text:
Kingdom of Heaven (film)

 * For general notions of a "Kingdom of Heaven" see Kingdom of God

Kingdom of Heaven is a 2005 film, set immediately following the Second Crusade, about a French village blacksmith who goes to the aid of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in its defense against the Ayyubid Muslim Sultan, Saladin, who is fighting to reclaim the city from the Christians. The screenplay is a heavily fictionalised portrayal of the life of Balian of Ibelin (c. 1143–93).
 * Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by William Monahan.

Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Safeguard the helpless, and do no wrong.

Godfrey of Ibelin

 * You are not what you were born, but what you have it in yourself to be.
 * I once fought two days with an arrow through my testicle.
 * Whoever dies here today, you will certainly be among them.
 * Let's work on your skills. Take a high guard, like this. The Italians call it 'la posta del falcone - the guard of the hawk. Strike from high. Like this.
 * If you have come to kill me, even these days, it is not easy.
 * A new world. A better world. A kingdom of conscience...a kingdom of heaven.
 * Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright, that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong; that is your oath. [Slaps Balian] And that is so you remember it. Rise a knight, and Baron of Ibelin.
 * Jerusalem is easy to find, go to where the men speak Italian, then continue until they speak something else.
 * No matter your position, you are of my house, and we support the king.
 * Defend the King.... If the King is no more save the people..... You are all that survives me... Do not let me down.

Balian of Ibelin

 * What man is a man who does not make the world better?
 * From the Latin Inscription: Nemo vir est qui mundum non reddat meliorem
 * A queen never walks. And yet you are walking.
 * How can you be in hell, when you are in my heart?
 * If we do not burn these bodies, we will all be dead of disease in three days. God will understand, my lord. And if he doesn't...then he is not God. And we need not worry.
 * They are here.
 * When a single horseman is seen in the distance on top of a hill.
 * Is this why you came to the Holy Land? Come on!
 * To a Teutonic knight trying to kill him as they prepare to fight one another.
 * When this wall comes down, there will be no quarter. If you throw down your arms, your families will die. We can break this army here! So I say let them come! Let them come!
 * Rallying the defenders of Jerusalem for what is likely their last stand.
 * If this is the Kingdom of Heaven, let God do with it as he will.
 * [To Sybilla, after surrendering Jerusalem] Your brother's kingdom is here - (points to the mind) - and here - (points to the heart) - and that kingdom can never be surrendered.

Hospitaller

 * If the ribs are broken, the marrow will enter the blood and you will develop fever and die or a cyst will form and you will live. You're in the hands of God.
 * You sail now for Jerusalem as your father wished. I'll follow within the week. Now the voyage is perilous. If God has purpose for you there, he'll keep you safe in his hands. [pauses] If not, God bless.
 * I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of God. I've seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers. Holiness is in right action, and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. And goodness - what God desires - is here [points to Balian's head] and here [points to Balian's heart] and by what you decide to do every day you will be a good man...or not.

King Baldwin IV

 * When I was sixteen I won a great victory. I felt in that moment that I should live to be one hundred, now I know I shall not see thirty. None of us know our end really, or what hand will guide us there. A King may move a man, a father may claim a son. That man can also move himself. And only then does that man truly begin his own game. Remember that howsoever you are played, or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone. Even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say "but I was told by others to do thus" or that "virtue was not convenient at the time." This will not suffice. Remember that. [Balian and King Baldwin IV]
 * Come forward. I am glad to meet Godfrey's son. He was one of my greatest teachers. He was there when, playing with the other boys, my arm was cut. And it was he, not my father's physicians, who noticed that I felt no pain. He wept when he gave my father the news, that I am a leper.
 * The Saracens say that this disease is God's vengeance against the vanity of our kingdom. As wretched as I am, these Arabs believe that the chastisement that awaits me in hell is far more severe and lasting. If that's true, I call it unfair.
 * Come. Sit. Do you play? The whole world is in chess. Any move can be the death of you. Do anything except remain where you started and you can't be sure of your end.
 * On your knees... lower. I am... Jerusalem. And you, Reynald, will give me the kiss of peace. [Takes off glove]
 * [To Sibylla] My beautiful sister. So beautiful. I'm sorry if I've caused you any pain. Remember me as I was.

Sybilla
But this isn't adultery. It's washing. But if it were adultery... which it isn't... the Commandments are not for people like us. They are for the others.
 * There'll be a day when you will wish you had done a little evil to do a greater good.
 * Jerusalem is dead Tiberias. No kingdom is worth my son alive in hell. I shall go to hell instead.
 * [To Tiberias] How long before he wears a mask? Will you have one made for him? How did my boy deserve it?

Reynald

 * [After raiding a peaceful caravan] I am what I am. Someone has to be.
 * [To Guy] If the war's to be now or later, I would have it now.

Tiberias

 * [To Balian] You're your father's son. He was my friend. I'm yours.
 * [To Balian] May God be with you, he's no longer with me.

Bishop

 * [On the practice of posthumously mutilating suicide victims] The law can go too far... I ask myself, would Jesus do it thusly? There is so much done in Christendom of which Christ would be incapable.

Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani

 * Your quality will be known among your enemies before ever you meet them.
 * [To Balian as he departs Jerusalem] If God does not love you, how could you have done all the things you have done?

Dialogue

 * Gravedigger: She's denied the cross for suicide... and buried at the center of a crossroads. Huh. Show me the logic. Father?
 * Village Sheriff: What?
 * Gravedigger: The devil is a practical man. If she were a witch, she was a poor return on his investment.
 * Village Sheriff: What would you know of logic?
 * Graveigger: Oh, I have ears, Father. Although one is notched [tugs ear lobe] because I love justice.
 * Village Sheriff: You love thieving. Shut up. You dig.
 * Gravedigger: [A parade of crusading knights appear] Crusaders. Clear the road, if you will.
 * English Sergeant: [Throws money bag] This is for the burial from my lord... and a Mass... for her soul.
 * Village Sheriff: [Starts walking and turns] Wait. Have you forgotten?
 * Gravedigger: She was your brother's wife.
 * Village Sheriff: She was a suicide. Cut off her head. And return the ax.
 * Gravedigger: You know this place, my lord?
 * Godfrey of Ibelin: Know it? I know all of it. Your brother? You have spoken to him?
 * Gravedigger: On what matter, my lord? He is still arrested.
 * Godfrey of Ibelin: Your brother is as responsible for his wife's sin as I am.
 * Graveigger: Opinions differ, my lord. The burial was... Yes.
 * Godfrey of Ibelin: And you did not mutilate the person?
 * Graveigger: No.
 * Godfrey of Ibelin: Good. The law can go too far. It can too far. I ask myself...

 * Town priest: [To Balian working on sharpening swords in the town blacksmith forge] The village does not want you. When the old lord is dead, they will drive you out. When the bishop is dead, it is certain.
 * Balian:And you take my property.
 * Town priest: The Church.
 * Balian:You.
 * Town priest: They would have taken you to Jerusalem... away from... all this. I arranged it. I swear to you... you will have no peace so long as you stay here. No man ever needed a new world more. Imagine your sin and pain erased. All. [Balian takes out a sword and starts malleablizing it] If you take the Crusade... you may relieve your wife's position in hell. I put it delicately. She was a suicide. She is in hell.  Though what she does there without a head... [Balian notices priest's cross necklace, holds it up and impales him with sword throwing him onto fire, Balian takes the necklace with priest leaping out igniting the forge]

 * Godfrey of Ibelin: Have you come to kill me? Even these days, it is not easy. Well?
 * Balian: I have done... murder.
 * Godfrey of Ibelin: Haven't we all?

 * Godfrey of Ibelin: God has made us man. We must suffer all. I also have lost. Some say Jerusalem is the very center of the world for asking forgiveness. For myself, I call it here. Now. I knew your namesake. I knew your mother. To be courteous, I should say that it was against her objections. But I was the lord's brother and she had no choice. But I did not force her. I have forgiveness to ask of you. I am Godfrey, the Baron of Ibelin. I have one hundred men at arms in Jerusalem. If you come with me, you will have a living... and... you will have my thanks. There it is.
 * Balian of Ibelin: Whoever you are, my lord... my place is here.
 * Godfrey of Ibelin: What made it your place is now dead. You will never see me again. If you want anything of me, take it now.
 * Balian of Ibelin: I want nothing.
 * Godfrey of Ibelin: I am sorry for your troubles. God protect you.

 * Balian of Ibelin: What could a king ask of a man like me?
 * Godfrey of Ibelin: A new world. A better world than has ever been seen. There, you are not what you are born but what you have it in yourself to be. A kingdom of conscience, of peace instead of war, love instead of hate. That is what lies in the end of a crusade. A kingdom of heaven.

 * Guy de Lusignan: If I had fought you when you were still capable of making bastards...
 * Godfrey of Ibelin: I knew your mother when she was making hers. Fortunately you're too old to be one of mine.

 * Balian of Ibelin: [Sees Saracens praying on the shores of Messina] Who are those men?
 * English Sergeant: Muslims [Looks at Balian] Saracens.
 * Balian of Ibelin: And they are allowed their prayers?
 * English Sergeant: If they pay the tax. Subhaana-rabbialadhim. Praise be to God. It is proper to praise Him.
 * Balian of Ibelin: Sounds like our prayers.

 * Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani: [To Balian] You there, he says that is his horse.
 * Balian of Ibelin: Why would it be his horse?
 * Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani: Because it is on his land.
 * Balian of Ibelin: I took this horse from the sea.
 * Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani: [Says to the Cavalier in Arabic] Wajdi al-hisānu min-bahr ("he found the horse from sea").
 * Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani: [Saracen Cavalier speak to him in Arabic and Imad interpretes for Balian] He says you are a great liar, and he will fight you because you are a liar.
 * Balian of Ibelin: I have no desire to fight.
 * Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani: Then you must give him the horse!
 * Balian of Ibelin: No.

