text:
Fred Allen

Fred Allen (31 May 1894 – 17 March 1956), born John Florence Sullivan, was an American comedian and radio host.

Quotes

 * A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 am and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 pm to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished even before lunch.
 * Treadmill to Oblivion (1954).

 * A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized
 * Treadmill to Oblivion.

 * I'm a little hoarse tonight. I've been living in Chicago for the past two months, and you know how it is, yelling for help on the way home every night. Things are so tough in Chicago that at Easter time, for bunnies the little kids use porcupines.
 * Much Ado About Me (1956).

 * All the sincerity in Hollywood you could stuff in a flea's navel and still have room left to conceal eight caraway seeds and an agent's heart.
 * From a lost letter to Kenny Delmar quoted in Earl Wilson's syndicated column (May 1959).

 * A good comedian can say things funny and other guys just say funny things.
 * Attributed by Robert Lemke in The Sunday Press (Binghamton, NY), “Rock ‘n Roll ‘Musically Horrid” Says Ex-2-a-Dayer,” pg. 2-C, col. 1 (9 August 1959)

 * Sullivan will be successful as long as other people have talent.
 * As quoted in Always On Sunday. Ed Sullivan: An Inside View (1968) by Michael David Harris; reproduced in "Sunday Marks Ed Sullivan's 20th Anniversary on TV," The San Antonio Express (June 16, 1968), p. 117

 * What does Sullivan do? He points at people. Rub meat on actors and dogs will do the same thing.
 * As quoted in Always On Sunday. Ed Sullivan: An Inside View (1968)
 * Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
 * Attributed in Newsweek, 14 January 1980.

 * California's a wonderful place to live - if you happen to be an orange.
 * Reported in Steven D. Price, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About California (2007), p. viii.

 * I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.
 * Letter to Groucho Marx.

title: Fred Allen


text:
Richard Bach

Richard Bach (born 23 June 1936) is an American writer, widely known as the author of some of the 1970s' biggest sellers, including Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970) and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977). Most of Bach's books have been semi-autobiographical, using actual or fictionalized events from his life to illustrate his philosophy, that our apparent physical limits and mortality are merely appearance.

Quotes

 * Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and such a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me, we may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long.
 * Nothing by Chance: A Gypsy Pilot's Adventures in Modern America (1969)

 * An old maxim says that a professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
 * A Gift of Wings (1974)

 * You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born, and never will die. You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.
 * There's No Such Place As Far Away (1978)

 * Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.
 * There's No Such Place As Far Away (1978)

 * Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.
 * There's No Such Place As Far Away (1978)

 * If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.
 * Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit (1994)

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

 *  For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.

 * Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again.

 * We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.

 * Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thoughts, he lived a long fine life indeed.

 * The gull sees farthest who flies highest.

 * Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding.

 * But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.

 * If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?

 * The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly.

 * "You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there."

 *  "The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other."

 *  "Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise."

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

 * 11. The Master answered and said "Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. 12. "The current of the river swept silently over them all — young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self. 13. "Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.  14. "But one creature said at last, 'I am tired of clinging.  Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.'  15. "The other creatures laughed and said, 'Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed against the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!'  16. "But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.  17. "Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.  18. "And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried 'See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah come to save us all!'  19. "And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go.  Our true work is this voyage, this adventure."  20. "But they cried the more, 'Savior!' all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Savior."

 * 26. And [the Messiah] said unto them, "If a man told God that he wanted most of all to help the suffering world, no matter the price to himself, and God answered and told him what he must do, should the man do as he is told?" 27. "Of course, Master!" cried the many. "It should be pleasure for him to suffer the tortures of hell itself, should God ask it!" 28. "No matter what those tortures, no matter how difficult the task?"  29. "Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be that God has asked," said they.  30. "And what would you do," the Master said unto the multitude, "if God spoke directly to your face and said, 'I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.' What would you do then?"  31. And the multitude was silent, not a voice, not a sound was heard upon the hillsides, across the valleys where they stood.

 * A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.

 * Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.

 * Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

 * Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

 * Everything in this book may be wrong.

 * Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.

 * If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That's all there is to it.

 * If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

 * If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.

 * Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.

 * In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

 * Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers.

 * Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true.

 * Perspective— Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.

 * Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place.

 * The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities."

 * The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

 * The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

 * The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

 * The original sin is to limit the Is. —Don't.

 * The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change.

 * "There is no problem so big that it cannot be run away from."… "You're quoting Snoopy the dog, I believe?" "I'll quote the truth wherever I find it thank you."

 * There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

 * We're all the sons of God, or children of the Is, or ideas of the Mind, or however else you want to say it.

 * You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

 * You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.

 * You teach best what you most need to learn.

 * You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy.

 * Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

 * Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.

The Bridge Across Forever (1984)

 * I felt like a moth in a chandelier — all at once there were lots of pretty choices, but I wasn't quite sure where to fly.

 * No one does anything uncharacteristic of who they are.

 * There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

 * That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
 * Ch. 15

 * The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

 * The music broke from the piano like clear cold water from a prophet-touched rock, pouring and splashing around us while her fingers leaped and spread, curled and stiffened and melted and flickered in magic pass and streaked lightning above the keyboard. Never before had she played for me... because we were lovers now, was she free to play...?

 * What I have just heard is pure . . . listen! . . . radiance, that you took from cloud-linings and sunrises and distilled into light that I can hear! Do you know how good, how lovely that is, what you can make the piano do?
 * Ch. 21

 * He wanted so much to ask, and he dared so little to know.
 * Ch. 45

 * As long as we believe in sequential time, we see becoming, instead of being. Beyond time, we're all one.
 * Ch. 46

 * The things we own, the places we live, the events of our lives: empty settings. How easy to chase after settings, and forget diamonds! The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love?
 * Ch. 48

 * The opposite of loneliness, it's not togetherness. It is intimacy.

 * We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE!

One (1988)

 * Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to Love.

 * It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now! Was it worth what I paid?

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Richard Bach


text:
Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (27 July 1870 – 16 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and poet, known chiefly for his essays and children's books; he was sometimes referred to by the nickname "Old Thunder". Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist.

Quotes

 * Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not.
 * The Modern Traveller (1898)

 * Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.
 * Speech to voters of South Salford (1906), quoted in Robert Speaight, The Life of Hilaire Belloc (London: Hollis & Carter, 1957), p. 204
 * Response to his Tory opponent's slogan, "Don't vote for a Frenchman and a Catholic". On polling day, 13 January 1906, Belloc, standing as a Liberal, overturned a Conservative majority to win by 852 votes, winning again four years later, though by an even slimmer margin.

 * Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have left the vulgar stuff alone.
 * "On Tea", On Nothing and Kindred Subjects (1908)

 * It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
 * "On Song", On Everything (1909)

 * It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
 * Letter to G.K. Chesterton (12 December 1917), quoted in Robert Speaight, The Life of Hilaire Belloc (London: Hollis & Carter, 1957), p. 355

 * I'm tired of Love; I'm still more tired of Rhyme. But money gives me pleasure all the time.
 * "Fatigued", Sonnets and Verse (1923)

 * How did the party go in Portman Square? I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there. And how did Lady Gaster's party go? Juliet was next me and I do not know.
 * "Juliet", Sonnets and Verse (1954)

 * The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.
 * Remark (undated) to William Temple, quoted in Robert Speaight, The Life of Hilaire Belloc (London: Hollis & Carter, 1957), p. 383

 * I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.
 * As quoted in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) edited by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 829
 * Variant: I have wandered all my life, and I have traveled; the difference between the two is this — we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.
 * As quoted in Traveling for Her: An Inspirational Guide (2008) by Amber Israelsen, p. 2

 * Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!
 * "The Catholic Sun"

 * It was my shame, and now it is my boast, That I have loved you rather more than most.
 * "Time Cures All"

 * The world is full of double beds And most delightful maidenheads, Which being so, there’s no excuse For sodomy or self-abuse.
 * "The world is full of double beds"

