text:
Charles Lindbergh

Charles Augustus Lindbergh II (4 February 1902 – 26 August 1974) was an American aviator, author, inventor, military officer, explorer, and social activist who piloted the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. An isolationist prior to the US entry into World War II, and in later years an environmental activist, he was the husband of Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Quotes

 * The readiness to blame a dead pilot for an accident is nauseating, but it has been the tendency ever since I can remember. What pilot has not been in positions where he was in danger and where perfect judgment would have advised against going? But when a man is caught in such a position he is judged only by his error and seldom given credit for the times he has extricated himself from worse situations. Worst of all, blame is heaped upon him by other pilots, all of whom have been in parallel situations themselves, but without being caught in them. If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one's outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. Why should we look for his errors when a brave man dies? Unless we can learn from his experience, there is no need to look for weakness. Rather, we should admire the courage and spirit in his life. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?
 * Journal entry (26 August 1938); later published in The Wartime Journals (1970)

 * Walked to Bill Castle's home at 6:00 — about ten minutes from the Anchorage. Fulton Lewis was the only other person there. The three of us had dinner together and discussed the European situation and the action this country should take if war breaks out over there. We are disturbed about the effect of the Jewish influence in our press, radio and motion pictures. It may become very serious. Lewis told us of one instance where the Jewish advertising firms threatened to remove all their advertising from the Mutual system if a certain feature were permitted to go on the air. The threat was powerful enough to have the feature removed.
 * Journal entry (23 August 1939); later published in The Wartime Journals (1970)

 * The pressure for war is high and mounting. The people are opposed to it, but the Administration seems to have ‘the bit in its teeth’ and is hell-bent on its way to war. Most of the Jewish interests in the country are behind war, and they control a huge part of our press and radio and most of our motion pictures. There are the ‘intellectuals’ and the ‘Anglophiles,’ and the British agents who are allowed free rein, the international financial interests, and many others.
 * Journal entry (1 May 1941); later published in The Wartime Journals (1970)

 * Shall we now give up the independence we have won, and crusade abroad in a utopian attempt to force our ideas on the rest of the world; or shall we use air power, and the other advances of modern warfare, to guard and strengthen the independence of our nation?
 * A speech on “Air Power” (29 August 1941)

 * The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration. Instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.
 * Speech in Des Moines, Iowa lobbying for American isolationism (11 September 1941)

 * Now, all that I feared would happen has happened. We are at war all over the world, and we are unprepared for it from either a spiritual or a material standpoint. Fortunately, in spite of all that has been said, the oceans are still difficult to cross; and we have the time to adjust and prepare... We can, of course, be raided; but unless we let ourselves go completely to pieces internally, we cannot be invaded successfully. But this is only one part of the picture. We are in a war which requires us to attack if we are to win it. We must attack in Asia and in Europe, in fact, all over the world. That means raising and equipping an army of many millions and building shipping, which we have not now got. And after that, if we are to carry through our present war aims, it probably means the bloodiest and most devastating war of all history.
 * Journal entry (11 December 1941); later published in The Wartime Journals (1970)

 * We talk about spreading democracy and freedom all over the world, but they are to us words rather than conditions. We haven't even got them here in America, and the farther we get into this war the farther we get away from democracy and freedom. Where is it leading us to, and when will it end? The war might stop this winter, but that is improbable. It may go on for fifty years or more. That also is improbable. The elements are too conflicting and confused to form any accurate judgment of its length. There may be a series of wars, one after another, going on indefinitely. Possibly the world will come to its senses sooner than I expect. But, as I have often said, the environment of human life has changed more rapidly and more extensively in recent years than it has ever changed before. When environment changes, there must be a corresponding change in life. That change must be so great that it is not likely to be completed in a decade or in a generation.
 * Journal entry (11 December 1941); later published in The Wartime Journals (1970)

 * Here was a place where men and life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation. How could any reward in national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of such a place?
 * After visiting the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Germany, as quoted in The New York Times (20 April 1980)

 * The intense artillery fire has stripped the trees of leaves and branches so that the outline of the coral ridge itself can be seen silhouetted against the sky. Since I have been on Owi Island, at irregular intervals through the night and day, the sound of our artillery bombarding this Japanese stronghold has floated in across the water. This afternoon, I stood on the cliff outside our quarters (not daring to sit on the ground because of the danger of typhus) and watched the shells bursting on the ridge. For weeks that handful of Japanese soldiers, variously estimated at between 250 and 700 men, has been holding out against overwhelming odds and the heaviest bombardment our well-supplied guns can give them. If positions were reversed and our troops held out so courageously and well, their defense would be recorded as one of the most glorious examples of tenacity, bravery, and sacrifice in the history of our nation. But, sitting in the security and relative luxury of our quarters, I listen to American Army officers refer to these Japanese soldiers as "yellow sons of bitches." Their desire is to exterminate the Jap ruthlessly, even cruelly. I have not heard a word of respect or compassion spoken of our enemy since I came here. It is not the willingness to kill on the part of our soldiers which most concerns me. That is an inherent part of war. It is our lack of respect for even the admirable characteristics of our enemy — for courage, for suffering, for death, for his willingness to die for his beliefs, for his companies and squadrons which go forth, one after another, to annihilation against our superior training and equipment. What is courage for us is fanaticism for him. We hold his examples of atrocity screamingly to the heavens while we cover up our own and condone them as just retribution for his acts.
 * Journal entry (21 July 1944); later published in The Wartime Journals (1970)

 * What the German has done to the Jew in Europe, we are doing to the Jap in the Pacific.
 * Journal entry (21 July 1944)

 * It was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of men — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same time.
 * Thoughts on his first parachute jump in The Spirit of St Louis (1953)

 * Life — a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.
 * "Is Civilization Progress?" in Reader's Digest  (July 1964)

 * If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
 * "Is Civilization Progress?" in Reader's Digest  (July 1964)

 * I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.
 * Of Flight and Life (1948)

 * The wild world is the human world. Having evolved in it for millions of centuries, we are not far removed by a cloth of civilization. It is packed into our genes. In fact, the more power-driven, complex and delicate our civilization becomes, the more likelihood arises that a collapse will force us back to wildness. There is in wildness a natural wisdom that shapes all Earth's experiments with life. Can we tap this wisdom without experiencing the agony of reverting to wildness? Can we combine it with intellectual developments of which we feel so proud, use it to redirect our modern trends before they lead to a worse breakdown than past civilizations have experienced? I believe we can, and that to do so we must learn from the primitive.
 * "The Wisdom of Wilderness" in LIFE (22 December 1967)