 * Balian of Ibelin: [Saracen Cavalier starts fighting him, but on horseback] Fight me fairly!
 * Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani: [Saracen Cavalier says in Arabic why he should] Why? Why should he? He is a Knight.
 * Balian of Ibelin: And I am the Baron of Ibelin.
 * Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani: [Says to the Cavalier in Arabic] Inna-hū hakīmu [pauses] iblin ("he is Baron of Ibelin").
 * Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani: [Saracen Cavalier speaks in Arabic and Imad interpretes for Balian] He says that the Baron of Ibelin is old. He knew him, in Damascus.
 * Balian of Ibelin: I am the new one.

 * Tiberias: Guy de Lusignan and Reynald de Chatillon, with the Templars... have attacked a Saracen caravan.
 * Crusaders: Liar!
 * Tiberias: Silence!
 * Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: It was no caravan. It was an army headed for Bethlehem to desecrate the birthplace of our Lord!
 * Tiberias: Reynald, with the Templars, have broken the king's pledge of peace. Saladin will come into this kingdom...
 * Guy de Lusignan: Tiberias knows more than a Christian should about Saladin's intentions.
 * Tiberias: [Walks up to him] That I would rather live among men than kill them, is certainly why YOU are still alive.
 * Guy de Lusignan: [Chuckles] That sort of Christianity has its uses, I suppose...
 * Tiberias: We must not go to war with Saladin! We do not want it, and we may not win it.
 * Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: Blasphemy! [All crusaders burst repeating in unison] An army of Jesus Christ, which bears his holy cross, cannot be beaten!
 * Hospitaller: Does the count of Tiberias suggest that it could be?
 * Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: There must be war. God wills it! [All crusaders burst repeating in unison and King Baldwin IV raises a hand for silence]
 * Tiberias: Silence!
 * King Baldwin IV: Saladin has crossed the Jordan with 200,000 men.
 * Tiberias: He will make first for Kerak and Reynald de Chatillon. [Walks up to King Baldwin IV] My lord...
 * King Baldwin IV: We must meet him before he reaches Kerak. I will lead the army.
 * Tiberias: My lord, if you travel, you'll die.
 * King Baldwin IV: Send word to Balian to protect the villagers. Assemble the army! [Crusaders excitedly roar]

 * Sybilla: What becomes of us?
 * Balian of Ibelin: The world will decide. The world always decides.

 * Hospitaller: Are you sorry for your sins?
 * Godfrey of Ibelin: [Looking at Balian, his illegitimate son] For all but one.

 * Hospitaller: So, how find you Jerusalem?
 * Balian of Ibelin: God does not speak to me. Not even on the hill where Christ died. I am outside God's grace.
 * Hospitaller: I have not heard that.
 * Balian of Ibelin: At any rate, it seems I have lost my religion.
 * Hospitaller: I put no stock in religion. By the word religion, I've seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the "Will of God". I've seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers. Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. And goodness - what God desires - [pointing at his head then heart] is here and here. And what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man, [smiles] or not.

 * Sybilla: [Walking] Do you fear being with me?
 * Balian of Ibelin: No. [Stops] And yes.
 * Sybilla: [Laughs] A woman in my place has two faces, one for the world and one which she wears in private. With you I'll be only Sybilla [Hears a noise and turns her head. A servant hides behind a wall] Tiberias thinks me unpredictable. I am unpredictable.

 * [Sybilla approaches Balian holding a light]
 * Sybilla: Why do you think I'm here?
 * Balian of Ibelin: I know that Ibelin is not on the way to Cana.
 * Sybilla: What else do you know, my lord?
 * Balian of Ibelin: I know you are a princess. And I am no lord.
 * Sybilla: You're a knight.
 * Balian of Ibelin: Neither earned nor proved.
 * Sybilla: I am not here with you because I'm bored or wicked. I am here because, because in the East between one person and another... there is only light.
 * [''Then Sybilla blows out the light and...]

 * [After the Saracen army withdraws from its attack on Kerak]]
 * Imam: Why did you retire? Why? God did not favour him. God alone determines the results of battles.
 * Saladin: The results of battles are determined by God...but also by preparation, numbers, the absence of disease and the availability of water. One cannot maintain a siege with the enemy behind. How many battles did God win for the Muslims before I came? That is, before God determined I should come.
 * Imam: Few enough. That's because we were sinful
 * Saladin: [Scoffs] It is because you were unprepared.
 * Imam: If you think that way, you shall not be king for long.
 * Saladin: When I'm not king, I quake for Islam.

 * Reynald: [Guy goes to see Reynald in Prison, Reynald is dancing] The King is in heaven?
 * Guy de Lusignan: Yes.
 * Reynald: You had the Templars kill Balian?
 * Guy de Lusignan: Yes, and now, give me a war.
 * Reynald: That is what I do.

 * Balian of Ibelin: You go to certain death.
 * Hospitaller: All death is certain. I will tell your father what I have seen you become.

 * Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: My lord, how are we to defend Jerusalem without knights?! We have no knights!
 * Balian of Ibelin: Truly? [Addresses a servant boy in the crowd] You, what is your condition?
 * Servant boy: I am servant to the Patriarch.
 * Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: He's one of my servants.
 * Balian of Ibelin: Is he? You were born a servant? [The boy nods] Kneel. Every man at arms, or capable of bearing them...Kneel! On your knees! [The crowd of soldiers kneels] Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless. That is your oath. [Balian strikes the servant boy] And that is so you remember it. Rise a knight. Rise a knight!
 * Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: Who do you think you are? Will you alter the World? Does making a man a knight make him a better fighter?
 * Balian of Ibelin: pPause, turn slowly to face Bishop] Yes.

 * Sybilla: What becomes of us?
 * Balian of Ibelin: The world will decide. The world always decides.

 * Saladin: I pray you'll pull back your cavalry and leave this matter to me.
 * King Baldwin IV: I pray you retire unharmed to Damascus. Raynald of Châtillon will be punished, I swear it. Withdraw or we will all die here. [Pause] Do we have terms?
 * Saladin: We have terms. [Pause] I will send you my physicians.
 * King Baldwin IV: [Nodding] Salaamualaikum.
 * Saladin: [Waves and says] Wa-`alaykumu s-salaam (Islamic greeting "peace be with you").

 * Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: Convert to Islam, repent later.
 * Balian of Ibelin: You have taught me a lot about religion, Your Eminence.

 * Balian of Ibelin: This army will be destroyed, and the city left defenseless.
 * Guy de Lusignan: When I wish a blacksmith to advise me in war, I will tell him.
 * Balian of Ibelin: Saladin wants you to come out. He is waiting for you to make that mistake.

 * Balian of Ibelin: [A single horsemen is seen in the distance standing on top of a hill] They are here.
 * Almaric: It is only one man.
 * Balian of Ibelin: No, they are here.
 * [The camera pans to reveal the whole of the Saracen army behind the hill]

 * Balian of Ibelin: [To the people of Jerusalem] It has fallen to us to defend Jerusalem, and we have made our preparations as well as they can be made. None of us took this city from Muslims. No Muslim of the great army now coming against us was born when this city was lost. We fight over an offence we did not give, against those who were not alive to be offended. What is Jerusalem? Your holy palaces lie over the Jewish temple that the Romans pulled down. The Muslim places of worship lie over yours. Which is more holy?
 * [Pause]
 * Balian of Ibelin: The wall? The Mosque? The Sepulchre? Who has claim? No-one has claim.
 * [Raises his voice]
 * Balian of Ibelin: All have claim!
 * Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: Blasphemy!
 * Almaric: [To the Patriarch] Be quiet.
 * Balian of Ibelin: We defend this city, not to protect these stones, but the people living within these walls.

 * Saladin: Will you yield the city?
 * Balian of Ibelin: Before I lose it, I will burn it to the ground. Your holy places - ours. Every last thing in Jerusalem that drives men mad.
 * Saladin: I wonder if it would not be better if you did.

 * Saladin: I will grant every soul safe passage to Christian lands. Every soul. The women, the children, the old. And all your knights and soldiers. And your Queen. Your King, such as he is, I leave to you, and what God will make of him. No one will be harmed. I swear it to God.
 * Balian of Ibelin: The Christians butchered every Muslim within the walls when they took this city.
 * Saladin: [Firmly] I am not those men. I am Saladin. Sala-hu-Din.

 * Balian of Ibelin: What is Jerusalem worth?
 * Saladin: [Solemnly] Nothing. [He starts to walk away, then turns around and smiles] Everything!

 * Richard Coeur de Lion: We come by this road to find Balian, who was the defender of Jerusalem.
 * Balian of Ibelin: I am the blacksmith.
 * Richard Coeur de Lion: And I am the King of England.
 * Balian of Ibelin: pPauses] I am the blacksmith.

 * King Baldwin IV: Oh. Hello.
 * Sibylla: [Mouths hello]
 * King Baldwin: I was dreaming. I was back in that summer, when I defeated Saladin. Do you remember it?
 * Sibylla: [Nods] You were a beautiful boy.
 * Baldwin: Yes.
 * Sibylla: You've always been beautiful. In every way.
 * King Baldwin: My beautiful sister. I've missed you. I'm sorry if I've caused you any pain. Remember me as I was.
 * Sibylla: I will. (leans down to kiss the brow of his mask. He dies)

 * Tiberias: There is a rumour. We must condemn it immediately.
 * Sibylla: Call it treason. And kill those who whisper it.
 * Tiberias: The rumour will die, if we show the boy as active.
 * Sibylla: [Screams passionately and throws back the chair she sitting on onto the floor. Clearly very distressed] How long before he wears a mask? Will you have one made for him? How did my boy deserve it?
 * Tiberias: [Shakes head]
 * Sibylla: Jerusalem is dead Tiberias. No kingdom is worth my son alive in hell. I will go to hell instead.

