Presidential Medal Of Freedom Recipients

"It may be something that becomes endemic that we have to just be careful about. Certainly it's not going to be a pandemic for a lot longer because I believe the vaccines are going to turn that around."

"Fauci suppressed off-label use of hydroxychloroquine by encouraging discussions of it to be pulled from social media, by sabotaging its clinical trials by testing doses six times the recommended levels (p. 26), and by pulling sixty-three million doses of the medicine off the market, safely away from covid sufferers they could have helped (p. 28). Fauci also provided cover for those who threatened doctors and pharmacists with loss of licenses and jobs for prescribing and dispensing hydroxychloroquine for covid (pp. 31–32). The story of ivermectin is similar."

"The real Anthony Fauci was a greedy egomaniac hell bent on creating an image of himself as the savior of the world during the AIDS crisis while generating billions in profits for his pharmaceutical industry “partners.” The “partners” would then share some of the loot with Fauci and others in various ways, including sharing in patent rights, the “revolving door” of very highly paid jobs for former government bureaucrats, paying multimillion dollar “user fees” to the NIAID, distributing shares of stock, etc."

"Then there was the 2005 “bird flu” hysteria where Fauci once again predicted “unprecedented carnage.” This time he partnered with Bill Gates and hired the now disgraced and discredited British conman statistician Neil Ferguson to construct “models” that predicted up to 150 million people could die from the bird flu. In the end, about 100 people died from it, and most probably had comorbidities that were the real causes of death. That was after President Bush asked Congress for $1.2 billion for Big Pharma to come up with another of its experimental vaccines."

": Bottom line. We don't have to worry about this one, right?"

"We have to admit it, that that mixed message in the beginning, even though it was well meant to allow masks to be available for health workers, that was detrimental in getting the message across. No doubt about it."

"I can't jump in front of the microphone and push him down. OK, he said it. Let's try and get it corrected for the next time."

"One of the problems we face in the United States is that unfortunately, there is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are -- for reasons that sometimes are, you know, inconceivable and not understandable -- they just don't believe science and they don't believe authority. So when they see someone up in the White House, which has an air of authority to it, who's talking about science, that there are some people who just don't believe that -- and that's unfortunate because, you know, science is truth. It's amazing sometimes the denial there is. It's the same thing that gets people who are anti-vaxxers, who don't want people to get vaccinated, even though the data clearly indicate the safety of vaccines. That's really a problem."

"It's really, really tough because you have to be honest with the American public and you don't want to scare the hell out of them. And then other times, in attempts to calm people down, [leaders] have had people be complacent about it. This is particularly problematic in a ‘gotcha” town like Washington."

"Even before we knew it was a coronavirus, I said it certainly sounds like a coronavirus-SARS type thing. As soon as it was identified, I called a meeting of top-level people and said, 'Let's start working on a vaccine right now.'"

": There’s a lot of confusion among people, and misinformation, surrounding face masks. Can you discuss that?"

"For me the important distinction is between a stylistic approach to the design; and an analytical approach giving the process of due consideration to time, place, and purpose ... My analytical approach requires a full understanding of the three essential elements ... to arrive at an ideal balance among them."

"Architects by design investigate the play of volumes in light, explore the mysteries of movement in space, examine the measure that is scale and proportion, and above all, they search for that special quality that is the spirit of the place as no building exists alone. The practice of architecture is a collective enterprise, with many individuals of various disciplines and talents working closely together. And from the commissioning to the completion of a project, there are also the many individuals for whom architects work, whose contribution to quality is frequently as crucial as that of the architect. So I accept this prize for all who have worked with me in this unique undertaking. Let us all be attentive to new ideas, to advancing means, to dawning needs, to impetuses of change so that we may achieve, beyond architectural originality, a harmony of spirit in the service of man."

"I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity. Freedom of expression, for me, consists in moving within a measured range that I assign to each of my undertakings. How instructive it is to remember Leonardo da Vinci's counsel that "strength is born of constraint and dies from freedom.""

"Golf is such a wonderful game, I love it to death."

"I don't smile much, and I never laugh. It's just something that's in me. If you'd been through what I've been through, you wouldn't be smiling, either."

"If you try hard enough, anything can happen."

"There are some people who imagine that older adults don't know how to use the internet. My immediate reaction is, "I've got news for you, we invented it.""

