text:
Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss developmental psychologist, famous for his work with children and his theory of cognitive development.

Quotes

 * If children fail to understand one another, it is because they think they understand one another. The explainer believes from the start that the reproducer will grasp everything, will almost know beforehand all that should be known, and will interpret every subtlety. Children are perpetually surrounded by adults who not only know much more than they do, but who also do everything in their power to understand them, who even anticipate their thoughts and desires. Children, therefore... are perpetually under the impression that people can read their thoughts, and in extreme cases, can steal their thoughts away. It is obviously owing to this mentality that children do not take the trouble to express themselves clearly... This mentality does not contradict ego-centric mentality. Both arise from the belief of the child, the belief that he is the centre of the universe. These habits of thought account... for the remarkable lack of precision in the childish style.
 * The Language and Thought of the Child (1923) Tr. Marjorie and Ruth Gabain (1926)

 * There are no really solipsistic philosophers, and those who think they are deceive themselves. The true solipsist feels at one with the universe, and so very identical to it that he does not even feel the need for two terms. The true solipsist projects all his states of mind onto things. The true solipsist is entirely alone in the world, that is, he has no notion of anything exterior to himself. In other words the true solipsist has no idea of self. There is no self: there is the world. It is in this sense it is reasonable to call a baby a solipsist: the feelings and desires of a baby know no limits since they are a part of everything he sees, touches, and perceives. Babies are, then, obviously narcissistic, but not in the way adults are, not even Spinoza's God, and I am a little afraid that Freud sometimes forgets that the narcissistic baby has no sense of self. Given this definition of solipsism, egocentrism in children clearly appears to be a simple continuation of solipsism in infants.. Egocentrism, as we have seen, is not an intentional or even a conscious process. A child has no idea that he is egocentric. He believes everybody thinks the way he does, and this false universality is due simply to an absence of the sense of limits on his individuality. In this light, egocentrism and solipsism are quite comparable: both stem from the absence or the weakness of the sense of self.
 * The First Year of Life of the Child (1927), "The Egocentrism of the Child and the Solipsism of the Baby", as translated by Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Vonèche

 * If a baby really has no awareness of himself and is totally thing-directed and at the same time all his states of mind are projected onto things, our second paradox makes sense: on the one hand, thought in babies can be viewed as pure accommodation or exploratory movements, but on the other this very same thought is only one, long, completely autistic waking dream.
 * The First Year of Life of the Child (1927), "The Egocentrism of the Child and the Solipsism of the Baby", as translated by Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Vonèche

 * Every acquisition of accommodation becomes material for assimilation, but assimilation always resists new accommodations.
 * Conclusion: "The Elaboration of the Universe" in The Construction of Reality in the Child (1955)

 * Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality. They are more or less isomorphic to transformations of reality. The transformational structures of which knowledge consists are not copies of the transformations in reality; they are simply possible isomorphic models among which experience can enable us to choose. Knowledge, then, is a system of transformations that become progressively adequate.
 * Genetic Epistemology (1968) – First lecture

 * I am convinced that there is no sort of boundary between the living and the mental or between the biological and the psychological. From the moment an organism takes account of a previous experience and adapts to a new situation, that very much resembles psychology.
 * Interview with Jean Claude Bringuier (1969)

 * As you know, Bergson pointed out that there is no such thing as disorder but rather two sorts of order, geometric and living. Mine is clearly living. The folders I need are within reach, in the order of frequency with which I use them. True, it gets tricky to locate a folder in the lower levels. But if you have to find it, you look for it. That takes less time than putting them away every day.
 * Conversations with Jean Piaget (1980) by Jean Claude Bringuier

 * Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society... But for me, education means making creators... You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists.
 * Conversations with Jean Piaget (1980) by Jean Claude Bringuier

 * The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.
 * As quoted in Education for Democracy, Proceedings from the Cambridge School Conference on Progressive Education (1988) edited by Kathe Jervis and Arthur Tobier

 * The essential functions of the mind consist in understanding and in inventing, in other words, in building up structures by structuring reality.
 * Piaget (1971, p.27) cited in: Ernst von Glasersfeld "Homage to Jean Piaget (1896–1980)". In: Irish Journal of Psychology, 18, pp. 293–306

The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932)

 * Using primarily the translation by Marjorie Gabain (1932)

 * From the point of view of the practice or application of rules four successive stages can be distinguished. A first stage of a purely motor and individual character, during which the child handles the marbles at the dictation of his desires and motor habits. This leads to the formation of more or less ritualized schemas, but since play is still purely individual, one can only talk of motor rules and not of truly collective rules. The second may be called egocentric for the following reasons. This stage begins at the moment when the child receives from outside the example of codified rules, that is to say, some time between the ages of two and five. But though the child imitates this example, he continues to play either by himself without bothering to find play-fellows, or with others, but without trying to win, and therefore without attempting to unify the different ways of playing. In other words, children of this stage, even when they are playing together, play each one "on his own " (everyone can win at once) and without regard for any codification of rules. This dual character, combining imitation of others with a purely individual use of the examples received, we have designated by the term Egocentrism. A third stage appears between 7 and 8, which we shall call the stage of incipient cooperation. Each player now tries to win, and all, therefore, begin to concern themselves with the question of mutual control and of unification of the rules. But while a certain agreement may be reached in the course of one game, ideas about the rules in general are still rather vague. In other words, children of 7-8, who belong to the same class at school and are therefore constantly playing with each other, give, when they are questioned separately, disparate and often entirely contradictory accounts of the rules observed in playing marbles. Finally, between the years of 11 and 12, appears a fourth stage, which is that of the codification of rules. Not only is every detail of procedure in the game fixed, but the actual code of rules to be observed is known to the whole society. There is remarkable concordance in the information given by children of 10-12 belonging to the same class at school, when they are questioned on the rules of the game and their possible variations.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game

 * Genetically speaking, the explanation both of rites and of symbols would seem to lie in the conditions of preverbal motor intelligence. When it is presented with any new thing, a baby of 5 to 8 months will respond with a dual reaction; it will accommodate itself to the new object and it will assimilate the object to earlier motor schemas. Give the baby a marble, and it will explore its surface and consistency, but will at the same time use it as something to grasp, to suck, to rub against the sides of its cradle, and so on. This assimilation of every fresh object to already existing motor schemas may be conceived of as the starting point of ritual acts and symbols, at any rate from the moment that assimilation becomes stronger than actual accommodation itself.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game

 * Before games are played in common, no rules in the proper sense can come into existence. Regularities and ritualized schemas are already there, but these rites, being the work of the individual, cannot call forth that submission to something superior to the self which characterizes the appearance of any rule.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game

 * Alongside of the rare cases of true conversation where there is a genuine interchange of opinions or commands, one can observe in children between 2 and 6 a characteristic type of pseudo-conversation or "collective monologue", during which the children speak only for themselves, although they wish to be in the presence of interlocutors who will serve as a stimulus. Now here again, each feels himself to be in communion with the group because he is inwardly addressing the Adult who knows and understands everything, but here again, each is only concerned with himself, for lack of having dissociated the "ego" from the "socius".
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game

 * Considering that the square game is only one of the five or ten varieties of the game of marbles, it is almost alarming in face of the complexity of rules and procedure in the square game, to think of what a child of twelve has to store away in his memory. These rules, with their overlapping and their exceptions, are at least as complex as the current rules of spelling. It is somewhat humiliating, in this connection, to see how heavily traditional education sets about the task of making spelling enter into brains that assimilate with such ease the mnemonic contents of the game of marbles. But then, memory is dependent upon activity, and a real activity presupposes interest.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game

 * As far as the game of marbles is concerned, there is therefore no contradiction between the egocentric practice of games and the mystical respect entertained for rules. This respect is the mark of a mentality fashioned, not by free cooperation between equals, but by adult constraint.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game