 * Looking at the mirror of life first caused me to question our civilization's trends. During years spent flying civil air routes and on military missions, I watched changes of shade and texture on the great surface below my wings. Stumplands appeared where forests were. Lakes climbed mountainsides. Ditches gridded marshlands: dust hazed prairies, highways, and power lines kept scarring ground from horizons to horizons. I watched crossroads become villages; villages, towns; towns turn into cities; suburbs spill over hills. Wherever I landed I heard similar reports: populations were expanding, farms spreading, timber prices rising with new construction. Speedboats and four-wheel-drive vehicles carried hunters into areas previously difficult to reach, while aircraft brought every latitude and longitude within fortnight-vacation range. As a result, virgin wilderness vanished, and wild animals dwindled in numbers. Now the American eagle is verging on extinction. Even the polar bear on its ice floes has become easy game for flying sportsmen. A peninsula named Udjung Kulon holds the last two or three dozen Javan rhinoceroses. The last herd of Arabian oryx has been machine-gunned by a sheik. Blue whales have nearly been harpooned out of their oceans. Pollution ruins bays and rivers. Refuse litters beaches. Dam projects threaten Colorado canyons, Hudson valleys, every place of natural beauty that can be a reservoir for power. Obviously, the scientific progress so alluring to me is destroying qualities of greater worth. Of course, virgin wilderness had to retreat as civilization advanced. That was inevitable. But I did not consider its possible disappearance. The world seemed so large I had assumed that portions would remain in primitive state, attainable at reasonable cost in time and effort. Days spent in laboratories, factories and offices were lightened by intuitive contact with wilderness outside. Had the choice confronted me, I would not have traded nature's miracles of life for all of science's toys. Was not my earth's surface more important than increasing the speed of transport and visiting the moon and Mars? If I were entering adulthood now instead of in the environment of 50 years ago, I would choose a career that kept me in contact with nature more than science. This is a choice an individual still can make—but no longer mankind in general. Too few natural areas remain. Both by intent and indifference we have insulated ourselves from the wilderness that produced us. Our emphasis of science has resulted in alarming rises in world populations that demand an ever-increasing emphasis of science to improve their standards and maintain their vigor. I have been forced to the conclusion that an overemphasis of science weakens human character and upsets life's essential balance. Science breeds technology. Technology leads to infinite complication. Examples are everywhere: in the intricacy of government and in that of business corporations: in automation and labor relations; in war, diplomacy, taxation, legislation, in almost every field of modern man's routine. From the growth of cities to that of military power, from medical requirements to social-welfare benefits, when progress is plotted against time, exponential curves result with which we cannot long conform. But what action should scientific man prescribe as a result of the curves he plots? How is their direction to be changed without another breakdown and return to wildness? Suppose technologists conclude theoretically that they are destroying their own culture. Are they capable of taking effective action to prevent such destruction? The failures of previous civilizations, and the crises existing for our own, show that man has not evolved the ability to cope with limitless complication. He has not discovered how to control his sciences' parabolas. Here I believe the human intellect can learn from primitive nature, for nature was conceived in cosmic power and thrives on infinite complication. No problem has been too difficult for it to solve. From the dynamics of an atom, nature produces the tranquility of a flower, the joy of a porpoise, the intellect of man–the miracle of life. In wilderness, I sense the miracle of life, and behind it, our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia. The construction of an analogue computer or a supersonic airplane is simple when compared to the mixture of space and evolutionary eons represented by a cell. In primitive rather than in civilized surroundings I grow aware of man's evolving status, as though I were suddenly released from a hypnotic state. Life itself becomes the standard of all judgement. How could I have overlooked, even momentarily, such an obvious fact?
 * "The Wisdom of Wilderness" in LIFE (22 December 1967)

 * I feel transported from the modern to a Mesozoic era, freed from the blindness caused by our clocked environment of time. Ages turn to seconds as I voyage back and forth. Man becomes a recent advent among Earth's contending forms, and civilization but a flash in evolutionary progress. Surrounded by wildness I become less aware of my individuality than the life stream individuals manifest: that tenuous, immortal quality probing an unknown future and trailing, unbroken, beyond the vaguest past. Thus stripped of my culture's armor, I am an animal among various others, emerged to represent my species' progress, the momentary form and outlook of mankind. Whether in Florida's Everglades, Tanzania's Serengeti, or Java's Udjung Kulon, I see animals about me as earthly experiments with life; and so I feel myself. Each of us represents a life stream attempting to survive, to take advantage of every opportunity arising. The heron lengthens its legs to wade. The lion sharpens its teeth to kill. The rhinoceros thickens its skin for protection. Man develops his intellect to gain domination of the Earth, and by comparison, the speed with which he has gained this domination is astounding–another of those exponential curves that mount like an explosion. In civilization's sky-scraping cities I feel my superiority to lower animals confirmed by man's unchallenged rule. I view other creatures with a god's aloofness; for I have intellect, and they, no more than instinct. But surrounded by wildness, representing the human life stream with diverse competing life streams close at hand, I start doubting my superiority. I am struck by the physical perfection of other species in contrast to my own, amazed at the beauty, health and balance nature has achieved through instinct's influence. I ask myself what the intellect has done to warrant its prestige. As Earth's most messy, destructive and defective animal, man's record gives him little cause for pride. Our present intellectual superiority is no guarantee of great wisdom or survival power in our genes. Anthropologists often warn that Homo sapiens may be only an overspecialized branch on the trunk of evolution.
 * "The Wisdom of Wilderness" in LIFE (22 December 1967)

 * Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation, in turn, becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on to the future.
 * New York Times Magazine (23 May 1971)

 * Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values... God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.
 * As quoted in Reader's Digest (July 1972)

 * I realized that the future of aviation, to which I had devoted so much of my life, depended less on the perfection of aircraft than on preserving the epoch-evolved environment of life, and that this was true of all technological progress.
 * Forword to The Gentle Tasady : A Stone Age People in the Philippine Rain Forest (1975) by John Nance, a book on the Tasaday of Mindanao (7 April 1974)

 * I owned the world that hour as I rode over it... free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds, but how inseparably I was bound to them.
 * On flying over the Rocky Mountains, as quoted in Lindbergh (1978) by Leonard Mosley

 * Living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming of impossible future conquest...
 * As quoted in Lindbergh (1998) by A. Scott Berg, p. 3

 * Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.
 * As quoted in Lindbergh (1998) by A. Scott Berg, p. 510

 * Is he alone who has courage on his right hand and faith on his left hand?
 * As quoted in 1927 (2000) by Robert P. Fitton

 * What kind of man would live where there is no danger? I don't believe in taking foolish chances. But nothing can be accomplished by not taking a chance at all.
 * As quoted in Lindbergh: Flight's Enigmatic Hero (2002) by Von Hardesty

 * Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.
 * As quoted in Lindbergh: Flight's Enigmatic Hero (2002) by Von Hardesty

Aviation, Geography, and Race (1939)

 * Reader's Digest (November 1939), pp. 64-67

 * Aviation has struck a delicately balanced world, a world where stability was already giving way to the pressure of new dynamic forces, a world dominated by a mechanical, materialist, Western European civilization.

 * Aviation seems almost a gift from heaven to those Western nations who were already the leaders of their era, strengthening their leadership, their confidence, their dominance over other peoples. It is a tool specially shaped for Western hands, a scientific art which others only copy in a mediocre fashion; another barrier between the teeming millions of Asia and the Grecian inheritance of Europe — one of those priceless possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown.

 * A great industrial nation may conquer the world in the span of a single life, but its Achilles' heel is time. Its children, what of them? The second and third generations, of what numbers and stuff will they be? How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life. This is our modern danger — one of the waxen wings of flight. It may cause our civilization to fall unless we act quickly to counteract it, unless we realize that human character is more important than efficiency, that education consists of more than the mere accumulation of knowledge.

 * Air power is new to all our countries. It brings advantages to some and weakens others; it calls for readjustment everywhere. If only there were some way to measure the changing character of men, some yardstick to reapportion influence among the nations, some way to demonstrate in peace the strength of arms in war. But with all of its dimensions, its clocks, and weights, and figures, science fails us when we ask a measure for the rights of men. They cannot be judged by numbers, by distance, weight, or time; or by counting heads without a thought of what may lie within. Those intangible qualities of character, such as courage, faith, and skill, evade all systems, slip through the bars of every cage. They can be recognized, but not measured.

 * The forces of Hannibal, Drake and Napoleon moved at best with the horses' gallop or the speed of wind on sail. Now, aviation brings a new concept of time and distance to the affairs of men. It demands adaptability to change, places a premium on quickness of thought and speed of action. Military strength has become more dynamic and less tangible. A new alignment of power has taken place, and there is no adequate peacetime measure for its effect on the influence of nations. There seems no way to agree on the rights it brings to some and takes from others.

 * Our civilization depends on peace among Western nations, and therefore on united strength, for Peace is a virgin who dare not show her face without Strength, her father, for protection. We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races. We need peace to let our best men live to work out those more subtle, but equally dangerous, problems brought by this new environment in which we dwell, to give us time to turn this materialistic trend, to stop prostrating ourselves before this modern idol of mechanical efficiency, to find means of combining freedom, spirit, and beauty with industrial life — a peace which will bring character, strength, and security back to Western peoples.

