I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others — that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail. ~ Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London (responding to the subway bombings of 7 July 2005)
To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day, And empty shadow of what is to be; Yet cheated Hope on future still depends, And ends but only when our being ends. ~ John Clare ~ (born 13 July 1793)
Changes in the structure of society are not brought about solely by massive engines of doctrine. The first flash of insight which persuades human beings to change their basic assumptions is usually contained in a few phrases. ~ Kenneth Clark
People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater. ~ Kenneth Clark
O how I feel, just as I pluck the flower And stick it to my breast — words can't reveal; But there are souls that in this lovely hour Know all I mean, and feel whate'er I feel. ~ John Clare ~
It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs. ~ Kenneth Clark
I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves.
Energy is eternaldelight; and from the earliest timeshuman beings have tried to imprison it in some durable hieroglyphic. It is perhaps the first of all the subjects of art.
"What is too silly to be said may be sung" — well, yes; but what is too subtle to be said, or too deeply felt, or too revealing or too mysterious — these things can also be sung and can only be sung.
There is (gentle reader) nothing (the works of God only set apart) which so much beautifies and adorns the soul and mind of man as does knowledge of the goodarts and sciences. Many arts there are which beautify the mind of man; but of all none do more garnish and beautify it than those arts which are called mathematical, unto the knowledge of which no man can attain, without perfect knowledge and instruction of the principles, grounds, and Elements ofGeometry.
The eye instinctively looks for analogies and amplifies them, so that a face imagined in the pattern of a wallpaper may become more vivid than a photograph.
At the very outset of our hearings, we described several elements of President Trump's multipart plan to overturn the 2020 election. Our hearings have now covered all but one of those elements, an organized campaign to persuade millions of Americans of a falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen by widespread fraud; a corrupt effort to pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count electoral votes; an effort to corrupt the US Department of Justice; efforts to pressure state election officials and legislators to change state election results; a scheme to create and submit fake electoral slates from multiple states. And today, you saw how President Trump summoned a mob to Washington for January 6th, and then knowing that that mob was armed, directed that mob to the United States Capitol. Every one of these elements of the planning for January 6th is an independently serious matter. They were all ultimately focused on overturning the election, and they all have one other thing in common. Donald Trump participated in each, substantially and personally. He oversaw or directed the activity of those involved.
We have no idea where we are going, and sweeping, confident articles on the future seem to me, intellectually, the most disreputable of all forms of public utterance.
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Comment: I would also go for something from Indiana Jones, if anyone would choose something as recognizable. ~ MosheZadka(Talk) 27 June 2005 11:28 (UTC)
2 Kalki 21:01, 12 July 2005 (UTC) Good quote, but I prefer the Jedi view on things...
2 Jeff Q(talk) 10:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC). Concur with Kalki.
2 Here's a nice Star Wars quote but I still feel there are lots of better, more elegant and charming dark side quotes that haven't been used, by Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, Count Dooku, and Grand Moff Tarkin, to name a few. Zarbon 05:34, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
We have not to fear anything, except fear itself. ~ Julius Caesar (born July 13)
3 and this is something that defines powerful characteristics. Fear nothing and success is but definite. I love this quote. Zarbon 06:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I remain dubious as to the authenticity of this attribution, as I can only find internet sources ascribing it or its Latin version to Julius Caesar, and no earlier published sources which do so. ~ Kalki 22:18, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
0 pending better sourcing, if any. InvisibleSun 23:35, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Evidently one cannot look for long at the Last Supper without ceasing to study it as a composition, and beginning to speak of it as a drama. It is the most literary of all great pictures, one of the few of which the effect may largely be conveyed — can even be enhanced — by description.
To Leonardo a landscape, like a human being, was part of a vast machine, to be understood part by part and, if possible, in the whole. Rocks were not simply decorative silhouettes. They were part of the earth's bones, with an anatomy of their own, caused by some remote seismic upheaval. Clouds were not random curls of the brush, drawn by some celestial artist, but were the congregation of tiny drops formed from the evaporation of the sea, and soon would pour back their rain into the rivers.
