text:
Optimism

Optimism, (positive thinking) is the opposite of pessimism, exemplifies a lifeview where one looks upon the world as a positive place. Optimists generally believe that people and events are inherently good. They have a so-called "positive" outlook on life, believing that things will work out in the end.

Quotes

 * Sorted alphabetically by author or source

 * The optimism of the Left was created and maintained by a strong feeling: admiration for the power of reason, certainty that the application of science to industry would revolutionise the order of human society and the condition of its individual members.
 * Raymond Aron, The Opium of Intellectuals (1955)

 * Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming: feedback is the treatment.
 * Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained : Embrace Change (2000)

 * I came out of my mom’s stomach thinking I was going to own America.
 * Caprice Bourret (b. 1971), on the chat show Live from Studio Five, Channel 5 (UK) television (18 November 2009)

 * The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label.
 * James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion : A Comedy of Redemption (1926), Book Four : Coth at Porutsa, Ch. XXVI : The Realist in Defeat

 * For men dare not face the universe with no better backing than their own resources; all men that live, and that go perforce about this world like blundering lost children whose rescuer is not yet in sight, have a vital need to believe in this sustaining legend about the Redeemer: and the wickedness and the foolishness of no man can avail against the fond optimism of mankind.
 * James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion (1926), Horvendille, in Book Six : In the Sylan's House, Ch. XXXIX : One Warden Left Uncircumvented

 * No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.
 * Gilbert K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

 * Optimism is morbid. It is if possible even more morbid than pessimism.
 * Gilbert K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (People's Library Edition, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927), p. 284

 * For myself I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
 * Winston Churchill, speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet, London (9 November 1954)

 * I am an irrepressible optimist, but I always base my optimism on solid facts.
 * Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Vol. 2; 2nd Ed. (1960) by D. G. Tendulkar, p. 152

 * The belief in indefinite progress is, all told, nothing more than the most ingenuous and the grossest of all kinds of ‘optimism’; whatever forms this belief may take, it is always sentimental in essence, even when it is concerned with ‘material progress’.
 * René Guénon, East and West (Ghent NY: Sophia Perennis, 2001; originally published in 1924 in French as Orient et Occident), p. 23 (Ch. 1, "Civilization & Progress").

 * Look up and not down; Look forward and not back; Look out and not in; Lend a Hand.
 * Edward Everett Hale, motto of the Lend a Hand Society. The first Lend a Hand Club was founded in 1871, followed by the incorporation of a league of clubs, the Lend a Hand Society, in 1891. Edward E. Hale, who founded the first club in Boston, Massachusetts, later became chaplain to the United States Senate.

 * To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is. A pessimistic attitude can never create the calm and serene smile which blossoms on the lips of Bodhisattvas and all those who obtain the way.
 * Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Miracle of Mindfulness (1999)

 * Don't ever become a pessimist … a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.
 * Robert A. Heinlein, in Time Enough for Love (1973)

 * You may be whatever you resolve to be. Determine to be something in the world, and you will be something. "I cannot" never accomplished anything: "I will try" has wrought wonders.
 * Joel Hawes, as quoted in Thoughts On The Business of Life at thoughts.forbes.com

 * Most people’s brains have soaked for decades in a marinade of rosy expectations. Since the 1950s, forecasts for the human future could be summarized by the adjectives more, bigger, and faster. Our political leaders and cultural icons encouraged us to think that more human problems (including disease and poverty) will be solved with each passing year; that we will unravel the mysteries of biology, astronomy, and other scientific fields; that we will access limitless new energy sources; and that technology-derived comfort, convenience, and connectivity will increase and become available to more people. This pervasive optimism was based on the actual experience of much of humanity, which saw wonders unfold throughout the 20th century.
 * Richard Heinberg, "Deadly Optimism, Useful Pessimism." Republished in Resilience (July 14, 2022)

 * Optimism was a self-reinforcing feedback: the system delivered more, people came to expect more, so the system was primed to deliver still more. The result was continued economic growth, with the global economy doubling in size every two or three decades. This always-accelerating conveyor belt of industrial production and disposal depended not just on the increased availability of energy and materials, but also on rising expectations.
 * Richard Heinberg, "Deadly Optimism, Useful Pessimism." Republished in Resilience (July 14, 2022)

 * Optimism greased the wheels of commerce, with society operating as an optimism-generating machine. Of course, there was a downside to fossil-fueled, optimism-propelled growth. Exponentially increasing humanity’s resource extraction, industrial production, and waste dumping resulted in far more pollution of the environment.
 * Richard Heinberg, "Deadly Optimism, Useful Pessimism." Republished in Resilience (July 14, 2022)

 * Always look on the bright side of life.
 * Eric Idle; song written for the film, Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)

 * Optimism is cowardice.
 * Ernst Jünger, On Pain (1934)

 * Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
 * Attributed to Helen Keller, inscription in autograph album of Lafayette E. Cornwell, Yonkers, New York, reported in Walter Fogg, One Thousand Sayings of History (1929), p. 17. While this sentence has been attributed to Keller several times, Keller experts at the American Federation for the Blind in New York City have never been able to find it.

 * Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.
 * Helen Keller, Optimism (1903)

 * Optimism is the opium of the people.
 * Milan Kundera, The Joke (1967)

 * Two men look out through the same bars: One sees the mud, and one the stars.
 * Frederick Langbridge (1849–1923), A Cluster of Quiet Thoughts

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

 * Despite the cautions just raised, there is abundant reason to believe that optimism – big, little, and in between – is useful to a person because positive expectations can be self-fulfilling.
 * Christopher Peterson, American Psychologist, ISSN 0003-066X, January 2000, p. 51

 * Optimism and stupidity are nearly synonymous.
 * Hyman G. Rickover, an address delivered to the US Naval Postgraduate School (16 March 1954)

 * "Optimist" is a word which here refers to a person...who thinks pleasant thoughts about nearly everything. For instance, if an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well, this isn't too bad. I don't have my arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me if I am right-handed or left-handed", but most of us would say something more along the lines of "Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!"
 * Lemony Snicket, The Miserable Mill (2000)

 * Optimism is cowardice.
 * Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics (1931)

 * Optimism is good for overcoming obstacles that are part of daily life, but over-optimism can blind us to adversities that need addressing.

 * This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have believed it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.
 * Rex Stout, in lines for Nero Wolfe, in Fer-de-Lance (1934)

 * Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be more precise: they are neither positive nor negative. They are as they are. And when you live in complete acceptance of what is - which is the only sane way to live - there is no "good" or "bad" in your life anymore. There is only a higher good - which includes the "bad." Seen from the perspective of the mind, however, there is good-bad, like-dislike, love-hate.
 * Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997)  p. 111

 * Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry, or hard-done-by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane.
 * Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997)  p. 119

 * As more humans awaken, the word work is going to disappear from our vocabulary, and perhaps a new word will be created to replace it. It is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that is the main determinant of what kind of future you will experience, so to surrender is the most important thing you can do to bring about positive change. Any action you take is secondary.
 * Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997)

 * See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always non-acceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
 * Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p.56
 * The Arising New Consciousness. Most ancient religions and spiritual traditions share the common insight – that our “normal” state of mind is marred by a fundamental defect. However, out of this insight into the nature of the human condition – we may call it the bad news – arises a second insight: the good news of the possibility of a radical transformation of human consciousness. In Hindu teachings (and sometimes in Buddhism also), this transformation is called enlightenment. In the teachings of Jesus, it is salvation, and in Buddhism, it is the end of suffering. Liberation and awakening are other terms used to describe this transformation.
 * Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)

 * The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science, or technology, but the recognition of its own dysfunction, its own madness. In the distant past, this recognition already came to a few individuals. A man called Gautama Siddhartha, who lived 2,600 years ago in India, was perhaps the first who saw it with absolute clarity. Later the title Buddha was conferred upon him. Buddha means “the awakened one.” At abut the same time, another of humanity’s early awakened teachers emerged in China. His name was Lao Tzu. He left a record of his teaching in the form of one of the most profound spiritual books ever written, the Tao Te Ching. To recognize one’s own insanity, is of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.
 * Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)

