Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this world the best generation of mankind in the history of the world — or make it the last.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) US President (1961-63)
Address, United Nations (20 Sep 1963)
It is confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 8 (1891)
Pain and fear and hunger are effects of causes which can be foreseen and known: but sorrow is a debt which someone else makes for us.
Freya Stark (1893-1993) Franco-British explorer, travel writer [Freya Madeline Stark]
Perseus in the Wind, ch. 16 (1948).
It seems to me that the distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
“What I Believe,” Forum and Century (Oct 1930)
(Source)
This phrase is not found in the parallel "The World As I See It [Mein Weltbild]" the next year.
When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet
“Thoughts on Various Subjects,” Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, vol. 2 (1727)
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatsoever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
“Art and Public Money,” speech, Municipal Technical College and School of Art, Brighton (1907-03-06)
(Source)
This is the "official" version that shows up in Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works, ch. 16 (1911), as the final words. A variant version from the reporter's notes was published in the Sussex Daily News (1907-03-07):
I consider my life belongs to the whole community, and while I last it is my privilege to do what I can for it. I want to be worn out, because the harder I am working, the more I live. I enjoy like for its own sake. It is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of glorious torch, which I have got the hold of for the moment, and I want to make it blaze brighter before I hand it on to future generations.
For the "brief candle" reference, see Shakespeare.
This passage is sometimes quoted incorrectly preceded by a passage in the "Epistle Dedicatory to Archibald Henderson" to Man and Superman (1903). This error may have come from Stephen Covey, who identified the chimera as one of his favorite quotations.
Their lives were ruined, he thought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling which had no necessary connection with affinities that alone render a lifelong comradeship tolerable.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English novelist, poet
Jude the Obscure, Part I, ch. 11 (1895)
If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.
Thomas Mann (1875-1955) German writer, critic, philanthropist, Nobel laureate [Paul Thomas Mann]
Tonio Kröger (1903)
Alt. trans. [B. Morgan]: "It is strange. If an idea gains control of you, you will find it expressed everywhere, you will actually smell it in the wind."
As we grow older, we should learn that these are two quite different things. Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify. Some people have easy temperaments and weak characters; others have difficult temperaments and strong characters. We are all prone to confuse the two in assessing people we associate with. Those with easy temperaments and weak characters are more likable than admirable; those with difficult temperaments and strong characters are more admirable than likable.
Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) Anglo-American columnist, journalist, author
“Confusing ‘Character’ with ‘Temperament’,” Clearing the Ground (1986)
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of senses, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history, power has been the vice of the ascetic.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
New York Herald Tribune Magazine (1928-05-06)
(Source)
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can’t get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
(Other Authors and Sources)
IBM maintenance manual (1925)
Play: Work that you enjoy doing for nothing.
Evan Esar (1899-1995) American humorist
Esar’s Comic Dictionary (1943)
Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development.
Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
“A World Split Apart,” Commencement Address, Harvard (8 Jun 1978)
(Source)
I am old, but I certainly have not that sign of old-age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman, essayist, wit
Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith, by His Daughter, Lady Holland, Vol. 1, ch. 11 (1855)
(Source)
In most communities it is illegal to cry “fire” in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Address to UN General Assembly (13 Aug 1958)
On the Middle East crisis.
The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
Hannah Whitall Smith (1832-1911) American evangelist, suffragist, author
Letter (1902)
In Philadelphia Quaker (1950) ed. Logan Piersoll Smith
The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.
Helen Hayes (1900-1993) American actress
On Reflection, ch. 14 (1968)
There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “Scientists” (1912)
Full text.
Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) English writer and churchman
“Thoughts on Various Subjects” (1706)
Full text.
If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
Intentions, “The Decay of Lying” (1891)
A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Spectator #122 (20 Jul 1711)
To live with integrity in an unjust society, we must work for justice. To walk with integrity through a landscape strewn with beer cans, we must stop and pick them up.
Starhawk (b. 1951) American writer, activist, feminist theologian [b. Miriam Simos]
Dreaming the Dark, ch. 3 “The Ethics of Magic” (1982)
The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) American conservationist, forester, ecologist
A Sand County Almanac, “November” (1949)
When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) American-English essayist, editor, anthologist
Afterthoughts, “Other People” (1931)
You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 Sep 1949)
We are dealing with veterans, not procedures — with their problems, not ours.
Omar Bradley (1893-1981) American general
Comment, while Administrator of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (1946)
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue. The most sophisticated satellite has no conscience. The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem of what to say and how to say it.
Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) American journalist
Speech, The Family of Man Award, The Protestant Council of New York (Oct 1964)
(Source)
His last public speech. Reprinted in Alexander Kendrick, Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow (1969).
I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.
George Carlin (1937-2008) American comedian
Brain Droppings (1997)
I observe, besides, that men who abandon themselves to the debauches of wine or women find it more difficult to apply themselves to things that are profitable, and to abstain from what is hurtful. For many who live frugally before they fall in love become prodigal when that passion gets the mastery over them; insomuch that after having wasted their estates, they are reduced to gain their bread by methods they would have been ashamed of before. What hinders then, but that a man, who has been once temperate, should be so no longer, and that he who has led a good life at one time should not do so at another? I should think, therefore, that the being of all virtues, and chiefly of temperance, depends on the practice of them: for lust, that dwells in the same body with the soul, incites it continually to despise this virtue, and to find out the shortest way to gratify the senses only.
Socrates (c.470-399 BC) Greek philosopher
In Xenophon, Memorabilia Book I, ch.2 [tr. E. Bysshe (1712)]
Full text.