The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896)

 * [M]others of large families (who claim to common sense) Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.
 * "The Tiger"

 * I shoot the Hippopotamus With bullets made of platinum, Because if I use leaden ones His hide is sure to flatten 'em.
 * "The Hippopotamus"

 * When people call this beast to mind, They marvel more and more At such a LITTLE tail behind, So LARGE a trunk before.
 * "The Elephant"

 * The Big Baboon is found upon The plains of Cariboo: He goes about with nothing on (A shocking thing to do). But if he dressed respectably And let his whiskers grow, How like this Big Baboon would be To Mister So-and-so!
 * "The Big Baboon"

More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)

 * What! Would you slap the Porcupine? Unhappy child — desist! Alas! That any friend of mine Should turn Tupto-philist.
 * "The Porcupine"

 * The Llama is a wooly sort of fleecy hairy goat, With an indolent expression and an undulating throat Like an unsuccessful literary man.
 * "The Llama"

 * The Microbe is so very small You cannot make him out at all, But many sanguine people hope To see him through a microscope.
 * "The Microbe"

 * Oh! let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about!
 * "The Microbe"

The Path to Rome (1902)

 * London: George Allen & Unwin, 1902

 * '… and as to what may be in this book, do not feel timid nor hesitate to enter. There are more mountains than molehills …'
 * caption to the frontispiece, p. ii

 * Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
 * p. xi

 * Then let us love one another and laugh. Time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer—and meanwhile common living is a burden, and earnest men are in siege upon us all around. '''Let us suffer absurdities, for this is only to suffer one another.
 * p. xv

 * I found myself entering that pleasant mood in which all books are conceived (but none written); I was "smoking the enchanted cigarettes" of Balzac, and if this kind of reverie is fatal to action, yet it is so much a factor of happiness that I wasted in the contemplation of that lovely and silent hollow many miles of marching. I suppose if a man were altogether his own master and controlled by no necessity, not even the necessity of expression, all his life would pass away in these sublime imaginings.
 * p. 23

 * I sincerely hope, trust, and pray that this part of my journey will not seem as dull to you as it did to me at the time, or as it does to me now while I write of it. But now I come to think of it, it cannot seem as dull, for I had to walk that wretched thirty miles or so all the day long, whereas you have not even to read it; for I am not going to say anything more about it, but lead you straight to the end. Oh, blessed quality of books, that makes them a refuge from living! For in a book everything can be made to fit in, all tedium can be skipped over, and the intense moments can be made timeless and eternal.
 * p. 201

 * Death […] people nowadays seem to regard as something odd, whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world.
 * p. 258

 * Man may […] be master of his fate, but he has a precious poor servant. It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour.
 * p. 299

 * And what is there else but pleasure, and to what else does beauty move on?
 * p. 421

Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)

 * [A]lways keep a-hold of Nurse For fear of finding something worse
 * "Jim, Who Ran Away From His Nurse, and Was Eaten by a Lion"

 * Physicians of the Utmost Fame Were called at once; but when they came They answered, as they took their Fees, "There is no Cure for this Disease."
 * "Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies"

 * Oh, my friends, be warned by me, That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea Are all the Human Frame requires.
 * "Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies"

 * Matilda told such Dreadful Lies, It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes; Her Aunt, who from her Earliest Youth, Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth, Attempted to Believe Matilda: The effort very nearly killed her.
 * "Matilda, Who Told Lies, and Was Burned to Death"

Verses (1910)

 * Of courtesy it is much less Than courage of heart or holiness Yet in my walks it seems to me That the Grace of God is in courtesy.
 * "Courtesy"

 * From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends, There's nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends.
 * "Dedicatory Ode", stanza 22

 * The tender Evenlode that makes Her meadows hush to hear the sound Of waters mingling in the brakes, And binds my heart to English ground. A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stone, Forgotten in the western wolds.
 * "Dedicatory Ode", stanzas 31–32

 * '''Child! Do not throw this book about; Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.
 * "Dedication on the Gift of a Book to a Child"

 * I said to Heart, "How goes it?" Heart replied: "Right as a Ribstone Pippin!" But it lied.
 * "The False Heart"

The Four Men: A Farrago (1911)

 * Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984 (Twentieth-Century Classics)

 * [N]othing is worthwhile on this unhappy earth except the fulfilment of a man's desire.
 * p. 4

 * When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside which is like the cold of space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly. Absolute dereliction is the death of the soul.
 * p. 27

 * [M]an knows his own nature, and that which he pursues must surely be his satisfaction? Judging by which measure I determine that the best thing in the world is flying at full speed from pursuit, and keeping up hammer and thud and gasp and bleeding till the knees fail and the head grows dizzy, and at last we all fall down and that thing (whatever it is) which pursues us catches us up and eats our carcasses. This way of managing our lives, I think, must be the best thing in the world—for nearly all men choose to live thus.
 * pp. 31–2
 * The "thing" which pursues us, we subsequently learn, is either "a Money-Devil" or "some appetite or lust" and "the advice is given to all in youth that they must make up their minds which of the two sorts of exercise they would choose, and the first [i.e. pursuit by a Money-Devil] is commonly praised and thought worthy; the second blamed." (p. 32)

 * Now the Faith is old and the Devil is bold, Exceedingly bold indeed; And the masses of doubt that are floating about Would smother a mortal creed. But we that sit in a sturdy youth, And still can drink strong ale, Oh—let us put it away to infallible truth, That always shall prevail.  [semi-chorus:] And thank the Lord For the temporal sword, And howling heretics too; And all good things Our Christendom brings, But especially barley brew!
 * the "Pelagian" drinking song, p. 50

 * Then he added, as men will who are of infinite imagination and crammed with desires, 'My wants are few.'
 * p. 78

 * May all good fellows that here agree Drink Audit Ale in heaven with me, And may all my enemies go to hell! Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël! May all my enemies go to hell! Noël! Noël!
 * drinking song, p. 126

 * There is nothing at all that remains: nor any house; nor any castle, however strong; nor any love, however tender and sound; nor any comradeship among men, however hardy. Nothing remains but the things of which I will not speak, because we have spoken enough of them already during these four days. But I who am old will give you advice, which is this—to consider chiefly from now onwards those permanent things which are, as it were, the shores of this age and the harbours of our glittering and pleasant but dangerous and wholly changeful sea.
 * pp. 157–8
 * By this, we are then told, "he meant Death." (p. 158)

 * I recognised that I was (and I confessed) in that attitude of the mind wherein men admit mortality; something had already passed from me—I mean that fresh and vigorous morning of the eyes wherein the beauty of this land had been reflected as in a tiny mirror of burnished silver. Youth was gone out apart; it was loved and regretted, and therefore no longer possessed.
 * p. 159

 * I put my pencil upon the paper, doubtfully, and drew little lines, considering my theme. But I would not long hesitate in this manner, for I knew that all creation must be chaos first, and then gestures in the void before it can cast out the completed thing.
 * p. 160

This and That and the Other (1912)

 * The Barbarian hopes — and that is the very mark of him — that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort but he will not be at pains to replace such goods nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is for ever marvelling that civilisation should have offended him with priests and soldiers.
 * Ch. XXXII : The Barbarians, p. 282

We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.
 * In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this that he cannot make; that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation exactly that has been true.
 * Ch. XXXII : The Barbarians, p. 282

The Jews (1922)

 * Houghton Mifflin, 1922, 308 p.

 * There is already something like a Jewish monopoly in high finance. (...) There is the same element of Jewish monopoly in the silver trade, and in the control of various other metals, notably lead, nickel, quicksilver. What is most disquieting of all, this tendency to monopoly is spreading like a disease.
 * p. 91

Economics for Helen (1924)

 * The Economic definition of Wealth is subtle and difficult to appreciate, but it is absolutely essential to our study to get it clear at the outset and keep it firmly in mind.
 * Ch. 1 : What is Wealth?