 * Until now, human intelligence, which is no more than a minute aspect of universal intelligence, has been distorted and misused by the ego. I call that “intelligence in the service of madness.” Splitting the atom requires great intelligence. Using that intelligence for building and stockpiling atom bombs is insane or at best extremely unintelligent. Stupidity is relatively harmless, but intelligent stupidity is highly dangerous. This intelligent stupidity, for which one could find countless obvious examples, is threatening our survival as a species.
 * Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose,  (2005)

 * As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future, that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness!
 * Leon Trotsky,  "On Optimism and Pessimism, on the Twentieth Century, and on Many Other Things" (1901), as quoted in The Prophet Armed : Trotsky, 1879-1921 (2003) by Isaac Deutscher, p. 45

 * The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
 * Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

 * My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.
 * Ellen Willis, "Tom Wolfe's Failed Optimism" (1977), Beginning To See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981)

 * "O otimismoé algo precioso para o ser humano"
 * [Kallyne Romão]

 * Now the basic impulse behind existentialism is optimistic, very much like the impulse behind all science... Romanticism began as a tremendous surge of optimism about the stature of man. Its aim — like that of science — was to raise man above the muddled feelings and impulses of his everyday humanity
 * Colin Wilson in Introduction to the New Existentialism, p. 96 (1966)

 * Maslow's psychology, firmly based upon Freud and Watson, simply points out that the optimistic side of the picture has been overlooked; the deterministic laws of our 'lower nature' hold sway in their won field; but there are other laws. Man's freedom is a reality — a reality that makes a difference to his physical, as well as his mental health. When Frankl's prisoners ceased to believe in the possibility of freedom, they grew sick and died. On the other hand, when they saw that Dachau had no chimney, standing out all night in the rain seemed no great hardship; they laughed and joked. The conclusion needs to be stated in letters ten feet high. In order to realise his possibilities, man must believe in an open future; he must have a vision of something worth doing. And this will not be possible until all the determinism and pessimism that we have inherited from the 19th century — and which has infected every department of our culture, from poetry to atomic physics — has been dismissed as fallacious and illogical. Twentieth century science, philosophy, politics, literature — even music — has been constructed upon a weltanschauung that leaves half of human nature out of account.
 * Colin Wilson in New Pathways In Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution, p 219-220 (1972)

 * If you think you are beaten, you are; If you think you dare not, you don't. If you'd like to win, but think you can't, It's almost a cinch you won't. If you think you'll lose, you're lost, For out in the world we find begins with a fellow's will; It's all in the state of mind. If you think you're outclassed, you are; You've got to think high to rise. You've got to be sure of yourself before You can ever win a prize. Life's battles don't always go To the stronger or faster man; But soon or late the man who wins Is the one who thinks he can.
 * Walter D. Wintle, in "Thinking" (1905), also known as "The Man Who Thinks He Can", as presented in Poems That Live Forever (1965) p. 310

 * Partly cloudy means mostly sunny
 * Devin Schumacher, Quotable Quotes, 2023

title: Optimism


text: User:Achilles

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

title: User:Achilles


text:
Africa and Africans

Quotes from Africa & Africans by and, 4th edition, 1995, Waveland Press, Illinois, USA.

Chapter 3: Mapping Africa

 * Westerners who are thoroughly familiar with market economy and with the particular tensions and insecurities it brings, would do well to remember that subsistence economy also brings its own tensions: food during the next year is totally dependent on one's own labors and on the fruits of one's fields, more or less ameliorated by dependence on kinsmen. Droughts and floods, locusts and birds are personal enemies. Religious myth and ritual, like insecurity, center around food production. Africans who have entered a market economy are adjusting to new types of insecurities: unemployment, boring jobs, loss of self-determination
 * p.45

Chapter 4: African Arts

 * Today African artists want to be recognized as artists, not just African artists. Their subject matter is drawn from the world in which they live--which is the present-day world, not nineteenth century Africa. They do not sculpt like traditional Africans any more than Pollack or Warhol painted like Whistler.
 * p.59

Chapter 8: African Trade and Markets

 * Different market places specialize in different goods and in different activities. One market is a good place to buy X and sell Y. The next one is a good place to buy Y and sell X. Another may be well known for its beer-drink, and another for its wise counselors and judges. Such specialization when combined with the fact that markets do not meet every day--leads to two vital points about the marketing system of Africa, particularly West Africa and the Congo Basin. First of all, every community is at the center of a group of markets which meets every fourth, fifth, or seventh day, depending on the area. There is, therefore, an association of market places with time as well as with special products.
 * P.109

Page 113:
 * "Finally, even that fiction has disappeared and most bridewealth passes openly in the form of general purpose money-bank-notes and coins issued by the African governments. However, the spread of the market principle into new spheres, here as in other aspects of life, has created tremendous moral problems that are not entirely resolved."

Chapter 9: African Religion
Page 116:
 * " Are monotheistic in the sense that there is a single high God. He is said to have created the world and humankind; he is a central source of order. Many African religions are also polytheistic in that either pantheons of gods or large numbers of spirits or ancestors or some other kind of divinities may stand between human beings and the ultimate God."
 * "Perhaps the most characteristic quality of African religion is that there are many strings to the bow. For each purpose to be achieved, there are several ritual and moral ways of doing it."
 * "The absence of orthodoxy in African religion means that many versions of the substantiating myths can be collected. The "truth" lies in the common motifs of the many versions."

Page 120:
 * "Westerners have, in fact, been rigorously trained not to ask "why" questions about misfortune. When a doctor tells us that we have a rare disease we do not immediately say "Why me?"--at least we do not say it to the doctor. We have become a statistic, for better or for worse. It is, however, exactly the "Why me?" question that Africans ask, and to which they seek an answer. In answer, they link social problems to divine action. In so doing, they air and often solve the social problems in the course of seeking to counter the divine manifestations."

Page 124:
 * "It is impossible to overemphasize the influence that Christian missionaries have had in Africa. It should at the same time be pointed out and recognized that much of their influence was of a cultural nature rather than merely of a theological nature. They have indeed taught new theologies, but they have also taught literacy, new ways of expressing basic theological notions, new moral precepts, and the principles of bureaucracy. Christianity and Islam both bring the morality of the individual into religion"

Page 125:
 * "The great debt that Africa owes to missionaries is that when the forces of trade, colonial government, and the missions themselves were creating cultural havoc, only the missions began to build a culture for the new era."

Chapter 11: Farms and Iron
Page 142:
 * "Egypt was basically an African culture, with intrusions of Asian culture."

Chapter 12: Africa in World History
Page 153:
 * "In the first millennium before Christ, the Western Sudan and northwestern Europe were nearly on par. Both had acquired iron and agriculture from the Middle East, but neither had yet moved on to evolve into urban civilization."

Page 164:
 * "The obvious prosperity of the East African port towns is deceptive. Although they were African towns, they looked toward the Indian Ocean. Their connection with the interior was almost nonexistent, and the immediate hinterland was sparsely populated."

Chapter 13: The End of Isolation
Page 178:
 * "It may be that Portugal's most important contribution to East African culture history was to increase the Africanization of coastal culture by reducing contact with Arabia."

Chapter 14: The Era of the Slave Trade
Page 189:
 * "As it was, the Europeans wanted slaves, and the challenge of meeting this demand diverted African creativity to an essentially unproductive enterprise. When the slave trade finally ended, African societies took up the challenge of supplying products rather than people, but time was already running out; the European invasions came before the adjustment could be completed. It seems clear from this point of view that, at the very least, the slave trade forestalled some of the positive fruits of more intense contact with the outside world."

Chapter 17: Forms and Conditions of Conquest
Page 218:
 * "In the perspective of world history, it is hard to imagine a combination of circumstances that would have prevented or delayed the European annexation of Africa."
 * "By the 1880s machine guns and light artillery capable of firing explosive shells gave the Europeans an incomparable advantage over any African opponent. Medical progress meant that European soldiers and administrators could be sent to tropical Africa without the old constraint of astronomical death rates from disease. Naturally, none of these changes could cause the conquest of Africa, but they slashed the price of any military action a European government might choose to consider, European economic growth made the cost smaller still in terms of resources available."
 * Page 218-219

Page 219:
 * "France, having lost the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71, had reason enough in wounded national pride and the web of international rivalries to seek spectacular victories overseas."
 * "other nations, seeing Britain as the economic leader of Europe and also in possession of the largest overseas empire, could easily assume that empire brought wealth"
 * "Political instability, in European eyes, was bad for business. Some of the secondary empires began to break up in the 1870s, when Zanzibar lost control over the East African interior."

