Non Fiction Authors

"I always come back to variations of the question that my son asked me when he was three. We were sitting in a jacuzzi, and he said, "Dad, why do we exist?" There is no other question. Nobody has any other question. We have variations of this one question, from three onwards. So when you spend time in a company, in a bureaucracy, in an organization and you're saying, boy -- how many people do you know who on their death beds said, boy, I wish I had spent more time at the office? So there's a whole thing of having the courage now -- not in a week, not in two months, not when you find out you have something -- to say, no, what am I doing this for? Stop everything. Let me do something else. And it will be okay, it will be much better than what you're doing, if you're stuck in a process."

"On-the-job democracy isn't just a lofty concept but a better, more profitable way to do things. We all demand democracy in every other aspect of our lives and culture. People are considered adults in their private lives, at the bank, at their children's schools, with family and among friends--so why are they suddenly treated like adolescents at work? Why can't workers be involved in choosing their own leaders? Why shouldn't they manage themselves? Why can't they speak up--challenge, question, share information openly?"

"Companies think that they are modern because they have painted their walls in a bright colour or they allow people to bring their dogs to work. This is silly and millennial-washing. The idea is to bring in the mature generation and get them to mentor the co-work with the younger generation from a distance."

"The opposite of work is idleness. But very few of us know what to do with idleness. When you look at the way that we distribute our lives in general, you realize that in the periods in which we have a lot of money, we have very little time. And then when we finally have time, we have neither the money nor the health."

"Instead of constantly talking about motivation, organizations should ensure that employees are occasionally delighted."

"What makes Ricardo Semler all the more notable is the way he has put theory into practice. Many people have talked the talk of corporate democracy; his company walks the walk."

"Everyone has a ‘reservoir of talent'. Intuition, interests and skills form the foundation of talents. These talents are indicators of your calling. The best way to ensure long-term job satisfaction is to act on that calling."

"Jews in Medina are singled out as "men whose malice and enmity was aimed at the Apostle of God". The Yahūd in this literature appear not only as malicious, but also deceitful, cowardly and totally lacking resolve. However, they have none of the demonic qualities attributed to them in mediaeval Christian literature, neither is there anything comparable to the overwhelming preoccupation with Jews and Judaism (except perhaps in the narratives on Muhammad’s encounters with Medinan Jewry) in Muslim traditional literature. Except for a few notable exceptions... the Jews in the Sira and the Maghazi are even heroic villains. Their ignominy stands in marked contrast to Muslim heroism, and in general, conforms to the Qura'nic image of "wretchedness and baseness stamped upon them.""

"Puuttuva rengas ihmisen ja apinan välillä olemme me."

"Do not love the one who doesn’t love Allah. If they can leave Allah, they will leave you."

"Knowledge is that which benefits not that which is memorized."

"My sin had burdened me heavily. But when I measured it against Your Grace, O Lord! Your Forgiveness came out greater."

"He who seeks pearls immerses himself in the sea."

"O Allah! You blessed me with Islam and I didn’t ask You for it, O Allah bless me with Jannah and I am asking for it."

"He said to the effect that no knowledge of Islam can be gained from books of Kalam, as kalam is not from knowledge and that "It is better for a man to spend his whole life doing whatever Allah has prohibited - besides shirk with Allah - rather than spending his whole life involved in kalam."