 * It is this worth, that is, this ability to get other wealth in exchange, which constitutes true Economic Wealth.
 * Ch. 1 : What is Wealth?

 * Wealth, for the purposes of economic study, is confined to those values attaching to material objects through the action of man, which values can be exchanged for other values.
 * Ch. 1 : What is Wealth?

 * The Science of Economics does not deal with true happiness nor even with well-being in material things. It deals with a strictly limited field of what is called "Economic Wealth," and if it goes outside its own boundaries it goes wrong.
 * Ch. 1 : What is Wealth?

Hilaire Belloc (1925)

 * Hilaire Belloc (Augustan Books of Modern Poetry). London: Eyre & Spottiswode, no date [1925]. 29pp.

 * You shall receive me when the clouds are high With evening and the sheep attain the fold. This is the faith that I have held and hold, And this is that in which I mean to die.
 * "Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa"

 * When I am dead, I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet, But his books were read'.
 * "On His Books"

 * Of three in One and One in three My narrow mind would doubting be Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met And all at once were Juliet.
 * "A Trinity"

 * Here richly, with ridiculous display, The Politician's corpse was laid away. While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.
 * "Epitaph on the Politician Himself"

 * The accursed power which stands on Privilege (And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge) Broke — and Democracy resumed her reign: (Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).
 * "On a Great Election"

The Cruise of the 'Nona' (1925)

 * The Cruise of the 'Nona', Penguin 1958 edition

 * The profound thing which Cardinal Manning said to me was this: all human conflict is ultimately theological.[…] This saying of his (which I carried away with me somewhat bewildered) that all human conflict was ultimately theological: that is, that all wars and revolutions, and all decisive struggles between parties of men arise from a difference in moral and transcendental doctrine, was utterly novel to me. To a young man the saying was without meaning: I would almost have said nonsensical, save that I could not attach the idea of folly to Manning. But as I grew older it became a searchlight: with the observation of the world, and with continuous reading of history, it came to possess for me a universal meaning so profound that it reached to the very roots of political action; so extended that it covered the whole. It is, indeed, a truth which explains and co-ordinates all one reads of human action in the past, and all one sees of it in the present.[…] All tragedy is the conflict of a true right and a false right, or of a greater right and a lesser right, or, at the worst, of two false rights. Still more do men pretend in this time of ours, wherein the habitual use of the human intelligence has sunk to its lowest, that doctrine is but a private individual affair, creating a mere opinion. Upon the contrary, it is doctrine that drives the State; and every State is stronger in the degree in which the doctrine of its citizens is united. Nor have I met any man in my life, arguing for what should be among men, but took for granted as he argued that the doctrine he consciously or unconsciously accepted was or should be a similar foundation for all mankind. Hence battle.
 * pp. 48-9
 * Belloc writes that Cardinal Manning said this sentence to him "when I was but twenty years old" (p. 47), i.e. in 1890 or 1891.

 * I have noticed that this kind of fanatic, like every other kind, is in two species: the species which too clearly thinks out its own insane theory, and the species which remains perfectly muddle-headed.
 * p. 83

 * [P]rofessional politics is a trade in which the sly outweigh the wise.
 * p. 116

 * It is in the irony of Providence that the more man comes to control the material world about him, the more does he lose control over the effects of his action; and it is when he is remaking the world most speedily that he knows least whither he is driving.
 * p. 177

 * It is a consolation to remember that corruption pushed beyond a certain point provides its own remedy, and that this sort of thing cannot indefinitely continue; but it is less consoling to remember another truth, to wit, that the correction of political and social evil may come in the form of irremediable catastrophe, and that the innocent, who are the greater number, would then suffer most. It is still less consoling to remember the universal human experience that when evil is redressed by the only partly conscious force of reaction, it is not succeeded by a corresponding good, but by some other new and unexpected evil.
 * pp. 248–9

Survivals and New Arrivals: The Old and New Enemies of the Catholic Church (1929)

 * The object of a religion or a philosophy is not to make men wealthy or powerful, but to make them, in the last issue, happy: that is, to fulfil their being.
 * Ch. III Survivals (iii) The "Wealth and Power" Argument

 * Even where the Faith is preserved men pursue wealth and power inordinately. Where the Faith is lost they pursue nothing else.
 * Ch. III Survivals (iii) The "Wealth and Power" Argument

 * For the line of cleavage does not fall between the various groups, Catholic, Agnostic, Evangelical, or what not, but between the Catholic Church and all else. She is unique, and at issue with the world.
 * Ch. IV The Main Opposition (ii) Anti-Clericalism

 * It is not insignificant that the Church, in the rare places and times when she had power to do so, did not compel the mind. During all that intense intellectual life of the thirteenth century instruction was by choice: endowed—so that the poorest could reach the highest inspiration, but at the choice of the individual or family will, to be taken or left.
 * Ch. IV The Main Opposition (iii) The "Modern" Mind

 * All teaching is dogmatic. Dogma, indeed, means only "a thing taught," and teaching not dogmatic would cease to be teaching and would become discussion and doubt.
 * Ch. IV The Main Opposition (iii) The "Modern" Mind

 * Logically the Neo-Pagan should get rid of the institution of marriage altogether; but the very nature of human society, which is built up of cells each of which is a family, and the very nature of human generation, forbid such an extreme. Children must be brought up and acknowledged and sheltered, and the very nature of human affection, whereby there is the bond of affection between the parent and the child, and the child is not of one parent but of both, will compel the Neo-Pagan to modify what might be his logical conclusion of free love and support some simulacrum of the institution of marriage.
 * Ch. V New Arrivals

A Conversation with a Cat, and Others (1931)

 * [I]n words lie the seeds of all dissension, and love at its most profound is silent.
 * I. A Conversation with a Cat

 * Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else.
 * IV. On Making an Omelette

 * Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring.
 * XIII. A Guide to Boring

An Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine (1932)

 * To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend, To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend Wine, true begetter of all arts that be; Wine, privilege of the completely free; Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong; Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong, Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!

 * By thee do seers the inward light discern; By thee the statue lives, the Gods return.

 * When the ephemeral vision's lure is past All, all, must face their Passion at the last.

 * So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep: So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep, And, sacramental, raise me the Divine: Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.

Sonnets and Verse (1938)

 * New edition of the 1923 collection of the same name, with many new poems

 * That I grow sour, who only lack delight; That I descend to sneer, who only grieve: That from my depth I should contemn your height; That with my blame my mockery you receive; Huntress and splendour of the woodland night, Diana of this world, do not believe.
 * "Sonnet: Do not believe when lovely lips report"
 * To Lady Diana Cooper. See her memoir, The Light of Common Day (Boston: Houghton, 1959), pp. 27–28

 * Torture will give a dozen pence or more To keep a drab from bawling at his door. The public taste is quite a different thing— Torture is positively paid to sing.
 * "On Torture: A Public Singer"

 * In soft deluding lies let fools delight. A shadow marks our days, which end in Night.
 * "On a Sundial"

 * How slow the Shadow creeps: but when 'tis past, How fast the Shadows fall. How fast! How fast!
 * "On the Same" (On a Sundial II)

 * Loss and Possession, Death and Life are one. There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.
 * "On the Same" (On a Sundial III)
 * Quoted by Kevin Smith's character in the film Catch and Release (2006)

 * Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.
 * "The Pacifist"

 * Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties, And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.
 * "Habitations"

The Great Heresies (1938)

 * The future always comes as a surprise, but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be. And for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam.
 * Chapter III
 * Quoted by: Philip Jenkins, God's Continent / Christianity, Islam And Europe's Religious Crisis, 2007, p.3

The Silence Of The Sea and Other Essays (1940)

 * Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.
 * "On Books"

 * Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.
 * "On Statistics"

 * All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.

 * The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie.

title: Hilaire Belloc


text:
Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow (10 June 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976 and the National Medal of Arts in 1988.