Page 220:
 * "Thus, the major secondary empires fell to full European control, either because they were too fragile or because they were unwilling to bow to informal pressure."
 * In Africa 1880s and 1890s.
 * "Central governments in Europe were often reluctant to annex African territory, but the Europeans in the trade enclaves were tempted to use force whenever they came into conflict with weak or recalcitrant African states."
 * "The first round of competitive annexations in western Africa was touched off by a series of French moves in 1879-82"
 * "Germany and Portugal joined France in annexing African territory for fear of being left out, and Britain shifted from informal to formal control for the same reason."
 * "In Europe, competitive annexation led to a series of diplomatic crises."

 * conquest was rarely on the basis of unconditional surrender, giving the victors a free hand to do as they liked. Instead, the pattern of conquest and pacification was enormously complex and variable from one local situation to the next.
 * P.222

Chapter 18: The Colonial Era
Page 230:
 * "Aside from the desire to exploit known mineral deposits, they began with no fixed ideas of what they wanted to do with the colonies, once they had them. This made for an early uncertainty about ultimate objectives, but as the colonial era moved along, a variety of different goals appeared."
 * "they" are the colonial powers after colonizing Africa.
 * "Certain aims were universal. First of all, any colonial government had to set up an administration-"to keep the peace,""
 * "the second-the colonies had to pay their own way."

Page 231:
 * "One reason for the decline of conversionism was the rise of a competing group of ideas that can be labeled "permanent trusteeship" or paternalism. The point of departure was pseudoscientific racism, with its view that Africans were permanently inferior to Europeans and could never successfully adopt the "civilization" of Europe. Believers in trusteeship nevertheless regarded Africans as human beings deserving the protection of their "superiors.""
 * "A third general category of imperial theory was less concerned with moral principle, even more rigorous in its insistence on racial inferiority, and infested with cultural arrogance. This school of thought can be called "racial subordination," though the Afrikaans word, baasskap (domination), may be even better in catching the essence. In this view, the best possible future for Africans was neither Westernization nor autonomous development but subordination as servants in a Western society-and permanently so."

Page 232:
 * "in South Africa, the official defense of racial subordination came to be set in terms of apartheid, or separate development, which is actually a variant form of permanent trusteeship."
 * "Administrators went to Africa as adults, already set in the forms of Western culture and prepared to see Africa only in the light of attitudes they brought from home."

title: Africa and Africans


text:
Marie Curie

Maria Skłodowska-Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish-born scientist. The first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize, in 1903, for Physics, she became the first person to win two with the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She founded the Curie Institute.

Quotes

 * One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
 * Letter to her brother (1894)

 * I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.
 * Instructions regarding a proposed gift of a wedding dress for her marriage to Pierre in July 1895, as quoted in Madame Curie : A Biography'' (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, as translated by Vincent Sheean, p. 137

 * Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
 * Response to a reporter seeking an interview during a vacation with her husband in Brittany, who mistaking her for a housekeeper, asked her if there was anything confidential she could recount, as quoted in Living Adventures in Science (1972), by Henry Thomas and Dana Lee Thomas
 * Variant: In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.
 * This is stated to be a declaration she often made to reporters, in Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, as translated by Vincent Sheean, p. 222

 * Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.
 * 'La vie n’est facile pour aucun de nous. Mais quoi, il faut avoir de la persévérance, et surtout de la confiance en soi. Il faut croire que l’on est doué pour quelque chose, et que, cette chose, il faut l'atteindre coûte que coûte.'
 * As quoted in Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, Part 2, p. 116

 * We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.
 * Lecture at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (14 May 1921)

 * All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.
 * Pierre Curie (1923), as translated by Charlotte Kellogg and Vernon Lyman Kellogg, p. 162

 * You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
 * Pierre Curie (1923), as translated by Charlotte Kellogg and Vernon Lyman Kellogg, p. 168

 * I believe international work is a heavy task, but that it is nevertheless indispensable to go through an apprenticeship in it, at the cost of many efforts and also of a real spirit of sacrifice: however imperfect it may be, the work of Geneva has a grandeur that deserves our support.
 * Letter to Eve Curie (July 1929), as quoted in Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, as translated by Vincent Sheean, p. 341

 * I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its beauty. Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our world. If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.
 * As quoted in Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, as translated by Vincent Sheean, p. 341
 * Variant translation: A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.

 * Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.
 * As quoted in Astrophysics of the Diffuse Universe (2003) by Michael A. Dopita and Ralph S. Sutherland

 * I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.
 * Java Connector Architecture: Building Custom Connectors and Adapters (2002) by Atul Apte, p. 69

 * There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
 * As quoted in The Commodity Trader's Almanac 2007 (2006) by Scott W. Barrie and Jeffrey A. Hirsch, p. 44

Misattributed

 * I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.
 * As quoted in White Coat Tales : Medicine's Heroes, Heritage and Misadventures (2007) by Robert B. Taylor, p. 141. The original source is the last sentence of the Nobel lecture of Pierre Curie (available here).

Quotes about Marie Curie

 * Marie Curie was at heart a Baconian, boiling tons of crude uranium ore to demolish the dogma of the indestructibility of atoms.
 * Freeman Dyson, "Birds and Frogs" (Oct. 4, 2008) AMS Einstein Public Lecture in Mathematics, as published in Notices of the AMS, (Feb, 2009). Also published in The Best Writing on Mathematics: 2010 (2011) p. 58.

 * In the 1970s we were rediscovering women whose lives had been dropped out of history or distorted, like Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Emily Dickinson, Marie Curie, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Hannah Senesch, Ethel Rosenberg.
 * Adrienne Rich Arts of the Possible (2001)

Radio-activity (1904)

 * by Ernest Rutherford (a 2nd edition was published in 1905).

 * Marie Curie made a detailed examination by the electrical method of the great majority of known substances, including the very rare elements, to see if they possessed any activity. In cases when it was possible, several compounds of the elements were examined. With the exception of and, none of the other substances possessed an activity even of the order of 1/100 of.

 * It seemed probable that the large activity of some of these minerals, compared with uranium and thorium, was due to the presence of small quantities of some very active substance, which was different from the known bodies thorium and uranium. This supposition was completely verified by the work of M. and Mme Curie, who were able to separate from pitchblende by purely chemical methods two active bodies, one of which in the pure state is over a million times more active than the metal uranium. This important discovery was due entirely to the property of radio-activity possessed by the new bodies. The only guide in their separation was the activity of the products obtained. ...The activity of the specimens thus served as a basis of rough qualitative and quantitative analysis, analogous in some respects to the indication of the spectroscope.

 * The chief difficulty lay in the fact that pitchblende is a very complex mineral and contains in varying quantities nearly all the known metals. ...The analysis of pitchblende by chemical methods, using the procedure sketched above, led to the discovery of two very active bodies, polonium and radium. The name polonium was given to the first substance discovered by Mme Curie in honor of the country of her birth. The name radium was a very happy inspiration of the discoverers, for this substance in the pure state possesses the property of radio-activity to an astonishing degree.

title: Marie Curie


text:
Josef Pieper

Josef Pieper (4 May 1904 – 6 November 1997) was a German Catholic philosopher, at the forefront of the Neo-Thomistic wave in twentieth century philosophy.

Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948)

 * Translation by Gerald Malsbary of two linked studies, Musse und Kult and Was heisst Philosophieren? (both 1948). South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 1998

Leisure, the Basis of Culture

 * We can begin, like the Scholastic masters, with an objection: videtur quod non … "It seems not to be true that ..." And this is the objection: a time like the present [i.e., a few years after the Second World War, in Germany] seems, of all times, not to be a time to speak of leisure. […] That is no small objection. But there is also a good answer to it. […] For, when we consider the foundations of Western European culture (is it, perhaps, too rash to assume that our re-building will in fact be carried out in a "Western" spirit? Indeed, this and no other is the very assumption that is at issue today), one of these foundations is leisure. We can read it in the first chapter of Aristotle's Metaphysics. And the very history of the meaning of the word bears a similar message. The Greek word for leisure (σχολή) is the origin of Latin scola, German Schule, English school. The names for the institutions of education and learning mean "leisure."
 * pp. 3–4

 * "We work in order to be at leisure." […] Doesn't this statement appear almost immoral to the man or woman of the world of "total work"? Is it not an attack on the basic principles of human society? Now I have not merely constructed a sentence to prove a point. The statement was actually made — by Aristotle [Nichomachean Ethics X, 7 (1177b4–6)]. Yes, Aristotle: the sober, industrious realist, and the fact that he said it, gives the statement special significance. What he says in a more literal translation would be: "We are not-at-leisure in order to be-at-leisure." For the Greeks, "not-leisure" was the word for the world of everyday work; and not only to indicate its "hustle and bustle," but the work itself. The Greek language had only this negative term for it (ά-σχολία), as did Latin (neg-otium). The context not only of this sentence but also of another one from Aristotle's Politics (stating that the "pivot" around which everything turns is leisure [Politics VII, 3 (1337b33)]) shows that these notions were not considered extraordinary, but only self-evident. […] Could this also imply that people in our day no longer have direct access to the original meaning of leisure?
 * pp. 4–5

 * What happens when our eye sees a rose? What do we do when that happens? Our mind does something, to be sure, in the mere fact of taking in the object, grasping its color, its shape, and so on. We have to be awake and active. But all the same, it is a "relaxed" looking, so long as we are merely looking at it and not observing or studying it, counting or measuring its various features. Such observation would not be a "relaxed" action; it would be what Ernst Jünger termed an "act of aggression." But simply looking at something, gazing at it, "taking it in," is merely to open our eyes to receive the things that present themselves to us, that come to us without any need for "effort" on our part to "possess" them.
 * p. 9
 * The Ernst Jünger quote is from Blätter und Steine (Hamburg, 1934), p. 202.

 * Not only the Greeks in general — Aristotle no less than Plato — but the great medieval thinkers as well, all held that there was an element of purely receptive "looking," not only in self-perception but also in intellectual knowing or, as Heraclitus said, "Listening-in to the being of things." The medievals distinguished between the intellect as ratio and the intellect as intellectus. Ratio is the power of discursive thought, of searching and re-searching, abstracting, refining, and concluding [cf. Latin dis-currere, "to run to and fro"], whereas intellectus refers to the ability of "simply looking" (simplex intuitus), to which the truth presents itself as a landscape presents itself to the eye.
 * p. 11

 * [I]f knowing is work, exclusively work, then the one who knows, knows only the fruit of his own, subjective activity, and nothing else. There is nothing in his knowing that is not the fruit of his own efforts; there is nothing "received" in it. […] It is the mark of "absolute activity" (which Goethe said "makes one bankrupt, in the end"); the hard quality of not-being-able-to-receive; a stoniness of heart, that will not brook any resistance — as expressed once, most radically, in the following terrifying statement: "Every action makes sense, even criminal acts … all passivity is senseless."
 * p. 14
 * The Goethe quote is from his Maximen und Reflexionen, ed. Günther Müller (Stuttgart, 1943), no. 1415. The other quote is from Hermann Rauschning's Conversations with Hitler (Gespräche mit Hitler, 1940).

 * We should consider for a moment how much the Christian understanding of life is based on the reality of "Grace"; let us also recall that the Holy Spirit Himself is called "Gift"; that the greatest Christian teachers have said that the Justice of God is based on Love; that something given, something free of all debt, something undeserved, something not-achieved - is presumed in everything achieved or laid claim to; that what is first is always something received — if we keep all this before our eyes, we can see the abyss that separates this other attitude from the inheritence of Christian Europe.
 * p. 20

 * Now the code of life of the High Middle Ages said something entirely opposite to this: that it was precisely lack of leisure, an inability to be at leisure, that went together with idleness; that the restlessness of work-for-work's sake arose from nothing other than idleness. There is a curious connection in the fact that the restlessness of a self-destructive work-fanatacism should take its rise from the absence of a will to accomplish something.
 * p. 27

 * Against the exclusiveness of the paradigm of work as activity, first of all, there is leisure as "non-activity" — an inner absence of preoccupation, a calm, an ability to let things go, to be quiet. Leisure is a form of that stillness that is the necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear. […] Leisure is the disposition of receptive understanding, of contemplative beholding, and immersion — in the real.
 * p. 31

 * Leisure lives on affirmation. It […] includes within itself a celebratory, approving, lingering gaze of the inner eye on the reality of creation. The highest form of affirmation is the festival; and according to Karl Kerenyi, the historian of religion, to festival belong "peace, intensity of life, and contemplation all at once." The holding of a festival means: an affirmation of the basic meaning of the world, and an agreement with it, and in fact it means to live out and fulfil one's inclusion in the world, in an extraordinary manner, different from the everyday. The festival is the origin of leisure, its inmost and ever-central source. And this festive character is what makes leisure not only "effortless" but the very opposite of effort or toil.
 * pp. 33–34
 * The Kerenyi quote is from Karl Kerenyi, Die antike Religion (Amsterdam, 1940), p. 66.

 * Leisure stands in a perpendicular position with respect to the working process — in just the same way as the "simple gaze" of intellectus does not consist in the "duration" (so to speak) of ratio's working-out process, but instead cuts through it at the perpendicular (the ancients compared the ratio with time, the intellectus with the "always now" of eternity).
 * p. 34

 * In leisure — not only there, but certainly there, if anywhere — the truly human is rescued and preserved precisely because the area of the "just human" is left behind over and over again — and this is not brought about through the application of extreme efforts but rather as with a kind of "moving away" (and this "moving" is of course more difficult than the extreme, active effort; it is "more difficult" because it is less at one's own disposal; the condition of utmost exertion is more easily to be realized than the condition of relaxation and detachment, even though the latter is effortless: this is the paradox that reigns over the attainment of leisure, which is at once a human and superhuman condition). As Aristotle said of it: "man cannot live this way insofar as he is man, but only insofar as something divine dwells in him." [Nichomachean Ethics X, 7 (1177b27–28)]
 * p. 36

 * Let us now pose the question again: is recourse to the "human" really enough to preserve and firmly ground the reality of leisure? I intend to show that such recourse to mere Humanism is not enough. It could be said that the heart of leisure consists in "festival." In festival, or celebration, all three conceptual elements come together as one: the relaxation, the effortlessness, the ascendancy of "being at leisure" […] over mere function.
 * p. 50

 * To experience and live out a harmony with the world, in a manner quite different from that of everyday life — this, we have said, is the meaning of "festival." But no more intense harmony with the world can be thought of than that of "Praise of God," the worship of the Creator of this world. Now, as I have often experienced, this statement is often received with a mixture of discomfort and various other feelings, but its truth cannot be denied. The most festive festival that can be celebrated is religious worship or "cult," and there is no festival that does not get its life from such worship or does not actually derive its origin from this. There is no worship "without the gods," whether it be mardi gras or a wedding.
 * pp. 50–51

 * The statement is made with certainty: a festival that does not get its life from worship, even though the connection in human consciousness be ever so small, is not to be found. To be sure, since the French Revolution, people have tried over and over to create artificial festivals without any connection with religious worship, or even against such worship, such as the "Brutus Festival" or "Labor Day," but they all demonstrate, through the forced and narrow character of their festivity, what religious worship provides to a festival. […] Clearer than the light of day is the difference between the living, rooted trees of genuine cultic festival and our artificial festivals that resemble those "maypoles," cut at the roots, and carted here and there, to be planted for some definite purpose. Of course we may have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that we are only at the dawn of an age of artificial festivals. Were we [in Germany] prepared for the possibility that the official forces, and especially the bearers of political power, would artificially create the appearance of the festive with so huge an expense in external arrangements? And that this seductive, scarcely delectable appearance of artificial "holidays" would be so totally lacking in the essential quality, that true and ultimate harmony with the world? And that such holidays would in fact depend on the suppression of that harmony and derive their dangerous seduction from that very fact?
 * pp. 51–52
 * In the three rhetorical questions that end this quote, Pieper alludes to the Nazis' elaborately stage-managed "festivals", in particular the Nuremberg Rally, the subject of Leni Riefenstahl's classic propaganda documentary, Triumph of the Will.