"For centuries, scholars from the four different schools of Islam had taught in the Holy Mosque and crowds of students had traveled from near and far to gather in halaqas, circles of study, around their preferred teachers. The faithful prayed, at slightly different times, behind their imams; there was a prayer station for each school: Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanafi, and Hanbali. When King Abdelaziz took control of Mecca in 1924, the Wahhabi clerics objected to the arrangement that had prevailed so far in the Holy Mosque. If the community of Muslims was one, and the call to prayer was one, why not pray behind one imam? The Wahhabi clerics won the debate, thereby dealing themselves all the power. But there was no rotation or compromise: the sole imam who would lead all five daily prayers in the Holy Mosque came from Wahhabi circles, with all that that entailed in puritanical intolerance. The number of halaqas dwindled rapidly, from several hundred to around thirty-five in the late 1970s. The Sufi sheikh that Sami had consulted that first day of the Mecca attack, Mohammad Alawi al-Maliki, was still drawing crowds, lecturing in his corner of the courtyard of the Holy Mosque, on the chair he had inherited from his father in 1971, the chair that been passed through generations. But few others were able to resist the onslaught of Wahhabi zeal. Harmony could be brought back, Sami thought, only if diversity was allowed to thrive again in the House of God. But this was not how the Al-Sauds would proceed. That was not the deal they had cut with Bin Baz to save their throne."

"Today no one who wishes to clean even a minimal regard for reason or evidence can espouse racist ideology as it was in its heyday, a system as comprehensive as Marxism and to some clearly equally as satisfying. However, thanks to Jensen and Eysenck and Shockley, the racist can cling to the periphery of his ideology; for example, he can provide a reasoned defence of his position on certain issues such as immigration and foreign policy. I do not wish to minimize the ground he has lost: the retreat from world history to little more than immigration quotas is a great defeat for the racist and a great source of satisfaction for all of his opponents. I am quite convinced that the refutation of racism in the light of reason is almost complete (the effort to eradicate it as a social force is a different matter and may never be fully accomplished). However, the last stand of the racist is not without importance, something I will attempt to demonstrate by giving a racist ideologue his say. [not referring to any of the above mentioned persons]."

"The question now is how to fill the void Jensen's death leaves, particularly for scholars open to scientific inquiry who challenge some of his conclusions. There is no substitute for someone of great intellectual caliber who disagrees with you. With Jensen no longer alive, we will have to invent him. But we cannot really do that, because no one is so constructed as to put the same energy and imagination into a fictitious opponent as we put into polishing our own ideas. No one can pretend to believe what they do not believe, but I hope there is a young scholar out there with the convictions and mind of Arthur Jensen. I am sometimes asked why I spoke so well of him. The answer is that it was easy."

"There are almost no courses on intelligence in Psychology departments in America. When I ask staff why, they give the same answer: what if a student raised a hand and said, what do you think about the race and IQ debate?"

"[Jensen] does not believe that [heritability] estimates alone can decide the issue of genetic versus environmental hypotheses. However, he argues that the probability of a genetic hypothesis will be much enhanced if, in addition to evidencing high [heritability], we find we can falsify literally every plausible environmental hypothesis one by one. He challenges social scientists who believe in an environmental explanation of the IQ gap between the races to bring their hypotheses forward. Given his competence and the present state of the social sciences, the result is something of a massacre.... Far too many of Jensen's critics have not taken up the challenge to refute him in any serious way, rather they have elected for various forms of escape, the most popular of which has been to seize on an argument put forward by the distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard C. Lewontin."

"The collapse of the Ice Ages hypothesis does not, of course, settle the debate about whether there are racial differences in genes for intelligence. If universities had their way, the necessary research will never be done. They fund the most mundane research projects, but never seem to have funds to test for genetic differences between races. I tell US academics I can only assume that they believe that racial IQ differences have a genetic component, and fear what they might find. They never admit that the politics of race affects their research priorities. It is always just far more important to establish whether squirrels enjoy The Magic Flute."

"Cantillon has been a much neglected figure in economics. He is known primarily for his influence on Quesnay and the Physiocrats, and for developing the notion that money flows connect the different sectors of the economy. Yet the place of Cantillon in history is more important than this. His Essay can legitimately be regarded as the first real economic treatise. It envisioned the economy as an interrelated system, and explained how that system worked. For this reason, Cantillon probably deserves to be regarded as the first real economist."