Autobiography of Values (1978)

 * In some future incarnation from our life stream, we may even understand the reason for our existence in forms of earthly life. The growing knowledge of science does not refute man's intuition of the mystical. Whether outwardly or inwardly, whether in space or in time, the farther we penetrate the unknown, the vaster and more marvelous it becomes. Only in the twentieth century do we realize that space is not empty, that it is packed with energy; it may be existence's source. Then, if space has produced existence and the form of man, can we deduce from it a form for God?

Near the fall's brink, I saw death as death cannot be seen. I stared at the very end of life, and at life that forms beyond, at the fact of immortality. Dark water bent, broke, disintegrated, transformed to apparition — a tall, stately ghost soul emerged from body, and the finite individuality of the whole becomes the infinite individuality of particles. Mist drifted, disappeared in air, a vanishing of spirit. Far below in the valley, I saw another river, reincarnated from the first, its particles reorganized to form a second body. It carried the same name. It was similar in appearance. It also ended at a lava brink. '''Flow followed fall, and fall followed flow as I descended the mountainside. The river was mortal and immortal as life, as becoming.'''
 * I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves? ... As one identity, I was born in AD 1902. But as AD twentieth-century man, I am billions of years old. The life I consider as myself has existed though past eons with unbroken continuity. Individuals are custodians of the life stream — temporal manifestations of far greater being, forming from and returning to their essence like so many dreams. ... I recall standing on the edge of a deep valley in the Hawaiian island of Maui, thinking that the life stream is like a mountain river — springing from hidden sources, born out of the earth, touched by stars, merging, blending, evolving in the shape momentarily seen. It is molecules probing through time, found smooth-flowing, adjusted to shaped and shaping banks, roiled by rocks and tree trunks — composed again. Now it ends, apparently, at a lava brink, a precipitous fall.

 * I grow aware of various forms of man and of myself. I am form and I am formless, I am life and I am matter, mortal and immortal. I am one and many — myself and humanity in flux. I extend a multiple of ways in experience in space. I am myself now, lying on my back in the jungle grass, passing through the ether between satellites and stars. My aging body transmits an ageless life stream. Molecular and atomic replacement change life's composition. Molecules take part in structure and in training, countless trillions of them. After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars.

Quotes about Lindbergh

 * Lindbergh's arrival in Paris became the defining moment of his life, that event on which all his future actions hinged — as though they were but a predestined series of equal but opposite reactions, fraught with irony... In the spring of 1927, Lindbergh had been too consumed by what he called "the single objective of landing my plane at Paris" to have considered its aftermath. "To plan beyond that had seemed an act of arrogance I could not afford," he would later write. Even if he had thought farther ahead, however, he could never have predicted the unprecedented global response to his arrival. By that year, radio, telephones, radiographs, and the Bartlane Cable Process could transmit images and voices around the world within seconds. What was more, motion pictures had just mastered the synchronization of sound, allowing dramatic moments to be preserved in all their glory and distributed worldwide. For the first time all of civilization could share as one the sights and sounds of an event — almost instantaneously and simultaneously. And in this unusually good-looking, young aviator — of apparently impeccable character — the new technology found its first superstar. The reception in Paris was only a harbinger of the unprecedented worship people would pay Lindbergh for years. Without either belittling or aggrandizing the importance of his flight, he considered it part of the continuum of human endeavor, and that he was, after all, only a man. The public saw more than that... Universally admired, Charles Lindbergh became the most celebrated living person ever to walk the earth.
 * A. Scott Berg in Lindbergh (1998)

 * As the first American airman to exhibit "the right stuff," Lindbergh inspired his country's first astronauts by sheer example. But more than that, he was — unknown to the public — the man most responsible for securing the funding that underwrote the research of Dr. Robert H. Goddard, the inventor of the modern rocket. A friend of the first man to fly an airplane, Lindbergh lived long enough in a fast-moving world to befriend the first man to walk on the moon.
 * A. Scott Berg in Lindbergh (1998)

 * Lindbergh believed all the elements of the earth and heavens are connected, through space and time. The configurations of molecules in each moment help create the next. Thus he considered his defining moment just another step in the development of aviation and exploration — a summit built on all those that preceded it and a springboard to all those that would follow. Only by looking back, Lindbergh believed, could mankind move forward. "In some future incarnation from our life stream," he wrote in later years, "we may understand the reason for our existence in forms of earthly life."
 * A. Scott Berg in Lindbergh (1998)

 * No source, however, captures the war hates and war crimes of this merciless struggle more soberly than Charles Lindbergh's diary. For over four months in mid-1944, Lindbergh lived and flew as a civilian observer with U.S. forces based in New Guinea, and as the weeks passed he became deeply troubled, not by the willingness to kill on the part of the soldiers, which he accepted as an inherent part of the war, but by the utter contempt in which Allied fighting men held their Japanese adversaries. The famous "Lone Eagle," whose isolationist sentiments had placed him among the conservative opponents of President Roosevelt's policies, really hearkened back to what [J. Glenn Gray] has called the more chivalrous tradition of the professional militarist, who accepts the necessity of war while maintaining respect for his adversaries, recognizing courage as courage and duty as duty, irrespective of the uniform worn. Lindbergh found no such sentiments among the Allied forces in the Pacific, where officers and enlisted men alike saw the enemy simply as animals and "yellow sons of bitches," and his detailed journal may be the most forthright firsthand account available of the "other" side of the Pacific War.
 * John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (1986), p. 69

 * On May 18, 1944, about two weeks after Lindbergh had tied in with a Marine unit, he recorded that the camps were full of reports of Japanese torture and the beheading of captured American pilots. A month later, on June 21, he summarized the conversation of an American general who told how an unsuspecting Japanese prisoner was given a cigarette and then seized from behind and had his throat "slit from ear to ear" as a demonstration of how to kill Japanese. Lindbergh's objections were met with tolerant scorn and pity.
 * John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (1986), p. 69-70

 * On August 30, Lindbergh visited Tarawa, recalled the terrible casualties there, and told of a naval officer who lined up the few Japanese captured, kept those who could speak English for questioning, and had the rest killed. In early September, he noted that on some islands Marines actually dug up dead bodies in their search for gold teeth. Elsewhere they collected noses as well as ears, teeth, and skulls. When Lindbergh finally left the Pacific islands and cleared customs in Hawaii, he was asked if he had any bones in his baggage. It was, he was told, a routine question.
 * John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (1986), p. 71

 * In fact a de facto state of war between Germany and the United States had existed since September 11, 1941, when Roosevelt had authorized American naval commanders who encountered German vessels to fire at them 'on sight'. This was possible because the tide of American public opinion had been running against the Axis powers, despite the best efforts of isolationists like Senator Hiram W. Johnson, neutralists like the lawyer and legal historian Charles Warren and crypto-fascists like the aviator Charles Lindbergh. Ordinary Americans did not want war. Many believed they had been duped into the last war by the machinations of British imperialists and North-Eastern business interests. They were strongly attracted to the neutralists' idea that by prohibiting military supplies or loans to combatant countries Congress could avoid another such entanglement. But they supported American rearmament from as early as 193 6. They clearly favoured Britain over Germany from 1938 onwards. Above all, Americans did not want to see an Axis victory - and by September 1939 a majority of voters saw that this was best insured against by supplying arms and material to Britain. The German victories of 1940 caused that view to spread. There was public support, too, for the sanctions imposed on Japan which set the course for Pearl Harbor.
 * Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 526

 * Charles is life itself — pure life, force, like sunlight — and it is for this that I married him and this that holds me to him — caring always, caring desperately what happens to him and whatever he happens to be involved in.
 * Anne Morrow Lindbergh in War Within and Without (1980)

 * Charles was a stubborn Swede, you know, and he himself never felt the need to explain his feelings about where he stood and about past statements. But I feel free now to elaborate on his actual attitudes. He never wanted to be regarded as a hero or leader, and he never had political ambitions. His prewar isolationist speeches were given in all sincerity for what he thought was the good of the country and the world. ... He was accused of being anti-Semetic, but in the 45 years I lived with him I never heard him make a remark against the Jews, not a crack or joke, and neither did any of our children.
 * Anne Morrow Lindbergh in The New York Times (20 April 1980)