Quotes

 * Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
 * Dangling Man (1944) [Penguin Classics, 1996, ISBN 0-140-18935-1 ], p. 84

 * There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.
 * Quoted by Granville Hicks in The Living Novel: A Symposium (Macmillan, 1957; digitized version in 2006), p. ix

 * Conquered people tend to be witty.
 * Mr. Sammler's planet, (1976), p. 98

 * All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!
 * Henderson the Rain King (1959) [Viking/Penguin, 1984, ISBN 0-140-07269-1 ], ch. XVIII, p. 271

 * We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it — the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.
 * Great Jewish Short Stories, introduction to the Dell paperback edition (1963)

 * We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
 * Herzog (1964) [Penguin Classics, 2003, ISBN 0-142-43729-8 ], p. 82

 * I think that New York is not the cultural center of America, but the business and administrative center of American culture.
 * BBC radio interview, The Listener (London, May 22, 1969)

 * Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
 * Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) [Penguin Classics, 2004, ISBN 0-142-43783-2 ], p. 156

 * Once you had read the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, you knew that everyday life was psychopathology.
 * Humboldt's Gift (1975) [Penguin Classics, 1996, ISBN 0-140-18944-0 ], p. 5

 * I never yet touched a fig leaf that didn't turn into a price tag.
 * Humboldt's Gift (1975), p. 159

 * Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.
 * Humboldt's Gift (1975), p. 265

 * No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
 * Humboldt's Gift (1975), p. 452

 * Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.
 * Nobel Prize lecture (12 December 1976)

 * A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part, that these many existences signify something, tend to something, fulfill something; it promises us meaning, harmony, and even justice.
 * Nobel Prize lecture (12 December 1976)

 * Our media make crisis chatter out of news and fill our minds with anxious phantoms of the real thing — a summit in Helsinki, a treaty in Egypt, a constitutional crisis in India, a vote in the U.N., the financial collapse of New York. We can't avoid being politicized (a word as murky as the condition which it describes) because it is necessary after all to know what is going on. Worse yet, what is going on will not let us alone. Neither the facts nor the deformations, the insidious platitudes of the media (tormenting because the underlying realities are so large and so terrible), can be screened out. The study of literature itself is heavily "politicized."
 * To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976) [Viking/Penguin, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18075-7 ], p. 21

 * For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it.
 * To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976), p. 38

 * A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
 * To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976), p. 127
 * Compare: It’s a point so blindingly obvious that only an extraordinarily clever and sophisticated person could fail to grasp it.
 * John Bercow, 2016.

 * All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
 * As quoted in "Dailer's Choice" by Harriet Van Horne, in New York Magazine Vol. 10, No. 13 (28 March 1977), p. 80

 * There are evils, as someone has pointed out, that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever — money, for instance, or war.
 * The Dean’s December (1982) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-140-18913-0 ], ch. 13, p. 140

 * Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what’s in it. They should, because they put it all in beforehand. It's like an Easter Egg hunt.
 * The Dean's December (1982), ch. 18, p. 298

 * Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
 * "Him with His Foot in His Mouth," from Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18023-4 ], p. 11

 * A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.
 * "Cousins," from Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984), p. 263

 * I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, "To hell with you."
 * Quoted in "Feeling Rejected? Join Updike, Mailer, Oates..." by Barbara Bauer and Robert F. Moss, New York Times (21 July 1985), section 7, page 1, column 1

 * Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches.
 * As quoted in The Portable Curmudgeon (1987) by Jon Winokur, p. 219

 * Any artist should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
 * Foreword to The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (1987)

 * In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.
 * Foreword to The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (1987)

 * You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
 * As quoted in The #1 New York Times Bestseller (1992) by John Bear, p. 93

 * California's like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me.
 * "Saul Bellow: Treading on the Toes of the Brahmans," interview with Lawrence Grobel in Endangered Species: Writers Talk about Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives [Da Capo, 2001, ISBN ISBN 0-306-81004-2 ], p. 21

 * The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, “Professor Cohen, how do I know that I exist?” The keen old prof replied, “And who is asking?”
 * Humboldt’s Gift (1996), p. 163

The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

 * 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.
 * Ch. 1 (opening line)

 * Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
 * Ch. 1

 * As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting — the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.
 * Ch. 6

Introduction to The Closing of the American Mind (1988)

 * As a scholar [Allan Bloom] intends to enlighten us, and as a writer he has learned from Aristophanes and other models that enlightenment should also be enjoyable. To me, this is not the book of a professor, but that of a thinker who is willing to take the risks more frequently taken by writers. It is risky in a book of ideas to speak in one’s own voice, but it reminds us that the sources of the truest truths are inevitably profoundly personal. … Academics, even those describing themselves as existentialists, very seldom offer themselves publicly and frankly as individuals, as persons.
 * p. 12

 * The book of the world, so richly studied by autodidacts, is being closed by the “learned,” who are raising walls of opinions to shut the world out.
 * p. 15

 * People reserve their best thinking for their professional specialties and, next in line, for serious matters confronting the alert citizen —economics, politics, the disposal of nuclear waste, etc. The day’s work done, they want to be entertained.
 * p. 16

 * In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves—to that part of us which is conscious. … The independence of this consciousness, which has the strength to be immune to the noise of history and the distractions of our immediate surroundings, is what the life struggle is all about. The soul has to find and hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annul it altogether.
 * pp. 16-17

 * The university, in a society ruled by public opinion, was to have been an island of intellectual freedom where all views were investigated without restriction. … But by consenting to play an active or “positive,” a participatory role in society, the university has become inundated and saturated with the backflow of society’s “problems.” Preoccupied with questions of Health, Sex, Race, War, academics make their reputations and their fortunes. … Any proposed reforms of liberal education which might bring the university into conflict with the whole of the U.S.A. are unthinkable. Increasingly, the people “inside” are identical in their appetites and motives with the people “outside” the university.
 * p. 18

It All Adds Up (1994)

 * Viking/Penguin, 1995, ISBN 0-14-023365-2

 * There is no need to make an inventory of the times. It is demoralizing to describe ourselves to ourselves yet again. It is especially hard on us since we believe (as we have been educated to believe) that history has formed us and that we are all mini-summaries of the present age.
 * "Mozart: An Overture" (1992), pp. 13-14

 * The principles of Western liberalism seem no longer to lend themselves to effective action. Deprived of the expressive power, we are awed by it, have a hunger for it, and are afraid of it. Thus we praise the gray dignity of our soft-spoken leaders, but in our hearts we are suckers for passionate outbursts, even when those passionate outbursts are hypocritical and falsely motivated.
 * "Literary Notes on Khrushchev" (1961), p. 36

 * When we read the best nineteenth- and twentieth-century novelists, we soon realize that they are trying in a variety of ways to establish a definition of human nature, to justify the continuation of life as well as the writing of novels.
 * "The Sealed Treasure" (1960), p. 60

 * Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.
 * "The Sealed Treasure" (1960), p. 62

 * It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.
 * "Facts That Put Fancy to Flight" (1962), p. 67

 * It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back.
 * "Facts That Put Fancy to Flight" (1962), p. 68

 * Apparently the rise of consciousness is linked to certain kinds of privation. It is the bitterness of self-consciousness that we knowers know best. Critical of the illusions that sustained mankind in earlier times, this self-consciousness of ours does little to sustain us now. The question is: which is disenchanted, the world itself or the consciousness we have of it?
 * "A Matter of the Soul" (1975), pp. 75-76

 * Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.
 * "The Jefferson Lectures" (1977), p. 139

 * In an age of enormities, the emotions are naturally weakened. We are continually called upon to have feelings — about genocide, for instance, or about famine or the blowing up of passenger planes — and we are all aware that we are incapable of reacting appropriately. A guilty consciousness of emotional inadequacy or impotence makes people doubt their own human weight.
 * "The Distracted Public" (1990), p. 156

 * Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.
 * "The Distracted Public" (1990), p. 159

 * Pointless but intense excitement holds us in TV dramas. We hear threatening music. A killer with a gun steals into the bedroom of a sleeping woman. More subliminal sounds of danger, pointlessly ominous. The woman wakes and runs into the kitchen for a knife. The cops are on the case. We watch as the criminal is pursued through night streets; shots, a death; a body falls from a roof. Then time is up, another drama begins. Now we are in a church. No, we are in a lecture hall; no again — a drawer opens in a morgue. A woman is looking for her kidnapped child. Then that ends, and we are on the veld with zebras and giraffes. Then with Lenin at a mass meeting. And suddenly we flash away to a cooking school; we are shown how to stuff a turkey. Next the Berlin Wall comes down. Or flags are burning. Or a panel is worrying about the rug crisis. More and more public themes, with less and less personal consciousness. Clearly, personal consciousness is shrinking.
 * "The Distracted Public" (1990), pp. 159-160

 * Writers, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers, political thinkers, to name only a few of the categories affected, must woo their readers, viewers, listeners, from distraction. To this we must add, for simple realism demands it, that these same writers, painters, etc., are themselves the children of distraction. As such, they are peculiarly qualified to approach the distracted multitudes. They will have experienced the seductions as well as the destructiveness of the forces we have been considering here. This is the destructive element in which we do not need to be summoned to immerse ourselves, for we were born to it.
 * "The Distracted Public" (1990), p. 167

 * Tocqueville predicted that in democratic countries the public would demand larger and larger doses of excitement and increasingly stronger stimulants from its writers. He probably did not expect that public to dramatize itself so extensively, to make the world scene everybody's theatre, or, in the developed countries, to take to alcohol and drugs in order to get relief from the horrors of ceaseless intensity, the torment of thrills and distractions. A great many writers have done little more than meet the mounting demand for thrills. I think that this demand has, in the language of marketing, peaked.
 * "The Distracted Public" (1990)

 * There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless — too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume responsibility for so much. This is what makes packaged opinion so attractive.
 * "There Is Simply Too Much to Think About" (1992), pp. 173-174

 * One naturally regrets not being an expert or one of those insiders who thoroughly understand. It's hell to be an amateur. A little reflection calms your sorrow, however. The experts in their own little speedboat, the rest of us floating with the rest of mankind in a great barge — that is the picture.
 * "The Day They Signed the Treaty" (1979), p. 224

 * In politics continental Europe was infantile — horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer.
 * "My Paris" (1983), p. 235

 * There's something that remains barbarous in educated people, and lately I've more and more had the feeling that we are nonwondering primitives. And why is it that we no longer marvel at these technological miracles? They've become the external facts of every life. We've all been to the university, we've had introductory courses in everything, and therefore we have persuaded ourselves that if we had the time to apply ourselves to these scientific marvels, we would understand them. But of course that's an illusion. It couldn't happen. Even among people who have had careers in science. They know no more about how it all works than we do. So we are in the position of savage men who, however, have been educated into believing that they are capable of understanding everything. Not that we actually do understand, but that we have the capacity.
 * "A Half Life" (1990), pp. 302-303

 * We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans — convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.
 * " A Second Half Life" (1991), p. 324

 * Much of junk culture has a core of crisis — shoot-outs, conflagrations, bodies weltering in blood, naked embracers or rapist-stranglers. The sounds of junk culture are heard over a ground bass of extremism. Our entertainments swarm with specters of world crisis. Nothing moderate can have any claim to our attention.
 * "A Second Half Life" (1991), p. 326

A Jewish Writer in America (2011)

 * Part I: New York Review of Books October 27, 2011 Part II: The New York Review of Books, vol. 58, no. 17, November 10, 2011

 * A millennial belief in a Holy God may have the effect of deepening the soul, but it is also obviously archaic, and modern influences would presently bring me up to date and reveal how antiquated my origins were. To turn away from those origins, however, has always seemed to me an utter impossibility. It would be a treason to my first consciousness to un-Jew myself.
 * Part I, p. 26

 * Reading Decline of the West I learned that in Spengler’s view ours was a Faustian civilization and that we, the Jews, were Magians, the survivors and representatives of an earlier type, totally incapable of comprehending the Faustian spirit that had created the great civilization of the West. … What Magians were to Faustians, Faustians might very well be to Americans.
 * Part I, p. 26

 * One’s language is a spiritual location. It houses your soul. If you were born in America all essential communication, your deepest conversations with yourself, will be in English. … Your English is the principal instrument of your humanity.
 * Part I, p. 27

 * What is imposed on us by birth and environment is what we are called upon to overcome.
 * Part I, p. 28

 * We are free to withdraw (to withdraw our minds where we cannot withdraw our bodies) from situations in which our humanity or lack of it is defined for us.
 * Part II, p. 29

Misattributed

 * What is art but a way of seeing?
 * Thomas Berger, in Being Invisible (1967)

 * When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
 * Demander un conseil, c'est presque toujours chercher un complice. — Adélaïde-Édouard le Lièvre, marquis de La Grange et de Fourilles (1796–1876), Pensées (1872)

 * If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
 * If women are to have the same duties as men, they must have the same nurture and education. — Plato, The Republic, Book V, trans. Benjamin Jowett, third edition, Oxford University Press, 1892
 * Variant: So if we are going to use men and women for the same purposes, they must be taught the same things. The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee [Penguin Classics, 2003, ISBN 0-14-044914-0 ], p. 161
 * Variant: Then if we are to use the women for the same things as the men, we must teach them the same things. The Republic, trans. W. H. D. Rouse [Signet Classic, 1999, ISBN 0-451-52745-3 ], p. 249

About Bellow

 * [John D Macdonald] is by any standards a better writer than Saul Bellow, only MacDonald writes thrillers and Bellow is a human-heart chap, so guess who wears the top-grade laurels.
 * Kingsley Amis (1971). "A New James Bond". What Became of Jane Austen? And Other Questions. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 69. ISBN 9780151958603.

 * I don't think a writer ever should show off, anyway. Saul Bellow would say to me years and years ago, "Get that fancy footwork out of there."
 * 1986 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)

 * Bellow (what a wonderful novel Humboldt's Gift is), Updike and Heller started very differently, but their own lives are octopuses taking up more and more space in their books: their divorces etc.
 * 1979 interview in Conversations with Nadine Gordimer edited by Nancy Topping Bazin and Marilyn Dallman Seymour (1990)

 * Saul Bellow and Philip Roth made the words Jewish and manic synonymous. "What are we doing? What are we doing?" their novels scream at us, from Augie March on.
 * Vivian Gornick Introduction to The Jewish Publication Society's 1987 edition of Jo Sinclair's Wasteland (1946)

 * Year after year, I and thousands of members of PEN [an international association that promotes cooperation among writers in the interests of international goodwill and freedom of expression] voted for Jorge Luis Borges, who was the obvious international candidate for the Nobel. They would not consider him. They didn't like his politics. I was shocked that Italo Calvino never got it. It seems they never give it to the really risky writers. Bellow is a safe writer…he is a really safe writer, sticking with mainstream male writing, what people are supposed to write about, what's accepted as the subject of writing. He hasn't taken any risks as far as I can see. He's safe as houses.
 * 1993 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin (2008)

 * In high school, I'd devoured the works of Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer, moved by stories of men trying to find their place in an America that didn't welcome them.
 * Barack Obama A Promised Land (2020)

 * Saul Bellow freed the Jewish voice in some ways that I didn’t even recognize, but his work was all about men. Still, for Jews who are crazy about the English language, he was the one.
 * Grace Paley Interview with Poets & Writers (2008)