 * When the child imitates the rules practiced by his older companions he feels that he is submitting to an unalterable law, due, therefore, to his parents themselves. Thus the pressure exercised by older on younger children is assimilated here, as so often, to adult pressure. This action of the older children is still constraint, for cooperation can only arise between equals. Nor does the submission of the younger children to the rules of the older ones lead to any sort of cooperation in action; it simply produces a sort of mysticism, a diffused feeling of collective participation, which, as in the case of many mystics, fits in perfectly well with egocentrism. For we shall see eventually that cooperation between equals not only brings about a gradual change in the child's practical attitude, but that it also does away with the mystical feeling towards authority.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game

 * In certain circumstances where he experiments in new types of conduct by cooperating with his equals, the child is already an adult. There is an adult in every child and a child in every adult. … There exist in the child certain attitudes and beliefs which intellectual development will more and more tend to eliminate: there are others which will acquire more and more importance. The later are not derived from the former but are partly antagonistic to them.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game, § 8 : Conclusions : Motor Rules and the Two Kinds of Respect

 * Between the various types of rules which we shall give there will therefore be at once continuity of function and difference of structure. This renders arbitrary any attempt to cut mental reality up into stages. The matter is further complicated by the "Law of conscious realization" and the resulting time-lag. The appearance of a new type of rule on the practical plane does not necessarily mean that this rule will come into the subject's consciousness, for each mental operation has to be relearned on the different planes of action and of thought.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game, § 8 : Conclusions : Motor Rules and the Two Kinds of Respect

 * A second prefatory question faces us: that of society and the individual. We have sought to contrast the child and the civilized adult on the ground of their respective social attitudes. The baby (at the stage of motor intelligence) is asocial, the egocentric child is subject to external constraint but has little capacity for cooperation, the civilized adult of to-day presents the essential character of cooperation between differentiated personalities who regard each other as equals. There are therefore three types of behavior: motor behavior, egocentric behavior (with external constraint), and cooperation. And to these three types of social behavior there correspond three types of rules: motor rules, rules due to unilateral respect, and rules due to mutual respect. But here again, one must beware of laying down the law: for things are motor, individual and social all at once. As we shall have occasion to show, rules of cooperation are in some respects the outcome of the rules of coercion and of the motor rules. On the other hand, coercion is applied during the first days of an infant's life, and the earliest social relations contain the germs of cooperation. Here again, it is not so much a question of these successive features themselves as of the proportions in which they are present. Moreover, the way in which conscious realization and the time-lag from one level to another come into play is a further bar to our arranging these phenomena in a strict sequence, as though they made a single appearance and then disappeared from the scene once and for all.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game, § 8 : Conclusions : Motor Rules and the Two Kinds of Respect

 * The motor rule. In its beginnings the motor rule merges into habit. During the first few months of an infant's life, its manner of taking the breast, of laying its head on the pillow, etc., becomes crystallized into imperative habits. This is why education must begin in the cradle. To accustom the infant to get out of its own difficulties or to calm it by rocking it may be to lay the foundations of a good or of a bad disposition. But not every habit will give rise to the knowledge of a rule. The habit must first be frustrated, and the ensuing conflict must lead to an active search for the habitual. Above all, the particular succession must be perceived as regular, i.e. there must be judgment or consciousness of regularity (Regelbewusstseiri). The motor rule is therefore the result of a feeling of repetition which arises out of the ritualization of schemas of motor adaptation.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game, § 8 : Conclusions : Motor Rules and the Two Kinds of Respect

 * Mixture of assimilation to earlier schemas and adaptation to the actual conditions of the situation is what defines motor intelligence. But — and this is where rules come into existence — as soon as a balance is established between adaptation and assimilation, the course of conduct adopted becomes crystallized and ritualized. New schemas are even established which the child looks for and retains with care, as though they were obligatory or charged with efficacy.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game, § 9 : Conclusions : Motor Rules and the Two Kinds of Respect

 * Every observer has noted that the younger the child, the less sense he has of his own ego. From the intellectual point of view, he does not distinguish between external and internal, subjective and objective. From the point of view of action, he yields to every suggestion, and if he does oppose to other people's wills — a certain negativism which has been called "the spirit of contradiction" — this only points to his real defenselessness against his surroundings. A strong personality can maintain itself without the help of this particular weapon. The adult and the older child have complete power over him. They impose their opinions and their wishes, and the child accepts them without knowing that he does so. Only — and this is the other side of the picture — as the child does not dissociate his ego from the environment, whether physical or social, he mixes into all his thoughts and all his actions, ideas and practices that are due to the intervention of his ego and which, just because he fails to recognize them as subjective, exercise a check upon his complete socialization. From the intellectual point of view, he mingles his own fantasies with accepted opinions, whence arise pseudo lies (or sincere lies), syncretism, and all the features of child thought. From the point of view of action, he interprets in his own fashion the examples he has adopted, whence the egocentric form of play we were examining above. The only way of avoiding these individual refractions would lie in true cooperation, such that both child and senior would each make allowance for his own individuality and for the realities that were held in common.
 * Ch. 1 : The Rules of the Game, § 8 : Conclusions : Motor Rules and the Two Kinds of Respect

 * Egocentrism in so far as it means confusion of the ego and the external world, and egocentrism in so far as it means lack of cooperation, constitute one and the same phenomenon. So long as the child does not dissociate his ego from the suggestions coming from the physical and from the social world, he cannot cooperate, for in order to cooperate one must be conscious of one's ego and situate it in relation to thought in general. And in order to become conscious of one's ego, it is necessary to liberate oneself from the thought and will of others. The coercion exercised by the adult or the older child is therefore inseparable from the unconscious egocentrism of the very young child.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * There is little mysticism without an element of transcendence, and conversely, there is no transcendence without a certain degree of egocentrism. It may be that the genesis of these experiences is to be sought in the unique situation of the very young child in relation to adults. The theory of the filial origin of the religious sense seems to us singularly convincing in this connection.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * If mutual respect does derive from unilateral respect, it does so by opposition.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * Generally speaking, one can say that motor intelligence contains the germs of completed reason. But it gives promise of more than reason pure and simple. From the moral as from the intellectual point of view, the child is born neither good nor bad, but master of his destiny. Now, if there is intelligence in the schemas of motor adaptation, there is also the element of play. The intentionality peculiar to motor activity is not a search for truth but the pursuit of a result, whether objective or subjective; and to succeed is not to discover a truth.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * The discussion of the game of marbles seems to have led us into rather deep waters. But in the eyes of children the history of the game of marbles has quite as much importance as the history of religion or of forms of government. It Is a history, moreover, that is magnificently spontaneous; and it was therefore perhaps not entirely useless to seek to throw light on the child's judgment of moral value by a preliminary study of the social behaviour of children amongst themselves.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * In real life the child is in the presence, not of isolated acts, but of personalities that attract or repel him as a global whole. He grasps people's intentions by direct intuition and cannot therefore abstract from them. He allows, more or less justly, for aggravating and attenuating circumstances. This is why the stories told by the children themselves often give rise to different evaluations from those suggested by the experimenter's stories.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism, § 1 : The Method