 * Sibylla: [To her son] Do you remember the story of Louan?
 * Baldwin V: No.
 * Sibylla: Do you remember why?
 * Baldwin V: No.
 * Sibylla: And he was so lonely that...he called all the gods.
 * Baldwin V: Why?
 * Sibylla: Because he was desperate. As a proof of love.
 * Sibylla: [Singing a lullaby in what sounds like French, she uncorks a bottle and with tears in her eyes she strokes back the hair of her sleeping son to reveal his ear. She tips the liquid in the bottle into his ear, and trails off, mouthing the song. She has euthanized her son because of his affliction with his uncle's horrific disease, leprosy. We see a toy the boy was playing with being wet by the rain outside the canopy over the summerhouse, and the scene ends].

 * Balian: You go with the Army?
 * Hospitaller: My order is with the Army.
 * Balian: You go to certain death.
 * Hospitaller: All death is certain. I shall tell your father what I have seen you become.

 * Hospitaller: I go to pray.
 * Balian of Ibelin: For what?
 * Hospitaller: For the strength to endure what is to come.
 * Balian of Ibelin: And what is to come?.
 * Hospitaller: The reckoning is to come for what was done one hundred years before. The Muslims will never forget. [Pauses and looks back to Balian]. Nor should they.

Cast

 * Orlando Bloom - Balian of Ibelin
 * Liam Neeson - Godfrey of Ibelin
 * David Thewlis - Hospitaller
 * Marton Csokas - Guy de Lusignan
 * Eva Green - Princess Sibylla
 * Brendan Gleeson - Raynald of Châtillon
 * Jeremy Irons - Raymond, Count of Tiberias
 * Jon Finch - Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem
 * Edward Norton - King Baldwin of Jerusalem
 * Ghassan Massoud - Saladin
 * Alexander Siddig - Imad ad-Din
 * Iain Glen - King Richard of England

title: Kingdom of Heaven (film)


text:
Asesela Ravuvu

Asesela Ravuvu (10 May 1931 — 11 March 2008) was a Fijian academic and Senator since 2001.

Interview with Pacific Journalism Online, 28 May 2000

 * (When) the people of the land no longer have the power to select and install their leaders, the chiefs lose their mana or power.
 * It is high time that the people are given back the flexibility and power to select and install their leaders who will be accountable to them if they are to prosper and forge ahead in the present modern and increasingly global context.

Façade of Democracy (1991)

 * Fijians generally perceive Indians as mean and stingy, crafty and demanding to the extent of being considered greedy, inconsiderate and grasping, uncooperative, egotistic, and calculating.
 * Indians on the other hand, view Fijians as "jungalis" or bushwhackers, still behind the times and backward, naive and foolish, and generally poor. They are seen as lazy, proud and extravagant, pound-foolish and undependable.These perceptions of each other are nearly always subdued and latent yet only need some slight provocations to bring them to the fore, which at times culminates in open physical confrontations."

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

title: Asesela Ravuvu


text:
D.E.B.S.

D.E.B.S. is a 2004 spy-film spoof about plaid-skirted schoolgirls who are groomed by a secret government agency to become the newest members of the elite national-defense group, D.E.B.S. (Discipline, Energy, Beauty, and Strength).
 * Written and directed by Angela Robinson.

They're crime-fighting hotties with killer bodies. Taglines

Lucy Diamond

 * I guess I'll see you around...same 'bat time' or whatever.

Amy Bradshaw

 * [to Janet] Remember when you got drunk and nearly got the chancellor of Bulgaria killed? I covered for you!
 * [to Lucy] I'm here because I feel more like me when I'm with you, than I do when I'm with me.
 * I think love should be irresistible, like a drug, you know? I think when it happens you should just not be able to help yourself. I just - I wanted... more.

Others

 * Dominique: You're not as boring as I thought. But you're not as bright, either.
 * Scud: Knock 'em dead... but not really.
 * Ms. Petrie: This is not the Girl Scouts, this is espionage!

Dialogue

 * Dominique: You need to put it here. Don't be an idiot for once.
 * Janet: You need to speak English or French. Frenglish is not a language.

 * Scud: You're scheduled to meet 20:00 hours.
 * Lucy: Where'd you find her?
 * Scud: Zeda tipped us. Said she's available, she's in from Prague, relocating state-side.
 * Lucy: Assassin?
 * Scud: Check.
 * Lucy: Where's the meet?
 * Scud: Les Deux Amours. Trendy, yet discreet.
 * Lucy: [looking over the image of Ninotchka and shifting her eyes side to side as she thinks] Cancel it. [gets up out of her chair]
 * Scud: Why?! It's all set up.
 * Lucy: I don't do blind dates.
 * Scud: Yeah, well it's not a blind date if you know what they look like, ok.
 * Lucy: Just tell her I'm not coming, ok. Say I came down with something.
 * Scud: Come on Lucy it's been two years. You have to get out there.
 * Lucy: I am out there. I went out with that drummer; the girl from the band that talked really loud.
 * Scud: No, you didn't go out with her. We all went out together. And then you lied and said you had food poisoning, and you went home early.
 * Lucy: Yeah well she talked really loud, like even when you were right next to her.
 * Scud: [under his breath] I know.
 * Scud: Look I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to drown yourself in your little schemes to destroy the world. But you need to get over it already, ok. You were dumped.
 * Lucy: I was not dumped.
 * Scud: Oh you were dumped hard. And that sucks. And you took your time off to go to Antarctica or whatever.
 * Lucy: Reykjavik. It's in Iceland.
 * Scud: But now it's time to get back in the game, Lucy. You've got a date tonight with a beautiful Russian assassin, and you're gonna show up. Lucy
 * Lucy: Fine. Ok, I'll go. I'll be there.
 * Scud: Just promise me you'll be open.
 * Lucy: Open to what?
 * Scud: Open to love.

 * Max: Who's your best friend?
 * Amy: You are my best friend.
 * Max: And what did I say to you the very first day of Academy?
 * Amy: "That's my bunk, bitch."
 * Max: Okay, after I said that.
 * Amy: D.E.B.S. stick together.

 * Lucy: [on an awkward blind date] So, you're an assassin.
 * Ninotchka: Da.
 * Lucy: How's that work?
 * Ninotchka: It's mostly freelance.

 * Lucy: [clutching stomach] I just, I'm feeling really ill. It's my stomach. I, um, I think I have food poisoning.
 * Ninotchka: Are you blowing me?
 * Lucy: What?
 * Ninotchka: Off. Are you blowing me off?

 * Amy: [looking at Lucy through binoculars] Wow. Lucy Diamond, she's...
 * Max: What?
 * Amy: Real.

 * Lucy: [after Amy refuses to go out with her] Why not?
 * Amy: [still with her weapon trained on Lucy] Like a zillion reasons!
 * [Lucy kicks the weapon pointed at her away, then snatches it away, and points it at Amy]
 * Lucy: Well now you have to come with me. [giggles]

 * Janet: I have the sweater she's wearing, but in taupe.
 * Amy: Really? Where did you get it?
 * Janet: Target.
 * Amy: No way.
 * Dominique: Silence!
 * Janet: [whispering] They also have it in teal.

 * Scud: Oh my God! What a disaster! I am so sorry! Leave it up to the D.E.B.S... your in a town a week and their all over you, grabbing...
 * [Lucy is sitting quiet with a little smile on her face]
 * Scud: What?
 * Lucy: I met someone.
 * Scud: [Slamming on brakes] I knew it! I mean the thing about the dance was a little wierd, but i had a feeling that you and Ninotchka...
 * Lucy: No, no, no, no, no Scud. Ninotchka was a train wreck thank you.
 * Scud: [Puzzled] I'm not following.
 * Lucy: Okay, but you have to promise that you're not going to freak out.
 * Scud: Freak Out? Why would I freak out...
 * Lucy: Well, ya know sometimes you...
 * Scud: [Freaking out] OH MY GOD WHO IS IT?
 * Lucy: What do you know about an Amy Bradshaw?
 * Scud: Amy Bradshaw? The girl from the smuggling op?
 * Lucy: No.
 * Scud: Oh my god! Amy Bradshaw? Blonde hair? Plaid skirt? She's a D.E.B.!
 * Lucy: So?
 * Scud: Okay, not only is she a D.E.B., She's THE D.E.B.! She's the perfect score!
 * Lucy: Yes, well, their poster child doesn't know it yet, but she's into me.

 * Amy: Nothing happened.
 * Janet: She was totally going to kiss you. You are so into her!
 * Amy: I am not!
 * Janet: You violated a prime directive. Plus, hello, it's a girl. You're so busted!

 * Janet: Everybody's talking about it.
 * Amy: About what?
 * Janet: How you met Lucy and lived to tell about it. They're calling you a hero, when really you're a slut!
 * Amy: Shut up!
 * Janet: [lowers voice] A gay slut!
 * Amy: I'm not gay!

 * Max: [to Amy] I don't care if you are the Perfect Score.
 * Janet: [under her breath] Perfect whore!

 * Max: I can't stop thinking about Lucy Diamond.
 * Janet: [incredulous] You too?

 * Janet: [watching Amy and Lucy flirt] Correct me if I'm wrong, but your friend appears to be hitting on my friend.
 * Scud: You're not wrong.
 * Janet: Yeah, but my friend... not into that.
 * Scud: [under breath] Right.

