Factor Quotes - page 25
It is the fallacy of all intellectuals to believe that intellect can grasp life. It cannot, because it works in terms of symbols and language. There is another factor involved: consciousness. If the flame of consciousness is low, a symbol has no power to evoke reality, and intellect is helpless.
Colin Wilson
"...Let us go," we said, "into the Sea of Cortez, realizing that we become forever a part of it; that our rubber boots slogging through a flat of eel-grass, that the rocks we turn over in a tide pool, make us truly and permanently a factor in the ecology of the region. We shall take something away from it, but we shall leave something too." And if we seem a small factor in a huge pattern, nevertheless it is of relative importance. We take a tiny colony of soft corals from a rock in a little water world. And that isn't terribly important to the tide pool. Fifty miles away the Japanese shrimp boats are dredging with overlapping scoops, bringing up tons of shrimps, rapidly destroying the species so that it may never come back, and with the species destroying the ecological balance of the whole region. That isn't very important in the world. And thousands of miles away the great bombs are falling and the stars are not moved thereby. None of it is important or all of it is.
John Steinbeck
The most important factor is how long are the supporters of those terrorists are keep going to keep supporting them, especially Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, with endorsements of some Western countries including United States, if you don't have that support it won't take more than a few months....That depends on how much the support of terrorist have in Turkey, in Saudi money to have more terrorists coming to Syria, their aim is to prolong the war, so they can prolong it if they want, they've already succeeded in that. That depends on that. If you're talking about how much is going to take as only Syrian conflict, isolated conflict, this is what it won't take for a few months but if it is not isolated conflict as it is the case today, with the interferences of many regional and international powers, it will be going to take some time, and no one has the answer as we have, of course, nobody knows how the war is going to develop...
Bashar al-Assad
I asked Buffett how many of his fellow billionaires shared his views. He laughed.
"I'll tell you, not very many,” he said. "They have this idea that it's ‘their money' and they deserve to keep every penny of it. What they don't factor in is all the public investment that lets us live the way we do." ... It may be surprising to some to hear the world's foremost capitalist talk in this way, but Buffett's views aren't necessarily a sign of a soft heart. Rather, they reflect an understanding that how well we respond to globalization won't be just a matter of identifying the right policies. It will also have to do with a change in spirit, a willingness to put our common interests and the interests of future generations ahead of short-term expediency.
Warren Buffett
[Iqbal elaborated that nationalism came into conflict with Islam] only when it begins to play the role of a political concept and claims to be a principle of human solidarity demanding that Islam should recede to the background of a mere private opinion and cease to be a living factor in the national life. ... In majority countries, Islam accomodates nationalism, for there Islam and nationalism are practically identical, in minority countries it is justified in seeking self-determination as a cultural unit.
Muhammad Iqbal
I never understood the ultimate answer. That was beyond me. It took the combined skills of three great civilizations far apart in time to frame that godlike concept in which the tangible universe itself was only a single factor.
And even then it was not enough. It took the Face of Ea - which I shall never be able to describe fully.
I saw it, though. I saw it...
Henry Kuttner
This is the so-called theory that "weapons decide everything", which constitutes a mechanical approach to the question of war and a subjective and one-sided view. Our view is opposed to this; we see not only weapons but also people. Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive. The contest of strength is not only a contest of military and economic power, but also a contest of human power and morale. Military and economic power is necessarily wielded by people.
Mao Zedong
She has always freely admitted being like a little girl in many ways, and furthermore, happily presumes she'll still be that way in her dotage. It's certainly still a factor on Aerial, both in the track "Bertie" itself and in the memories and reminiscences that cobweb some other songs. But compared to the darker corners of the mind sometimes mined in earlier songs, the new album seems a much sunnier affair: an enduring image I took away from it - not necessarily a lyric, though it might have been - was of windows flung wide open, their curtains billowing out in the breeze, a room's long-dormant dust stirred into life again.
Kate Bush
Who is to blame but her and the third factor, from whence no one knows, which moved me with its stimulus and transformed me? After all, what I have done is praised in others.-Or is becoming a poet my compensation? I reject all compensation, I demand my rights-that is, my honor. I did not ask to become one, I will not buy it at this price. – Or if I am guilty, then I certainly should be able to repent of my guilt and make it good again. Tell me how. On top of that, must I perhaps repent that the world plays with me as a child plays with a beetle?-Or is it perhaps best to forget the whole thing? Forget-indeed, I shall have ceased to be if I forget it. Or what kind of life would it be if along with my beloved I have lost honor and pride and lost them in such a way that no one knows how it happened, for which reason I can never retrieve them again? Shall I allow myself to be shoved out in this manner? Why, then, was I shoved in?
Søren Kierkegaard