 * It is when the child is accustomed to act from the point of view of those around him, when he tries to please rather than to obey, that he will judge in terms of intentions. So that taking intentions into account presupposes cooperation and mutual respect. Only those who have children of their own know how difficult it is to put this into practice. Such is the prestige of parents in the eyes of the very young child, that even if they lay down nothing in the form of general duties, their wishes act as law and thus give rise automatically to moral realism (independently, of course, of the manner in which the child eventually carries out these desires). In order to remove all traces of moral realism, one must place oneself on the child's own level, and give him a feeling of equality by laying stress on one's own obligations and one's own deficiencies. In this way the child will find himself in the presence, not of a system of commands requiring ritualistic and external obedience, but of a system of social relations such that everyone does his best to obey the same obligations, and does so out of mutual respect. The passage from obedience to cooperation thus marks a progress analogous to that of which we saw the effects in the evolution of the game of marbles: only in the final stage does the morality of intention triumph over the morality of objective responsibility. When parents do not trouble about such considerations as these, when they issue contradictory commands and are inconsistent in the punishments they inflict, then, obviously, it is not because of moral constraint but in spite of and as a reaction against it that the concern with intentions develops in the child. Here is a child, who, in his desire to please, happens to break something and is snubbed for his pains, or who in general sees his actions judged otherwise than he judges them himself. It is obvious that after more or less brief periods of submission, during which he accepts every verdict, even those that are wrong, he will begin to feel the injustice of it all. Such situations can lead to revolt. But if, on the contrary, the child finds in his brothers and sisters or in his playmates a form of society which develops his desire for cooperation and mutual sympathy, then a new type of morality will be created in him, a morality of reciprocity and not of obedience. This is the true morality of intention and of subjective responsibility.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * The child who defines a lie as being a "naughty word" knows perfectly well that lying consists in not speaking the truth. He is not, therefore, mistaking one thing for another, he is simply identifying them one with another by what seems to us a quaint extension of the word "lie".
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * The need to speak the truth and even to seek it for oneself is only conceivable in so far as the individual thinks and acts as one of a society, and not of any society (for it is just the constraining relations between superior and inferior that often drive the latter to prevarication) but of a society founded on reciprocity and mutual respect, and therefore on cooperation.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * In this way things, external objects, are assimilated to more or less ordered motor schemas, and in this continuous assimilation of objects the child's own activity is the starting point of play. Not only this, but when to pure movement are added language and imagination, the assimilation is strengthened, and wherever the mind feels no actual need for accommodating itself to reality, its natural tendency will be to distort the objects that surround it in accordance with its desires or its fantasy, in short to use them for its satisfaction. Such is the intellectual egocentrism that characterizes the earliest form of child thought.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * It is as his own mind comes into contact with others that truth will begin to acquire value in the child's eyes and will consequently become a moral demand that can be made upon him. As long as the child remains egocentric, truth as such will fail to interest him and he will see no harm in transposing facts in accordance with his desires.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * Thus we see that the child is almost led to tell lies — or what seem to us lies from our point of view — by the very structure of his spontaneous thought. Given this situation, what will be the result of the laws laid down by adults about truthfulness? On the occasion of the first very obvious lies, or of those connected with some offense or other and told therefore with the object of averting punishment or scolding, the parents point out to the child that he has just done something very wrong and thus inculcate in him the respect for truth.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * The child is a realist in every domain of thought, and it is therefore natural that in the moral sphere he should lay more stress on the external, tangible element than on the hidden motive.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * One must have felt a real desire to exchange thoughts with others in order to discover all that a lie can involve. And this interchange of thoughts is from the first not possible between adults and children, because the initial inequality is too great and the child tries to imitate the adult and at the same time to protect himself against him rather than really to exchange thoughts with him. The situation we have described is thus almost the necessary outcome of unilateral respect. The spirit of the command having failed to be assimilated, the letter alone remains. Hence the phenomenon we have been observing. The child thinks of a lie as "what isn't true," independently of the subject's intentions. He even goes so far as to compare lies to those linguistic taboos, "naughty words." As for the judgment of responsibility, the further a lie is removed from reality, the more serious is the offense. Objective responsibility is thus the inevitable result of unilateral respect in its earliest stage.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * The notion of good, which generally speaking, appears later than the notion of pure duty, particularly in the case of the child, is perhaps the final conscious realization of something that is the primary condition of the moral life — the need for reciprocal affection. And since moral realism is, on the contrary, the result of constraint exercised by the adult on the child, it may perhaps be a secondary growth in comparison to the simple aspiration after good, while still remaining the first notion to be consciously realized when the child begins to reflect upon morality and to attempt formulation.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * For the fundamental fact of human psychology is that society, instead of remaining almost entirely inside the individual organism as in the case of animals prompted by their instincts, becomes crystallized almost entirely outside the individuals. In other words, social rules, as Durkheim has so powerfully shown, whether they be linguistic, moral, religious, or legal, etc., cannot be constituted, transmitted or preserved by means of an internal biological heredity, but only through the external pressure exercised by individuals upon each other.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * As Bovet has demonstrated in the field of morals, rules do not appear in the mind of the child as innate facts, but as facts that are transmitted to him by his seniors, and to which from his tenderest years he has to conform by means of a sui generis form of adaptation. This, of course, does not prevent some rules from containing more than others an element of rationality, thus corresponding to the deepest fundamental constants of human nature. But whether they be rational or simply a matter of usage and consensus of opinion, rules imposed on the childish mind by adult constraint do begin by presenting a more or less uniform character of exteriority and sheer authority. So that instead of passing smoothly from an early individualism (the "social" element of the first months is only biologically social, so to speak, inside the individual, and therefore individualistic) to a state of progressive cooperation, the child is from his first year onwards in the grip of coercive education which goes straight on and ends by producing what Claprède has so happily called a veritable "short circuit."
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * To perceive is to construct intellectually, and if the child draws things as he conceives them, it is certainly because he cannot perceive them without conceiving them. But to give up gradually the spurious absolutes situated away and apart from the context of relations that has been built up during experience itself is the work of a superior kind of rationality. When the child comes to draw things as he sees them, it will be precisely because he has given up taking isolated objects in and for themselves and has begun to construct real systems of relations which take account of the true perspective in which things are connected.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * The majority of parents are poor psychologists and give their children the most questionable moral trainings. It is perhaps in this domain that one realized most how keenly how immoral it can be to believe too much in morality, and how much more precious is a little humanity than all the rules in the world. Thus the adult leads the child to the notion of objective responsibility, and consolidates in consequence a tendency that is already natural to the spontaneous mentality of little children.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * The relations between parents and children are certainly not only those of constraint. There is spontaneous mutual affection, which from the first prompts the child to acts of generosity and even of self-sacrifice, to very touching demonstrations which are in no way prescribed. And here no doubt is the starting point for that morality of good which we shall see developing alongside of the morality of right or duty, and which in some persons completely replaces it.
 * Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

 * There are in existence two distinct ideas of justice. We say that an award is unjust when it penalizes the innocent, rewards the guilty, or when, in general, it fails to be meted out in exact proportion to the merit or guilt in question. On the other hand, we say that a division is unjust when it favors some at the expense of others. In this second adaptation of the term, the idea of justice implies only the idea of equality. In the first acceptation of the term, the notion of justice is inseparable from that of the reward and punishment, and is defined by the correlation between acts and their retribution.
 * Ch. 3 Cooperation and the Idea of Justice

Quotes about Jean Piaget

 * At one time, many philosophers held that faultless "laws of thought" were somehow inherent, a priori, in the very nature of mind. This belief was twice shaken in the past century; first when Russell and his successors showed how the logic men employ can be defective, and later when Freud and Piaget started to reveal the tortuous ways in which our minds actually develop.
 * Marvin Minsky, "Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious" (1980)

 * Much research in psychology has been more concerned with how large groups of people behave than about the particular ways in which each individual person thinks... too statistical. I find this disappointing because, in my view of the history of psychology, far more was learned, for example, when Jean Piaget spent several years observing the ways that three children developed, or when Sigmund Freud took several years to examine the thinking of a rather small number of patients.
 * Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine (2006)

title: Jean Piaget


text:
Noël Coward

Noël Peirce Coward (December 16, 1899 – March 26, 1973) was an English playwright, composer of popular music and actor.

