Ordinary Quotes - page 68
Our master Titian is quite disconsolate at the loss of his wife, who was buried yesterday. He told me that in the troubled time of her sickness he was unable to work at the portrait of the lady Cornelia or at the picture of the 'i Nude' which he is doing for our most illustrious Lord; but he thinks the latter will be a fine thing, and he hopes to finish it before the month is out. Meanwhile he desires to know how his Lordship likes the 'St. Sebastian' lately sent to him, which he admits is but an ordinary performance as compared with the nudes, and one which he only produced as an entertainment in token of the devotion which he feels for his Excellency.
Titian
It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy; that the world owes the world more than the world can pay, and ought to go into chancery and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency, which involves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year and other times, in bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the choosing. If at any time it comes into my head that a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of a work-house.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I shall, without further discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute something towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof.
John Stuart Mill
The level of historical ignorance and/or jingostic American exceptionalism necessary to believe this is impossible to describe. Compared to what the CIA has done to dozens of other countries since the end of World War II, and what it continues to do, watching Americans cast Russian interference in the 2016 election through online bots and email hacking (even if one believes every claim made about it) as some sort of unique and unprecedented crime against democracy is staggering. Set against what the CIA has done and continues to do to "interfere” in the domestic affairs of other countries - including Russia - the 2016 election was, at most, par for the course for international affairs and, more accurately, a trivial and ordinary act in the context of CIA interference.
Glenn Greenwald
Every great deed of which history tells us, every mighty passion which art can represent, every picture of manners, of civic arrangements, of the culture of peoples of distant lands or of remote times, seizes and interests us, even if there is no exact scientific connection among them. We continually find points of contact and comparison in our own conceptions and feelings; we get to know the hidden capacities and desires of the mind, which in the ordinary peaceful course of civilised life remain unawakened.
It is not to be denied that, in the natural sciences, this kind of interest is wanting. Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications. But intellectual satisfaction we obtain only from a connection of the whole, just from its conformity with law.
Hermann von Helmholtz
In an exchange several months after his New York Review of Books article, Weinberg admitted that the founders of quantum theory had been wrong in their "apparent subjectivism," and declared that "we know better now." What exactly do we know better now? Do we know better that one should not infer from the physical to the political realm and if yes, why? Or do we know better that the "orthodox" interpretation of quantum physics the one that confidently announced the final overthrow of causality and the ordinary conception of reality is not the only possible interpretation, and that, ultimately, it might not even be the surviving one?
Mara Beller
When James Braid introduced the concept of hypnotism, he was not consistent with his proposal. At one time he spoke of hypnotism as a specific sleep-like neurological state comparable to animal hibernation or yogic meditation and at other times he spoke of it as encompassing a number of different stages or states that are an extension of ordinary psychological and physiological process. Braid seems to have moved from a more "specific state” understanding to a more complex "non-state” orientation.
James Braid
Born and bred a member of the leather-aproned class, Franklin was, at least for most of his life, more comfortable with artisans and thinkers than with the established elite, and he was allergic to the pomp and perks of a hereditary aristocracy. Throughout his life he would refer to himself as "B. Franklin, printer."
From these attitudes spring what may be Franklin's most important vision: an American national identity based on the virtues and values of its middle class. Instinctively more comfortable with democracy than were his fellow founders, and devoid of the snobbery that later critics would feel toward his own shopkeeping values, he had faith in the wisdom of the common man and felt that a new nation would draw its strength from what he called "the middling people." Through his self-improvement tips for cultivating personal virtues and his civic-improvement schemes for furthering the common good, he helped to create, and to celebrate, a new ruling class of ordinary citizens.
