jews-from-hungary

"János Major started to take photographs in cemeteries at the beginning of the sixties most probably around 1962-63."

"After being expelled from the Academy, Major worked one year unskilled labourer in the Orion Factory."

"Vasarely Go Home!"

"Al Qaeda has failed in its goals. The United States has succeeded, not so much in winning the war as in preventing the Islamists from winning, and, from a geopolitical perspective, that is good enough."

"The problem for China is political. China is held together by money, not ideology. When there is an economic downturn and the money stops rolling in, not only will the banking system spasm, but the entire fabric of Chinese society will shudder. Loyalty in China is either bought or coerced. Without available money, only coercion remains. Business slowdowns can generally lead to instability because they lead to business failure and unemployment. In a country where poverty is endemic and unemployment widespread, the added pressure of an economic downturn will result in political instability."

"Your 15 minutes are here, Friedman... I'm just saying, all your life you know useless and obscure things. And suddenly... It is a fairly strange experience."

"[D]isequilibrium will dominate the twenty-first century, as will efforts to contain the United States. It will be a dangerous century, particularly for the rest of the world."

"Old institutions have shattered, but new ones have not yet emerged. The twenty-first century will be a period in which a range of new institutions, moral systems, and practices will begin their first tentative emergence. The first half of the twenty-first century will be marked by intense social conflict globally. All of this frames the international struggles of the twenty-first century."

"When I was growing up in the 1950s, the twenty-first century was an idea associated with science fiction, not a reality in which I would live. Practical people focus on the next moment and leave the centuries to dreamers. But the truth is that the twenty-first century has turned out to be a very practical concern to me. I will spent a good deal of my life in it."

"No continent is as small and fragmented as Europe. Only Australia is smaller, yet Europe consists of fifty independent nations (including Turkey and the Caucasus, for reasons explained later). Crowded with nations, it is also crowded with people. Europe's population density is 72.5 people per square kilometer. The European Union's density is 112 people per square kilometer. Asia has 86 people per square kilometer. Europe is crowded and fragmented."

"Europe has always been a bloody place."

"By 2040, France and Germany are going to be has-beens, historically. Between population crises and the redefinition of the geopolitics of Europe, the French and Germans will be facing a decisive moment. If they do not assert themselves, their futures will be dictated by others and they will move from decadence to powerlessness. And with powerlessness would come a geopolitical spiral from which they would not recover."

"The United States Navy controls all of the oceans of the world."

"I need caffeine. I need sugar. I need beef."

"The twenty-first century will be the American century."

"I think Iraq will have a formally independent government that will be in perpetual gridlock and chaos, and essentially, there will be a U.S. military administration utilizing NGOs that can do a lot of the heavy lifting in the country."

"Europe dominated the world, but it failed to dominate itself. For five hundred years Europe tore itself apart in civil wars."

"[W]hat al Qaeda is fighting for is a traditional understanding of the family. This is not a minor part of their program: it is at its heart. The traditional family is built around some clearly defined principles. First, the home is the domain of the woman and life outside the house is the purview of the man. Second, sexuality is something confined to the family and the home, and extramarital, extrafamilial sexuality is unacceptable. Women who move outside the home invite extramarital sexuality just by being there. Third, women have as their primary tasks reproduction and nurturing of the next generation. Therefore, intense controls on women are necessary to maintain the integrity of the family and of society. In an interesting way it is all about women, and bin Laden's letter [to the U.S.] drives this home. What he hates about America is that it promotes a completely different view of women and the family."

"In the United States, minority populations were never an indigestible mass—with the major exceptions of the one ethnic group that did not come here voluntarily (African Americans) and those who were here when Europeans arrived (American Indians). The rest all came, clustered and dispersed, and added new cultural layers to the general society. This has always been the strength of the United States. In much of Europe, for example, Muslims have retained religious and national identities distinct from the general population, and the general population has given them little encouragement to blend. The strength of their own culture has therefore been overwhelming."

"Two forces are emerging that will moot global warming. First, the end of the population explosion will, over the decades, reduce the increases in demand for just about everything. Second, the increase in the cost of both finding and using hydrocarbons will increase the hunger for alternatives."

"Contemporary Europe is a search for an exit from hell."

"[T]he twenty-first century truly began on September 11, 2001, ten years later, when planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."

"Japan must import all of its major minerals, from oil to aluminum. Without those imports-particularly oil-Japan stops being an industrial power in a matter of months."

"Understand that you're now in a superheated atmosphere; there are all kinds of rumors floating around. And one of the players is deliberately feeding us lies."

"Mexico will emerge as a major global economic power. Ranked fourteenth or fifteenth early in the century, it will be firmly within the top ten by 2080. With a population of 100 million, it will be a power to be reckoned with anywhere in the world—except on the southern border of the United States."

"If human beings can simply decide on what they want to do and then do it, then forecasting is impossible. Free will is beyond forecasting. But what is most interesting about humans is how unfree they are. It is possible for people today to have ten children, but hardly anyone does. We are deeply constrained in what we do by the time and place in which we live."

"The twenty-first century has begun with an American success that on the surface looks like not only a defeat but a deep political and moral embarrassment."

"[A]ny seagoing vessel—commercial or military, from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea to the Caribbean—could be monitored by the United States Navy, who could choose to watch it, stop it, or sink it."