Quotes

 * [On the phone] My dear Jim's dead...No dear, he jumped off Waterloo Bridge - Yes, the one next to Charing Cross - No, no, no that's Blackfriars.
 * Early review, cited in Frank Muir's Book of Comedy Sketches

Don't put your daughter on the stage The profession is overcrowded And the struggle's pretty tough And admitting the fact she's burning to act That isn't quite enough She's a big girl and though her teeth are fairly good She's not the type I ever would be eager to engage I repeat, Mrs. Worthington, sweet Mrs. Worthington Don't put your daughter on the stage.
 * Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington
 * "Mrs Worthington" (Song, 1933)

We only keep them up for Americans to rent. Tho' the pipes that supply the bathroom burst And the lavat'ry makes you fear the worst It was used by Charles the First (quite informally), And later by George the Fourth on a journey north, The state apartments keep their historical reknown, It's wiser not to sleep there in case they tumble down; But still if they ever catch on fire Which with any luck they might, We'll fight for the stately homes of England.
 * The stately homes of England we proudly represent,
 * "The Stately Homes of England" from Operette (1937)

We've heard of a thousand times Our ancestors were unequivocally right. They frequently went on missions To rather peculiar climes To lead the wretched heathen to the light. Though some of them got beaten up and some of them stampeded And quite a lot were eaten up - a few of them succeeded. On one of these expeditions An uncle we thought a bore Turned out to be more spirited than ever he'd been before. Poor Uncle Harry Wanted to be a missionary So he took a ship and sailed away. This visionary Hotly pursued by dear Aunt Mary Found a South Sea isle on which to stay. The natives greeted them kindly, And invited them to dine On yams and clams and human hams and vintage coconut wine The taste of which was filthy But the after-effects divine.
 * Our families have traditions
 * "Uncle Harry" from Pacific 1860 (1946)

 * Charles: Anything interesting in The Times? Ruth: Don't be silly, Charles.
 * Blithe Spirit (1941)

 * Hollywood is a place where some people lie on the beach and look up at the stars, whereas other people lie on the stars and look down at the beach.
 * Interview with Walter Harris in 1960 reported in The Times (26 May 2009)

 * I love criticism as long as it is unqualified praise.
 * Quote in Margaret McManus, "Noël Coward a 'Blithe Spirit' — in Sunny Jamaica", The Des Moines Register (January 8, 1956), Section: Iowa TV Magazine, p. 5

 * Television is for appearing on, not looking at.
 * Interview with Edward R. Murrow on Person to Person (27 April 1956)

 * The Battle of Britain was twenty-three years ago and the world has forgotten it. Those young men, so many of whom I knew, flew up into the air and died for us and all we believed in... What did they die for? I suppose for themselves and what they believed was England. It was England then – for a few brave months... The peace we are enduring is not worth their deaths. England has become a third-rate power, economically and morally. We are vulgarised by American values. America, which didn't even know war on its own ground, is now dictating our policies and patronising our values. I came away from that gentle, touching, tatty little party with a heavy and sad heart. The England those boys died for has disappeared. Our history, except for stupid, squalid social scandals, is over... We are now beset by the 'clever ones', all the cheap frightened people who can see nothing but defeat and who have no pride, no knowledge of the past, no reverence for our lovely heritage... I despise the young, who see no quality in our great past and who spit, with phoney, left-wing disdain, on all that we, as a race, have contributed to the living world... I say a grateful goodbye to those foolish, gallant young men who made it possible for me to be alive today to write these sentimental words.
 * Diary entry after attending the annual dinner for Battle of Britain veterans (September 1963), quoted in The Noël Coward Diaries, eds. Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley (1982), pp. 543-545

 * He loved me true did Harry-boy and I loved him true, and if the happiness we gave each other was wicked and wrong in the eyes of the Law and the Church and God Almighty, then the Law and the Church and God Almighty can go dig a hole and fall down it.
 * Me and the Girls (1964)

The author of Lear remains unshaken Willie Herbert or Mary Fitton What does it matter? The Sonnets were written.
 * Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon
 * A Question of Values.

 * Proceeding on the assumption that the reader of this preface is interested in the development of my musical talent, I will try to explain, as concisely as I can, how, in this respect, my personal wheels go round. To begin with, I have only had two music lessons in my life. These were the first steps of what was to have been a full course at the Guildhall School of Music, and they faltered and stopped when I was told by my instructor that I could not use consecutive fifths. He went on to explain that a gentleman called Ebenezer Prout had announced many years ago that consecutive fifths were wrong and must in no circumstances be employed. At that time Ebenezer Prout was merely a name to me (as a matter of fact he still is, and a very funny one at that) and I was unimpressed by his Victorian dicta. I argued back that Debussy and Ravel had used consecutive fifths like mad. My instructor waved aside this triviality with a pudgy hand, and I left his presence forever with the parting shot that what was good enough for Debussy and Ravel was good enough for me. This outburst of rugged individualism deprived me of much valuable knowledge, and I have never deeply regretted it for a moment.
 * Preface, The Noël Coward Song Book, pp. 12–13.

 * If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it.
 * Sheridan Morley, A Talent to Amuse (1985).

 * Your motivation is your pay packet on Friday. Now get on with it.
 * Fred Metcalf, ''The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations (1987).

Whenever spring breaks through again.
 * I'll see you again,
 * "I'll See You Again," Bitter Sweet, Act 1

Private Lives (1930)
Elyot: The Duke of Westminster's I expect. It always is. Amanda: I wish I were on it. Elyot: I wish you were too. Amanda: There's no need to be nasty. Elyot: Yes, there is every need. I've never in my life felt a greater urge to be nasty.
 * Amanda: Whose yacht is that?

Amanda: Very flat, Norfolk. Elyot: There's no need to be unpleasant. Amanda: That was no reflection on her, unless of course she made it flatter.
 * Elyot: I met her on a house party in Norfolk.

 * Elyot: Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.

 * Amanda: Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1930)
There are certain times Of day When all the citizens retire To take their clothes off and perspire. It's one of those rules That the greatest fools Obey, Because the sun is far too sultry And one must avoid its ultry- Vi'let ray.
 * In tropical climes

Their huts. Because they're obviously, Definitely Nuts.
 * The natives grieve When the white men leave

Go out in the midday sun. The Japanese don't care to, The Chinese wouldn't dare to, The Hindus and Argentines Sleep firmly from twelve to one, But Englishmen Detest a Siesta.
 * Mad Dogs & Englishmen

For Eastern eyes To see, That though the English are effete, They're quite impervious to heat.
 * It's such a surprise

When the English claim The Earth, That they give rise To such hilarity And mirth.
 * It seems such a shame

The heat of noon Is just what the natives shun, They put their Scotch Or Rye down And lie down.
 * In Rangoon

Where the sun beats down To the rage of man and beast, The English garb Of the English sahib Merely gets a bit more creased. In Bangkok At twelve'o'clock They foam at the mouth and run, But mad dogs and Englishmen Go out in the midday sun.
 * In a jungle town

They strike a gong And fire off a noonday gun To reprimand Each inmate Who's in late.
 * In Hong Kong

To move at all Is seldom if ever done.
 * In Bengal,

Design for Living (1932)

 * The actual facts are so simple. I love you. You love me. You love Otto. I love Otto. Otto loves you. Otto loves me. There now! Start to unravel from there.

 * People are wrong when they say that the opera isn't what it used to be. It is what it used to be — that's what's wrong with it!
 * Act 3, Scene I

Mad About the Boy (1932)

 * Mad about the boy I know it's stupid to be mad about the boy I'm so ashamed of it but must admit the sleepless nights I've had About the boy

 * On the silverscreen He melts my foolish heart in every single scene Although I'm quite aware that here and there are traces of the cad About the boy

 * Lord knows I'm not a fool girl I really shouldn't care Lord knows I'm not a school girl In the flurry of her first affair.