 * I'm a woman and that makes a big difference. It separates me a lot from Bellow and Roth and all those guys. There's such distortion in their writing sometimes, the kind of stuff that gives men a bad name. It really louses them up. I think there's a lot of contempt for their fathers coming out and it doesn't do the books, or them, a lot of good.
 * 1985 interview in Conversations with Grace Paley (1997)

 * I do think the subject of women's writing is different: there is experience that hasn't been dealt with. You know you go through a period where you're very annoyed with all these male writers. They were your ideal intellectuals simply because they were the literary people of your youth. And then you go through a period where you just can't stand them. I just began to read Saul Bellow's short stories. I hadn't read Saul Bellow in a long time. But I saw how good the writing was. And I read it. And I liked it so much. I liked his stories. They were so beautiful. And there were no women in it. The guys had a woman, or they didn't have a woman or there was an aunt that everybody loved or an aunt that everybody hated. Whatever. But the wives were terrible. But I thought to myself, "Well, it doesn't matter so much maybe as long as we women have a voice." But unless we tell about our lives, those stories can't be listened to. You can't bear half the truth. But as long as we women are being read, then I can accept them.
 * 1986 interview in Conversations with Grace Paley (1997)

 * It is a special pleasure for a reviewer who did not admire Saul Bellow's first novel, Dangling Man, to report of his second, The Victim, that it is not only in every way a striking advance over its predecessor but also hard to match in recent fiction for brilliance, skill, and originality.
 * Diana Trilling Reviewing the Forties (1974)

title: Saul Bellow


text:
John Braine

John Gerard Braine (April 13, 1922 – October 28, 1986) was a British novelist, sometimes classed with the so-called angry young men. His best-known book is Room at the Top (1957).

Quotes

 * Being a writer in a library [...] is rather like being a eunuch in a harem.
 * "A Talk in London With John Braine" The New York Times (7 October 1962).

title: John Braine


text:
User:33451~enwikiquote

For my user page, see Wikipedia.

title: User:33451~enwikiquote


text:
Max Brand

Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944) was an American western fiction author. Faust wrote mostly under five pseudonyms, though he is primarily known by one, Max Brand, today.

Attributed

 * There has to be a woman, but not much of a one. A good horse is much more important.
 * On writing westerns

title: Max Brand


text:
Anthony the Great

Saint Anthony the Great (251–356) was a Christian saint, also known as Saint Anthony of Egypt, Saint Anthony of the Desert, Saint Anthony the Anchorite, and honorifically as the Father of All Monks. He was a leader among the Desert Fathers, Christian monks in the Egyptian desert in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.

From St. Athanasius' Life of St. Antony

 * If we would despise the enemy, our thoughts must always be of God and our souls always glad with hope.
 * Book II, Chapter 10
 * To one whose mind is sound, letters are needless.
 * Book IV, Chapter 17
 * To those who have an active belief, reasoned proofs are needless and probably useless.
 * Book IV, Chapter 17
 * I am going the way of my fathers, as the Scripture says, for I see myself called by the Lord. Be you wary and undo not your long service of God, but be earnest to keep your strong purpose, as though you were but now beginning. You know the demons who plot against you, you know how savage they are and how powerless; therefore, fear them not. Let Christ be as the breath you breathe; in Him put your trust. Live as dying daily, heeding yourselves and remembering the counsels you have heard from me. … So do you also be earnest always to be in union first with the Lord and then with the Saints, that after death, they also may receive you into everlasting tabernacles as known friends. Ponder these things, and mean them. … And now God save you, children, for Antony departs and is with you no more.
 * Book IV, Chapter 20 (his last words), St. Athanasius. Trans. Dom J.B. McLaughlin, O.S.B. St. Antony of the Desert. Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc, 1995.
 * Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it, a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labour in vain.
 * The Living Testament: The Essential Writings of Christianity Since the Bible (1985), p. 66.

From Apophthegmata Patrum

 * as translated by Benedicta Ward (Cistercian Publications: 1975)

 * Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cells or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of inner peace. So like a fish going towards the sea, we must hurry to reach our cell, for fear that if we delay outside, we will lose our interior watchfulness.
 * Saying 10, Page 3

 * Abba Anthony said, "A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, 'You are mad, you are not like us.'"
 * Saying 25, Page 6

 * Hate the world and all that is in it. Hate all peace that comes from the flesh. Renounce this life, so that you may be alive to God.
 * Saying 33, Page 8

 * Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it, a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labor in vain.
 * Saying 35, Page 8

Quotes about Anthony the Great

 * As soon as this earth's great elder, the blessed Antony, who prayed for the whole world, departed, everything has been torn apart and is in anguish, and the Wrath devastates Egypt. While he was truly on earth, he extended his hands and prayed and spoke with God all day long. He did not let the Wrath descend on us. Lifting up his thoughts, he kept it from coming down. But now that those hands are closed, no one else can be found who might halt the violence of the Wrath that may devastate the whole region. I write to you therefore because the churches are filled with desolation, and the city streets are filled with blasphemies. Many crimes, fornication, all sorts of filth fill our city. The source of the corruption: the mad minds of the Arians. The Church of God has no ministers, the sanctuaries stand deserted. People have left the churches deserted, empty.
 * Serapion of Thmuis, Ep. ad discipulos Antonii 5, 7–8, 19–20. Translation and adaptation by

title: Anthony the Great


text:
A Fish Called Wanda

A Fish Called Wanda is a 1988 comedy film about three criminals and a lawyer who team up to commit armed robbery in London, then try to double cross each other for the loot.
 * Directed by Charles Crichton. Written by John Cleese and Charles Crichton.

A tale of murder, lust, greed, revenge, and seafood.

Otto

 * Oh you English are SO superior aren't you? Well, would you like to know where you'd be without US the good old U.S. of A. to protect you? I'll tell you. The smallest fucking province in the Russian Empire, that's where! So DON'T call me stupid, lady. Just THANK me! ...If it wasn't for us, you'd all be speaking German, singing, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!"

 * [On finding George has moved the jewels, forestalling his and Wanda's attempted double-cross] Okay...Okay... DISAPPOINTED!!! Son of a bitch! What do you have to do in this life to make people trust you?!?!...People are always takin' advantage of me!

 * You pompous, stuck-up, snot-nosed, English, giant, twerp, scumbag, fuck-face, dickhead, asshole!

 * You English! You think you're so superior, don't you? Well you're the filth of the planet! A bunch of pompous, badly dressed, poverty stricken, sexually repressed football hooligans!

 * [repeated] Don't call me stupid.

 * Oh look, it's K-K-Ken! C-C-Coming to k-k-kill me! How you gonna c-c-catch me, K-K-Ken?

Wanda

 * [to Otto] To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people. I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs!

 * [to Otto] Even if you were my brother, I'd still want to fuck you.

 * [to Otto] I knew you'd come along and fuck it up! I was dealing with something delicate. I'm setting up a guy who's important to us, who'll tell me where the loot is and if you'll be arrested, and you come loping in like Rambo without a jock strap and you dangle him out a fifth-floor window! Now, was that smart? Was it shrewd? Was it good tactics? Or was it stupid?

Dialogue

 * Otto: You really like animals, don't you, Ken? What's the attraction?
 * Ken: B-b-b-because you c-c-an trust them, and they don't sh-sh-sh-
 * Otto: Shit on you?
 * Ken: ... Shove off all the t-t-t-time.

 * Wanda: I'm sorry about Otto, Ken. I know he can be insensitive, but he's had a hard life. Dad used to beat him up.
 * Ken: Good!

 * Otto: [to Wanda about Archie] When you say "friendly", what are we talking about here? Cordial? Courteous? Supportive? What?
 * Wanda: I don't know. Let's just see what happens.
 * Otto: So, "friendly" might include actual, uh, what? Penetration?

 * Wendy: My father was in the Secret Service, Mr. Manfredjensenjen, and I happen to know perfectly well that you do not keep the general public informed when you are debriefing a KGB defector in a safe house.
 * Otto: Oh you don't?
 * Wendy: Not unless you're congenitally insane or irretrievably stupid, no.
 * Otto: Don't call me stupid.
 * Wendy: Why on Earth not?