 * Within the world of total work, the "festival" is either "a break from work" (and thus only there for the sake of work), or it is a more intensive celebration of the principles of work itself (as in the "Labor Days," and thus belongs, again, to the working world). There will naturally be "games" — like the Roman circences — but who would dignify the amusements for the masses with the name of "festival"?
 * p. 53

 * In the effort to regain a space of true leisure, to bring about a fundamentally correct attitude and "exercise" of leisure, the real difficulty of this so-often despaired-of project consists in the fact that the ultimate root of leisure lies outside the range of our responsible, voluntary action. The fullest harmony with the world, to be precise, cannot come about on the basis of a voluntary decision. Above all, one cannot simply "make" it happen for some ulterior purpose. There are certain things which one cannot do "in order to ..." do something else.
 * p. 58

 * Worship itself is a given — or it does not exist at all.
 * p. 59

The Philosophical Act

 * When the physicist poses the question, "What does it mean to do physics?" or "What is research in physics?" — his question is a preliminary question. Clearly, when you ask a question like that, and try to answer it, you are not "doing physics." Or rather you are no longer doing physics. But when you ask yourself, "What does it mean to do philosophy?" then you actually are "doing philosophy" — this is not at all a "preliminary" question but a truly philosophical one: you are right at the heart of the business.
 * p. 63

 * It pertains to the very nature of a philosophical question that its answer will not be a "perfectly rounded truth" (as Parmenides said it), grasped in the hand like an apple plucked from a tree.
 * P. 63

 * Of course in the present day […] the world of work begins to become — threatens to become — our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.
 * pp. 64–65

 * It could even be said, perhaps, that this very opposition, this threat from the world of total work, is what characterizes the situation of philosophy today more than its own particular content. Philosophy increasingly adopts — necessarily, it seems — the character of the alien, of mere intellectual luxury, of that which seems ever more intolerable and unjustifiable, the more exclusively the demands of the daily world of work take over the world of man.
 * pp. 65–66

 * Now it is not our purpose here to condemn this world, from the standpoint of some "holiday-world" of philosophy. No words need be wasted on saying that this work-a-day world is very much with us, that in it the foundations of our physical existence are secured, without which no one can philosophize at all! Nevertheless, let us also recall, that among the voices which fill the workplace and the markets ("How do you get this or that item of daily existence?" "Where do you get that?" etc.) — in the midst of all these voices suddenly one calls above the rest: "Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?" — asking that age-old question, which Heidegger called the basic question of all metaphysics! Must we explicitly state how unfathomable this philosopher's question is, in comparison with that everyday world of needs and purposefulness? If such a question as this were asked, without introduction or interpretation, in the company of those people of efficiency and success, wouldn't the questioner be considered rather … mad?
 * pp. 66—67

 * No less incommensurable with the working-world than the philosophical question is the sound of true poetry. […] The lover, too, stands outside the tight chain of efficiency of this working world, and [so does] whoever else approaches the margin of existence through some deep existential disturbance (which always brings a "shattering" of one's environment), or through, say, the proximity of death.
 * pp. 67–68

 * And as for the close connection between philosophy and poetry, we can refer to a little-known statement by Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics [I, 3]: the Philosopher is akin to the Poet in this, that both are concerned with the mirandum, the "wondrous," the astonishing, or whatever calls for astonishment or wonder. This statement is not that easy to fathom, since Thomas, like Aristotle, was a very sober thinker, completely opposed to any Romantic confusion of properly distinct realms. But on the basis of their common orientation towards the "wonderful" (the mirandum — something not to be found in the world of work!) — on this basis, then, of this common transcending-power, the philosophical act is related to the "wonderful," is in fact more closely related to it than to the exact, special sciences; to this point we shall return.
 * pp. 68–69
 * The Aquinas quote cited — "The reason why the philosopher can be compared to the poet is that both are concerned with wonder" — is the epigraph of "The Philosophical Act".

 * To philosophize (we have already asked, What empowers the philosophical act to transcend the working-world?) — to philosophize means to take a step outside of the work-a-day world into the vis-à-vis de l'univers. It is a step which leads to a kind of "homeless"-ness: the stars are no roof over the head. It is a step, however, that constantly keeps open its own retreat, for the human being cannot live long in this way.
 * p. 94

 * How does the philosophical question differ from the non-philosophical question? To philosophize means, we said, to direct one's view toward the totality of the world. So is that a philosophical question (and that alone) which has for its explicit and formal theme the sum-total of all existing things? No! What is peculiar and distinctive about a philosophical question is that it cannot be posed, considered, or answered (so far at least as an answer is possible) without "God and the world" also coming into consideration, that is, the whole of what exists.
 * p. 95

 * Since "the answers of the special sciences" do not reach "the horizon of total reality", they are given "without having to speak at the same time of 'God and the world.'
 * p. 96

 * And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder [Plato, Theaetetus 155d], lies the, so to speak, non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a moment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean to become bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything else, it means that someone takes one's immediate surroundings (the world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so "tightly" and "densely," as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experience no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real, and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to exist; the "wonder" is no longer there, it has no place to come from; the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind, rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what really is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist? Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as "seeing"? These are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as anyone whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning — has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life, whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands of life — if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the astounding vision of the world.
 * pp. 101–102

 * If someone needs the "unusual" to be moved to astonishment, that person has lost the ability to respond rightly to the wondrous, the mirandum, of being. The hunger for the sensational, posing, as it may, in "bohemian garb," is an unmistakable sign of the loss of the true power of wonder, for a bourgeois-ized humanity.
 * p. 102

 * It should now be clear that "wonder" and philosophizing are connected with each other in a more essential sense than may at first appear in the statement, "Philosophy begins in wonder." For wonder is not merely the beginning, in the sense of initium, the first stage or phase of philosophy. Rather, wonder is the beginning in the sense of the "principle" (principium), the abiding, ever-intrinsic origin of philosophizing. It is not true to say that the philosopher, insofar as he philosophizes, ever "emerges from his wonder" — if he does depart from his state of wonder, he has ceased to philosophize.
 * pp. 105–106

 * He who knows does not feel wonder. It could not be said that God experiences wonder, for God knows in the most absolute and perfect way.
 * p. 106

 * Wonder is defined by Thomas [Aquinas] in the Summa Theologiae [I-II, Q. 32, a. 8], as the desiderium sciendi, the desire for knowledge, active longing to know.
 * pp. 106–107

 * "None of the gods philosophizes," Plato has Diotima say in the Symposium: "nor do fools; for that is what is so bad about ignorance — that you think you know enough." "Who, then, O Diotima, I asked, are the philosophers, since they are neither those who know nor those who don't know?" Then she answered me: "It's so obvious, Socrates, that a child could understand: the philosophers are the ones in between." This "in-between" is the realm of the truly human. It is truly human, on the one hand, not to understand (as God), and on the other hand, not to become hardened; not to include oneself in the supposedly completely illuminated world of day-to-day life.
 * p. 109

 * Now this structure of hope (among other things) is also what distinguishes philosophy from the special sciences. There is a relationship with the object that is different in principle in the two cases. The question of the special sciences is in principle ultimately answerable, or, at least, it is not un-answerable. It can be said, in a final way (or some day, one will be able to say in a final way) what is the cause, say, of this particular infectious disease. It is in principle possible that one day someone will say, "It is now scientifically proven that such and such is the case, and no otherwise." But […] a philosophical question can never be finally, conclusively answered. […] The object of philosophy is given to the philosopher on the basis of a hope. This is where Dilthey's words make sense: "The demands on the philosophizing person cannot be satisfied. A physicist is an agreeable entity, useful for himself and others; a philosopher, like the saint, only exists as an ideal." It is in the nature of the special sciences to emerge from a state of wonder to the extent that they reach "results." But the philosopher does not emerge from wonder. Here is at once the limit and the measure of science, as well as the great value, and great doubtfulness, of philosophy. Certainly, in itself it is a "greater" thing to dwell "under the stars." But man is not made to live "out there" permanently! Certainly, it is a more valuable question, as such, to ask about the whole world and the ultimate nature of things. But the answer is not as easily forthcoming as for the special sciences!
 * pp. 109–111
 * The Dilthey quote is from Briefwechsel zwischen Wilhelm Dilthey und dem Grafen Paul Yorck v. Wartenberg, 1877–1897 (Hall/Salle, 1923), p. 39.