 * Will it ever cloy This odd diversity of misery and joy I'm feeling quite insane and young again And all because I'm mad about the boy

 * So if I could employ A little magic that will finally destroy This dream that pains me and enchains me But I can't because I'm mad... I'm mad about the boy

Present Laughter (1939)

 * Gary: You ought never to have joined the Athenaeum Club, Henry: it was disastrous. Henry: I really don’t see why. Gary: It’s made you pompous. Henry: It can’t have. I’ve always been too frightened to go into it.

 * Gary: Beryl Willard is extremely competent. Beryl Willard has been extremely competent, man and boy, for forty years. In addition to her extreme competence, she has contrived, with uncanny skill, to sustain a spotless reputation for being the most paralysing, epoch-making, monumental, world-shattering, God-awful bore that ever drew breath...I will explain one thing further - it is this. No prayer, no bribe, no threat, no power, human or divine, would induce me to go to Africa with Beryl Willard. I wouldn't go as far as Wimbledon with Beryl Willard. Liz: What he's trying to say is that he doesn't care for Beryl Willard.

 * Morris: I'll never speak to you again until the day I die! Gary: Well, we can have a nice little chat then, can't we?

Quotes about Noël Coward

 * Wrongly attributed to Noel Coward is a quotation about the Queen of Tonga. He is alleged to have been sitting under cover from the heavy rain with Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent at the Coronation in London in 1953. Opposite them was the vast Queen Salote of Tonga. Princess Marina is supposed to have asked "Noel, who is that little man sheltering under Queen Salote's umbrella?" Coward is said to have peered through the rain and said "Oh, her lunch, my dear." In a later interview with Walter Harris, Coward revealed it had been said by someone at White's Club and was immediately attributed to Coward. "It was very flattering of course, except that I had intended to visit Tonga the following winter, and after that of course it was quite impossible."
 * Interview with Walter Harris in 1960 reported in The Times (26 May 2009)

 * My big break came the next year with Bitter Sweet, starring . I had a dress with a plunging neckline. Noël Coward said he could see the and I felt devastated. If you're blind, you'll miss me in that one.
 * , speaking with James Bawden, circa 1980s; as quoted in Conversations with Classic Film Stars: Interviews from Hollywood's Golden Era (2016) by Bawden and Ron Miller, p. 208

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

title: Noël Coward


text:
Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres (2 August 1923 - 28 September 2016) was a Polish-born Israeli statesman. He was the ninth President of Israel from 2007 to 2014. Peres served twice as the Prime Minister of Israel and twice as Interim Prime Minister, and he was a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and, except for a three-month-long hiatus in early 2006, served continuously until 2007, when he became President.

Quotes

 * There's a great deal of criticism about the United States, but there is one thing that nobody criticizes the United States. Nobody thinks the United States went to strike against Iraq in order to gain land or water or oil, nobody thinks America has any ambitions about real estate. As it happened in the 20th century, the American boys went to fight in two world wars, many of them lost their lives. The United States won the wars, won the land, but you gave back every piece of it. America didn't keep anything out of her victories for herself. You gave back Japan, an improved Japan, you gave Germany, an improved Germany, you've heard the Marshall Plan. And today, I do not believe there is any serious person on earth who thinks the United States, whether you agree or don't agree with this strike, has any egoistic or material purposes in the war against Iraq. The reason is, for this strike, that you cannot let the world run wild. And people who are coming from different corners of our life, attack and kill women and children and innocent people, just out of the blue. And I think the whole world is lucky that there is a United States that has the will and the power to handle the new danger that has arrived on the 21st century.
 * Speech at Harvard University (20 October 2004)

 * Until the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, until then Israel didn't have a chance but to fight for her life. We were attacked five times, outgunned, outnumbered, on a small piece of land, and our main challenge was to remain alive.
 * Speech at Harvard University (20 October 2004)

 * Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.
 * As quoted in Serving "60 Years to Life", Newsweek Europe (12 December 2005)

 * There isn't a single person in Israel who wants to destroy or harm Egypt. In contrast, there's a whole country that openly wants to destroy Israel, and that's Iran. That is the difference between ours and Egypt's security problems. Egypt is not threatened by anyone. Israel is threatened by the second circle. Israel has never been and will never be a danger to Egypt. [...] Israel is not threatening Iran, Iran is threatening Israel. The situation is not similar.
 * ArabYnet online chat (6 February 2006)

 * The borders will be based on 1967, with the required security modifications. If we take a certain percentage of the Palestinian land, we will compensate them with land. We will not rob their land. Sovereignty yes, but no one would threaten this Palestinian state, and therefore the Palestinians also agree that it can be demilitarized. When the threats on Israel would also cease, I hope that Israel could be demilitarized too.
 * ArabYnet online chat (6 February 2006)

 * We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through but not a genocide [...] Israel should not determine a historical or philosophical position on the Armenian issue. If we have to determine a position, it should be done with great care not to distort the historical realities.
 * As quoted in "The Holocaust and Armenian Case: Highlighting the Main Differences" by Ibrahim Kaya, in Turkish Weekly (10 April 2001)

 * Iran is a great problem, but not necessarily a great country. In fact, I think it is a very weak country.
 * As quoted in "Israel's Shimon Peres Calls Iran Weak", Comcast (29 November 2006)

 * The president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.
 * Remarks 8 May 2006, as quoted in "Iran can also be wiped off the map", in The Jerusalem Post (9 May 2006)

 * If world is suspicious that Israel may detonate nuclear bomb and if the suspicion is a deterrent — that's good enough.
 * As quoted in "Peres: Suspicion over Israeli nukes is good deterrent", Ynetnews (1 September 2007)

 * I will confine myself to reaffirming the Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the region.
 * As quoted in "Shimon Peres: 'Sanctions on Iran could work'" in Le Figaro'' (26 July 2007)

 * Your majesty, the king of Saudi Arabia, I was listening to your message. I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people. It's right, it's needed, it's promising … The initiative's portrayal of our region's future provides hope to the people and inspires confidence in the nations.
 * On King Abdullah's Interfaith initiative, as quoted in "Saudi king promotes tolerance at U.N. forum", Reuters (12 November 2008)

 * India represents the new world in a unique sense. Traditionally democracies were trying to bring equality to all walks of life, today there is a change. Democracy wants to enable every country to have the equal right to be different; it's a collection of differences, not an attempt to force or impose equality on every country. I think India is the greatest show of how so many differences in language, in sects can coexist facing great suffering and keeping full freedom... Many of the countries in the Middle East should learn from you how to escape poverty. You didn't escape poverty by getting American dollars or Russian Roubles but by introducing your own internal reforms and by understanding that the new call of modernity is science. In between the spiritual wealth of Gandhi and the earthly wisdom of Nehru, you combined a great performance of spirit and practice to escape poverty...I know you still have a long way to go but you do it without compromising freedom. The temptation when you're such a large country to introduce discipline and imposition is great but you tried to do it, to make progress not with force and discipline but in an open way. Many of us were educated on the literature of India when we fell in love we read Rabindranath Tagore and when we matured we tried to understand Gandhi.
 * Israeli President Shimon Peres praises India as greatest 'show of co-existence' (4 December 2012)

 * If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.
 * As quoted by Donald Rumsfeld in "Sharon's Victory" (link is to a preview, but the quote is in the first few visible lines), Wall Street Journal (7 February 2001)

 * India and Israel are co-operating on security and intelligence matters because we have a common enemy: terrorism.
 * Rahul Bedi, Israel and India draw Closer, 14 March 2002,

 * The way to make peace is not through governments. It is through people.
 *

Quotes about Peres

 * (HC: What is your personal estimate of Shimon Peres' performance as Prime Minister?) SH: I think he is doing very well indeed. But I am not at all surprised. I have known him for years. Apart from all else, he is a sensitive, genuinely thoughtful, widely-read person. Moreover, he maintains an ongoing dialogue with the intellectual community. Now that is real change from, say, Menachem Begin-not to mention Golda Meir!
 * Shulamith Hareven 1985 interview in We Are All Close: Conversations with Israeli Writers by Haim Chertok (1989)

 * Not long ago, at a meeting of people involved with social policy, Mr. Shimon Peres said that there are two things in the world that have no lobby: the weak and the future. I would recommend that we all adopt this diagnosis. We have too big a lobby for the past and not a big enough one for the future.
 * Shulamith Hareven "Identity: Victim" in The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)

 * He is sinister and slippery, always the man in a hurry.
 * Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, describing Peres to President Gerald Ford, [] (May 30, 1975).

title: Shimon Peres


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Washington Irving

Washington Irving (3 April 1783 – 28 November 1859) was an American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century.