 * Otto: You pompous, stuck-up, snot-nosed, English, giant, twerp, scumbag, fuck-face, dickhead, asshole.
 * Archie: How very interesting. You're a true vulgarian, aren't you?
 * Otto: You're the vulgarian, you fuck!

 * [Otto dangling Archie out of a window]
 * Archie: All right, all right, I apologize.
 * Otto: You're really sorry?
 * Archie: I'm really really sorry. I apologize unreservedly.
 * Otto: You take it back?
 * Archie: I do. I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.
 * Otto: [thinks a moment] Okay.

 * Archie: You make me feel free!
 * Wanda: Free?
 * Archie: Wanda, do you have any idea what it's like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of, of doing the wrong thing, of saying to someone, 'Are you married?' and hearing, ' My wife left me this morning,' or saying, uh, ' Do you have children?' and being told they all burned to death on Wednesday. You see, Wanda, we're all terrified of embarrassment. That's why we're so... dead. Most of my friends are dead, you know; we've these piles of corpses to dinner. But you're alive, God bless you, and I want to be, I'm so fed up with all this. I want to make love with you, Wanda. I'm a good lover - at least, used to be, back in the early 14th century. Can we go to bed?
 * Wanda: [kisses him] ...Yeah.

 * Wanda: But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?
 * Otto: [superior smile] Apes don't read philosophy.
 * Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it! Now let me correct you on a couple things, okay? Aristotle was not Belgian! The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself!" And the London Underground is not a political movement! Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked 'em up. Now. You have just assaulted the one man who can keep you out of jail and make you rich. So what are you going to do about it, huh? What would... an intellectual do? What would Plato do?
 * Otto: [mumbles] Apologize.
 * Wanda: Pardon me?
 * Otto: [mumbles] Apologize.
 * Wanda: What?
 * Otto: Apologize! I'm sorry.
 * Wanda: No. Not to me. To Archie. And make it good, or we're dead.

 * Otto: You know your problem? You don't like winners.
 * Archie: Winners?
 * Otto: Yeah, winners.
 * Archie: Winners, like... North Vietnam?
 * Otto: Shut up! We did not lose Vietnam! It was a tie!
 * Archie: [Cowboy-like drawl] I'm tellin' you, baby, they kicked your little ass there! Boy, they whooped yer hide real good!
 * Otto: No they didn't!!
 * Archie: Oh yes they did!
 * Otto: Oh no they... SHUT UP! Goodbye Archie.
 * Archie: Gonna shoot me Otto?
 * Otto: Er Yes. Yes 'fraid so old chap sorry.

 * Ken: What's h-happening?
 * Otto: Well, Ken. I'm going to ask you a series of questions while I eat my chips. First, who was the philosopher who developed the concept of the Superman in Thus Spake Zarathustra?
 * Ken: (dumbstruck)
 * Otto: No? That's a chip up the nose, I'm afraid. (sticks his chips up Ken's right nostril) Friedrich Nietzsche! Next. In which book did Nietzsche claim that all almost all higher culture is based on cruelty?
 * Ken: (opens mouth)
 * Otto: Are you thinking or in mid-stutter?
 * Ken: You're m-m-mad.
 * Otto: (sticks a chip up Ken's other nostril) Beyond Good and Evil! Guess I'll have to ask you an easy one, eh, Ken? OK. Um... Let me think, let me think. Um... Where are the diamonds? I'll give you a clue. Somewhere around the airport.
 * Ken: I'm n-n-n...
 * Otto: No hassle. There's plenty of time. I'll just sit here and eat my chips till you tell me. The English contribution to world cuisine: the chip. What do the English usually eat with chips to make them more interesting? Wait a moment! It's fish. Isn't it? [Dipping into the fish tank with a net] Oh! Here, boy. Down the hatch. [Eats the fish] Delicious!
 * Ken: You b-b-b...
 * Otto: Better eat the green one? OK. What's this one's name? Well, not Wanda, anyway. I'm going to call her Lunch. Hello, Lunch. Hello! [Eats the fish] Ew! Avoid the green ones - not ripe yet.

 * [In court]
 * Archie: Ms Gershwitz, do you remember where you were on the evening of the 7th?
 * Wanda: Yes, I was at the apartment.
 * Archie: And were you alone or was someone else there?
 * Wanda: No someone else was there.
 * Archie: And who was that?
 * Wanda: My brother.
 * Archie: Your brother, good and [stumbling] your brother? Are you sure it was your brother?
 * Judge: Mr. Leach I'm sure Ms. Gershwitz can recognize her own brother, after all she's had a relationship with him her whole life.
 * Archie: Yes, sorry your honour. Well, was anybody else there with you?
 * Wanda: Yes George was there. [adds] But he left about five to seven.
 * Archie: Wanda! [remembering himself] I wonder, how could you be sure it was five to seven?
 * Wanda: Because I looked at the clock. I remember looking at the clock and thinking, where could George be going with that sawn off shotgun?
 * Archie: Darling!
 * Judge: Mr. Leach, "Darling"?
 * Archie: Yes, dear?

 * Wanda: Otto, what are you doing?
 * Archie: It's a Buddhist meditation technique. Focuses your aggression. The monks used to do it before going into battle.
 * Wanda: What kind of Buddhism is this, Otto?

 * Wanda: What are you thinking, Archie?
 * Archie: I'm just trying to think of one good reason why I should take you to South America with me.
 * Wanda: How about... because I have the key to the safety deposit box?
 * Archie: (after a pause) That's a...
 * Archie/Wanda: Good reason! (laugh)

Cast

 * John Cleese - Archie Leach
 * Jamie Lee Curtis - Wanda Gershwitz
 * Kevin Kline - Otto
 * Michael Palin - Ken Pile
 * Maria Aitken - Wendy
 * Tom Georgeson - Georges Thomason

title: A Fish Called Wanda


text:
Persecution

Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group, including the inflicting of suffering, harassment, isolation, imprisonment, fear, pain or exclusion.

A

 * 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.
 * Susan B. Anthony, A defense of Elizabeth Cady Stanton against a motion to repudiate her Woman's Bible at a meeting of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association 1896 Convention, HWS, IV (1902), p. 263

B

 * 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."
 * Albert Barnes, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 450.

 * There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness.
 * William Blake, Annotations to Swedenborg (1788)

 * 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.
 * Jordan Boyd, "Indictment Of Texas Doctor Who Exposed Kids’ Transing Proves No One Is Safe From Biden’s Weaponized DOJ", The Federalist (June 7, 2024)

C

 * Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant.
 * Edwin Hubbell Chapin, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 450.

 * 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.
 * G. K. Chesterton, Heretics, Ch. XX - Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy (1905)

G

 * Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.
 * Emma Goldman, , Minorities Versus Majorities, 1910, Mother Earth Publishing''

 * 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.
 * Khalil Gibran, The Secrets of the Heart, trans. Anthony R. Ferris, p. 157 (1947)

I

 * [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.
 * Massimo Introvigne, "Tai Ji Men and Religious Persecution", Bitter Winter (2023)

 * 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.
 * Massimo Introvigne, "Church of Almighty God: The Economy of Refugees and Ill-Founded Accusations of Human Trafficking", Bitter Winter (July 18, 2024)

M

 * Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
 * Matthew 5:10 (NIV)

 * Any body of men who believe in hell will persecute whenever they have the power.
 * Joseph McCabe, What Gods Cost Man (1933)

 * 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.
 * H.L. Mencken, "Varieties of Envy", Second Mencken Chrestomathy.