 * No one I know of has foreseen an America like the one we live in today. No one (except perhaps the acidic H. L. Mencken, who famously described American democracy as “the worship of jackals by jackasses”) could have imagined that the 21st-century catastrophe to befall the U.S.A., the most debasing of disasters, would appear not, say, in the terrifying guise of an Orwellian Big Brother but in the ominously ridiculous commedia dell’arte figure of the boastful buffoon. How naïve I was in 1960 to think that I was an American living in preposterous times! How quaint! But then what could I know in 1960 of 1963 or 1968 or 1974 or 2001 or 2016? ... However prescient The Plot Against America might seem to you, there is surely one enormous difference between the political circumstances I invent there for the U.S. in 1940 and the political calamity that dismays us so today. It's the difference in stature between a President Lindbergh and a President Trump. Charles Lindbergh, in life as in my novel, may have been a genuine racist and an anti-Semite and a white supremacist sympathetic to Fascism, but he was also — because of the extraordinary feat of his solo trans-Atlantic flight at the age of 25 — an authentic American hero 13 years before I have him winning the presidency. ... Trump, by comparison, is a massive fraud, the evil sum of his deficiencies, devoid of everything but the hollow ideology of a megalomaniac.
 * Philip Roth, comparing Lindbergh's leadership of an "America First" movement with that of Donald Trump, in responses to being asked about foreseeing an America such as now exists in his earlier writings, including his alternate-history novel The Plot Against America (2004) where Lindbergh defeats FDR for the presidency in 1940, as quoted in "No Longer Writing, Philip Roth Still Has Plenty to Say" by Charles Mcgrath, in The New York Times (16 January 2018)

 * The people of England are about finished with him. Americans are beginning to feel the same way, and the halo of hero worship around Lindbergh's head is getting pretty well tarnished.
 * New Jersey Attorney General David P. Wilentz (December 1936), quoted in Radio and the Jews: The Untold Story of How Radio Influenced the Image of Jews (2007) by David S. Siegel and Susan Siegel, p. 45

title: Charles Lindbergh


text:
Alexander Mackenzie

Alexander Mackenzie, PC (January 28, 1822 – April 17, 1892), was a building contractor and newspaper editor, and was the second Prime Minister of Canada, from November 7, 1873 to October 8, 1878.

Quotes

 * We shall all respect the principles of each other and do nothing that would be regarded as an act of oppression to any portion of the people.
 * Speech to the House of Commons (March 10, 1875)

 * How I wished for manhood and the opportunity to wreak my vengeance on my country's oppressors
 * his lecture Sarnia April 1858 "Anglo-Saxon race" reflecting on his youthhood readings of Bruce and Wallace - Buckingham page 137

 * Loyalty to the Queen does not require a man to bow down to her manservant, her maidservant, her ox... or her ass!
 * responding to McDougall who claimed he was disloyal for not supporting the Government - Lambton debates 1867 - Buckingham page 229

 * Walk into my parlour said the spider to the fly
 * August 1872 debate Sarnia - to Macdonald in declining Macdonald's offer for Mackenzie to join the Coalition Cabinet in 1865 upon George Brown's resignation in protest - Buckingham page 324

 * I have always held those political opinions which point to the universal brotherhood of man, no matter in what rank of life he may have taken his origin
 * Speech to Working Men of Dundee July 14, 1875 - Speeches of Alexander Mackenzie during his recent visit...page 43

 * We shall all respect the principles of each other and do nothing that would be regarded as an act of oppression to any portion of the people
 * Speech to the House of Commons, March 10, 1875

 * To the working men of Dundee...I press upon them the absolute necessity, as the very foundation of success in life, that they shall assume an erect position; that they shall respect their own manhood; and they will soon compel all other people to respect them
 * Speech to Working Men of Dundee July 14, 1875 Evoking Burn's A Man's A Man For A' That - Speeches of Alexander Mackenzie during his recent visit...page 44

 * No Canadian government, whatever political party, will attempt to hinder the extension of the true principle of free trade all over the world
 * Speech The Banquet in Dundee July 13, 1875 - Speeches of Alexander Mackenzie during his recent visit...page 34

 * ...the Reformers of this country will remember... with gratitude, that it was the great leaders of the Reform Party who first gave perfect civil and religious rights to the people of Canada
 * Speech 1877

 * On all questions of principle, the party is not only Liberal, but clear grit in the real sense of the word.... pure sand without a particle of dirt in it!
 * on campaign trail for Ontario provincial election in Strathroy 1871 Thomson

 * Civil servants should keep out of politics and politics should be kept out of the civil service
 * House of Commons speech 1875 Thomson page 233

 * I would rather sacrifice political position tomorrow than do an unworthy act which would subject me to the censure of an honest man

 * And yet they say there is no God!
 * to Chief Justice Sir Louis Davies gazing up at the stars on a clear, crisp night overlooking the Ottawa River behind Parliament - story related by Davies in newspaper article during banquet - Library and Archives Canada

 * I determined to rule in broad daylight or not at all
 * letter a friend September 21, 1878 reflecting on his election loss Buckingham page 518

 * I repent it
 * having not spoken in the last two parliamentary sessions; his last words in Parliament 1891 - relating to a high spender that he regretted having appointed to the Senate 1875 Buckingham page 632

His Character

 * W.L. Mackenzie (Canada West/Ontario Leader of 1837 Rebellion) – “He is every whit a self-made, self-educated man. Has large mental capacity and indomitable energy.” (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 120)

 * Lord Dufferin (Governor General) – “as pure as crystal, and as true as steel, with lots of common sense.” (Thomson 1960, p.211)

 * Chief Justice Sir Louis Davies – “the best debater the House of Commons has ever known.” (Mackenzie's newspaper scrapbook "Days of Giants", Library and Archives Canada)

 * Sir Wilfred Laurier (Prime Minister) – “one of the truest and strongest characters to be met within Canadian history. He was endowed with a warm heart and a copious and rich fancy, though veiled by a somewhat reticent exterior, and he was of friends the most tender and true.” (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p.633)

 * Sir George Ross (Federal Cabinet, Premier of Ontario)– “Mackenzie was sui generis a debater. His humorous sallies blistered like a blast from a flaming smelter.  His sterling honesty is a great heritage, and will keep his memory green to all future generations.” (Ross 1913, p. 31)

 * S.H. Blake (prominent Ontario Lawyer, Judge)– “God give us more such as he was, honest and true.” (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 639)

 * Rev. Dr. Thomas (delivered Mackenzie's eulogy) – “stood four square, to all the winds that blow.” (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 643, Tennyson's Ode to the Death of the Duke of Wellington)
 * London times – the untiring energy, the business-like accuracy, the keen perception and reliable judgment, and above all the inflexible integrity which marked his private life, he carried without abatement of one jot into his public career. (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 663)

 * Westminster Review – a man, who although, through failing health and failing voice, he had virtually passed out of public life, yet retained to the last the affectionate veneration of the Canadian people as no other man of the time can be said to have done. (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 651, The Westminster Review Volume 137)

 * Charlottetown Patriot – in all that constitutes the real man, the honest statesman, the true patriot, the warm friend, and sincere Christian, he had few equals. Possessed of a clear intellect, a retentive memory, and a ready command of appropriate words, he was one of the most logical and  powerful speakers we have ever heard. (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 662)

 * St. John Telegraph – he was loved by the people and his political opponents were compelled to respect him even above their own chosen leader. As a statesman, he has had few equals. (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 660)

 * Montreal Star – it is one of the very foremost architects of the Canadian nationality that we mourn. In the dark days of ’73 Canadians were in a state of panic, distrusting the stability of their newly-built Dominion; no one can tell what would have happened had not the stalwart form of Alexander Mackenzie lifted itself above the screaming, vociferating and denying mass of politicians, and all Canada felt at once, there was a man who could be trusted. (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 661)

 * Toronto Globe – he was a man who loved the people and fought for their rights against privilege and monopoly in every form. (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 661)

 * Philadelphia Record – Like Caesar, who twice refused a knightly crown, Alexander Mackenzie refused knighthood three times. Unlike Caesar, he owed his political overthrow to his incorruptible honesty and unswerving integrity. (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 660)

 * “He was, and ever will remain, the Sir Galahad of Canadian politics” (Marquis 1903, p. 418)

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

title: Alexander Mackenzie


text:
Jim Horning

James Jay Horning (24 August 1942 – 18 January 2013) was an American scientist and author.