Quotes

 * I endeavor to take things as they come with cheerfulness, and when I cannot get a dinner to suit my taste, I endeavor to get a taste to suit my dinner.
 * Letter to William Irving, Jr., about his positive attitude acquired while traveling in Europe.

 * Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
 * Bracebridge Hall. Bachelors (1822)

 * I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories.
 * Tales of a Traveler, To the Reader (1824)

 * There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place.
 * Tales of a Traveler (1824), Preface, p. 7

 * The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages; and unless some of its missionaries penetrate there, and erect banking houses and other pious shrines, there is no knowing how long the inhabitants may remain in their present state of contented poverty.
 * The Creole Village published in The Knickerbocker magazine (November 1836). This is origin of the expression almighty dollar. See Edward Bulwer-Lytton for "the pursuit of the almighty dollar". Compare: "Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold, And almost every vice,—almighty gold", Ben Jonson, Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland

 * Free-livers on a small scale, who are prodigal within the compass of a guinea.
 * The Stout Gentleman

 * There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted.
 * "The Adventure Of The German Student"

Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809)

 * How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.
 * Book II, ch. 3

 * Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? — No — no, ‘tis your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.
 * Book III, ch. 2 This derives from a statement by William Shakespeare in the play Julius Caesar where Caesar declares:
 * Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

 * His wife "ruled the roost," and in governing the governor, governed the province, which might thus be said to be under petticoat government.
 * Book IV, ch. 4

 * They claim to be the first inventors of those recondite beverages, cocktail, stonefence, and sherry cobbler.
 * Book IV, ch. 241

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

 * My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age.
 * "The Author's Account of Himself"

 * There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams, and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
 * "The Wife"

 * Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
 * "Rip Van Winkle"

 * A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use.
 * "Rip Van Winkle"

 * That happy age when a man can be idle with impunity.
 * "Rip Van Winkle"

 * There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity, that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble. It is only spurious pride that is morbid and sensitive, and shrinks from every touch.
 * "The Country Church"

 * We feel that we are surrounded by the congregated bones of the great men of past times, who have filled history with their deeds, and the earth with their renown. And yet it almost provokes a smile at the vanity of human ambition to see how they are crowded together and jostled in the dust; what parsimony is observed in doling out a scanty nook, a gloomy corner, a little portion of earth, to those whom, when alive, kingdoms could not satisfy, and how many shapes and forms and artifices are devised to catch the casual notice of the passenger, and save from forgetfulness for a few short years a name which once aspired to occupy ages of the world's thought and admiration.
 * "Westminster Abbey"

 * Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-men is ever new, active, and immediate.
 * "Westminster Abbey"

 * Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present a touching instance of the equality of the grave; which brings down the oppressor to a level with the oppressed, and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemies together.
 * "Westminster Abbey"

 * Thus man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin.
 * "Westminster Abbey"

 * Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes; but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over the fields; but they are starving in the midst of its abundance: the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden; but they feel as reptiles that infest it.
 * "Traits of Indian Character"

 * Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it.
 * "Philip of Pokanoket : An Indian Memoir"
 * A more extensive statement not found as such in this work is attributed to Irving in Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book (1923) edited by Roycroft Shop:
 * Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
 * The first part of this statement is quoted without attribution as early as 1897, and is widely attributed to Irving separately as well as in this joined form, but in research for Wikiquote, no original source has yet been found.

 * A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul on the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.
 * "The Broken Heart"

 * Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature. Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive multiplication. Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was a slow and laborious operation; they were written either on parchment, which was expensive, so that one work was often erased to make way for another; or on papyrus, which was fragile and extremely perishable. Authorship was a limited and unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly by monks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters. The accumulation of manuscripts was slow and costly, and confined almost entirely to monasteries. To these circumstances it may, in some measure, be owing that we have not been inundated by the intellect of antiquity; that the fountains of thought have not been broken up, and modern genius drowned in the deluge. But the inventions of paper and the press have put an end to all these restraints. They have made everyone a writer, and enabled every mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the whole intellectual world. The consequences are alarming. The stream of literature has swollen into a torrent — augmented into a river — expanded into a sea.
 * "The Mutabilities of Literature"

 * There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.
 * "The Mutabilities of Literature"

 * The great British Library — an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or “pure English, undefiled” wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.
 * "The Art of Book-Making"

 * His [the author's] renown has been purchased, not by deeds of violence and blood, but by the diligent dispensation of pleasure.
 * "The Westminster Abbey [The Poets' Corner]"

 * The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal — every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open — this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.
 * "Rural Funerals"

 * They who drink beer will think beer.
 * "Stratford-on-Avon"

 * From the listless repose of the place and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land and to pervade the very atmosphere.
 * "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

 * The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head had been carried away by a cannonball in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country-folk hurrying along in the gloom of night as if on the wings of the wind.
 * "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

 * "If I can but reach that bridge," thought Ichabod, "I am safe." Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash; he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider passed by like a whirlwind.
 * "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

Mahomet and his successors (1849)

 * In his private dealings he was just. He treated friends and strangers, the rich and poor, the powerful and weak, with equity, and was beloved by the common people for the affability with which he received them, and listened to their complaints.[...]
 * Mahomet and his successors, George P. Putnam, 1850, p. 330

 * Many of the visions and revelations handed down as having been given by him are spurious. The miracles ascribed to him are all fabrications of Moslem zealots. He expressly and repeatedly disclaimed all miracles excepting the Koran ; which, considering its incomparable merit, and the way in which it had come down to him from heaven, he pronounced the greatest of miracles. And here we must indulge a few observations on this famous document. While zealous Moslems and some of the most learned doctors of the faith draw proofs of its divine origin from the inimitable excellence of its style and composition, and the avowed illiteracy of Mahomet, less devout critics have pronounced it a chaos of beauties and defects; without method or arrangement; full of obscurities, incoherencies, repetitions, false versions of scriptural stories, and direct contradictions. The truth is that the Koran as it now exists is not the same Koran delivered by Mahomet to his disciples, but has undergone many corruptions and interpolations.
 * Mahomet and his successors, George P. Putnam, 1850, p. 330-331

 * His military triumphs awakened no pride nor vain glory, as they would have done had they been effected for selfish purposes. In the time of his greatest power he maintained the same simplicity of manners and appearance as in the days of his adversity. So far from affecting a regal state, he was displeased if, on entering a room, any unusual testimonials of respect were shown to him. If he aimed at a universal dominion, it was the dominion of faith; as to the temporal rule which grew up in his hands, as he used it without ostentation, so he took no step to perpetuate it in his family
 * Mahomet and his successors, George P. Putnam, 1850, p. 339

Disputed

 * Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
 * Attributed to Irving as early as 1883.  However, it does not seem to appear in Irving's known works.  Other citations from the same year leave the quotation unattributed.  . A similar passage is found in a pseudonymous novel published two years earlier in 1881: "Julia knew that sacrifices to patience are not in vain. Although they often do not produce the happiness for which they are made, they will, always, flow back and soften and purify the heart of the one who makes them".

title: Washington Irving


text: User:Topbanana

title: User:Topbanana


text:
Dick Gregory

Richard Claxton "Dick" Gregory (October 12, 1932 – August 19, 2017) was an American civil rights activist, social critic, writer, and comedian.