 * Janet: [catching Amy and Lucy in a near kiss] Oh, my God! She almost kissed you! You almost let her!
 * Lucy: [ scoffs rolling her eyes at Janet] Uhg!
 * Scud: [smug] You owe me fifty bucks.

 * Lucy: Come with me. Come on, what do you have to lose?
 * Amy: Everything.

 * Lucy: I didn't even want to be a criminal. I wanted to be a pirate.
 * Amy: [laughs]
 * Lucy: [chuckling confusedly] What?
 * Amy: Pirates are criminals.
 * Lucy: Oh. Whoops.

 * [Amy fails to unhook Lucy's bra properly during their make-out session]
 * Lucy: Did you just snap my bra?
 * Amy: No.
 * Lucy: Yeah, you did. That hasn't happened to me since sixth grade.
 * Amy: I was trying to be smooth.

 * Mrs. Petrie: Annie--
 * Madeline: Amy.
 * Mrs. Petrie: Amy, I think you identify with Lucy Diamond. I think she sees your pathos. You've got some dangerous Jungian symbiosis going on. What's that movie with Jodie, and the little dog falls in the well, with the lotion?
 * Madeline: Silence of the Lambs.
 * Mrs. Petrie: You're the lamb, Amy.

 * Mrs. Petrie: Are you kidding me? We conduct a nationwide manhunt for you and you're boning the suspect? Did you think this was a joke? "Let's divert federal resources and man-hours so I can have my collegiate lesbian fling in style."
 * Amy: I was doing research.
 * Mrs. Petrie: I'll bet.

 * Amy: Do you remember what I said to you the first time we met?
 * Max: "High-protein diets are overrated".
 * Amy: After that.

 * Lucy: Australia's toast.
 * Scud: Uh-huh, what's your beef with the Australians?
 * Lucy: I don't like their attitude!

 * Scud: So, I was wondering if maybe you wanted--
 * Janet: Yes.
 * Scud: I didn't ask you anything yet.
 * Janet: Whatever it is, yes.
 * Scud: Awesome.

 * Amy: [at Endgame, Amy delivers the formal acceptance speech Max wrote for her] If there is corruption in this city, Lucy Diamond is behind it.
 * [Lucy enters the auditorium on an upper-floor balcony and listens in painful silence]
 * Amy: If there is indecency to be found, she is the root. If there is evil in this world, its name is Lucy Diamond. It's not until moments like this when you are forced to take stock of yourself that you see what you are made of. It's not until moments like this when you have to remember what's right and true. Because it's moments like this when you discover what it truly means to be a D.E.B.
 * [looks up, sees Lucy, and stops reading]
 * Amy: Which is why I can't accept this award from you tonight. Because, the truth is, the times I spent with Lucy Diamond were the happiest days of my life. And the only brave thing I've done this whole time is what I'm doing now. So if you'll excuse me, I have a date with the devil.
 * [smiles and runs from the podium]

 * Scud: What...the hell?
 * Janet: I couldn't stop them!
 * Scud: [pauses] You look nice.
 * Janet: Thanks.
 * [pauses]
 * Janet: What?
 * Max: [to Janet] What are you doing?
 * Janet: [to Max] Nothing!
 * [punches Scud, who falls to the floor, unconscious]
 * Janet: Sorry!

 * Max: [referring to Amy] If you break her heart, I will hunt you down and kill you.
 * Lucy: [smiles] Deal.

 * Janet: So, where're you going to?
 * Amy: I think...Barcelona.
 * Janet: I'll miss you.
 * [pauses]
 * Janet: Can I have your room?

Taglines

 * They're crime-fighting hotties with killer bodies.
 * Evil is so totally busted!

Cast

 * Sara Foster - Amy Bradshaw
 * Jordana Brewster - Lucy Diamond
 * Meagan Good - Max Brewer
 * Devon Aoki - Dominique
 * Jill Ritchie - Janet
 * Jimmi Simpson - Scud
 * Holland Taylor - Mrs. Petrie
 * Michael Clarke Duncan - Mr. Phipps
 * Jessica Cauffiel - Ninotchka Kaprova
 * Christina Kirk - Madeleine

title: D.E.B.S.


text:
Sweet Home Alabama

Sweet Home Alabama is a 2002 film about a young woman, who ran away from her husband in Alabama and reinvented herself as a New York socialite, as she returns to Alabama to finalize her divorce so that she can remarry.
 * Directed by Andy Tennant. Written by C. Jay Cox

Sometimes What You're Looking for Is Right Where You Left It. (taglines)

Melanie Smooter/Carmichael

 * Like I could tip a cow BY MYSELF!
 * [to Lurlynn] Look at you, you have a baby... In a bar. [Lurlynn: Hell, I got 3 more at home! This one’s still on the tit, so I can cart him anywhere.]
 * You dumb stubborn redneck hick.
 * Well, you must be Jake's hot date. I'm Melanie, Jake's snotty Yankee bitch wife whom he refuses to divorce even though I'm engaged to another man.
 * [Drunk, at the bar] Oh Bobby Ray....why don't you just go to a gay bar. [Eldon: What would B-Ray do at a gay bar?]
 * The truth is I gave my heart away a long time ago, my whole heart, and I never really got it back.
 * You're the first boy I ever kissed, Jake, and I want you to be the last.
 * [After punching Kate] Nobody talks to my mama like that! [Earl Smooter: Praise the Lord, the South has risen again!]
 * [On seeing her father in his Confederate uniform] Christ Almighty, Daddy, how am I gonna explain you in New York?
 * [Seeing her father in his Confederate uniform, leaving to go to 'battle'] "People need a passport to come down here."
 * Well for starters, you can get your stubborn ass down here and give me a divorce.
 * [after leaving Andrew at the altar as a thunderstorm is approaching] Hey, y'all! If your friends of the bride, stick around! I'm gonna go find me a groom!
 * [final line] Hey, Stella! Make it a slow one.

Jake Perry

 * [about the divorce papers Melanie wants him to sign] The only reason I ain't signin’ is cause you've turned into some hoity toity Yankee bitch and I'd like nothin’ better right now than to piss you off.
 * Honey, just 'cause I talk slow don't mean I'm stupid.
 * [after looking at divorce papers] I better have my lawyer take a look at these. I'm just a simple country boy. There's all kinds of big words in here I can't even pronounce. Hell, you might be takin' me to the cleaners for all I know. [Melanie: The cleaners—you?]
 * Since when does it have to be one or the other? You can have roots and wings, Mel.
 * Nobody finds their soul mate when they're ten. I mean, where's the fun in that, right?

Mayor Kate Hennings

 * Why don't you go back to your double-wide and fry something?
 * What ever happened to responsible journalism?
 * There is nothing wrong with poor people. I get elected by poor people.
 * [after Melanie tells Andrew that she still loves Jake at the wedding] I've never met anyone so manipulative, so deceitful...and I'm in politics.

Bobby Ray

 * [to Melanie] Woo-oo. You look like sex on a stick in that Frederick Montana getup.
 * You can take the girl out of the honky tonk, but you can't take the honky tonk out of the girl.
 * We weren't aimin' for ya, but I doubt I woulda gone to your funeral.
 * Well, aren't you just a big fat liar?
 * [about a pair of handcuffs] Might wanna save those for the honeymoon! [laughs with Frederick Montana before exchanging a look]

Earl Smooter

 * You can't ride two horses with one ass, sugarbean.
 * [to Kate] Careful, you just smashed the state bird of Alabama.
 * Well even if he is a Yankee, at least he's sober.
 * [after Melanie punches Kate] Praise the Lord, the South has risen again!

Others

 * Andrew: You married your cousin?
 * Pearl: How many times does your only daughter get married? [awkward pause] Well, other than the other time.

Dialogue

 * Young Melanie: What do you wanna marry me for anyhow?
 * Young Jake: So I can kiss you anytime I want.

 * Melanie: [on her cell phone] I can't. I'm in Alabama.
 * Tabatha Wadmore-Smith: [in New York] Oh... my God.

 * Jake: [not recognizing Melanie in her sunglasses] Can I help you?
 * Melanie: Well, for starters, you can get your stubborn ass down here and give me a divorce.
 * Jake: You're shittin' me right?
 * Melanie: I've never actually understood that expression, but no, I am not shitting you.

 * Jake: Well, how about "Hey there Jake, lookin' good. How's the family?"
 * Melanie: You expect me to say that you look good? What'd, they run out of soap at the Piggly Wiggly since I left?

 * Melanie: And don't even pretend like you missed me.
 * Jake: Oh, I missed you all right, but at this range, my aim is bound to improve.

 * Jake: [opens the fridge to discover Melanie replaced his beer with Bud Light] What the hell is this? Chick food?
 * Melanie: Light beer. Less calories.

 * Melanie: What are you doing?
 * Jake: Leavin’, you done it, you should recognize the gesture.

 * Jake: Whatever blows your dress up, darlin'. You go right ahead and spend your money.
 * Melanie: Oh, but darlin', I thought you said we should think of it as "our money." [Jake stops cold] Just a guess: The words joint checking are flashing in your head right now.

 * [Jake is getting ready to go to the beach to place the lightning rods]
 * Stella: You know, for someone who’s been holdin’ onto somethin’ for so long, you're pretty quick to let it go.
 * Jake: I can't control her, any more than I can control the weather.

 * Bobby Ray: Now, what'd I ever do to you?
 * Melanie: [drunk] Oh, you didn't do anything to me, darlin'... or any other girl in town!

 * Lurlynn: You know he went up there?
 * Melanie: Who? Jake?
 * Lurlynn: I'm not supposed to know, but Clinton let it slip once.
 * Melanie: When?
 * Lurlynn: About a year after you left. He told Clinton he'd never seen anything like it. He knew that it would take more than an apology to get you back. He'd have to conquer the world first. He's been trying ever since.
 * Melanie: [realizing] That's why he kept sending the papers back.