Quotes

 * Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.
 * Jim Horning's personal web page

Misattributed

 * "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."
 * Jim Horning notes: I've often repeated this, but the original source appears to be the great Sufi sage, Mulla Nasrudin.

title: Jim Horning


text:
Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell (26 March 1904 – 30 October 1987) was an American professor, writer, and orator most famous for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion.

Quotes

 * Out of perfection nothing can be made.
 * A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (1991)

 * It's only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world.
 * Comments on a passage in Where the Wild Things Are (1963) by Maurice Sendak, as quoted by Bill Moyers in "NOW with Bill Moyers", PBS (12 March 2004)

 * There is an important difference between the Hindu and the Western ideas. In the Biblical tradition, God creates man, but man cannot say that he is divine in the same sense that the Creator is, where as in Hinduism, all things are incarnations of that power. We are the sparks from a single fire. And we are all fire. Hinduism believes in the omnipresence of the Supreme God in every individual. There is no "fall". Man is not cut off from the divine. He requires only to bring the spontaneous activity of his mind stuff to a state of stillness and he will experience that divine principle with him.
 * quoted in (source: Philosophy of Hinduism - An Introduction - By T C Galav Universal Science-Religion. p 19 and Joseph Campbell Foundation).

 * It is ironic that our great western civilization, which has opened to the minds of all mankind the infinite wonders of a universe of untold billions of galaxies should be saddled with the tightest little cosmological image known to mankind? The Hindus with their grandiose Kalpas and their ideas of the divine power which is beyond all human category (male or female). Not so alien to the imagery of modern science that it could not have been put to acceptable use.
 * quoted in (source: Myths to Live By - By Joseph Campbell. A Bantam Book 1988. p 90).

The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)

 * New World Library, 2008. ISBN 1577315936

 * In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams.
 * Chapter 1

 * It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those that tend to tie it back. In fact, it may very well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid. We remain fixated to the unexorcised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the necessary passages of our adulthood.
 * Chapter 1

 * If we could dredge up something forgotten not only by ourselves but by our whole generation or our entire civilization, we should become indeed the boonbringer, the culture hero of the day—a personage of not only local but world historical moment. In a word: the first work of the hero is to retreat from the world scene of secondary effects to those causal zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside, and there to clarify the difficulties, eradicate them in his own case (i.e., give battle to the nursery demons of his local culture) and break through to the undistorted, direct experience and assimilation of what C. G. Jung called "the archetypal images." This is the process known to Hindu and Buddhist philosophy as viveka, "discrimination."
 * Chapter 1

 * Dream is personalized myth, myth is depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problem and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.
 * Chapter 1

 * The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved—by the virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through the millenniums. It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight is truly desperate; that is to say, most of us today, in this labyrinth without and within the heart. Alas, where is the guide, that fond virgin, Ariadne, to supply the simple clue that will give us the courage to face the Minotaur, and the means to find our way to freedom when the monster has been met and slain?
 * Chapter 1

 * Most curiously, the very scientist who, in the service of the sinful king, was the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom. But the hero-heart must be at hand. ...He is the hero of the way of thought—singlehearted, courageous, and full of faith that the truth, as he finds it, shall make us free.
 * Chapter 1

 * Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn. Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
 * Chapter 1

 * The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending; death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms which we have loved.
 * Chapter 2

 * This death to the logic of emotional commitments of our chance moment in the world of space and time, this recognition of, the shift of our emphasis to, the universal life that throbs and celebrates its victory in the very kiss of our own annihilation, this amor fati, "love of fate," love of the fate that is inevitably death, constitutes the experience of the tragic art...
 * Chapter 2

 * There is no make-believe about heaven, future bliss, and compensation, to alleviate the bitter majesty, but only utter darkness, the void of unfulfillment, to receive and eat back the lives that have been tossed forth from the womb only to fail.
 * Chapter 2

 * No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold.
 * Chapter 2

 * Sober, modern Occidental judgement is founded on a total misunderstanding of the realities depicted in the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedies of redemption. These, in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete.
 * Chapter 2

 * The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. ...Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms... the two are the terms of a single mythological theme... the down-going and the up-coming (kathados and anodos), which together constitute the totality of the revelation that is life, and which the individual must know and love if he is to be purged (katharsis=purgatorio) of the contagion of sin (disobedience to the divine will) and death (identification with the mortal form).
 * Campbell follows with a quote from Ovid's Metamorposes, "All things are changing; nothing dies..."
 * Chapter 2

 * The passage of the mythological hero may be overground, incidentally; fundamentally it is inward—into depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available for the transfiguration of the world. ...Something of the light that blazes invisible within the abysses of its normally opaque materiality breaks forth, with an increasing uproar. The dreadful mutilations are then seen as shadows, only, of an immanent, imperishable eternity; time yields to glory; and the world sings with the prodigious, angelic, but perhaps finally monotonous, siren music of the spheres. Like happy families, the myths and the worlds redeemed are all alike.
 * Chapter 2
 * (...) we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best, with only tentative, impromptu, an not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern 'enlightened' individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.
 * Chapter 2, page 87 (New World Library, 2008)

 * Everywhere, no matter what the sphere of interest (whether religious, political, or personal), the really creative acts are represented as those deriving from some sort of dying to the world; and what happens in the interval of the hero's nonentity, so that he comes back as one reborn, made great and filled with creative power, mankind is also unanimous in declaring. We shall have only to follow, therefore, a multitude of heroic figures through the classic stages of the universal adventure in order to see again what has always been revealed. ...the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom.
 * Chapter 3

 * For when scrutinized in terms not of what it is but of how it functions, of how it has served mankind in the past, of how it may serve today, mythology shows itself to be as amenable as life itself to the obsessions and requirements of the individual, the race, the age.
 * Epilogue

 * The tribal ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, burial, installation, and so forth, serve to translate the individual’s life-crises and life-deeds into classic, impersonal forms. They disclose him to himself, not as this personality or that, but as the warrior, the bride, the widow, the priest, the chieftain; at the same time rehearsing for the rest of the community the old lesson of the archetypal stages.
 * Epilogue

 * Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence — for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness. Thus, just as the way of social participation may lead in the end to a realization of the All in the individual, so that of exile brings the hero to the Self in all.
 * Epilogue

 * It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching telescope and microscope; there is no such society any more as the gods once supported.
 * Epilogue

 * The modern hero-deed must be that of questing to bring to light again the lost Atlantis of the co-ordinated soul.
 * Epilogue

The Power of Myth (1988)

 * Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers PBS television series, Mystic Fire Video (2001)

 * We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
 * Episode 1, Opening introduction voice-over

 * The achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it's really a manifestation of his character. It's amusing the way in which the landscape and conditions of the environment match the readiness of the hero. The adventure that he is ready for is the one that he gets … The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he didn't know he possessed.
 * Episode 1, Chapter 12

 * This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? … If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.
 * Episode 1, Chapter 12

 * Our life evokes our character and you find out more about yourself as you go on.
 * Episode 1, Chapter 12

 * This thing up here, this consciousness, thinks it's running the shop. It's a secondary organ. It's a secondary organ of a total human being, and it must not put itself in control. It must submit and serve the humanity of the body.
 * Episode 1, Chapter 12

 * It's a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts.
 * Episode 2, Chapter 15

 * People ask me, "Do you have optimism about the world, about how terrible it is?" And I say, "Yes, it's great the way it is" … I had the wonderful privilege of sitting face to face with [a Hindu guru] and the first thing he said to me was "Do you have a question?", cause the teacher always answers questions... I said, "Yes, I have a question." I said, " Since in Hindu thinking all the universe is divine, a manifestation of divinity itself, how can we say no to anything in the world? How can we say no to brutality to stupidity to vulgarity to thoughtlessness?" And he said, "For you and me, you must say yes." Well, I learned from my friends who were students of his that that happened to be the first question he asked his guru, and we had a wonderful conversation for an hour there.
 * Episode 2, Chapter 12

Moyers: That's a pessimistic note. Campbell: Well, you have to say yes to it, you have to say it's great this way. It's the way God intended it.
 * Campbell: Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. There's a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Bodhisattva, the one whose being (sattva) is illumination (bodhi), who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it. "All life is sorrowful" is the first Buddhist saying, and it is. It wouldn't be life if there were not temporality involved which is sorrow. Loss, loss, loss.
 * Episode 2, Chapter 13-14

 * Follow your bliss.
 * Episode 1, Chapter 15

 * People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about.
 * Episode 2, Chapter 4

 * I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.