Quotes

 * I have experienced personally over the past few years how a purity of diet and thought are interrelated. And when Americans become truly concerned with the purity of the food that enters their own personal systems, when they learn to eat properly, we can expect to see profound changes effected in the social and political system of this nation. The two systems are inseparable.
 * Dick Gregory's Political Primer (Harper & Row, 1972), p. 262.

Nigger: An Autobiography (1964)

 * I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.

 * When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It's not enough, but it helps.

 * Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: “We don’t serve colored people here.” I said: “That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.”

Dick Gregory's Natural Diet For Folks Who Eat (1973)

 * Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' with Mother Nature, edited by James R. McGraw with Alvenia M. Fulton (New York: Harper & Row, 1973)

 * The philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first responsible for my change in diet. I became a vegetarian in 1965. … Under the leadership of Dr. King I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other—war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like—but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.
 * pp. 15-16

 * I personally would say that the quickest way to wipe out a group of people is to put them on a soul food diet. One of the tragedies is that the very folks in the black community who are most sophisticated in terms of the political realities in this country are nonetheless advocates of “soul food.” They will lay down a heavy rap on genocide in America with regard to black folks, then walk into a soul food restaurant and help the genocide along.
 * p. 81

Quotes about Dick Gregory

 * On October 5, Dick Gregory came to Selma. His wife, Lillian, had been jailed in Selma while demonstrating. He spoke to a crowded church meeting that evening. It was an incredible performance. With armed deputies ringing the church outside, and three local officials sitting in the audience taking notes, Gregory lashed out at white Southern society with a steely wit and a passion that sent his Negro listeners into delighted applause again and again. Never in the history of this area had a black man stood like this on a public platform, ridiculing and denouncing white officials to their faces. It was a historic coming of age for Selma, Alabama. It was also something of a miracle that Gregory was able to leave town alive. The local newspaper said that a "wildly applauding crowd" listened that night to "the most scathing attack unleashed here in current racial demonstrations." Gregory told the audience that the Southern white man had nothing he could call his own, no real identity, except "segregated drinking fountains, segregated toilets, and the right to call me nigger." He added, "And when the white man is threatened with losing his toilet, he's ready to kill!" He wished, Gregory said, that the whole Negro race would disappear overnight. "They would go crazy looking for us!" The crowd roared and applauded. Gregory lowered his voice, and he was suddenly serious: "But it looks like we got to do it the hard way, and stay down here, and educate them." He called the Southern police officials "peons, the idiots who do all the dirty work, the dogs who do all the biting." He went on for over two hours in that vein; essentially it was a lesson in economics and sociology, streaked with humor. "The white man starts all the wars, then he talks about cuttin' somebody.... They talk about our education. But the most important thing is to teach people how to live...."
 * Howard Zinn SNCC: The New Abolitionists (1964)

 * As Dick Gregory has said, any other group of people in the world who would take arms and rise up against the tyranny of their government would be hailed as "Freedom Fighters." But Negroes are expected to adhere to nonviolence.
 * Howard Zinn SNCC: The New Abolitionists (1964)

title: Dick Gregory


text:
Romain Gary

Romain Gary, born Romain Kacew (8 May 1914 - 2 December 1980) was a Jewish-French novelist, film director, WWII pilot and diplomat. He wrote under many pseudonyms including Shatan Bogat, Rene Deville and Fosco Sinibaldi. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt twice, once under his own name and again under the pseudonym Émile Ajar.

Quotes

 * When a war is won, it's the losers, not the winners, who are liberated.
 * Tulipe (1946)

 * Disease-carrying thoughts swarm and multiply in the dark and twisted labyrinths of our minds, and all that is needed is a mob and a good political slogan for the epidemic to be spread once again, with a burst of automatic weapons or a mushroom cloud.
 * Introduction to The Plague (1946) by Albert Camus, as translated in a 1962 edition.

 * I sat day after day in my little room, waiting for inspiration to visit me, trying to invent a pseudonym that would express, in a combination of noble and striking sounds, our dream of artistic achievement, a pen name grand enough to compensate for my own feeling of insecurity and helplessness at the idea of everything my mother expected from me.
 * Promise at Dawn (1960) as quoted in "Great Pretenders" by Emma Garman in Tablet (31 October 2007)

 * A writer’s subconscious is one of the filthiest places there are: as a matter of fact, you can find the whole world there.
 * The Dance of Genghis Cohn (1967)

 * There is more to Jewish history than Auschwitz.
 * Interview (1970), republished in Le Judaïsme n’est pas une Question de Sang [Judaism Isn’t About Blood] (2008) by Les éditions de l’Herne, as quoted in "A Chameleon on Show" in Forward (12 January 2011)

 * Gari in Russian means "burn!"… I want to test myself, a trial by fire, so that my I is burned off.
 * La Nuit Sera Calme [The Night Will Be Calm] (1974)

 * During the war he was an airman and slaughtered civilians from on high.
 * Pseudo (1976)

 * The gossip that came back to me from fashionable dinners where people pitied poor Romain Gary, who must be a little sad, a little jealous of the meteoric rise in the literary firmament of his cousin Emile Ajar… I’ve had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you.
 * The Life and Death of Émile Ajar (1980), an essay written prior to his suicide, as quoted in "Romain Gary: A Short Biography" by Madeleine Schwartz, at The Harvard Advocate

 * Humour is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.
 * As quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 223

 * The bombs I dropped on Germany between 1940 and 1944 maybe killed a Rilke or a Goethe or a Hölderin in his cradle. And yes, of course, if it had to be done over, I would do it again. Hitler had condemned us to kill. Not even the most just causes are ever innocent.
 * As quoted in Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2003) by Tzvetan Todorov, p. 217

Quotes about Gary

 * Alphabetized by author

 * Gary’s life was shaped by war, revolution, emigration, anti-Semitism, defeat, and murderous low-altitude bombing runs. But he never wallowed in victimhood – quite the contrary. He wrote scathing satires of the victim syndrome, and never claimed that his changes of country and language were anything but opportunities to be someone else. He didn’t need to know whether he was Russian, or Jewish, or Polish, or Catholic, or French. In a questionnaire on ethnic identity he would have answered: all of the above. Gary is a good model for our own century of transnational lives.
 * David Bellos, in "Romain Gary: au revoir et merci" in The Telegraph (12 November 2010)

 * In 1966, Gary and Seberg visited the memorial of the Warsaw ghetto, in the city where he’d lived as a child for several years before moving to France. This confrontation with the trauma of history — a horror he narrowly avoided — was overwhelming. Gary hallucinated the arm of a hidden Jew emerging from a sewer grill shaking its fist, and fainted from the shock. When he came to, some combination of survivor’s guilt and righteous anger was conceived, taking shape in The Dance of Genghis Cohn (1967) — a breathtakingly original, hilarious, and complex exploration of Gary as a man, an author, and a Jew. Genghis (né Moishe) Cohn, a comedian from Berlin imprisoned in Auschwitz, exposes his bare bottom to Schatz, the SS officer who kills him, and instructs him to “Kush mire in toques.” (Opines Cohn’s ghost: “There have undoubtedly been more worthy and noble last words in history than ‘Kiss my ass,’ but I have never made any claim to greatness and, besides, I’m quite pleased with my effort…”).
 * Emma Garman, in "Great Pretenders" in Tablet (31 October 2007)