"And programming computers was so fascinating. You create your own little universe, and then it does what you tell it to do."

"The ability to interact with a computer presence like you would a human assistant is becoming increasingly feasible."

"When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him. In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one."

"Unrest of spirit is a mark of life."

"It is a strange and dismal thing that in a world of such need, such opportunity and such variety as ours, the search for an illusory peace of mind should go so zealously pursued and defended, while truth goes languishing."

"The voice of the intelligence is soft and weak, said Freud. It is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is hissed away by hate, and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance."

"The greatest success goes to the person who is not afraid to fail in front of even the largest audience."

"The most important question we have to deal with, is a combination of population control and the control of our environment — how to utilize the world in as effective a way as we can for the future of mankind."

"The best company management is one that combines a sense of corporate greatness and destiny, with empathy for - and fidelity to - the average employee."

"I want to discuss why a company exists in the first place. In other words, why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. . . . Purpose (which should last at least 100 years) should not be confused with specific goals or business strategies (which should change many times in 100 years). Whereas you might achieve a goal or complete a strategy, you cannot fulfill a purpose; it’s like a guiding star on the horizon—forever pursued but never reached. Yet although purpose itself does not change, it does inspire change. The very fact that purpose can never be fully realized means that an organization can never stop stimulating change and progress."

"Set out to build a company and make a contribution, not an empire and a fortune."

"Marketing is far too important to be left only to the marketing department!."

"Into the plastic expression of the period he has introduced a new element - that of time. In several of his mobiles he has, as it were, underscored certain suggested compositional rhythms by actual kinetic ones. And here his work offers an interesting parallel with that of the fountain sculptors, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Rome and Florence. Just as out of their playing with water and their free and often fanciful solutions of technical problems, grew what we recognize today as some of the earliest hints of the baroque style in sculpture; so Calder's realizations, vividly vernacular to the present age as they are, offer, at the same time, more probabilities of relationship with the plastic expression of the next, than does the work of any other American sculptor today."

"It was only a step further for Calder to bring back actual movement in place of the suggestions of it [in art]. And the immediacy of this stimulus carried with it a primitive strength of rhythmic evocation that is perhaps Calder's most striking contribution. But a still more personal and perhaps more important one lies in his recognition of another feature of natural movements - their unpredictable character and the aesthetic possibilities of the unexpected.. .Calder in adapting the natural rhythms also recognized the dramatic value of the surprise element."

"Such artists [as Calder] design with 'movement itself' as distinct from a movement which is incidental or accessory...without changing the form. Their movement is as intrinsic as that of a gramophone record or an airplane in flight; without it the object would be something else."

"I fled, a fortunate fugitive, / Lying with the work of one alive / The day and the night unfurled in the presence / of mobile wings - algae - leaves. / Greetings forger of gigantic dragonflies / Diviner of mercury your fountain revealed / A water heavy as tears. But a carousel of little crimson moons thrills me / It brings to mind a translucent circus / It is a leaf traversed by the sun. / One green day you saw a red bird / in pursuit of a yellow bird; you [Calder] know that we are bound to nature / that we belong to the earth."

"Calder's constructions are not imitative of nature; I know no less deceptive art than his. Sculpture suggests movement, painting suggests depth or light. A "mobile" does not "suggest" anything: it captures genuine living movements and shapes them. "Mobiles" have no meaning, make you think of nothing but themselves. They are, that is all; they are absolutes. There is more of the unpredictable about them than in any other human creation. No human brain, not even their creator's, could possibly foresee all the complex combinations of which they are capable. A general destiny of movement is sketched for them, and then they are left to work it out for themselves. What they may do at a given moment will be determined by the time of day, the sun, the temperature or the wind.."

"What I like best is the acoustic ceiling in Caracas, in the auditorium of the university [Central University of Venezuela]. It's made from great panels of plywood - some thirty feet long - more or less horizontal and tilted to reflect sound. I also like the work I did for UNESCO in Paris and the mobile called 'Little Blue under Red' that belongs to the Fogg. That one develops hypocycloidal and epicycloidal curves. The main problem there was to keep all the parts light enough to work."