 * We are standing on a whale fishing for minnows.
 * Episode 2, Chapter 19

 * Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
 * Episode 2, Chapter 22

The Power of Myth (book)

 * Now, what is a myth? The dictionary definition of a myth would be stories about gods. So then you have to ask the next question: What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe – the powers of your own body and of nature.
 * p. 28

 * One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.
 * Ch. 2 : The Journey Inward

 * Moyers: Do you ever have the sense of... being helped by hidden hands? Campbell: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time — namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.
 * p. 120

 * The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy-not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call "following your bliss."
 * p.193

 * Moyers: Unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus, we're not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. Campbell: But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there's no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who's on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it's alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.
 * p.183

Mythology and the Individual (1997)

 * The image of the cosmos must change with the development of the mind and knowledge; otherwise, the mythic statement is lost, and man becomes dissociated from the very basis of his own religious experience. Doubt comes in, and so forth. You must remember: all of the great traditions, and little traditions, in their own time were scientifically correct. That is to say, they were correct in terms of the scientific image of that age. So there must be a scientifically validated image. Now you know what has happened: our scientific field has separated itself from the religious field, or vice-versa. … This divorce this is a fatal thing, and a very unfortunate thing, and a totally unnecessary thing.
 * Lecture 1A, 13:45

 * Heresy is the life of a mythology, and orthodoxy is the death.
 * Lecture 1A, 20:42

 * All cultures … have grown out of myths. They are founded on myths. What these myths have given has been inspiration for aspiration. The economic interpretation of history is for the birds. Economics is itself a function of aspiration. It’s what people aspire to that creates the field in which economics works.
 * Lecture 1B, 8:20

Sukhavati (2002, reissued 2007)

 * We're in a freefall into future. We don't know where we're going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you're going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It's a very interesting shift of perspective and that's all it is... joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.

Pathways to Bliss (2004)

 * Marx teaches us to blame society for our frailties, Freud teaches us to blame our parents, and astrology teaches us to blame the universe. The only place to look for blame is within: you didn't have the guts to bring up your full moon and live the life that was your potential.
 * p. 104

The Power of Myth (1988)

 * Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers PBS television series, Mystic Fire Video (2001)

 * "You're talking about a search for the meaning of life?" I asked. "No, no, no," he said. "For the experience of being alive."
 * Bill Moyers, in the Introduction

 * To him mythology was "the song of the universe," "the music of the spheres" — music we dance to even when we cannot name the tune.
 * Bill Moyers, in the Introduction

 * The beasts were seen as envoys from that other world, and Campbell surmised "a magical, wonderful accord" growing between the hunter and the hunted, as if they were locked in a "mystical, timeless" cycle of death, burial, and resurrection. Their art — the paintings on cave walls — and oral literature gave form to the impulse we now call religion.
 * Bill Moyers, in the Introduction

 * The images of God are many, he said, calling them "the masks of eternity" that both cover and reveal "the Face of Glory." … However the mystic traditions differ, he said, they are in accord in calling us to a deeper awareness of the very act of living itself. The unpardonable sin, in Campbell's book, was the sin of inadvertence, of not being alert, not quite awake.
 * Bill Moyers, in the Introduction

 * The new discoveries of science "rejoin us to the ancients" by enabling us to recognize in this whole universe "a reflection magnified of our own most inward nature; so that we are indeed its ears, its eyes, its thinking, and its speech — or, in theological terms, God's ears, God's eyes, God's thinking, and God's Word."
 * Bill Moyers, in the Introduction

 * When he said that myths are clues to our deepest spiritual potential, able to lead us to delight, illumination, and even rapture, he spoke as one who had been to the places he was inviting others to visit.
 * Bill Moyers, in the Introduction

 * He was a man with a thousand stories. This was one of his favorites. In Japan for an international conference on religion, Campbell overheard another American delegate, a social philosopher from New York, say to a Shinto priest, "We've been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines. But I don't get your ideology. I don't get your theology." The Japanese [Shinto priest] paused as though in deep thought and then slowly shook his head. "I think we don't have ideology," he said. "We don't have theology. We dance." And so did Joseph Campbell — to the music of the spheres.
 * Bill Moyers, in the Introduction

title: Joseph Campbell


text:
Talk:The Simpsons

Pages
I have a feeling that this will get rather large. I think main charactes should be divided up to their own page. Non main can remain here. Mr Burns already has his own page.

Maybe just 2-3 quotes which are very representative for the character. Like "Ex-cellent." (Burns) "Hi-diddly-ho, neighbors!" (Flanders) "As Intelligence goes up, Happiness goes down. See, I made a graph. I make a lot of graphs." (Lisa) "Ay, caramba!" (Bart)

As above would suggest we just put the catchphrase(s) of each character on this page and a link to separate pages for them. D'oh for Homer

I agree that each character should have their own seperate page. The sitcoms are nice, but some history would be even better. Thanks for the site though. Very nice

I think each charachter should have its own seperate page with the minor charachers remaining here.

I completely agree. Since no one seems to disagree, I'll do my best to give Homer his own page.--Mihoshi 18:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Sorry, I disagree. It would be better to edit this page to comply with the correct format rather than spreading the mess around. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 18:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I disagree with this. Sorting by episode is far less user/browser friendly.  Taking a stab in the dark here, but I'd say about 99% of people who watch the Simpsons don't know which episode they're watching when they watch it, and if they want a quote, they'll search for it by character.

 * I agree, but I also think it would be best for the main Simpsons page to be a link to all other Simpsons characters, so as to avoid confusion. I just came to this page and was disappointed to see the lack of quotes and was rather confused as to why there was nothing but Homer on a page called 'The Simpsons' which suggests it should be for all characters, not just one.  I actually thought it had been wiped accidentally!

 * I agree with the guys above, should have been left the way it was. Quotes according to character. I'm a massive simpsons fan and while I know what episode I'm watching I wouldn't be able to name it by the correct title. And as above, when I visited I though something had gone wrong.