 * Too famous for his work to be judged without bias, Gary felt he needed to break free from categorization. So, in 1973, at age 59 — the same age his mother was when she died — Gary invented Émile Ajar. He was by then twice divorced, retired from the diplomatic corps, and had published 22 books, including the Goncourt-winning The Roots of Heaven (1956), about illegal elephant poaching in Africa. It was time for a new adventure, as he explains in The Life and Death of Émile Ajar: “I was tired of being nothing but myself…there was the nostalgia for one’s youth, for one’s debut, for one’s renewal…. I was profoundly affected by the oldest protean temptation of man: that of multiplicity.” … events turned downright farcical. The Life Before Us was awarded the 1975 Prix Goncourt, the rules of which stipulate that it may be awarded to an author just once in his lifetime, and Gary had already received it for The Roots of Heaven. He instructed Ajar’s lawyer to turn down the honor on her client’s behalf, but the prize administrators would hear nothing of it. “The Goncourt Prize cannot be accepted or refused any more than life and death. Mr. Ajar remains the laureate.”
 * Emma Garman, in "Great Pretenders" in Tablet (31 October 2007)

 * Beyond Gary’s creative mendacity, one aspect of his life was indubitably genuine. After Germany invaded France, Gary escaped to London, where he became a war hero, serving as a fearless bomber pilot for the Free French Forces. Flying missions even when recuperating from battle wounds, Gary fought a feisty personal, even visceral battle against the Nazis (in one interview, Gary described himself as “testicularly anti-racist”) that was a concrete reality in a life devoted to more amorphous artistry, and his wartime loyalties remained a permanent obsession.
 * Benjamin Ivry, in "A Chameleon on Show" in Forward (12 January 2011)

 * When it counted, Gary was ultimately accurate, as when he left a suicide note in 1980, explaining that he decided to end his life because he had written all he wished to write and not because his estranged and tormented ex-wife, film star Jean Seberg, had committed suicide a year earlier. Yet such basic home truths in Gary’s life and work can be obscured by his prose style and grandiose, self-mythifying persona. The Dance of Genghis Cohn itself demonstrates Gary’s paradoxical approach of using, as Bellos observes, “vulgarity and coruscating wit to defeat the greatest obscenity of 20th-century history, the slaughter of the Jews by Nazi Germany.” The novel’s protagonist (a blend of Mongol and Jewish, as Gary himself claimed to be), murdered by the Nazis in 1943, becomes a dybbuk in the mind of his executioner. The victim/protagonist forces his murderer to sing songs redolent of Yiddishkeit, like “My Yiddishe Mama.” Such burlesque ironies, painted with broad brushstrokes in a popular novel published one year before the release of Mel Brooks’s film The Producers, demonstrated the comic potential of ridiculing Hitler, but offended some readers in France, notably a critic from the weekly news magazine L’Express, who termed The Dance of Genghis Cohn an “affront to the memory of those who died at Auschwitz.” Forty-five years on, readers and critics are relishing the same pitilessly absurdist authorial voice, describing savage and coarse events of modern history in the savage and coarse terms that so troubled Gary’s readers when his books first appeared decades ago.
 * Benjamin Ivry, in "A Chameleon on Show" in Forward (12 January 2011)

 * In 1975, Emile Ajar's second novel, La Vie devant soi, was a French literary sensation. The fictionalised memoir of an Arab boy growing up in a Parisian suburb, packed with extraordinary slang, aggressive jokes and almost unbelievable characters, the book was lathered with praise by critics, eventually winning the Goncourt, the French equivalent of the Booker. It went on to become the bestselling French novel of the 20th century. There was only one problem: Ajar was actually Roman Gary, already a bestselling French author (and previous winner of the Goncourt, which is supposed to be awarded to any particular writer only once), who had reinvented himself to outwit the literary establishment and win a new readership.
 * Josh Lacey, in "Romain Gary: A Tall Story by David Bellos – review" in The Guardian (15 January 2011)

 * By the time Romain Gary shot himself in the head, the French-Russian writer had published over fifty novels under four different names, directed two movies, fought in the air force, and represented France as a consul. His marriages — first to the British writer Lesley Branch, then to the American actress Jean Seberg — had brought him celebrity. He had enmeshed some of France’s literary giants in an elaborate hoax that broke fundamental precepts of the country’s cultural institutions. But Gary always saw his own life as a series of incomplete drafts. Even as he planned his own death, he remained on the path to self-improvement. “To renew myself, to relive, to be someone else, was always the great temptation of my existence,” read the essay he left with his suicide note. It’s perhaps no surprise that biographies of the author often seem overwhelmed by the slippery nature of their subject. “Romain Gary: The Chameleon,” “Romain Gary: The Man who Sold his Shadow.” Gary was one of France’s most successful writers, but he lived the life of a spy.
 * Madeleine Schwartz, in "Romain Gary: A Short Biography" at The Harvard Advocate

title: Romain Gary


text:
User:LuciferBlack

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title: User:LuciferBlack


text:
Julia Child

Julia Child (August 15, 1912 - August 13, 2004), television chef and author.

Quotes

 * A cookbook is only as good as its worst recipe.
 * Quoted in New York Times obituary

 * The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook.
 * Indirect quote on The National (CBC TV), Aug. 13

 * I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. … Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed—eh bien, tant pis! Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile … then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile—and learn from her mistakes.
 * My Life In France: Le Cordon Bleu, p. 71

 * My, I get so depressed after a poor meal; that's why I can never stay in England for more than a week.
 * Letter to Avis DeVoto, January 30, 1953, collected in As Always Julia ed. Joan Reardon, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2010

 * "Too much trouble," "Too expensive," or "Who will know the difference" are death knells for good food.
 * Foreword to Mastering the Art of French Cooking, July 1961

Attributed

 * How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex?”
 * Origins of attribution could be a New York Times Magazine article by Joan Barthel ("How to Avoid TV Dinners While Watching TV" 7 August 1966, p. 34): "'The French Chef'...the program that can be campier than 'Batman,' farther-out than 'Lost in Space' and more penetrating than 'Meet the Press' as it probes the question: Can a Society be Great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?" Article quoted in |Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child (Noël Riley Fitch. Doubleday, 1997, p. 308)

Quotes about Julia Child

 * I read and read and read-that's how I learned to cook-from M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard
 * 1978 interview in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)

 * Julia Child the famous chef said, "I never feel lonely in the kitchen. Food is very friendly."
 * Naomi Shihab Nye "Feeling Wise" in Everything Comes Next (2020)

title: Julia Child


text:
Patti Smith

Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter and poet.

Quotes

 * Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about.

Lyrics
For somebody's sins But not mine.
 * Jesus died
 * Gloria: In Excelsis Deo, from Horses (1975)

Riding on a copper wave Do you like the world around you? Are you ready to behave?
 * Look around you, all around you
 * Rock N Roll Nigger, from Easter (1978)

I have not sold myself to God!
 * He spared the child and spoiled the rod
 * Babelogue, from Easter (1978)

To redeem the work of fools Upon the meek the graces shower It's decreed the people rule.
 * People have the power
 * People Have the Power, from Dream of Life (1988)

Johnny's laying there in his sperm coffin The angel looks down at him and says "Oh, pretty boy Can't you show me nothing but surrender?
 * Life is filled with holes
 * Land

About Patti Smith

 * Patti Smith, the rock n roll legend...as Patti Smith sings famously, "People have the power."
 * Amy Goodman Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America (2017) p 184

 * Her writing is so brilliant and beautiful.
 * Alice Hoffman Interview with Goodreads (2017)

 * She is a soldier. She will not be defeated.

title: Patti Smith