"This book is a record of pioneer farming on the , one of the , lying a little way out from the mainland in western . Here the author and his devoted wife became the owners of an abandoned and ruinous house, and by sheer hard work, without, as the author says, any considerable bank balance to which to turn for comfort, have renovated the land with lime and basic slag, have repaired the ruined quay, have brought the garden again to life, and although their work is not yet completed, have changed the face of the land."

"As the dominant mammal on the face of the earth, as the clever one, the only one as far as we know capable of reflection and of accumulating knowledge, our duty is plain, to serve the lesser creation, to keep our world clean and pass on to posterity a record of which we shall not feel shame."

"must eat flesh or die; primitive man may be in the same state, whether he be or ; what about the sportsman? The man who owns a , or partridge manor has a moral right to take a share of the natural increase of the animals on his ground if he uses decent methods."

"By some strange and sinister fatality the chosen victims at present are the most intelligent and friendly of our domestic favourites—the cats who purr in love and confidence as they sit beside us on the hearth; the dogs whose faithful hearts glow with an affection for us, truer and fonder than we may easily find in any human breast."

"Every system of law is a system of education, and, in extending legal sanction to the scientific torture of animals, the State educates the nation in a false view of the relations of man to the lower creatures, encourages selfishness and cruelty and the disregard of the rights of the weak by the strong."

"As the main work of civilisation has been the vindication of the rights of the weak, it is not too much, I think, to insist that the practice of Vivisection in which this tyranny of strength culminates is a retrograde step in the progress of our race—a backwater in the onward flowing stream of justice and mercy, no less portentous than deplorable."

"My great panacea for making Society at once better and more enjoyable would be to cultivate greater sincerity."

"I think that every woman who has any margin of time or money to spare should adopt some one public interest, some philanthropic undertaking, or some social agitation of reform, and give to that cause whatever time and work she may be able to afford; thus completing her life by adding to her private duties the noble effort to advance God's Kingdom beyond the bounds of her home."

"The making of a true Home is really our peculiar and inalienable right; a right which no man can take from us, for a man can no more make a Home than a drone can make a hive. He can build a castle or a palace, but, poor creature! be he wise as Solomon and rich as Croesus, he cannot turn into a Home. No masculine mortal can do that. It is a woman, and only a woman; a woman all by herself if she likes, and without any man to help her, who can turn a House into a Home."

"As our President said, we have in our army such minds as Spencer, and Mill, and I would add Buckle, and many others; and they are diffusing light, intelligence and civilization, and advocating the right. We have women also. We have Frances Cobbe; whose name I speak with pride and rejoicing; and in the literary world we have Charlotte Bronte, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many others, who are consecrating their talents to the great cause of womanhood, and freedom, and right."

"Love naturally reverses the idea of obedience, and causes the struggle between any two people who truly love each other to be not who shall command, but, who shall yield."

"He who does most to cure woman of her weakness, her frivolity and her servility, will likewise at the same stroke do most to cure man of his brutality, his selfishness and his sensuality."

"I have been a vegetarian for a few years and just recently I have become a vegan … I took this step following my inner feeling. … If we think for a moment how man manages animals and what impact he has on animal world we could say he was not human at all. Just think of all slaughter houses and production of beef or poultry where conditions for animals are impossible. Animals are transported in lorries many times without any water, which is extremely cruel. It is not that people are bad, they just don't think about it. … it is unreasonable to expect from people with lower levels of consciousness, who are cruel to animals, to end wars, to stop manipulating others, to help eradicate world poverty. In short as long as consciousness level is low all the disagreements in the world today will remain and possibly increase to the point of annihilation of humans."

"The time comes to every dog when it ceases to care for people merely for biscuits or bones, or even for caresses, and walks out of doors. When a dog really loves, it prefers the person who gives it nothing, and perhaps is too ill ever to take it out for exercise, to all the liberal cooks and active dog-boys in the world."

"I could discern clearly, even at that early age, the essential difference between people who are kind to dogs and people who really love them."