 * Strongly Disagree: I think the character pages should be merged with the main article. It may be true that some people come to WikiQuote looking for certain character's quotes, but the format should remain the same for every TV show. If we let the characters from the Simpsons have their own page, we could easily say that South Park characters or Family Guy could have their own character pages as well. Pages would snowball and get out of hand. I will agree with having a 'Catch Phrase' or 'Repeated Quotes' section, something like Taglines on Film pages (but limit them to only a few quotes). Reconsider making character pages. Curlyro 05:11, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree. As the series continues, this page will keep getting bigger and bigger, and it gets pretty bad when I'm searching for a quote by Grandpa, but it shows up on this page as Abe, Abraham, Grandpa, and Grampa. Seperate character pages works well. 68.117.6.73

Lisa/Homer
In the introduction it is to my understanding that the last line is said by Lisa, not Homer. If anyone could verify this and then fix it up. Thanks Mark alec 07:22, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Pages (continued)
I've been thinking about what Fonzy said, and I agree that main characters should be given their own pages. IMHO Homer/Bart/Lisa/Marge/Ralph/Burns should be splintered off. As soon as we agree on this, I can volunteer my services cleaning up the quotes and moving them to their new pages. Can somebody handle all the Redirection?  Mark alec, according to SNPP, that last line was said by Lisa AND Homer. However, SNPP's transcript of the scene is slightly different from that on this page. Does Wikiquote bother with exact transcriptions? FYI, that's from "Blood Feud" (Ep.2-22), if you want to look at the SNPP Episode Summary. --LuciferBlack 15:53, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Most people who left comments at Talk:Mr Burns felt there should not be pages devoted to the statements of fictional characters. The page for Mr. Burns remains only as a redirect. I think it is more convenient for most people to be able to search through sections of a single page for quotes from a show than to have to sift through many pages. There is no absolute rule against it as yet, and perhaps should not be, but I do not think that it is generally a good idea to create a seperate page devoted to just the statements of a single fictional character. ~ Achilles 20:08, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * To answer the question about exact transcriptions, Wikiquote does not, as far as I can tell, have any policy as yet on TV show dialog transcriptions. It's geared more toward the printed word, in which one can hope to have Sourced or Verified quotes that should be exact, and others (e.g., Attributed) that are pending verification. Those of us who have focused mainly on TV shows and films haven't discussed this much. (Personally, I prefer exactness, so Wikiquote can be an authoritative quote reference. This is a major challenge, as I've never found any quote source that reliably matches quotes to what my show and movie tapes and DVDs say.) In the absence of policy, it's up to interested parties for any given page to set the standards for its accuracy. — Jeff Q (talk) 02:53, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki merge of "By Lucifer's Beard"
I just merged the above quote and some related information from a Wikipedia article that was Transwiki'd (i.e., bounced from Wikipedia to Wikiquote as being more appropriate for the latter). Here is the original page's history, which must be listed here after such a merge:

This page was transwikied from en.wikipedia.org. List of contributors: 216.177.2.140 02:05, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * [2004-09-14T06:27:18Z] SimpsonPhenom
 * [2004-09-14T07:23:54Z] Jimfbleak

I wasn't sure where to put the quote, so I added it to the end of "Other characters". I leave it for you all to decide if you'd prefer to change it. Thanks. — Jeff Q (talk) 03:07, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Abraham
Grandpa Simpson's 6th quote should read: "I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was.  Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too." Nice page.

Fox Quotes
One of the included quotes included in the "trashing fox" section was about the episode Mr Plow. When Homer's add is finally aired, he says "It may be on a lousy channel, but the Simpsons are on TV!" I have the episode on DVD, and there was never a reference to the advertisement being aired on Fox. Could I get some confirmation on this?

Definitely wasn't. Lisa recommends buying cheap commercial time on channel 92. She changes to the channel where Captain McCalister is promiting his "90 Sea Shanties on 3 Compact Discs" Harryboyles 02:15, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I don't care enough to argue, and I didn't post the original, but regardless of what channel the commercial was on the joke is still that The Simpsons are on a crappy channel. Think of it as a joke that works on both levels if you want, but it's there either way 207.127.128.2 16:28, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes guy?
Quote: YES!!!! Does anyone know who I'am talking about? 130.111.98.131 19:28, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes, but I don't think he has quite enough quotes (Yesss, Siiim and I had a stroooke) to warrant a mention in the article. Smurrayinchester 15:18, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, all he ever says is "Yeeeeeees", so it's not really much use putting on quotes by him, is it?

Cleanup explained
Quotations should be divided according to season/episode, not according to characters, and should be formatted as per the standards in the GtL. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 18:22, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

TransWiki
Just cut/pasting a shitload of quotes from the WP page, where they don't belong...do what you will with them.

Stupidity Quotes

 * [ 8F22 ]
 * Homer: Marge, where's that... metal deely... you use to... dig... food...
 * Marge: You mean, a spoon?
 * Homer: Yeah, yeah!

 * [ 1F13 ]
 * (From above the Earth)
 * Homer: It's beautiful. It's the most awe-inspiring sight I have ever seen. Giver of life, mother of us all...hey guys, look what I smuggled aboard!
 * [shows a bag of chips]
 * Buzz Aldrin: Homer, no!
 * [Homer breaks open bag; chips fly everywhere]
 * Race Banyon: They'll clog the instruments!
 * Buzz: Careful! They're ruffled!
 * Homer: I'll handle this!
 * [Homer floats around the cabin, eating chips to The Blue Danube - an obvious reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey]

 * [ 2F09 ]
 * Marge: "Homer I don't want you stalking Lenny and Carl. It's so... illegal."
 * Homer: "Okay I'm just going to go out and... stalk... Lenny and Carl... D'oh!"

 * [ DABF02 ]
 * Homer:"As long as you're in my house you'll do what I do and believe what I believe. So Bart butter your bacon."
 * Bart:"Yes, Father."

 * [ [(Homer standing outside a bar after being kicked out of Moe's)] ]
 * HOMER: This is the last bar in town. If they don't let me in, I'll have to stop drinking!
 * HOMER'S LIVER: Yay!
 * HOMER: Shut up, liver! (He punches himself) Ow... My liver hurts...

 * [ 1F10 ]
 * Homer: Apu friend me good.

 * [ [Homer on having just learned that the house is to be repossessed] ]
 * HOMER: Homeless? We'll be forced to live under a bridge like common trolls!

Drunk Quotes

 * [ FABF10 ] "Wow, I'm in NO condition to drive.... hey wait, I'm drunk, I shouldn't listen to myself!"
 * [ CABF14 ] "You ever see that Blue Man Group? Total rip-off of the Smurfs! And the Smurfs – they suck!"
 * [ 3G01 ] "So I says blue M&M, red M&M, they all wind up the same colour in the end!"
 * [ FABF07 ] "I don't need your charity. I'll dance for my money!"

Homer Vs. Brain

 * [ 1F20 ] "Okay Brain, it's all up to you now, if you don't think of something, we'll lose Marge forever" Brain:"Eatthepudding eatthepudding eatthepudding..." Homer:"Okay, but then we gotta get to work"
 * [ 1F06 ] (Homer finds $20 under the couch) "Twenty dollars? I wanted a peanut!" Brain: "Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts." Homer: "Explain how!" Brain: "Money can be exchanged for goods and services" Homer: "... Woohoo!"
 * [ 9F12 ] Clerk: "What is your reason for joining "Big Brothers"?" Brain: "Don't say revenge, don't say revenge!" Homer: "...erm ...Revenge" Brain: "That's it! I'm outa here!" Sound effect:Brain runs down stairs and slams door
 * [ 7F22 ] Mr. Burns: "Who are you?" Brain: "Don't tell him your name, give him a fake name!" Homer: "Homer Simpson" Brain: "D'oh!" Homer: "D'oh!"
 * [ 9F16 ] (Homer given test) Homer: "Okay Brain, you don't like me, I don't like you. But let just get through this, and I can get back to killing you with beer" Brain: "It's a deal!"

Too long to cope
Hi. This article has grown beyond any measure of control. I propose it be broken into several smaller articles. Not everything, only the main characters, with the longer list of quotes. Possibly, we could leave here a few quotes, maybe some of the more famous ones, and link at the top of the section to the specific article. At the specific articles, we can try to create sections and organize the quotes in a fashion that makes it humanly possible to browse the article and find the stuff one wants to read. Not to mention that this article is so long that most browsers are bound to have trouble editing it; those with slower internet connections would have an impossible time. I antecipate that the entire Simpson family (except for Maggie) would each need their own individual article, plus some of the other characters, depending on how many quotes there are to their names. Regards, Redux 22:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Agreed --203.18.155.107 11:04, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Homer
What ever happened to the section of Homer quotes beginning with "Hmmm..unexplained bacon"? etc..