He’d been an angel once. He hadn’t meant to Fall. He’d just hung around with the wrong people.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens, 2. “Eleven Years Ago” (1990) [with Neil Gaiman]
(Source)
I have reached the conclusion, which I think is confirmed at least by negative implication in the Court’s decisions since Roth and Alberts, that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
Potter Stewart (1915-1985) US Supreme Court Justice (1959-81)
Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964) [Concurring]
(Source)
Source of the paraphrase, "I can't define obscenity/pornography, but I know it when I see it."
I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter to Gen. Joseph Hooker (26 Jan 1863)
The emptiest pitchers make the most noise.
[Los cántaros cuanto más vacios, más ruido hacen.]
Alfonso X (1221–1284) Spanish King of Castile and Leon
(Attributed)
But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English novelist, poet
Jude the Obscure, Pt. I, ch. 4 (1895)
It iz an actewal fackt that most ov us work harder, tew seem happy, than we should have to, to be happy.
[It is an actual fact that most of us work harder, to seem happy, than we should have to, to be happy.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, “Josh Settles Up with His Correspondents Summarily” (1874)
Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Address, Guildhall, London (12 Jun 1945)
Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.
Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
“Open Letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers Congress” (16 May 1967)
What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!
Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman, essayist, wit
In Hesketh Pearson, The Smith of Smiths, ch. 10 (1934)
When I hear a man applauded by the mob, I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
Minority Report: H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks (1956)
But every writer, especially every novelist, has a “message”, whether he admits it or not, and the minutest details of his work are influenced by it. All art is propaganda. Neither Dickens himself nor the majority of Victorian novelists would have thought of denying this. On the other hand, not all propaganda is art.
When Carlini was convulsing Naples with laughter, a patient waited on a physician in that city, to obtain some remedy for excessive melancholy, which was rapidly consuming his life. The physician endeavored to cheer his spirits, and advised him to go to the theater and see Carlini. He replied, “I am Carlini.”
It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “An Apology for the Devil” (1912)
Full text.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Requiem,” Underwoods, Bk. 1 (1887)
Things are not what they seem; or, to be more accurate, they are not only what they seem, but very much else besides.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“Man and Reality,” Vedanta for the Western World (ed. C. Isherwood) (1945)
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
The Great War, Vol. 1 (1933)
A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than that of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) American conservationist, forester, ecologist
A Sand County Almanac (1949)
If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish painter and sculptor
(Attributed)
On painting objectively. In Saturday Review (1 Sep 1956)
Avoid over-coordination. We have all observed months-long delays caused by an effort to bring all activities into complete agreement with a proposed policy or procedure. While the coordinating machinery is slowly grinding away, the original purpose is often lost. The essence of the proposals is being worn down as the persons most concerned impatiently await the decision. The process has been aptly called coordinating to death.
Hyman Rickover (1900-1986) US Navy Admiral
Address delivered to US Naval Post Graduate School (16 March 1954)
There’s no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I don’t even have to exaggerate.
Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
(Attributed)
In P.J. O'Brien, Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom, ch. 9 (1935)
If I am to live longer, perhaps I must live out my old age, seeing and hearing less, understanding worse, coming to learn with more difficulty and to be more forgetful, and growing worse than those to whom I was once superior. Indeed, life would be unliveable, even if I did not notice the change. And if I see the change, how could life not be even more wretched and unpleasant?
Socrates (c.470-399 BC) Greek philosopher
In Xenophon, Memorabilia Book IV, ch.8, sec.8
(sometimes cited to Plato, Apology)
Alt. trans.:
- "If my life is to be prolonged now, I know that I must live out my old age, seeing worse, hearing less, learning with more difficulty, and forgetting more and more of what I have learned. If I see myself growing worse and reproach myself for it, tell me, how could I continue to live pleasantly? Perhaps even the god in his kindness is offering to end my life not only at the right time, but also in the easiest way possible."
- "If I were to live longer, perhaps I should fall into the inconveniences of old age: perhaps my sight should grow dim, my hearing fail me, my judgment become weak, and I should have more trouble to learn, more to retain what I had learnt; perhaps, too, after all, I should find myself incapable of doing the good I had done before. And if, to complete my misery, I should have no sense of my wretchedness, would not life be a burden to me? And, on the other hand, say I had a sense of it, would it not afflict me beyond measure?" [tr. E. Bysshe (1712)]
Administrivia: Things are back to normal
I’ve gotten the performance problems here cleared up by shifting my main blog (which was the spam traffic target) over to WordPress from Movable Type. I will probably eventually do the same to WIST, but that’s a ways off — I’ve done some serious tweaking to how I get MT to support WIST, and the migration of the data (the normal MT-WP export/import routine doesn’t include a good chunk of the data I store here), getting WP to behave the same (again, using categories for authors and such), and retaining all the permalinks to the current site (for the sake of Google and folks who have linked back) is going to be a non-trivial task.
In the meantime, though, things seem to be on an even keel here, and no more glitches in posting (knocks wood). Thanks for your continued reading and support.
No one is free who is a slave to the body.
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC-AD 65) Roman statesman, philosopher, playwright [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
Moral Letters to Lucilius [Epistulae morales ad Lucilium], letter 92, sec. 33, “On the Happy Life” (tr. R. Gummere (1918)]
It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think of a serious problem and decide that I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.
St. John XXIII (1881-1963) Italian Catholic Pontiff (1958-63) [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli]
(Attributed)
Quoted in "Thoughts on the Business of Life," Forbes (29 Dec 1997)
The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.
Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) Anglo-American columnist, journalist, author
“Purely Personal Prejudices,” Strictly Personal (1953)
The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English novelist, poet
(Attributed)
Quoted in Florence Emily Hardy, The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, ch. 17 (1930)