 * Lurlynn: It's funny how things don't turn out...
 * Melanie: ...It's funny how they do.

 * Melanie: Bobby Ray, it's not like that.
 * Bobby Ray: [visibly hurt] No, I'll tell you what it's not like. It's not like Jake's the only one you run out on.

 * Jake: Anybody think of anything in here that, uh, might bother Bobby Ray?
 * Wade: Uh, Clinton's breath.
 * Jake: You still the same Bobby Ray from last night?
 * Bobby Ray: Last time I checked, yeah.
 * Jake: [puts arm on shoulder] Well, then, let me buy you a drink.
 * Bobby Ray: Well, you're really not my type... [laughter]

 * Jake: C'mon, I wanna show you somethin’.
 * Melanie: I can't.
 * Jake: Can't? Or won't?
 * Melanie: Both.
 * Jake: The girl I knew used to be fearless.
 * Melanie: The girl you knew didn't have a life.
 * Jake: Guess you better get on with it then.

 * Mayor Kate Hennings: You're just gonna let her humiliate you... with some bullshit about an old husband?!
 * Andrew: Yeah, I think I am. Excuse me.

 * Melanie: Now what kind of wife would I be if I didn't pick up after my husband?
 * Jake: The kind that don't live here.

Taglines

 * Sometimes What You're Looking for Is Right Where You Left It.
 * Fall... in love.

Cast

 * Reese Witherspoon - Melanie Smooter/Carmichael
 * Josh Lucas - Jake Perry
 * Patrick Dempsey - Andrew Hennings
 * Candice Bergen - Mayor Kate Hennings
 * Mary Kay Place - Pearl Smooter
 * Fred Ward - Earl Smooter
 * Jean Smart - Stella Kay
 * Ethan Embry - Bobby Ray Bailey
 * Melanie Lynskey - Lurlynn, Melanie's best friend
 * Courtney Gains - Wade
 * Mary Lynn Rajskub - Dorothea
 * Rhona Mitra - Tabatha Wadmore-Smith, Melanie's best friend from New York
 * Nathan Lee Graham - Frederick Montana
 * Thomas Curtis - Young Jake
 * Dakota Fanning - Young Melanie

title: Sweet Home Alabama


text:
Talk:Theodore Kaczynski

To be added and formatted when I have the time:

 * By a boundary function for f we mean a function t defined on a set E ( X such that for each p ( E there exists an arc v at p for which

lim  f(z) = t(p). z -> p                 z ( v a boundary function for a Borel-measurable function is always Borel-measurable, but we show that a boundary function for a Lebesgue-measurable function need not be Lebesgue-measurable. http://www.rpi.edu/~bulloj/tjk/tjk1.html

if f(z) is a homeomorphism of D onto D, then there exists a countable set N such that t|C - N is continuous. http://www.rpi.edu/~bulloj/tjk/tjk2.html

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 18:31, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Theodore Kaczynski


text:
User talk:82.32.161.91

Deliberate vandalism can result in IP numbers being blocked from editing. ~ Kalki 21:46, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:82.32.161.91


text:
User talk:205.196.188.133

Deliberate vandalism of several pages has resulted in this IP number being temporarily blocked from editing. ~ Kalki 21:48, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:205.196.188.133


text:
Karen Blixen

Karen von Blixen-Finecke (17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was a Danish author; born Karen Christence Dinesen, she is also known under her pen name Isak Dinesen.

Quotes

 * I have a feeling that wherever I may be in the future, I will be wondering whether there is rain at Ngong.
 * Letter to her mother (26 February 1919)

 * There is hardly any other sphere in which prejudice and superstition of the most horrific kind have been retained so long as in that of women, and just as it must have been an inexpressable relief for humanity when it shook off the burden of religious prejudice and superstition, I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open before them.
 * Letter to her sister Elle (1923); later published in Letters from Africa: 1914-1931 (1981) edited by Frans Lasson, translated by Anne Born.

 * All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
 * As quoted in The Human Condition (1958) by Hannah Arendt. This appears as part of a statement in a 1957 interview where she speaks of a friend's comments about her: I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy.
 * Interview with Bent Mohn in The New York Times Book Review (3 November 1957)
 * Paraphrased variant : All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.

 * Man reaches the highest point of lovableness at 12 to 17 — to get it back, in a second flowering, at the age of 70 to 90.
 * Shadows on the Grass (1960)

 * God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.
 * As quoted in obituaries (7 September 1962)

 * The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.
 * As quoted in Reader's Digest (April 1964)
 * Variant: I know a cure for everything. Salt water … in one form or another, sweat, tears or the salt sea.
 * Isak Dinesen is also known for this quote.

 * "Do you know a cure for me?" "Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water." "Salt water?" I asked him. "Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea."
 * "The Deluge at Norderney"

 * It is little silly to be a caricature of something of which you know very little, and which means very little to you, but to be your own caricature — that is the true carnival!
 * Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales (1971)

 * A fashion always has some meaning. The fashion, or style, of renunciation really meant something then. It was inspired by the war, or it ran parallel to the war, and could not have been conceived without the war... It stood for the will to sacrifice — if the unlimited will to throw away can be called the will to sacrifice. It was arrogant and elegantly cynical — because it is arrogant and elegantly cynical when the symbol of the élite becomes hunger. The superfluous here threw away the necessary quite simply. In its inner essence it was the disdain of death.
 * Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (1979) This has also been abbreviated and quoted as "The will to sacrifice . . . was the disdain of death."

 * Real art must always involve some witchcraft.
 * Letters from Africa: 1914-1931 (1981) edited by Frans Lasson, translated by Anne Born.

 * I don't believe in evil, I believe only in horror. In nature there is no evil, only an abundance of horror: the plagues and the blights and the ants and the maggots.
 * As quoted in Voices: A Memoir (1983) by Frederic Prokosch

 * The best of my nature reveals itself in play, and play is sacred.
 * On Modern Marriage and Other Observations (1986)

 * Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows that they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest.
 * As quoted in Journey Through Womanhood: Meditations from Our Collective Soul (2002) by Tian Dayton

 * I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, although she is of course almost incredibly pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong...I shall never forget the almost overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness.
 * Written of her experience with actress Marilyn Monroe in a letter to the American author, Fleur Cowles Meyer, in 1961. As quoted in Fragments, by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment (2010)

Seven Gothic Tales (1934)

 * "Do you know a cure for me?" "Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water." "Salt water?" I asked him. "Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea."
 * "The Deluge at Norderney"

 * During the first quarter of the last century, seaside resorts became the fashion, even in those countries of Northern Europe within the minds of whose people the sea had hitherto held the role of the devil, the cold and voracious hereditary foe of humanity.
 * "The Deluge at Norderney"

 * God made the world, My Lord, and looked at it, and saw that it was good. Yes. But what if the world had looked back at him, to see whether he was good or not?
 * "The Deluge at Norderney"

 * I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch … and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order … by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
 * "The Old Chevalier"

 * My love was both humble and audacious, like that of a page for his lady...
 * "The Old Chevalier"

 * Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine. A young man in love is essentially enraptured by the forces within himself.
 * "The Old Chevalier"

 * What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?
 * "The Dreamers"

 * The consolations of the vulgar are bitter in the royal ear. Let physicians and confectioners and servants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and even by what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged by what they are. I have been told that lions, trapped and shut up in cages, grieve from shame more than from hunger.
 * "The Dreamers"

Out of Africa (1937)

 * I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.
 * First lines.

 * It was Africa distilled up through six thousand feet like the strong and refined essence of a continent... The views were immensely wide — everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility.

 * Africa, amongst the continents, will teach it to you: that God and the Devil are one, the majesty coeternal, not two uncreated but one uncreated, and the Natives neither confounded the persons nor divided the substance.

 * In the Ngong Forest I have also seen, on a narrow path through thick growth, in the middle of a very hot day, the Giant Forest Hog, a rare person to meet.

 * White people, who for a long time live alone with Natives, get into the habit of saying what they mean, because they have no reason or opportunity for dissimulation, and when they meet again their conversation keeps the Native tone.

 * There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne — bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive.

 * I had time after time watched the progression across the plain of the giraffe, in their queer, inimitable, vegetative gracefulness as if it were not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long stemmed spackled gigantic flowers slowly advancing. It was, in giant size, the border of a very old, infinitely precious Persian carpet in the dyes of green, yellow and black-brown

 * The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.

 * People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of...

 * I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizard, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the color seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail. Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendor. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.

 * Often since I have, in some sort, shot an Iguana, and have remembered that one in the reserve. Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and all embroidered over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied little in colour and played in green, light blue and ultra-marine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and made Farah buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my arm that it gave up the ghost. It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colors, the duet between the turquoise and the "negre", — that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native's skin, — that had created the life of the bracelet. ...I stood in Meru and looked at my pale hand and the dead bracelet, it was as if an injustice had been done to a noble thing, as if truth had been suppressed. So sad did it seem that I remembered the saying of the hero in a book that I had read as a child: "I have conquered them all, but I am standing amongst graves."

 * In a foreign country and with foreign species of life one should take measures to find out whether things will be keeping their value when dead. To settlers I give this advice: "For the sake of your eyes and hearts, shoot not the Iguana."

Winter's Tales (1942)

 * Tragedy should remain the right of human beings, subject, in their conditions or in their own nature, to the dire law of necessity. To them it is salvation and beatification.
 * "Sorrow-Acre"

 * Human talk is a centrifugal function, ever in flight outwards from what is on the talker's mind.
 * "The Invincible Slave-owners"

 * Man and woman are two locked caskets, of which each contains the key to the other.
 * "A Consolatory Tale"

Anecdotes of Destiny (1953)

 * I first began to tell tales to delight the world and make it wiser...