Pages (continued)
I think it would be cool to have not only quotes organised by character but also by episode. I often look at the Wikipedia articles because the quotes help me to remember and enjoy the episodes more. The character lists are great for getting a sense of personality and the episode lists are good when you need to know how a specific quote goes.Harryboyles 02:40, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Listing By Episode Please!
C'mon can we at least have the same expectations that each simpson qoute would be listed by episode(like every other qoute in tv show) instead of character!
 * Yea, Wikiquote Policy clearly states that organizing TV quotes by character is an obsolete practice. I'd start this myself but I have in sufficient means to verify the quotes and find out which episode they belong in. --MJMyers2 19:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

A lot of work, it has to be gradual
I agree...this page is just too long to dump any more quotes into. This page is going to take a while to deconstruct and fix...but as the wikiproject for the Simpsons is working on individual character pages and everything else....one idea I tested on Ralph Wiggum's page is to have only a few of the main quotes on his profile page...and all other quotes be dumped to his own distinct quote page...referring people to the quote page for more. Its worked tremendously well, and has allowed his page to become much more organized as the sheer list of his quotes took up half the entire page. Now Ralph's being considered for merging to this page...I have confronted this because as anyone can see looking at this page...this page does not need to be merged too...it needs to be separated.

I am soon going to move all of Clancy Wiggum's quotes to his own wikiquote page if this blows over, because he has a similar problem...as do some other characters. I think in the end...this will allow this page time to slowly go down in size. If one wishes to construct individual quotes per episode that'd be great too...but I'm going to personally concentrate on characters. I think after 18 years...this show should get some special exceptions when it comes to things like quotes and information. Deletion and merging is just going to make the problem go in circles...we have to redirect all this information and context it so its organized and still available...without congesting pages.--68.233.141.149 06:13, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject: The Simpsons
WikiProject The Simspons has a discussion up right now regarding The Simpsons... We're proposing to clean up and organize all of the Simpsons quotes, and also merge any quotes from the Wikipedia articles, and link them to a matching page for each episode here... anyone interested in helping with this project, or wanting to discuss it, feel free to visit the WikiProject page... - Adolphus79 02:56, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Pages for episodes
I've begun to create pages for each episode so that some of these quotes can be sorted out. I can see that work has already begun but the episodes need to have their own page. Harryboyles 00:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I also created a page to list the episodes, based off the Wikipedia version: List of The Simpsons episodes. Pick an episode and we could move some of the quotes to their respective articles. Harryboyles 00:42, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I've made a big change to the display for individual season pages. Rather than simply being linked to from the main page, they now appear as part of the main page, though they remain separate pages. —LrdChaos (talk) 16:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Clean up
Thanks for cleaning up this article. I really enjoy it. Cheers from the norwegian wikiproject. 84.202.133.179 15:19, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Quote Actions
I've been looking around the quotes and cleaned up a few sections, but was just wondering about something in particular. I've decided to go through and format and clean up pretty much all of the quotes.

When a character is performing an action, ie "Homer: [thinking to himself]" there are many different ways this has been done on various pages.

 * 1) Homer: [thinking to himself]
 * 2) Homer [thinking to himself]:
 * 3) Homer [thinking to himself]:
 * 4) Homer [thinking to himself]:
 * 5) Homer [thinking to himself]:
 * 6) Homer: (thinking to himself):
 * 7) Homer (thinking to himself):
 * 8) Homer (thinking to himself):
 * 9) Homer: (thinking to himself)

to give you examples of different ways of writing this.

Is there a consensus as to which is the preferred way to do this?

I just thought it would be good to go and put all the bits like this in the same format. —This unsigned comment is by KillerCommz (talk • contribs) 10:09, 13 January 2007.

 * In my experience, italicised square brackets are used for most descriptions/explanations, and they go outside the colon (the colon is usually not in bold text). That would suggest you want option 1.
 * On the other hand, if attempting to differentiate between Homer speaking out loud and thinking to himself, for example in situations when he seems to be holding a whole conversation on his own, its probably worth considering them as two separate "characters". In that case, you'd want option 7, although you could consider:
 * Homer: How can I ever thank you?
 * Homer's brain: Just don't hit me on your way out of the car.
 * -- Supermorff 13:09, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes I just found the page Formatting of quotes, which I suppose is what we would be wanting to follow. I'll use this standard when cleaning up quote pages. Gotta remember to sign my comments too, whoops. -- KillerCommz 03:11, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Just a suggestion
Thank you for cleaning those up. Means a lot! D'oh stupid formats

Why don't the different seasons get divided into different articles because the article itself is quite long and about half of the episodes aren't filled in. Scoomb 11:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I know this was written a long time ago, but I agree with Scoomb. The article is indeed extremely long (especially now), and it takes a very long time to load, especially on dial-up. Any other opinions on this? I like how the Family Guy quote page is done... Beebee89 06:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Character Quotes
The quotes should be by character since the characters of this show has been identified by themselves not just by relation to the show. More people know the characters better than the show itself.

Create a separate article for Season 19
Season 19 is the only season that does not have its own separate article. Instead edits must be made on this page only. Could a registered user please create a separate article for Season 19? Thanks. 71.125.93.197 02:31, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

 * (sigh) I'll try. TobytheTramEngine 05:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

 * I just did. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it was a good idea. Let's wait until further results. No offense. TobytheTramEngine 05:39, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Season 1
Somebody is removing season 1 over and over again and replacing it with some suptid bullshit noonsense. Whoever it is should please stop.

Episode Listing
WHAT JUST HAPPENED?! Why is every episode like html code?

Episode 1721
Instead of Marge: Go on Maggie, it's safe to pick up the deadly weapons

shouldn't it be Go ahead Maggie, you're allowed to touch the deadly weapons?

For the first nine episodes of each season…
Should it be 1.1 or 1.01? I've seen both, so I'd like to make them all the same. 99.255.188.158 03:24, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I have been using this method . So I list it as 1.01. - ellusion - 06:13, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Some older browsers would face a little bug when ordering the episodes in the first way mentioned. Because it doesn't know how to actually read numbers as such, it orders alphabetically, so the order of, say, the numbers from 1 to 21 would be:
 * 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 2, 20, 21, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
 * ...which is obviously not what one wants. That's where the custom of putting zeroes to the left comes.

cleanup required
there is a bit of cleanup that needs to be done on this page.

1. there is a lot of random "copyright " in some of the episode links for some unknown reason

2. some have dates in the season links.. again for some unknown and untidy reason

129.67.146.111 16:21, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Merge
I suggest we merge Good Night (The Simpsons) here. That short is a few minutes long and there is really no need to have a separate entry. At the very least, having a single entry for all Simpsons shorts may be appropriate. Thoughts? —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:35, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Simpsons


text:
Cyndi Lauper

Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper (born June 22, 1953), better known as Cyndi Lauper, is a singer.

Interview with Matthew Rettenmund in his book "Totally Awesome 80's" (1996), p. 149-150

 * "It is not a dirty word, "feminism." I just think that women belong in the human population with the same rights as everybody else. … The problem is, "A feminist looks like this, or is like that." We are taught not to like ourselves as women, we are taught what we're supposed to look like, what our measurements are supposed to be. I never hear what measurements men are supposed to be. Just women."

 * on tolerance of gays: "You always have to remember - no matter what you're told - that God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway."

 * on Catholicism:
 * "...I'm a recovering Catholic. … There's, y'know, the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, and it just so happens that I was with the Sisters of No Charity and No Mercy at All."
 * "When you take a group of people and you repress them and they cut themselves off from their feelings as a human - and a human being has sexual feelings, has bodily feelings - what you are handing over to children is a monster. Because if you are not connected to who you are in your heart, and you don't understand and have compassion for yourself, how in the wide world of sports are you gonna have compassion with forty screaming children?"
 * "I'm against all [the Catholic Church]'s teaching that women are evil and that their power and their sexuality is evil. Let's kinda like get a little beyond that, get Christ-like, you know what I mean?"

title: Cyndi Lauper