 * Now one may ask, How could a Christian philosophy have something over a non-Christian philosophy, if it does not reach to a higher level of solutions, if it cannot get handy answers, if the problems and questions are still there? Well, perhaps a greater truth could be present in its ability to see the world in its truly mysterious character, in its inexhaustablity. It could even be the case that here, in the very experience of being as a mystery, that it is not to be grasped in the hand as a "well-rounded truth" — herein is reality more deeply and truly grasped than in any transparent system that may charm the mind of the student with its clarity and simplicity. And this is the claim of Christian philosophy: to be truer, precisely because of its recognition of the mysterious character of the world. In no way, then, does philosophy become easier. Plato appears to have discovered and felt that too — if a certain interpretation of Plato is correct, maintaining that Plato understood philosophy to be something tragic for this reason, that it must constantly have recourse to mythos, since the teaching of philosophy can never close itself into a system.
 * pp. 127–128
 * The "interpretation of Plato" referred to is that of Gerhard Krüger, Einsicht und Leidenschaft (Frankfurt, 1939), p. 301.

Happiness and Contemplation (1958)

 * “The essence of happiness consists in an act of the intellect.” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica) … What is implicit in this sentence? This is implicit: the fulfillment of existence takes place in the manner in which we become aware of reality; the whole energy of our being is ultimately directed toward attainment of insight. The perfectly happy person, the one whose thirst has been finally quenched, who has attained beatitude—this person is the one who sees. The happiness, the quenching, the perfection, consists in this seeing.
 * p. 58

The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

 * Translations of four studies previously published separately: Traktat über die Klugheit (1937), Über die Gerechtigkeit (1953), Von Sinn der Tapferkeit (1934), Zucht und Mass (1939)

 * "Being precedes Truth, and … Truth precedes the Good."

 * Modern religious teachings have little or nothing to say about the place of prudence in life or in the hierarchy of virtues.

 * The truth is the good of our knowing mind, upon which the mind fixes itself by nature; it is not granted to the mind to choose or not choose that good (truth!) on the basis, again, of knowledge. The finite mind does not comprehend itself so profoundly, and does not have such power over itself, that it follows its own light.

 * A friend and a prudent friend, can help to shape a friend's decision. He does so by virtue of that love which makes the friend's problem his own, the friend's ego his own (so that after all it is not entirely "from outside"). For by virtue of that oneness which love can establish he is able to visualize the concrete situation calling for decision, visualize it from, as it were, the actual center of responsibility. Therefore it is possible for a friend - only for a friend and only for a prudent friend - to help with counsel and direction to shape a friend's decision or, somewhat in the manner of a judge, help to reshape it. Such geniune and prudent loving friendship (amor amicitiae) - which has nothing in common with sentimental intimacy, and indeed is rather imperiled by such intimacy - is the sine qua non for geniune spirtual guidance. For only this empowers another to offer the kind of direction which - almost! - conforms to the concrete situation in which the decision must be made.

 * The eye of perfected friendship with God is aware of deeper dimensions of reality, to which the eyes of the average man and the average Christian are not yet opened.

 * Justice is a habit (habitus), whereby a man renders to each one his due with constant and perpetual will.

 * To the virtue of temperance as the preserving and defending realization of man's inner order, the gift of beauty is particularly co-ordinated. Not only is temperance beautiful in itself, it also renders men beautiful. Beauty, however, must here be understood in its original meaning: as the glow of the true and the good irradiating from every ordered state of being, and not in the patent significance of immediate sensual appeal. The beauty of temperance has a more spiritual, more austere, more virile aspect. It is of the essence of this beauty that it does not conflict with true virility, but rather has an affinity to it. Temperance, as the wellspring and premise of fortitude, is the virtue of mature manliness. The infantile disorder of intemperance, on the other hand, not only destroys beauty, it also makes man cowardly; intemperance more than any other thing renders man unable and unwilling to 'take heart' against the wounding power of evil in the world

 * All just order in the world is based on this, that man give man what is his due.
 * Justice (1955)

title: Josef Pieper


text:
Hannibal (film)

Hannibal is a 2001 film, adapted from the Thomas Harris novel Hannibal. It is the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. One of Hannibal Lecter's victims, Mason Verger, is seeking to capture, torture, and kill Dr. Lecter.
 * Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Thomas Harris (novel), and David Mamet and Steven Zaillian (screenplay).

Break the silence taglines

Mason Verger was a fictional character in the novel “Hannibal” written by Thomas Harris about a despicable character and avowed pedophile who was hideously disfigured by the serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lector. In the novel, while Verger is demonstrating his autoerotic asphyxiation, Dr. Lector offered him amyl nitrate and several other mind-altering drugs and convinced Verger to tear his face off with a shard of mirror and feed it to his pet dogs. Verger does so, and also gouges out one of his eyes and eats his own nose. So, Does Art Imitate Life? Or, Does Life Imitate Art.” [towards the end].. "Apparently Art Does Imitate Life."

Hannibal Lecter

 * [to Barney, on a recording from his imprisonment] There are shallow rollers, and there are deep rollers. You can't breed two deep rollers... or their young, their offspring, will roll all the way down, hit, and die. Agent Starling is a deep roller, Barney. Let us hope one of her parents was not.
 * What is worst about this humiliation, Clarice? Is it how your failure will reflect on your mommy and daddy? Is your worst fear that people will now and forever believe they were indeed just good old trailer-camp, tornado-bait white trash, and that perhaps you are too?
 * [in a letter to Clarice Starling] Dear Clarice, I have followed with enthusiasm the course of your disgrace and public shaming. My own never bothered me, except for the inconvenience of being incarcerated, but you may lack perspective.
 * [in a letter to Clarice Starling] By the way I couldn't help noticing on the FBI's rather dull public website that I have been hoisted from the Bureau's archives of the common criminal and elevated to the more prestigious 10 Most Wanted list. Is this coincidence, or are you back on the case? If so, goody goody, cause I need to come out of retirement and return to public life.
 * [in a letter to Clarice Starling] Your job is to craft my doom... so I'm not sure how well I should wish you... but I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun. Ta-ta. "H."
 * Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for her, and find nourishment in the very sight of her? I think so. But would she see through the bars of his plight and ache for him?
 * My life? What is there to say about mine? I have been in a state of hibernation for some time... a little inactive. But now I'm back home and I'm very happy, and very healthy. You, though. It's you I'm worried about.
 * Do you have so much faith in your abilities that you honestly believe you can somehow simultaneously arrest me and them? It could get very messy, Clarice, like the fish market.
 * [repeated line] Okey-dokey, here we go.
 * My freedom, just that. You'd take that from me. And if you did, would they have you back, do you think? The FBI? Those people you despise almost as much as they despise you? Will they give you a medal, Clarice, do you think? Would you have it professionally framed and hang it on your wall to look at and remind you of your courage and incorruptibility? All you would need for that, Clarice, is a mirror.
 * [to Rinaldo Pazzi] On a related subject, I must confess to you, I'm giving very serious thought... to eating your wife.

Clarice Starling

 * [about Dr. Lecter] He's always with me. Like a bad habit.
 * This is from the Guinness Book of World Records, congratulating me on being the female FBI Agent who has shot and killed the most people.

Mason Verger

 * It's all right. I have immunity from the U.S. Attorney. And I have immunity... from the risen Jesus. And nobody beats the Riz.
 * [to Clarice] Isn't it funny? You can look at my face... but you shied when I said the name of God.
 * When the fox hears the rabbit scream he comes a-runnin'... but not to help.

Dialogue

 * Mason Verger: You know, I thank God for what happened. It was my salvation. Have you accepted Jesus, Agent Starling? Do you have faith?
 * Clarice Starling: I was raised Lutheran.
 * Mason Verger: That's not what I asked.

 * [Mason Verger is recounting the day Lecter disfigured him]
 * Mason Verger: The good doctor approached me with a piece of broken mirror and said, "Try this"...
 * [In the flashback, Lecter is holding a shard of broken glass]
 * Hannibal Lecter: Try peeling off your face...
 * Mason Verger: "...and feeding it to the dogs." [In the flashback, Verger cuts off parts of his face] Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

 * Agent Pearsall: Of course you're right, Starling... but it doesn't change anything.
 * Clarice Starling: It changes everything.  It changes me.

 * Paul Krendler: Jesus, Starling! What are you doing sitting there in the dark?
 * Clarice Starling: Thinking about cannibalism.