 * Nobody has seen the trekking birds take their way towards such warmer spheres as do not exist, or rivers break their course through rocks and plains to run into an ocean which is not to be found. For God does not create a longing or a hope without having a fulfilling reality ready for them. But our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home.
 * "The Diver"

 * Of what happened later in the evening nothing definite can here be stated. None of the guests later on had any clear remembrance of it. They only knew that the rooms had been filled with a heavenly light, as if a number of small halos had blended into one glorious radiance. Taciturn old people received the gift of tongues; ears that for years had been almost deaf were opened to it. Time itself had merged into eternity. Long after midnight the windows of the house shone like gold, and golden song flowed out into the winter air.
 * "Babette's Feast"

 * When later in life they thought of this evening it never occurred to any of them that they might have been exalted by their own merit. They realized that the infinite grace of which General Loewenhielm had spoken had been allotted to them, and they did not even wonder at the fact, for it had been but the fulfillment of an ever-present hope. The vain illusions of this earth had dissolved before their eyes like smoke, and they had seen the universe as it really is. They had been given one hour of the millennium.
 * "Babette's Feast"

 * When soon I sail from here, I may again run into such a storm as the one in Kvasefjord. But this time I shall clearly understand that it is not a play in the theatre, but it is death. and it seems too that then, in the last moment before we go down, I can in in all truth be yours...
 * "Tempests"

 * It never has happened, and it never will happen, and that is why it is told.
 * "The Immortal Story"

Last Tales (1957)

 * 'Are you sure,' she asked, 'that it is God whom you serve?' The Cardinal looked up, met her eyes and smiled very gently. 'That,' he said, 'that, Madame, is a risk which the artists and the priests of this world have to run!'
 * "The Cardinal's First Tale"

 * The entire being of a woman is a secret which should be kept.
 * "The Cardinal's Third Tale"

 * Why, you are to become a story teller, and I shall give you the reasons! Hear then: Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence. Whether a small snotty lass understands it or not.
 * "The Blank Page"

Quotes about Blixen

 * Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.
 * Raymond Carver in Writers at Work (1986) edited by George Plimpton

 * (Tell us about your favorite short story.) ...Isak Dinesen’s masterworks, “The Deluge at Norderney” and “The Monkey,” are so important to me that I keep wearing out the collection they are part of — “Seven Gothic Tales.”
 * Louise Erdrich interview (2016)

 * As a Nobel Prize winner I cannot but regret that the award was never given to Mark Twain, nor to Henry James, speaking only of my own countrymen. Greater writers than these also did not receive the prize. I would have been happy — happier — today if the prize had been given to that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.
 * Ernest Hemingway as quoted in The New York Times Book Review (7 November 1954)

 * ("Would you agree with Isak Dinesen's idea, "All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story"?) ULG: That's nice, and I like Isak Dinesen. Yes, but it is kind of a tautology, because if you can put them in a story, it means you're already bearing them. You are bearing them as a woman bears her child.
 * 1988 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin

title: Karen Blixen


text: User:Johann Wolfgang

title: User:Johann Wolfgang


text:
Roger Nash Baldwin

Roger Nash Baldwin (January 21, 1884 – August 26, 1981), civil libertarian, founding member of American Civil Liberties Union, and its first executive director.

Quotes

 * So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.
 * quote on American Civil Liberties Union's webpage

 * The Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, a traumatic shock to me, ended any ambivalence I had about the Soviet Union, and all cooperation with Communists in united fronts.

Article from Soviet Russia Today
"Freedom In the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R." (PDF document) (Soviet Russia Today, September 1934) [emphasis below in original]

 * I believe in non-violent methods of struggle as most effective in the long run for building up successful working class power. Where they cannot be followed or where they are not even permitted by the ruling class, obviously only violent tactics remain. I champion civil liberty as the best of the non-violent means of building the power on which workers rule must be based. If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties. The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental.

 * When that power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever. Dictatorship is the obvious means in a world of enemies at home and abroad. I dislike it in principle as dangerous to its own objects. But the Soviet Union has already created liberties far greater than exist elsewhere in the world. They are liberties that most closely affect the lives of the people — power in the trade unions, in peasant organizations, in the cultural life of nationalities, freedom of women in public and private life, and a tremendous development of education for adults and children.

 * I saw in the Soviet Union many opponents of the regime. I visited a dozen prisons — the political sections among them. I saw considerable of the work of the OGPU. I heard a good many stories of severity, even of brutality, and many of them from the victims. While I sympathized with personal distress I just could not bring myself to get excited over the suppression of opposition when I stacked it up against what I saw of fresh, vigorous expressions of free living by workers and peasants all over the land. And further, no champion of a socialist society could fail to see that some suppression was necessary to achieve it. It could not all be done by persuasion.

 * [I]f American champions of civil liberty could all think in terms of economic freedom as the goal of their labors, they too would accept "workers' democracy" as far superior to what the capitalist world offers to any but a small minority. Yes, and they would accept — regretfully, of course — the necessity of dictatorship while the job of reorganizing society on a socialist basis is being done.

title: Roger Nash Baldwin


text:
Template talk:Policydraft

I think this template is an excellent idea, but it should reflect a community point of view, not a sysop one. Policies are supposed to be determined by community consensus (however hard that may be to come by in a relatively small community), so such a message should encourage participation even as it communicates the tentative nature of the policy. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:21, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I've tweaked the statement a bit for community POV (and added a shaded box and the policy-draft category). I invite improvements. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:47, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

title: Template talk:Policydraft


text:
William-Adolphe Bouguereau

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (November 30, 1825 – August 19, 1905) was a French painter.

Quotes

 * One has to seek Beauty and Truth, Sir! As I always say to my pupils, you have to work to the finish. There's only one kind of painting. It is the painting that presents the eye with perfection, the kind of beautiful and impeccable enamel you find in Veronese and Titian.
 * Bouguereau (1895); Attributed in: Jefferson C. Harrison (1986) French paintings from the Chrysler Museum. Chrysler Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, Ala.). p.45.

 * For me a work of art must be an elevated interpretation of nature. The search for the ideal has been the purpose of my life. In landscape or seascape, I love above all the poetic motif.
 * Attributed to Bouguereau in: Sotheby's (Firm). (1994) 19th Century European Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture. p. 123; Cited in: Adolphe William Bouguereau Quotes by Armand Cabrera, Oct. 4, 2010.

About Bouguereau

 * William Bouguereau is unquestionably one of history's greatest artistic geniuses. Yet in the past century, his reputation and unparalleled accomplishments have undergone a libelous, dishonest, relentless and systematic assault of immense proportions. His name was stricken from most history texts and when included it was only to blindly, degrade and disparage him and his work. Yet, as we shall see, it was he who single handedly opened the French academies to women, and it was he who was arguably the greatest painter of the human figure in all of art history. His figures come to life like no previous artist has ever before or ever since achieved. He wasn't just the best ever at painting human anatomy, more importantly he captured the tender and subtlest nuances of personality and mood. Bouguereau caught the very souls and spirits of his subjects much like Rembrandt. Rembrandt is said to have captured the soul of age. Bouguereau captured the soul of youth.
 * William Bouguereau (1825-1905) by Damien Bartol on artrenewal.org, 2013.

title: William-Adolphe Bouguereau


text:
Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham (15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832) was a British gentleman, jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He is best known as an early advocate of utilitarianism and animal rights.

Quotes

 * Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth — that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
 * "Extracts from Bentham's Commonplace Book", in Collected Works, x, p. 142; He credits Priestley in his Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768) or Beccaria with inspiring his use of the phrase, often paraphrased as "The greatest good for the greatest number", but the statement "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" actually originates with Francis Hutcheson, in his Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil (1725), sect. 3. In an unpublished manuscript on utilitarianism, written for James Mill, Bentham later criticized this formulation: "Greatest happiness of the greatest number. Some years have now elapsed since, upon a closer scrutiny, reason, altogether incontestable, was found for discarding this appendage. On the surface, additional clearness and correctness given to the idea: at bottom, the opposite qualities. Be the community in question what it may, divide it into two unequal parts, call one of them the majority, the other the minority, lay out of the account the feelings of the minority, include in the account no feelings but those of the majority, the result you will find is that to the aggregate stock of happiness of the community, loss not profit is the result of the operation. Of this proposition the truth will be the more palpable, the greater the ratio of the number of the minority to that of the majority: in other words, the less difference between the two unequal parts: and suppose the condivident part equal, the quantity of the error will then be at its maximum." — as quoted in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham: Deontology ... (1983) edited by Amnon Goldworth, p. 309;

 * Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.
 * Advice to a young girl (22 June 1830)

 * To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?
 * Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811); translation by Richard Smith, The Rationale of Reward, J. & H. L. Hunt, London, 1825, Bk. 3, Ch. 1

 * It is part of a work to which if ever it should be completed I intend to give some such title as Principles of Legal Policy; the object of it is to trace out a new model for the Laws: of my own country you may imagine, in the first place: but keeping those of other countries all along in view. To ascertain what the Laws ought to be, in form and tenor as well as in matter: and that elsewhere as well as here. All that I shall say to recommend it to you is that I have taken counsel of you much oftener than of our own Ld. Coke and Hale and Blackstone. The repose of Grotius and Puffendorf and Barbeyrac and Burlamaqui I would never wish to see disturbed. I have built solely on the foundation of utility, laid as it is by Helvetius. Becarria has been lucrative pedibus, or if you please manibus, meis.
 * Letter to Voltaire (c. November 1776), quoted in Timothy L. S. Sprigge (ed.), The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (2017), p. 367