"We can benefit our kind in no way so much as by being ourselves pure and upright and noble-minded."

"I could not bear it did I not believe in another life for the poor harmless victims where their wrongs will be recompensed, & I may add also in another life for their inhuman persecutors where they will all repent in moral agony worse than the physical pain of their poor victims."

"We women have before us the noblest end to which a finite creature may attain; and our duty is nothing else than the fulfilment of the whole moral law, the attainment of every human virtue."

"It follows then that it is impossible to be a perfect doctor for another person. A person can’t have a better guide than himself or any prescription better than the regular living that I’ve described. I don’t mean to say that those who live this regular life don’t ever need a doctor or that we shouldn’t give him the respect he’s due. We should call a doctor when we get sick. But for simply staying healthy, it’s my opinion that we should consider this self-controlled, regular life as our doctor, since it keeps even weak people healthy and causes them to live well and hearty to the age of one-hundred and further."

"A man can enjoy a terrestrial paradise after eighty, but it is not to be obtained, except by strict temperance in food and drink, virtues acceptable to God, and friends to reason."

"Our beneficent Creator is desirous, that, as he originally favoured human nature with longevity, we should all enjoy the full advantage of his intentions, knowing, that when a man has passed seventy, he may be exempt from the sensual strivings, and govern himself entirely by the dictates of reason."

"It is true, and cannot be denied, that man must at last die, however careful with himself he may have been; but yet, I maintain, without sickness and great pain, for in my case I expect to pass away quietly and peacefully, and my present condition ensures this to me, for, though at this great age, I am hearty and content, eating with a good appetite, and sleeping soundly. Moreover, all my senses are as good as ever, and in the highest perfection; my understanding clear and bright, my judgment sound, my memory tenacious, my spirits good, and my voice (one of the first things which is apt to fail us) has grown so strong and sonorous, that I cannot help chanting aloud my prayers, morning and night."

"No man should be a perfect physician to any but himself."

"A man cannot have a better guide than himself, nor any physic better than a regular life."

"My friends and relations … urged … that the quantity [of food] I took was too little for one so advanced in years; against this, I urged that nature was content with little, and that with this small quantity, I had preserved myself for many years in health and activity, that I believed as a man advanced in years, his stomach grew weaker, and therefore the tendency should be to lessen the amount of food rather than to increase. I further reminded them of the two proverbs, which say; he who has a mind to eat a great deal, must eat but little; eating little makes life long, and, living long, he must eat much; and the other proverb was: that, what we leave after making a hearty meal, does us more good than what we have eaten."

"Some sensual unthinking persons affirm, that a long life is no great blessing, and that the state of a man, who has passed his seventy-fifth year, cannot really be called life; but this is wrong, as I shall fully prove; and it is my sincere wish, that all men would endeavour to attain my age [of eighty-three], that they might enjoy that period of life, which, of all others is most desirable."

"It is universally agreed, that custom, in time, becomes a second nature, forcing men to use that, whether good or bad, to which they have been habituated; in fact, we see habit, in many instances, gain the ascendency over reason. This is so undeniably true, that, virtuous men, by keeping company with wicked, often fall into the same vicious course of life. Seeing and considering all this, I have decided to write on the vice of intemperance, in eating and drinking. Now, though all are agreed, that intemperance is the parent of gluttony, and sober living the offspring of abstemiousness, yet, owing to the power of custom, the former is considered a virtue, and the latter as mean and avaricious, and so many men are blinded and besotted to such a degree, that they come to the age of forty or fifty, burdened with strange and painful infirmities, which render them decrepit and useless, whereas, had they lived temperately and soberly, they would in all probability, have been sound and hearty, to the age of eighty and upwards."

"I became quite green - I have a very strong connection to nature. I read that if we fish the way we fish, in 2048 there will be no more fish left, which is pretty soon. So it's a statement."