 * Clarice Starling: Paul, what is it with you? I told you to go home to your wife, was that wrong?
 * Paul Krendler: Don't flatter yourself, Starling. That was a long time ago. Why would I hold that against you? Besides, this town is full of cornpone country pussy.

 * Mason Verger: I might be able to get a cookie now. What do you think, Cordell?
 * Cordell Doemling: I think it would kill you.

 * Mason Verger: So what do you think, Cordell? Does Lecter want to fuck her or kill her or eat her alive?
 * Cordell Doemling: Probably all three, though I wouldn't want to predict in what order.

 * Mason Verger: What do you think?
 * Paul Krendler: I could have handled this.
 * Mason Verger: Oh, coulda, woulda, shoulda. I mean what do you think about the money?
 * Paul Krendler: Five.
 * Mason Verger: Oh, let's just toss it off like 'five'! Let's say it with the respect it deserves.
 * Paul Krendler: Five hundred thousand dollars.
 * Mason Verger: Well, that's better, but not much. Will it work?
 * Paul Krendler: It'll work. Won't be pretty.
 * Mason Verger: What ever is?
 * [Krendler hangs up]
 * Mason Verger: Cocksucker!

 * [Verger is preparing to feed Lecter to a pack of wild boars]
 * Mason Verger: I suppose now you wish that you had fed the rest of me to the dogs.
 * Hannibal Lecter: No, Mason. I much prefer you the way you are.

 * Clarice Starling: I'll cut you loose. If you touch me, I'll shoot you.
 * Hannibal Lecter: Understood.
 * Clarice Starling: Do right, and you'll live through this.
 * Hannibal Lecter: Spoken like a true Protestant.

 * [Krendler comes home from shopping to find that someone is cooking in the kitchen]
 * Paul Krendler: What the fuck...
 * Hannibal Lecter: [walks in from behind] Good, you brought the wine.
 * Paul Krendler: Oh God-- [Lecter smothers him with a dish cloth]

 * [Lecter has lobotomized Krendler and is preparing to cook his brain]
 * Hannibal Lecter: Paul, would you like to say grace?
 * Paul Krendler: [in drugged, lobotomized stupor] God bless every one of us, even white trash like Starling.
 * Hannibal Lecter: I don't think the Apostle Paul could have put it any better. He hated women too.

 * Hannibal Lecter: I came half way around the world, to watch you run, Clarice. Let me run, eh?
 * [Clarice struggles against Lecter, he forces her against the refrigerator, opens the door and traps her hair, breaking away the handle]
 * Hannibal Lecter: Tell me, Clarice, would you ever say to me "stop, if you loved me, you'd stop"?
 * Clarice Starling: Not in a thousand years.
 * Hannibal Lecter: Not in a thousand years...
 * [Lecter lunges towards Clarice, baring his teeth; she does not flinch]
 * Hannibal Lecter: That's my girl.
 * [Lecter kisses Starling, but she does not respond. The click of closing handcuffs is heard. Lecter stops, pulls away and lifts his wrist. The two are joined by handcuffs]
 * Hannibal Lecter: Now, that's really interesting. But I'm rather pressed for time. Where's the key?
 * [Clarice does not react. He repeats the line, sounding less calm and more infuriated. Still she does not respond]
 * Hannibal Lecter: Okay...
 * [He takes a meat cleaver from the worktop and lays out her hand]
 * Hannibal Lecter: Above or below the wrist, Clarice?
 * [Clarice still refuses to respond as he raises the cleaver]
 * Hannibal Lecter: This is really going to hurt...

Taglines

 * Break The Silence
 * Never Forget Who He Is
 * How long can a man stay silent before he returns to what he does best?

About
"So, Does Art Imitate Life? Or, Does Life Imitate Art."

Cast

 * Anthony Hopkins - Hannibal Lecter
 * Julianne Moore - Clarice Starling
 * Gary Oldman - Mason Verger
 * Ray Liotta - Paul Krendler
 * Giancarlo Giannini - Inspector Pazzi
 * Francesca Neri - Allegra Pazzi
 * Zeljko Ivanek - Dr. Cordell Doemling
 * Frankie Faison - Barney

title: Hannibal (film)


text:
Heterosexuality

Heterosexuality consists of sexual behavior, practices, and identity predicated on a primary preference or desire for the opposite sex.

F

 * Vive la différence!
 * [Long] live the difference!
 * Attributed to Anatole France. Originally referring to the difference between the sexes; the phrase may be also used to celebrate the difference between any two groups of people (or simply the general diversity of individuals)
 * "Miles Kington Remembered: There's a whole world of difference between the sexes". The Independent (4 June 2008)

G

 * And the L ORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.And out of the ground the L ORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.And the L ORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;And the rib, which the L ORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
 * Genesis 2:18–25 (KJV)

 * The dilemma of traditional sex research lay in the unconscious, but unquestiongly assumed division into opposing drives and hereditary factors. . . The division into heterosexuality and homosexuality, into hetersexuals and homosexuals, is also an artefact that rests on a grave error, namely, on the assumption that a fundamentally different model is necessary to explain heterosexual and homosexual behavior. The entire investigation of etiology was ideologically loaded beforehand because it separated a segment of the sexual contiuum and attempted to make analyses with the help of fundamentally different concepts.
 * Rolf Gindorf, "Scientific ideologies in change: Fear of Homosexuality as an Intellectual Event", 1977.

H

 * After the repast is ended, we return to the dance, and, when the hour of repose arrives, we draw from a kind of lottery, in which every one is sure of a prize; that is, a young girl as his companion for the night. They are allotted thus by chance, in order to avoid jealousy, and to prevent exclusive attachments. Thus ends the day, and gives place to a night of delights, which we sanctify by enjoying with due relish that sweetest of all pleasures, which Faraki has so wisely attached to the reproduction of our species. We reverently admire the wisdom and the goodness of Faraki, who, desiring to secure to the world a continued population, has implanted in the sexes an invincible mutual attraction, which constantly draws them towards each other. Fecundity is the end he proposes, and he rewards with intoxicating delights those who contribute to the fulfilment of his designs.
 * "Japanese Tale", quoted in Mémoires de Madame du Hausset
 * Memoirs of the Courts of Louis XV and XVI (L. C. Page, 1899)

K

 * Compulsory heterosexuality: The idea that heterosexuality is preserved by gender and sexual binaries and other social forces. This concept battles the idea that we choose to be heterosexual and instead says that heterosexuality is a compulsory (or enforced) state of being.
 * Michael Kimmel and The Stony Book Sexualities Research Group (editors), Sexualities: Identities, Behaviors, and Society (2004), 2nd Edition (2015), p. 680

 * Heteronormativity: Naturalizes the heterosexual identity, or privileges it as timeless and universal.
 * Michael Kimmel and The Stony Book Sexualities Research Group (editors), Sexualities: Identities, Behaviors, and Society (2004), 2nd Edition (2015), p. 681

 * Heterosexism: Describes the biases and prejudices that favor heterosexual people or relationships.
 * Michael Kimmel and The Stony Book Sexualities Research Group (editors), Sexualities: Identities, Behaviors, and Society (2004), 2nd Edition (2015), p. 681

 * Heterosexuality: The term describing emotional, affectional, sexual, or physical attraction to members of the opposite sex.
 * Michael Kimmel and The Stony Book Sexualities Research Group (editors), Sexualities: Identities, Behaviors, and Society (2004), 2nd Edition (2015), p. 681

 * Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheeps and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior, the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex.
 * Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948).

 * It would encourage clearer thinking on these matters if persons were not characterized as hetereosexual or homosexual, but as individuals who have had certain amounts of heterosexual experience and certain amounts of homosexual experience. Instead of using these terms as substantives which stand for persons, or even as adjectives to describe persons, they may better be used to describe the nature of the overt sexual relations, or of the stimuli to which an individual erotically responds.
 * Alfred Kinsey

title: Heterosexuality


text:
Mathematicians

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and research is the field of mathematics.