 * It is the principle of antipathy which leads us to speak of offences as deserving punishment. It is the corresponding principle of sympathy which leads us to speak of certain actions as meriting reward. This word merit can only lead to passion and error. It is effects good or bad which we ought alone to consider.
 * MSS 29, 32, University College Collection

 * Want keeps pace with dignity. Destitute of the lawful means of supporting his rank, his dignity presents a motive for malversation, and his power furnishes the means.
 * The Rationale of Reward (1811)

 * Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure … There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.
 * Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811); translation by Richard Smith, The Rationale of Reward, J. & H. L. Hunt, London, 1825, Bk. 3, Ch. 1

 * Ah! when will the yoke of Custom—Custom, the blind tyrant, of which all other tyrants make their slave—ah! when will that misery-perpetuating yoke be shaken off?—when, when will Reason be seated on her throne?
 * Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in the Form of a Catechism, with Reasons for Each Article: With an Introduction, Showing the Necessity of Radical, and the Inadequacy of Moderate, Reform (1817), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Part X (1839), p. 495

 * Figure to yourself the mixture of surprise and delight which has this instant been poured into my mind by the sound of my name, as uttered by you, in the speech just read to me out of the Morning Herald... By one and the same man, not only Parliamentary Reform, but Law Reform advocated. Advocated? and by what man? By one who, in the vulgar sense of profit and loss, has nothing to gain by it... Yes, only from Ireland could such self-sacrifice come; nowhere else: least of all in England, cold, selfish, priest-ridden, lawyer-ridden, lord-ridden, squire-ridden, soldier-ridden England, could any approach to it be found.
 * Letter to Daniel O'Connell (15 July 1828) after O'Connell delivered a speech in the House of Commons in which he advocated parliamentary and legal reform, and ended by calling himself "an humble disciple of the immortal Bentham", quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. X (1843), pp. 594-595

 * [I am] at heart more of a United-States-man than an Englishman.
 * Letter to Andrew Jackson (14 June 1830), quoted in Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Volume 4, ed. David Maydole Matteson (1929), p. 146

 * Liberty therefore not being more fit than other words in some of the instances in which it has been used, and not so fit in others, the less the use that is made of it the better. I would no more use the word liberty in my conversation when I could get another that would answer the purpose, than I would brandy in my diet, if my physician did not order me: both cloud the understanding and inflame the passions.
 * Jeremy Bentham, quoted in P. J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law, Oxford, 1990, p. 96

 * It is with government, as with medicine. They have both but a choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils: In making this choice, what ought to be the object of the legislator? He ought to assure himself of two things; 1st, that in every case, the incidents which he tries to prevent are really evils; and 2ndly, that if evils, they are greater than those which he employs to prevent them. There are then two things to be regarded; the evil of the offence and the evil of the law; the evil of the malady and the evil of the remedy. An evil comes rarely alone. A lot of evil cannot well fall upon an individual without spreading itself about him, as about a common centre. In the course of its progress we see it take different shapes: we see evil of one kind issue from evil of another kind; evil proceed from good and good from evil. All these changes, it is important to know and to distinguish; in this, in fact, consists the essence of legislation.
 * Principles of Legislation (1830), Ch. X : Analysis of Political Good and Evil; How they are spread in society

 * Rights are, then, the fruits of the law, and of the law alone. There are no rights without law—no rights contrary to the law—no rights anterior to the law. Before the existence of laws there may be reasons for wishing that there were laws—and doubtless such reasons cannot be wanting, and those of the strongest kind;—but a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, does not constitute a right. To confound the existence of a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, with the existence of the right itself, is to confound the existence of a want with the means of relieving it. It is the same as if one should say, everybody is subject to hunger, therefore everybody has something to eat.
 * Pannomial Fragments (c. 1831), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. III (1838), p. 221

 * [O]f corruption, the principal and direct use is, to engage the representatives of the people to betray their trust, and sell themselves and the people to the universal corrupter—the monarch, in his capacity of corrupter-general.
 * Constitutional Code (written between 1820 and 1832), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. XVII (1841), p. 76

 * Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.
 * As quoted in Life of John Stuart Mill (1954) by M. St.J. Packe, Bk. I, Ch. II

 * Secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy; it ought not, therefore, to be the system of a regular government.
 * On Publicity from The Works of Jeremy Bentham volume 2, part 2 (1839)

Anarchical Fallacies (1843)

 * Anarchical Fallacies; Being an Examination of the Declarations of Rights Issued During the French Revolution

 * That which has no existence cannot be destroyed — that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts. But this rhetorical nonsense ends in the old strain of mischievous nonsense for immediately a list of these pretended natural rights is given, and those are so expressed as to present to view legal rights. And of these rights, whatever they are, there is not, it seems, any one of which any government can, upon any occasion whatever, abrogate the smallest particle.
 * A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights

 * Whenever you are about to be oppressed, you have a right to resist oppression: whenever you conceive yourself to be oppressed, conceive yourself to have a right to make resistance, and act accordingly. In proportion as a law of any kind—any act of power, supreme or subordinate, legislative, administrative, or judicial, is unpleasant to a man, especially if, in consideration of such its unpleasantness, his opinion is, that such act of power ought not to have been exercised, he of course looks upon it as oppression: as often as anything of this sort happens to a man—as often as anything happens to a man to inflame his passions,—this article, for fear his passions should not be sufficiently inflamed of themselves, sets itself to work to blow the flame, and urges him to resistance. Submit not to any decree or other act of power, of the justice of which you are not yourself perfectly convinced. If a constable call upon you to serve in the militia, shoot the constable and not the enemy;—if the commander of a press-gang trouble you, push him into the sea—if a bailiff, throw him out of the window. If a judge sentence you to be imprisoned or put to death, have a dagger ready, and take a stroke first at the judge.
 * A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823)

 * Full text online (1823 edition)

 * The principle of utility judges any action to be right by the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interests are in question... if that party be the community the happiness of the community, if a particular individual, the happiness of that individual.
 * Introduction (1789 edition)

 * Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.
 * Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility

 * Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure— Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure. Such pleasures seek if private be thy end: If it be public, wide let them extend. Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view: If pains must come, let them extend to few.
 * Ch. 4: Value of a Lot of Pleasure or Pain, How to be Measured

 * The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is what? The sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.
 * Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility

 * [P]leasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure.
 * Ch. 10: Of Motives

 * [I]n principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
 * Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility

 * The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?
 * Ch. 17: Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence

 * In looking over the catalogue of human actions (says a partizan of this principle) in order to determine which of them are to be marked with the seal of disapprobation, you need but to take counsel of your own feelings: whatever you find in yourself a propensity to condemn, is wrong for that very reason. For the same reason it is also meet for punishment: in what proportion it is adverse to utility, or whether it be adverse to utility at all, is a matter that makes no difference. In that same proportion also is it meet for punishment: if you hate much, punish much: if you hate little, punish little: punish as you hate. If you hate not at all, punish not at all: the fine feelings of the soul are not to be overborne and tyrannized by the harsh and rugged dictates of political utility.
 * Ch. 2: Of Principles Adverse to That of Utility

Disputed

 * Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
 * Attributed to Bentham in The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949) by Evan Esar, p. 29; no earlier sources for this have been located.
 * All poetry is misrepresentation
 * An Aphorism attributed to him according to John Stuart Mill (see Mill's essay On Bentham and Coleridge in Utilitarianism edt. by Mary Warnock p. 123).

Quotes about Bentham

 * A century ago it was perfectly well known that whoever had one audience of a Master in Chancery was made to pay for three, but no man heeded the enormity until it suggested to a young lawyer that it might be well to question and examine with rigorous suspicion every part of a system in which such things were done. The day on which that gleam lighted up the clear hard mind of Jeremy Bentham is memorable in the political calendar beyond the entire administration of many statesmen.
 * Lord Acton, "The History of Freedom in Antiquity" (1877)

 * Bentham is a denyer, he denies with a loud and universally convincing voice: his fault is that he can affirm nothing, except that money is pleasant in the purse and food in the stomach, and that by this simplest of all Beliefs he can reorganise Society.
 * Thomas Carlyle to Macvey Napier (20 January 1831), quoted in Fred Kaplan, Thomas Carlyle: A Biography (1983), p. 158

 * Jeremy Bentham opposed Blackstone most bitterly... He made a critical attack on Blackstone's Commentaries in a book called Fragment on Government. He started it, I am sorry to say, when he was staying at my little town of Whitchurch in Hampshire – one of the few bad things to come out of it. But there, I never thought anything of Jeremy Bentham. He was the most pretentious person that ever lived. Like Archimedes in his bath, he cried "Eureka!" (I have found it) in 1768 when he discovered the phrase "the greatest happiness of the greatest number". He regarded that – the philosophy of utilitarianism – as the solution for all legal problems as well as social ones. It solves nothing. He started many books but finished none of them.
 * Lord Denning, What Next in the Law (1982), p. 17

 * Individualism as regards legislation is popularly, and not without reason, connected with the name and the principles of Bentham. The name of one man, it is true, can never adequately summarise a whole school of thought, but from 1825 onwards the teaching of Bentham exercised so potent an influence that to him is fairly ascribed that thorough-going though gradual amendment of the law of England which was one of the main results of the Reform Act.
 * A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion (second edition, 1914; 2008), p. 91

 * The founding utilitarians, Bentham and Mill, were not just armchair philosophers. They were daring social reformers, intensely engaged with the social and political issues of their day. Indeed, many familiar social issues became social issues because Bentham and Mill made them so. Their views were considered radical at the time, but today we take for granted most of the social reforms for which they fought. They were among the earliest opponents of slavery and advocates of free speech, free markets, widely available education, environmental protection, prison reform, women's rights, animal rights, gay rights, workers' rights, the right to divorce, and the separation of church and state.
 * Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them (2013), p. 155