"Question, Léger once called you a realist. How do you feel about this? Yes, I think I am a realist. Because I make what I see. It's only the problem of seeing it. If you can imagine a thing, conjure it up in space - then you can make it, and tout de suite you're a realist. The universe is real but you can't see it. You have to imagine it. Once you imagine it, you can be realistic about reproducing it."

"His need for fantasy broke the connection; he started to "play" with his materials: wood, plaster, iron wire, especially iron wire...a time both picturesque and witty.."

"I was talking with Calder one day in his studio when suddenly a "mobile" beside me, which until then had been quiet, became violently agitated. I stepped quickly back; thinking to be out of its reach. But then, when the agitation had ceased and it appeared to have relapsed into quiescence, its long, majestic tail, which until then had not budged, began mournfully to wave, and, sweeping through the air, brushed across my face. These hesitations, resumptions, gropings, clumsiness's, the sudden decisions and above all that swan-like grace make of certain "mobiles" very strange creatures indeed, something midway between matter and life. At moments they seem endowed with an intention; a moment later they appear to have forgotten what they intended to do, and finish by merely swaying inanely.."

"Question: Is it true that Marcel Duchamp invented the name “mobile” for your work? Duchamp named the mobiles and Arp the stabiles. Arp said, "What did you call those things you exhibited last year? Stabiles?""

"Question: How do you get that subtle balance in your work? You put a disk here and then you put another disk that is a triangle at the other end and then you balance them on your finger and keep on adding. I don't use rectangles - they stop. You can use them; I have at times, but only when I want to block, to constipate movement."

"Question: How did the mobiles start? The mobiles started when I went to see [[w:Piet Mondrian|Mondrian [in Paris, 1930]. I was impressed by several colored rectangles he had on the wall. Shortly after that I made some mobiles."

"I started [in Paris, 1920's, making toys] right away, using wire as my main material as well as working with others like string, leather, fabric and wood. Wood combined with wire (with which I could make the heads, tails and feet of animals as well as articulating parts) was almost always my medium of choice. One friend of mine suggested that I should make bodies entirely of wire, and that is how I started to make what I called 'Wire Sculpture'. In Montparnasse, I became known as the 'King of Wire'."

"What I mean is that the idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colors and temperatures, and surrounded and interlarded with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest, while others move in peculiar manners, seems to me the ideal source of form."

"Question: Which has influenced you more, nature or modern machinery? I haven't really touched machinery except for a few elementary mechanisms like levers and balances. You see nature and then you try to emulate it. But, of course, when I met Mondrian [Paris, 1930] I went home and tried to paint [for a while]. The basis of everything for me is the universe. The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle. I represent them by disks and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement. Even my triangles are spheres, but they are spheres of a different shape."

"Question: Do you make preliminary sketches? I've made so many mobiles that I pretty well know what I want to do, at least where the smaller ones are concerned. But when I'm seeking a new form, then I draw and make little models out of sheet metal. Actually the one at Idlewild [Airport (in the International Arrival Building)] is forty-five feet long and was made from a model only seventeen inches long. For the very big ones I don't have machinery large enough, so I go to a shop and become the workman's helper."

"I knew metal working before I knew Calder, and Calder is one of our great men and he is earlier by a few years than any of the rest of us [in American Abstract Expressionism ]. Calder had worked in Paris quite a bit in the early days, though he did go to school here in New York at the Art Students League.. .After my first year in college I had worked on the assembly line in the Studebaker plants up in Indiana.."

"My entrance into the field of abstract art came about as the result of a visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian in Paris in 1930. I was particularly impressed by some rectangles of color he had tacked on his wall in a pattern after his nature. I told him I would like to make them [Mondrian's flat painting] oscillate, he objected. I went home and tried to paint abstractly - but in two weeks I was back again among plastic materials."

"The evolution of Calder's work epitomizes the evolution of plastic art in the present [20th] century...First we have a reduction of volumes to contour lines - a sort of spatial calligraphy in wire.. .Then a growing interest in the bases of plastic organization - texture contrasts, primary colors, simple rhythms. Finally a new fusion of these elements into forms.. .And it is in the ability to effect this fusion that Calder's quality lies.. .Tatlin's and Obmochu's constructions remained architecture and machines. Calder personalizes his 'mobiles' with a lyricism entirely his own - a freshness, gaiety and charm."

"I think that at that time and practically ever since, the underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof. For that is a rather large model to work from."