation, by the extension of the “sun's rays” that depart from the central point where the initial Fiat Lux was uttered. Light is therefore effectively “after darkness”, not only from a "macrocosmic" point of view, but also from a "microcosmic" point of view which is that of initiation, since, from this point of view, darkness represents the profane world from which the recipient comes, or the profane state in which he initially finds himself, until the precise moment when he becomes initiated by “receiving the light”. Through initiation, the being therefore passes “from darkness to light”, just as the world, at its origin (and the symbolism of “birth” is equally applicable in both cases), passed “from darkness to light” by virtue of the act of the creative and ordering Word; and consequently initiation is truly, according to a very general characteristic of traditional rites, an image of “what was done in the beginning”."

"Chaos, that reigns here In double night of darkness and of shades."

"Fate shall yield To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife."

"The Joker: Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!"

"Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night, To blot out order and extinguish light."

"Lo: thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal darkness buries all."

"...there is a perpetual struggle between manifested chaos and the unmanifested. It is the struggle of the Forces of Light with the dark forces. Christ Himself actively resisted evil... he drove the merchants from the Temple, and all his severe accusations against the scribes and Pharisees... If we try to read objectively the words... attributed to Christ, we shall see a Teaching which is severe in its mercy. Therefore, the words "resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also... If this law of Karma, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," is inevitable and exact justice, it by no means follows that we ourselves, personally, should attempt to fulfil it in this way. If we do so, we shall never emerge from the magic circle of karma. Indeed, we must forgive our personal enemies, as who knows but that the blow one receives is a return blow, well-deserved under the law of Karma? By returning such a blow with another and with a feeling of revenge in our heart, we do not outlive this karma, but we continue and even intensify it in the worst way for ourselves. Moreover, by forgiving our enemies we decrease the amount of evil in space and become immune against many blows. Similarly, let us understand the words "Love thine enemies." However, with all this, we must resist evil, if we do not want to be entirely overwhelmed by it. (26 May 1934)"

"Nay, had I power, I should Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, Uproar the universal peace, confound All unity on earth."

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos."

"When Shaw is read in the light of the existentialist thinkers, a new philosophical position arises from his works as a whole, a position of he himself was probably unconscious. It is this: that although the ultimate reality may be irrational, yet man's relation to it is not. Existentialism means the recognition that life is a tiny corner of casual order in a universe of chaos. All men are aware of that chaos; but some insulate themselves from it and refuse to face it. These are the Insiders, and they make up the overwhelming majority of the human race. The Outsider is the man who has faced chaos. If he is an abstract philosopher — like Hegel — he will try to demonstrate that chaos is not really chaos, but that underlying it is an order of which we are unaware. If he is an existentialist, he acknowledges that chaos is chaos, a denial of life — or rather, of the conditions under which life are possible. If there is nothing but life and chaos, then life is permanently helpless — as Sartre and Camus think it is. But if a rational relation can somehow exist between them, ultimate pessimism is avoided, as it must be avoided if the Outsider is to live at all. It is this contribution which makes Shaw the key figure of existentialist thought."

"If we were children of chaos, the fundamental laws of nature could not exist."

"The motto ‘Ordo ab Chao’ is an extremely important expression within Freemasonry and is known by Masons as the motto of the 33rd degree. The motto can be found on the splendid decorations of the Order of Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, which is one of the highest distinctions that can be awarded to a Mason."

"He thought at heart like courtly Chesterfield, Who, after a long chase o'er hills, dales, bushes, And what not, though he rode beyond all price, Ask'd next day, "if men ever hunted twice?""

"Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield."

"Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began, A mighty hunter, and his prey was man."

"They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope; They threatened its life with a railway-share; They charmed it with smiles and soap."

"The dusky night rides down the sky And ushers in the morn: The hounds all join in glorious cry, The huntsman winds his horn; And a-hunting we will go."

"The woods were made for the hunter of dreams, The brooks for the fishers of song; To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game The streams and the woods belong. There are thoughts that moan from the soul of pine And thoughts in a flower bell curled; And the thoughts that are blown with scent of the fern Are as new and as old as the world."

"Soon as Aurora drives away the night, And edges eastern clouds with rosy light, The healthy huntsman, with the cheerful horn, Summons the dogs, and greets the dappled morn."

"Love's torments made me seek the chase; Rifle in hand, I roam'd apace. Down from the tree, with hollow scoff, The raven cried: "Head-off! head off!""

"Of horn and morn, and hark and bark, And echo's answering sounds, All poets' wit hath ever writ In dog-rel verse of hounds."