 * His primary concern was with neither psychology nor ethics, nor was it with "political theory", but with the reform of existing laws by means of a science of law... Bentham considered that both the Common Law and the administration that Parliament was supposed to supervise were incoherent and antiquated, and that systematic examination and comprehensive overhaul were just precisely what were required... To a considerable degree Bentham was adopting towards the legal institutions of his own country much the attitude that the rationalist Philosophes were adopting towards the whole of the social institutions of France.
 * Wilfrid Harrison, 'Introduction', Jeremy Bentham, A Fragment on Government and An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1948), pp. xviii, xxiii

 * Bentham and his Utilitarians did much to destroy the beliefs which England had in part preserved from the Middle Ages, by their scornful treatment of most of what until then had been the most admired features of the British constitution. And they introduced into Britain what had so far been entirely absent—the desire to remake the whole of the law and institutions on rational principles.
 * Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 174

 * I should emphasise that I am largely neglecting here the long history of this revolt, as well as the different turns it has taken in different lands. Long before Auguste Comte introduced the term 'positivism' for the view that represented a 'demonstrated ethics' (demonstrated by reason, that is) as the only possible alternative to a supernaturally 'revealed ethics' (1854:1, 356), Jeremy Bentham had developed the most consistent foundations of what we now call legal and moral positivism: that is, the constructivistic interpretation of systems of law and morals according to which their validity and meaning are supposed to depend wholly on the will and intention of their designers. Bentham is himself a late figure in this development. This constructivism includes not only the Benthamite tradition, represented and continued by John Stuart Mill and the later English Liberal Party, but also practically all contemporary Americans who call themselves 'liberals' (as opposed to some other very different thinkers, more often found in Europe, who are also called liberals, who are better called `old Whigs', and whose outstanding thinkers were Alexis de Tocqueville and Lord Acton). This constructivist way of thinking becomes virtually inevitable if, as an acute contemporary Swiss analyst suggests, one accepts the prevailing liberal (read 'socialist') philosophy that assumes that man, so far as the distinction between good and bad has any significance for him at all, must, and can, himself deliberately draw the line between them (Kirsch, 1981:17).
 * Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (1988), Ch. 4: The Revolt of Instinct and Reason

 * Mr. Bentham is very much among philosophers what La Fontaine was among poets:—in general habits and in all but his professional pursuits, he is a mere child. He has lived for the last forty years in a house in Westminster, overlooking the Park, like an anchoret in his cell, reducing law to a system, and the mind of man to a machine. He scarcely ever goes out, and sees very little company. The favoured few, who have the privilege of the entrée, are always admitted one by one.
 * The Spirit of the Age by William Hazlitt

 * [Bentham] once said his ambition was to be “the most effectively benevolent man who ever lived.” He may well have been so.
 * Mary Peter Mack, Jeremy Bentham, Encyclopedia.com

 * It is perhaps fortunate that Mr. Bentham devoted a much greater share of his time and labour to the subject of legislation, than that of morals; for the mode in which he understood and applied the principle of Utility, appears to me far more conducive to true and valuable results in the former, than in the latter of these two branches of inquiry.
 * John Stuart Mill, "Remarks on Bentham's Philosophy" in Appendix B of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, England and the English (1833)

 * If we were asked to say, in the fewest possible words, what we conceive to be Bentham’s place among these great intellectual benefactors of humanity; what he was, and what he was not; what kind of service he did and did not render to truth; we should say—he was not a great philosopher, but a great reformer in philosophy.
 * John Stuart Mill, Bentham, Dissertations and Discussions, London, 1859

 * The Benthamic standard of “the greatest happiness” was that which I had always been taught to apply; I was even familiar with an abstract discussion of it, forming an episode in an unpublished dialogue on Government, written by my father on the Platonic model. Yet in the first pages of Bentham it burst upon me with all the force of novelty. What thus impressed me was the chapter in which Bentham passed judgment on the common modes of reasoning in morals and legislation, deduced from phrases like “law of nature,” “right reason,” “the moral sense,” “natural rectitude,” and the like, and characterized them as dogmatism in disguise, imposing its sentiments upon others under cover of sounding expressions which convey no reason for the sentiment, but set up the sentiment as its own reason. It had not struck me before, that Bentham’s principle [of utility] put an end to all this. The feeling rushed upon me, that all previous moralists were superseded, and that here indeed was the commencement of a new era in thought.
 * John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (1873), Ch. 3: Last Stage of Education and First of Self-Education.

 * In their time, Bentham's ideas promoted progress, reform, wider democracy, and the amelioration of undesirable social conditions. Bentham lived... when common people, the "labouring poor," had little voice and no vote... Their toil and sacrifices enhanced the power of the nation, the glory of its rulers, the wealth of industrialists and merchants, and the indolent ease of the aristocrats. Yet here was a philosopher who said that people are people regardless of their social position. ...[L]egislators ought actively to augment the total happiness of the community. Instead of the people serving the state, the state should serve the people. ...[H]is slogan for government was "Be quiet." But he did not worship laissez-faire as a principle to be accepted blindly. ...[T]he state should monopolize the issue of paper money, thereby saving interest on its borrowing. It should... operate life and annuity insurance, and tax inheritance, monopolies, [etc.] ...Bentham's idea of diminishing marginal utility of money suggested an argument for the redistribution of income. ...[M]ore happiness will be gained by the poor person than will be lost by the wealthy one. ...Bentham's devotion to the greatest good for the greatest number led him to... advocate for.. democratic reforms. He supported universal (male) suffrage, equal electoral districts, annual parliaments, and the secret ballot. He opposed the monarchy and the, arguing that only in a democracy do the interest of the governors and the governed become identical. ...Bentham urged a system of national education, even for pauper children. Frugality Banks... should... stimulate saving by the poor. should provide jobs for unemployed workers during slack times. ...He designed ...a model prison that would reform criminals rather than punish them. No wonder Bentham and his circle of intellects (including James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Ricardo) were called "philosophic radicals."
 * Jacob Oser, Stanley L. Brue, The Evolution of Economic Thought (1963, 1988) 4th edition, pp. 122-123

 * The Reformers had been in the unhappy position of not having brains enough for their programme. Bentham supplied them. He classified and (inevitably) systematized the vapourings of Burdett and the nebulous projects of Cartwright. Bentham took the Burdettite catchwords of the day and gave them meaning: he redeemed the cause of democracy by providing it with a basis of reasoned theory. The sole clue to political conduct, he held, was Interest. What wonder, then, if Whigs and Tories were indistinguishable, since their interests were identical? The country was being governed by a minority for the partial interests of a minority: was not that the very definition of corruption? Corruption...was a system, it was a political theory, it was the whole government of England. Aristocracy as a form of government was itself an intolerable grievance... He based his democracy not on political considerations, but on the fundamental tag of the "greatest happiness of the greatest number". He gave Reform an irresistible catchword: he opened up a new and impugnable line of argument... Bentham gave the Reform movement a much-needed intellectual fillip. Through Mill, in the Edinburgh Review, he reached the genteel establishments: through Place, he stiffened the people.
 * Michael Roberts, The Whig Party, 1807–1812 (1939), pp. 261-263, 265

 * Ethical hedonism was originally tied to psychological hedonism about human motivation. Bentham assumed that all humans are basically and exclusively motivated by the desire to gain pleasure and avoid pain, but it is possible to maintain ethical hedonism while rejecting, as most present utilitarians are inclined to do, psychological hedonism. However, certain later and contemporary versions of utilitarianism broaden the notion of ethical hedonism so that human or personal good is understood to be constituted by whatever satisfies people's desires or preferences or makes people happy.
 * Michael Slote, in the article on Utilitarianism in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995) edited by Ted Honderich, p. 890

 * For as a hedonist, Bentham apparently bases moral status not on the dignity of rational nature but rather solely on the capacity to feel pleasure and pain. And this is clearly different from the Kantian position. Yet I claim that Bentham’s idea here is in general terms not inconsistent with Kantian ethics but is instead a corollary of the Kantian position. I would even claim that Kantian ethics provides a better justification for it than Bentham’s hedonism–a shallow empiricist doctrine that cannot account properly even for the values it assigns to pleasure and pain in human beings. […] Nonhuman animals do not have the capacity to reason or to talk. Therefore, beyond making the obvious point that they are not persons in the strict sense, whether they have or lack these capacities is irrelevant to how we should treat them. Bentham is therefore correct in telling us not to ask about these matters when we are deciding how to treat animals. What is relevant, because it relates their capacities to those of rational nature, is the fact that they can suffer, and desire, and sometimes also care – about members of their own species, or even occasionally about members of other species, such as humans. Bentham is therefore also correct in telling us what we should ask about these capacities, for they are the relevant ones. Bentham is correct, however, not because Kant is wrong, but because Kant is right.
 * Allen W. Wood, Kantian Ethics (2008), Ch. 5. Humanity

 * Here the childlike nature of Bentham’s approach to life, which Mill often stresses, proves valuable: for Bentham understood how powerful pain and pleasure are for children and the child in us. Bentham did not value the emotional elements of the personality in the right way. He simplified them too, lacking all understanding of poetry (as Mill insists) and of love (as we might add). But perhaps it was the very childlike character of Bentham, the man who loved the pleasures of small creatures, who allowed the mice in his study to sit on his lap, that made him able to see something Aristotle did not see, the need that we all have to be held and comforter, the need to escape a terrible loneliness and deadness.
 * Martha Nussbaum, “Mill on Happiness: The Enduring Value of a Complex Critique,” in B. Schultz and G. Varouxakis, eds. Utilitarianism and Empire (2005)

title: Jeremy Bentham