Walter Isaacson
"I'll bet you Harry Dalton would trade half his ballclub for Clemente,” Don Leppert, the Pirates' first-base coach, said. "He'd probably split the clubhouse down the middle, and give us a choice of either side, to get that guy into an Oriole uniform.” Leppert's only regret is that Clemente didn't have the chance to truly excel in the field. Other than his eye-popping throw to the plate in the sixth game, Clemente was required to field no more than ordinary chances. "Brooks Robinson had that great Series with the glove in 1970,” Leppert said, "but you've got to be lucky to field like he did. By that, I mean you've got to get the tough chances, and if Roberto had had some in this Series, he really would have shown them something.”.
Roberto Clemente
A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?
Leo Tolstoy
I sent down a circular check to the office to be cashed-a check good for its face in any part of the world, as any ordinary ass would know-but the ass who was assifying for the Queen Anne Mansions on salary didn't know it; indeed I think that his assitude transcended any assfulness I have ever met in this world or elsewhere.
Mark Twain
All right-thinking people are deeply shocked by the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We are appalled by the event and the unbelievable death toll, and send our deepest sympathy to the American people. One positive thing to come out of it is that Maitreya has decided to come forward even sooner than planned to try to prevent precipitate action of revenge. One other positive thing that may come out of it is that the mass of ordinary Americans might have a more realistic view of the world than their media has allowed them in the past, feeding them 'soft' instead of 'hard' news. It is a change but in the long run it might be a change for the better, and prepare them for Maitreya's ideas.
Benjamin Creme
Imagine a Labour canvasser talking on the doorstep to those East German families when they settle in, on freedom's side of the wall. "You want to keep more of the money you earn? I'm afraid that's very selfish. We shall want to tax that away. You want to own shares in your firm? We can't have that. The state has to own your firm. You want to choose where to send your children to school? That's very divisive. You'll send your child where we tell you." Mr President, the trouble with Labour is that they're just not at home with freedom. Socialists don't like ordinary people choosing, for they might not choose Socialism.
Margaret Thatcher
Nothing can stir the "depths" of mind, but total out-of-doors. We call "depth," last dregs, etc., that in man which only ultimate facts and happenings can interest; that which the near and usual can neither rouse nor ruffle. Somewhere in each man, we imagine, there lies an ultimatum, to be backed by all his energies from all reservoirs, ordinary and extraordinary,--what can elicit from any man such ultimatum and ultimatum-backing?--nothing that has not somewhere in it the word All! There are such things, we think, as ruling passions, "deepest desires," in any man some nameable or unnameable last ambition--what can set such a depth on fire?--nothing but some total opportunity (real or believed real), discovered in the wide world beyond the self.
William Ernest Hocking
I cannot conceive that Britain would be an ordinary member of a Federal Union limited to Europe in any period which can at present be foreseen. We should in my opinion favour and help forward all developments on the Continent which arise naturally from a removal of barriers, from the process of reconciliation, and blessed oblivion of the terrible past, and also from our common dangers in the future and present. Although a hard-and-fast concrete federal constitution for Europe is not within the scope of practical affairs, we should help, sponsor and aid in every possible way the movement towards European unity. We should seek steadfastly for means to become intimately associated with it.
Winston Churchill
What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most - that we are all frail human beings. What a decline from this world of irony and reason and truthfulness down to Plato's kingdom of the sage whose magical powers raise him high above ordinary men; although not quite high enough to forgo the use of lies, or to neglect the sorry trade of every shaman - the selling of spells, of breeding spells, in exchange for power over his fellow-men.
Karl Popper
[N]othing is easier to attain than full employment... All we would have to do, for instance, would be to continue a war-economy at no more, perhaps, than half its present level. Or we could adopt some sort of state socialism, under which the surplus resources... would be employed on non-economic projects, it makes... little difference what twentieth century equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids... so long as we do not use the surplus labor to produce ordinary economic goods. ...But we refuse to accept the kind of society to which either [a permanent war economy or state socialism] would lead. We demand more than a stable society, we demand a good society. Specifically, we demand of our economic system... that it produce goods... that add to the wealth... and... that these goods be produced... under... the free enterprise system.
Peter Drucker