 * 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.
 * John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion, pp. 36-37 (1859)

O

 * 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.
 * George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part III, Ch. 3 (1948)

P

 * Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
 * Paul of Tarsus, 2 Timothy 3:12

R

 * 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.
 * Marco Respinti, "How Tai Ji Men Dizi Can Regain Their Stolen Youth", Bitter Winter (August 2023)

T

 * To persecute Makes a faith hated, and is furthermore No perfect witness of a perfect faith In him who persecutes.
 * Alfred Tennyson, Queen Mary, Act III, scene 4

title: Persecution


text:
Talk:Star Trek

Reorganization
Note: It would be best to either reorganize certain sections by Season or Episode or by Character -- User:4.8.219.237 23:23, 7 Aug 2004

How to organize the quotes of specific characters? By stardate? By episodes? Or just leave the quotes in the order that they are and let people find the ones they like best?

I propose that each of us organize the quotes (again per specific character) by how significant the quotes are to us. As you edit the order of the quotes, and others rework your work, I think certain quotes will 'rise to the top'. For example, Kirk's quote about "risk is our business" is one that I believe would be on most fans top ten Kirk quotes. If you rearrange Kirk's quotes, perhaps this quote will be in your top 10. In my opinion, having the best quotes at the top - is the best way to organize the quotes of specific characters. It may never settle down as to what are the best Kirk quotes, Spock quotes, etc, but I'd rather make such an attempt than having the quotes arranged by stardate or episode. -- User:24.98.104.230

Cleanup
This page needs cleanup... badly... -- User:128.195.64.90 18:55, 19 Aug 2004

that was fun
I can't believe i wasn't logged in for all that. For the record 24.118.75.250 is me. I also can't believe i just only edited the TOS section. So.. I am further postponing my ST:TOS marathon to edit the other quote sections. But not for a hour or so; i need a break. comment if you have any objections (to the editing, not the star trek watching ;)

--Flashmorbid 09:34, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Removed the "unknown stardate" note from all afflicted; it's even more worthless than the actual stardate. honestly are those even worth keeping? IMHO the season and episode number would be infinitely more valuable.
 * moved character article links to section division title.
 * alot of citation consitency problems
 * Alot of these quotes are really crummy but i left them all. If one you added is apparently missing it's because i moved it from "dialogues" to the appropriate section; there were a ton of one person quotes in dialogues, and vice versa.
 * These ought to be alphabtised. I like the emergent "preferential" order suggested above however there are just too many for that. Maybe another day i'll get to that.

P.S. i think these shoulded be divided into separate articles based on series. as such, where do the movie quotes go? --Flashmorbid 09:38, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

There's one quote I really like; the episode was the one where Wesley traps his mother inside a warp bubble; anyway, the quote goes something like this:
 * [F/X: Loud explosion shakes the ship]
 * Dr. Crusher (to computer): What was that?
 * Computer: All your base are belong to us!
 * Dr. Crusher: Cause?
 * Computer: Someone set up us the bomb!
 * Dr. Crusher: Show me.
 * [Display: Enterprised superimposed on a slightly smaller bubble]
 * Computer: Ship's parameters exceed the dimensions of the known Universe.

And there is one quote I like especially well as well. It's Tuvok who says it in Star Trek Voyager - but I'm not sure in which episode or season. Here it goes:
 * Tuvok: "I have no intention of continuing this conversation any further".

The reason for why I have not posted it in the article is that I'm not sure that that's exactly what he says. I hope someone can confirm it and post it for real.

Form a new section called Star Trek Movies
There are lots of quotes building up in Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generations. I propose we add a new section called Star Trek Movies and move all movies from both sections there. This is the most common way that other websites section off the franchise, such as the official site, startrek.com

Jean-Luc Picard
shouldn't Jean-Luc Picard be in the series and movie pages? 70.55.84.42 08:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

title: Talk:Star Trek


text:
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Talk:Ho Chí Minh

A note or my own edification: The categorization under "Ho" is correct, as Ho is his surname.

isn't his name spelled Ho Chi Minh?
 * I believe so. Moved.  Stancollins 20:13, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

"I for one would rather sniff French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life."

I've never heard such a stupid thing like that from Ho Chi Minh. I'm a VIETNAMESE, and I know what our leader said. He didn't say that, in Vietnamese or other languages.

This quote MUST be removed from this article.

 * Is this guy serious?!?. This is, in fact, a very well known quote, expressive of Vietnamese concerns about Chinese intentions and the nationalistic elements of the NLF. Personally, I can't imagine why he/she is offended, except perhaps the shock of discovering a scatological bent in Uncle Ho's vernacular. "I'm Vietnamese, and I know what our leader said." Take it up with the Politburo, comrade. For the quote, see Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking Press, 1983)p. 153. 192.43.227.18 12:14, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

The version I heard went like "It's better to eat the French dung for 100 years than the Chinese dung for 1000 years. 208.101.169.103 23:00, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Where is the source of this quote? A Vietnamese blogger did some research and it turns out that the earliest source for this quote he can identify is the 1952 work by Paul Mus, Viêt-Nam: Sociologie d’une Guerre (Paris, Éditions du Seuil), in which Mus claims to have heard from “a good source” that Hồ Chí Minh said the final sentence – “Plutôt flairer un peu la crotte des Français que manger toute notre vie celle des Chinois.” - not the extended paragraph that Karnow later provided. Paul Mus was a French scholar, and after WW II he played an important role in attempting to gain the return of Vietnam for the French. In other words, Mus was deeply invested in the colonial enterprise. Considering the obscurity and the bias around the origin of this quote, it's authenticity is highly dubious. It was originally used by the French as a political slogan to lobby for a continuous colonization of Vietnam under the French, and now it is re-invented as a political slogan to counter the Chinese business ventures in Vietnam. What an irony!

http://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/ho-chi-minh-said-what/ --109.91.7.81 17:45, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Eating Chinese shit quote has been challenged by a historian from the University of Hawaii, suggested that it was faked by a French colonialist
http://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/chiang-kai-shek-and-vietnam-in-1945/

https://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/ho-chi-minh-said-what/

The blog can be used as a valid source since it's a notable historian who runs the blog, Professor Liam Kelley of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Le Minh Khai is the name he uses for his blog.

http://manoa.hawaii.edu/history/node/44

Rajmaan (talk) 13:37, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

"It is not the American people who are bombing us..."
Attributed quote (in bold):
 * Our guide tells us that while the Americans were bombing Hanoi, children were reading the words of Ho Chi Minh in bomb shelters: "It is not the American people who are bombing us, it is the American Imperialists. We must learn to love the Americans because they will return after the war."

However, I didn't put it in the article, as I couldn't find another source besides this quote from somebody quoting a tourist guide. Does anyone know if he said something like this? Is there a source? --Singkong2005 04:52, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Unsourced

 * "Nothing is more valuable than independence and freedom."
 * "Those who wish to seize Vietnam, must kill us to the last man, woman, and child"
 * "I follow only one party: the Vietnamese party."
 * "You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win." - referring to France and America in their wars in Vietnam.
 * "It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery!"
 * "The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of United States aggression they have risen up, united as one man."
 * "We have to win independence at any cost, even if the Truong Son mountains burn."
 * "In (Lenin's Theses on the National and Colonial Questions) there were political terms that were difficult to understand. But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy. Sitting by myself in my room, I would shout as if I were addressing large crowds: "Dear martyr compatriots! This is what we need, this is our path to liberation!" Since then (the 1920s) I had entire confidence in Lenin, in the Third International!"
 * "When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out."
 * "It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me."
 * "Remember, the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability."
 * "My only desire is that all of our Party and people, closely united in struggle, construct a peaceful, unified, independent, democratic and prosperous, and make a valiant contribution to the world Revolution." (Hanoi, 10 May 1969.)
 * "I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid."
 * Reported reaction to the overthrow and assassination of Ngo Dienh Diem.
 * "Vietnam has faced many conquerors over the centuries. The Mongols, the French, the Japanese, the Americans. They come and go. Unfortunately for us, the Chinese will always be there."

title: Talk:Ho Chí Minh