Quotes

 * Mathematicians are used to game-playing according to a set of rules they lay down in advance, despite the fact that nature always writes her own. One acquires a great deal of humility by experiencing the real wiliness of nature.
 * Philip Warren Anderson, More and Different: Notes from a Thoughtful Curmudgeon, 2011, World Scientific Publishing, p. 190

 * Quapropter bono christiano, sive mathematici, sive quilibet impie divinantium... cavendi sunt, ne consortio daemoniorum irretiant.
 * Translation: Therefore, a good Christian should beware that mathematicians, and any others who prophesy impiously... may be entangled in the companionship of demons.
 * St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram
 * Augustine uses "mathematicians" in this context to refer mainly to astrologers and occultists using numerology.

 * A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
 * Popularly attributed to Paul Erdős, who was quoting Alfréd Rényi (Bruce Schechter, My Brain Is Open: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdős, 1998, New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0684846357 ).

Thomas Godfrey, a self-taught mathematician, and afterwards inventor of what is now called Hadley's dial; but he had little knowledge out of his own line, and was insupportable in company, always requiring, like the majority of mathematicians that have fallen in my way, an unusual precision in everything that is said, continually contradicting, or making trifling distinctions—a sure way of defeating all the ends of conversation. He very soon left us.
 * I united the majority of well-informed persons into a club, which we called by the name of the Junto, and the object of which was to improve our understandings. ... The first members of our club were...
 * Benjamin Franklin, The Life and Miscellaneous Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1839)

 * ''Avec toute l’algèbre du monde on n’est souvent qu’un sot lorsqu’on ne sait pas autre chose. Peut-être dans dix ans la société tirera-t-elle de l’avantage des courbes que des songe-creux d’algébristes auront carrées laborieusement. J’en félicite d’avance la postérité; mais, à vous parler vrai, je ne vois dans tous ces calculs qu’une scientifique extravagance. Tout ce qui n’est ni utile ni agréable ne vaut rien. Quant aux choses utiles, elles sont toutes trouvées; et, pour les agréables, j’espère que le bon goût n’y admettra point d’algèbre.
 * [A] man with all the algebra in the world is often only an ass when he knows nothing else. Perhaps in ten years society may derive advantage from the curves which these visionary algebraists will have laboriously squared. I congratulate posterity beforehand. But to tell you the truth I see nothing but a scientific extravagance in all these calculations. That which is neither useful nor agreeable is worthless. And as for useful things, they have all been discovered; and to those which are agreeable, I hope that good taste will not admit algebra among them.
 * Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 93 from Frederick to Voltaire (1749-05-16)

 * Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen; redet man zu ihnen, so übersetzen sie es in ihre Sprache, und dann ist es alsobald ganz etwas anders.
 * Translation: Mathematicians are [like] a sort of Frenchmen; if you talk to them, they translate it into their own language, and then it is immediately something quite different.
 * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen, 2006 (Helmut Koopmann, ed.) ISBN 3423343788

 * The mathematician's best work is art, a high perfect art, as daring as the most secret dreams of imagination, clear and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch one another.
 * Gösta Mittag-Leffler
 * Quoted in N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.

 * Mathematicians seem to have no difficulty in creating new concepts faster than the old ones become well understood.
 * Edward Norton Lorenz (1991) "A scientist by choice". Speech by acceptance of the Kyoto Prize in 1991.

 * I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
 * Plato, from Benjamin Jowett's interpretive vernacular translation (1871) of Plato's Republic, Book VII, 531-e. Plato actually has Socrates say that few mathematicians are dialecticians (διαλεκτικοί) (Jowett, Plato's Republic: The Greek Text, Vol. I "Text", 1894), by which he refers to step by step reasoning based on mutual agreement, (G. M. A. Grube, Plato's Republic (1974), Book VII, note 13). It is an accurate observation on the primitive mathematics of his day.

 * Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was one which does not now seem very impressive; it was, that some people can do sums.
 * Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish", in Unpopular Essays (1950), p. 71

 * Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.
 * Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish", Unpopular Essays (1950).

 * These experiences are not 'religious' in the ordinary sense. They are natural, and can be studied naturally. They are not 'ineffable' in the sense the sense of incommunicable by language. Maslow also came to believe that they are far commoner than one might expect, that many people tend to suppress them, to ignore them, and certain people seem actually afraid of them, as if they were somehow feminine, illogical, dangerous. 'One sees such attitudes more often in engineers, in mathematicians, in analytic philosophers, in book keepers and accountants, and generally in obsessional people'. The tends to be a kind of bubbling-over of delight, a moment of pure happiness. 'For instance, a young mother scurrying around her kitchen and getting breakfast for her husband and young children. The sun was streaming in, the children clean and nicely dressed, were chattering as they ate. The husband was casually playing with the children: but as she looked at them she was suddenly so overwhelmed with their beauty and her great love for them, and her feeling of good fortune, that she went into a peak experience . ..
 * Colin Wilson in New Pathways In Psychology, p. 17 (1972)

title: Mathematicians


text:
Abu Nuwas

Abu Nuwas (756–814), Arab poet; Libertine pederast, lived in Baghdad during the reigns of Caliphs Harun al-Rashid and Muhammad al-Amin. His poetry describes a life of debauchery, wine, boys and women.

Quotes

 * Critic, relent! Your hope for repentance Will meet with disappointment. For this is the life, Not desert tents, Not camel's milk!
 * Diwan, 11–12.

 * You, mad to expect repentance, Tear your robe all you want; I will never repent!
 * Diwan, 11–12.

 * I bought abandon dear And sold all piety for pleasure. My own free spirit I have followed, And never will I give up lust.
 * Diwan, 164.

title: Abu Nuwas


text:
Talk:Mathematicians

Should we name the page "mathematicians" (plural), since that more implies a general rather than individual case? Would setup a redirect for the mathematician page. SkyOdyssey 09:18, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Done ~ Kalki 09:33, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Unsourced

 * A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
 * Uncertain, often misattributed to Charles Darwin

 * A topologist is one who doesn't know the difference between a doughnut and a coffee cup.
 * John Kelley

 * You know we all became mathematicians for the same reason: we were lazy.
 * Max Rosenlicht

 * The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.
 * Havelock Ellis

 * There are two kinds of mistakes. There are fatal mistakes that destroy a theory; but there are also contingent ones, which are useful in testing the stability of a theory.
 * Giancarlo Rota

 * Give us something to take home!
 * Dirk Struik

 * Some of you may have had occasion to run into mathematicians and to wonder therefore: How they got that way
 * Tom Lehrer

 * It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.
 * Sofia Kovalevskaya

 * Think Explore Solve Lookback.
 * Assael

 * lottery: Taxation for the mathematically inept.
 * B. Duane Farris

title: Talk:Mathematicians


text:
Talk:Hilary Duff

There seems to be something of a Simpsons connection here... See http://www.snpp.com/episodes/9F07.html

Duff beer, eh?

 * Thanks for the info. I removed the quotes that were there as almost certainly spurious, and apparently the work of a vandal who cares liitle about truthfulness. A brief search with Google and of movie credits gives no indication that Duff and Linz have even worked together. Now I need to find some genuine quotations for his page. ~ Kalki 12:29, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Hilary Duff. --Antiquary 19:09, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Every week I read about myself in a magazine, about something that I haven't done or some place that I've never been or don't even know. It's just gossip, rumors, egos, and politics.

 * It's crazy and so surreal. I feel like such a normal person, yet everybody around the world knows my music, my movie, my name and my face. It's crazy sometimes, but I'm so flattered. It's a good feeling.

 * Lots of girls like really smooth-talking guys, but I like the ones who are really nervous to come up to you and a little shy. They're probably the nicest ones.

 * Mom always tells me to celebrate everyone's uniqueness. I like the way that sounds.

 * My life is very crazy and busy, but I love it that way.

 * We raise so much money for hospitals, but it's not just about that. Anybody can come up with a bunch of money to give to somebody. It's about going to a hospital and hanging out with the kids and dancing and singing with them or giving underprivileged kids a chance to go to a theme park for a day or rebuilding a playground. I love it so much. It's really gratifying.
 * Comments on her work for the charity Kids with a Cause

 * I love clothes. I can't control myself. I have a huge fetish for shoes and clothes and make-up. I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to wear things over and over again.
 * I love my sister so much. She is always there for me. And we always hang out together. We are so close. I love her.
 * The album is titled Metamorphosis because I thought it was a good way to express my experiences in this ever-changing world.
 * I think ambition can be having something that you're good at and love to do.

title: Talk:Hilary Duff