"Me act? Why, I just make faces! Really, that's all I do, I make lots of faces and they pay me for it. The director says: "You're mad, Peter. Make like you're mad.” Then pretty soon someone calls out “one hour for lunch”! I follow the others to the commissary and later return to the set. "Make like you did before lunch, Peter," says the director. "Make like you're mad." So I make like I'm mad again and before long someone says, "wrap 'em up. That's all for today." So I go home, have dinner, go to bed, get up, report for work again and the director says: "Make like you're mad again, Peter. Make like you did yesterday." I find it so easy. I just look mad and like old man river I keep rolling along doing devilish things in motion pictures."

"[Speaking of his horror roles] You know I can get away with murder. The audience loves me."

"For a lazy man I work awfully hard, I couldn't live without acting. In fact anybody who can live without that feeling is a complete idiot."

"Peter was the most inventive actor I've ever known. He was a great scholar, an accomplished dramatic actor and a masterful comedian. [...] Peter liked to make pictures which entertained people, not critics. He didn't have any pretensions about conveying messages to the world."

"I’ve become a Zionist. This word stands for a tremendous number of things. To me it means, in short, that I now consciously and strongly feel I am a Jew, and am proud of it. My primary aim is to go to Palestine, to work for it."

"Dear mother, I don’t know what to tell you. I will only say this: A thousand thanks and more, and forgive me, if you can. After all, you will understand, better than anyone else, that words are not necessary now. With great love, your daughter."

"One – two – three… eight feet longTwo strides across, the rest is dark…Life is a fleeting question markOne – two – three… maybe another week.Or the next month may still find me here,But death, I feel is very near.I could have been 23 next JulyI gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost."

"There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world even though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind."

"Early Saturday morning I climbed the hills facing Kfar Gil'adi. Wonderful scenery. And in the brilliance of the beautiful morning I understood why Moses received the Torah on a mountain top. Only in the mountains is it possible to receive orders from above, when one sees how small is man yet feels secure in the nearness of God. From there one's horizons broaden in every respect, and the order of things becomes more understandable. In the mountains one can believe - and must believe. In the mountains one involuntarily hears the query: "Whom shall I send?" And the answer, "Send me to serve the beautiful and good!" Will I succeed? Will I be able to fulfil God's command?"

"Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame.Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart's secret places.Blessed is the heart that knows, for honors sake, to stop its beating.Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame."

"Joseffy's own playing underwent a marked change during the years following his coming to America. Those who heard him in the earlier part of his career describe the dainty elegance of his performances, the wonderful grace and the unequalled technical perfection of his style. They gained for him the sobriquet of the "Patti of the piano.""

"There are probably few modern pianists who have gone into the matter of fingering with such minute detail as Joseffy. With him fingering was almost an art in itself. At the lessons, in his books of technical studies, and in his editions of pianoforte works this matter was always uppermost in his mind. Fingering and tone quality he considered inseparable, the latter depending almost entirely on the former."

"At his own lessons Joseffy was a great source of inspiration to his pupils. When he felt that he had a responsive intellect at his side, he spared himself no pains in the careful elucidation of his points. His ideas on fingering were illuminating and his methods of practise for overcoming specific technical difficulties in the study matter were quite invaluable. Although he laid great stress on matters of technical detail, he was not to be dazzled by a merely technically brilliant performance. When a new pupil came to him and tried to make an impression with some showy composition he would ask for a Bach Prelude or a Mendelssohn Song without Words. "You may be able to play that technically difficult composition," he would say, "and still not be able to play the piano. From a Bach Prelude or a Mendelssohn Song without Words I can tell right away just how much of a musician you are." Pupils who at the first interview tried to foist upon him an unripe performance of such works as the Appassionata or the E minor Concerto of Chopin as samples of their pianistic prowess did not usually succeed in earning anything better than his deep disgust."

"Of the grace and finesse of Joseffy's Chopin, the clarity of his Bach, the depth of his Brahms and Beethoven, of the wide catholicity of his taste, resulting in interpretations of Mozart and Liszt, of Schubert and Tschaikowsky that were equally true in conception and beautiful in execution, of all this alone a little volume might be written."

"He was an indefatigable worker at his technical studies and his editions of piano compositions, even during the heated months of the year."

"He emphasized most strongly the importance of combining technical practise with the study of pieces, his idea being to take the most difficult passages and construct even more difficult technical studies from them."

"He must be familiar with the entire pianoforte literature, must be able to illustrate at the second piano everything that he teaches, and must possess such a highly developed analytical faculty that he is able to recognize and impart the all-important "how" in distinction from the "what." The mere playing of a piece at the second piano with the remark, "I do it this way," he considered of little help to the pupil, unless the very necessary explanation of the process were also forthcoming."

"I didn't know how much truth there was to gossip of her being a nymphomaniac, but I was eager to get to know her."

"A life cut tragically short, but with more colour perhaps than one may find in her work."

"She [Sher-Gil] melded the Western and Indian idioms and did not, like many other artists of her time, attempt to find an authentic ‘Indian’ mode or weave together a nationalist agenda."

"Amrita's life was more colourful than the bright colours she used in her paintings—this is a good look at it."

"At stake was not only a serious and viable artistic career as a woman, but the development of a subjectivity that was being defined through the self-portrait. conscious of being both muse and maker, Sher-Gil took on the position of artist and object with a double consciousness of being both.”"