William Quotes - page 12
Hamilton was not only an Irishman, but Irish: and this with curious oppositions of character. He was a non-combatant: there was too much kindness in his disposition to allow any fight to show itself. Impulsive and enthusiastic, with strong opinions and new views, he was never engaged in a scientific controversy... William Rowan Hamilton's preservative was his dread of wounding the feelings of others. In his youth, "Defender of the Absent" was his nickname. ...He had a morbid fear of being a plagiarist; and the letters which he wrote to those who had treated like subjects with himself sometimes contained curious and far-fetched misgivings about his own priority. But, with all this, there was a touch of the national temperament in him... an Irishman who never gets into a row may give quick but quiet symptoms of opposition of opinion, and of what, were it more than a rudiment, would be called pugnacity.
William Rowan Hamilton
[There was a] long standing contention between the sees of York and Canterbury as to the right of either metropolitan to bear his cross erect in the province of the other. ...Peckham, on hearing that his brother [ William of Wickwane, Archbishop] of York had returned from abroad, and was intending to pass through his province with his cross erect, wrote a letter forbidding the clergy to show him any mark of respect, ordering them to shut the church-doors in his face, and threatening all persons, clerical and lay, with excommunication, who ventured to supply him with food, or render him the slightest service.
John Peckham
It is said that I ought to have taken the risks and stopped the carnage. Let me confess that there were, and still are, moments when I am of the same opinion. But let those who are inclined to condemn me and the War Cabinet for not taking the hazard, weigh carefully and fairly the conditions at that time. Passchendaele could not have been stopped without dismissing Sir Douglas Haig. Sir William Robertson would have resigned. Had both disappeared without any preliminary fuss which would have rattled the Army, there would have been a sense of relief amongst all the fighting men from one end of the line to the other. But I could not have done it without the assent of the Cabinet.
David Lloyd George
He personifies liberalism for a generation -- much as William Gladstone did in British politics a century ago -- but in the America of 1990, that is a backhanded compliment at best. "After all is said and done," says Republican Party Chairman Lee Atwater, "Ted Kennedy is still the man in American politics Republicans love to hate." At least some of the blame for liberalism's decline may be laid at his door, and he has been unable to articulate a compelling vision of America's future acceptable to a majority of the Democratic Party, much less the American electorate. Ruled by his passions, for good and ill, he will forever draw resentment from those who believe he squandered his chance to leave a larger imprint on the society he hopes to better.
Ted Kennedy
I have five minutes left to give you a message to take home. The message is simple. "God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world". This was said by Francis Bacon, one of the founding fathers of modern science, almost four hundred years ago. Bacon was the smartest man of his time, with the possible exception of William Shakespeare.
Freeman Dyson
The Roman Catholic Church has withstood in Europe and in Ireland the fiercest storms. In France it has survived Voltaire and Lepaux, the French Revolution and the Goddess of Reason; in England, Queen Elizabeth, William the Third, and the Penal Laws. In Ireland it still confronts us with four times as many adherents as all the Protestant churches. If we look to the fate of sovereigns, we find that James the Second forfeited the crown of England, and that Charles the Tenth sacrificed the crown of France, rather from devotion to the Church of Rome than from the failure of their political ambition.
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
In 1626 Bacon succumbed to the results of his ill timed experiment in preserving chickens with snow... The Bacon manuscripts were sent to [Sir William] Boswell's residence at the Hague, and there lay until Boswell, who died in 1647, confided them to the editorial care of Isaac Gruter who... published them all together in 1653. Among the papers which thus came into his hands, Gruter found the two manuscripts of William Gilbert, of Colchester, which William Gilbert, of Melford, had prepared, and these he edited and issued... in 1651.
William Gilbert (astronomer)
When the political history of the Blair era is written, it may well be concluded that the most effective conservative opposition came not from politicians, but journalists. It often seems that the charge against New Labour is led by the Telegraph and Spectator, by Charles Moore and Boris Johnson, or from some Murdoch journalists, rather than by William Hague. So perhaps it should not comes [sic] as a complete surprise that the most sustained, internally logical and powerful attack on Tony Blair and all his works should be a polemic by a right-wing journalist, Peter Hitchens, rather than a Tory pamhlet or an MP's speech. ...
On much of this agenda, Hitchens is simply out of time. ... [T]he idea of a widespread return to a belief in literal damnation, to public hostility towards homosexuals and the shaming of single mothers, seems utterly implausible.
Peter Hitchens
At every turn, the struggle for equality was resisted by many of the powerful. And some have said we should not judge their failures by the standards of a later time, yet in every time there were men and women who clearly saw this sin and called it by name. We can fairly judge the past by the standards of President John Adams, who called slavery 'an evil of colossal magnitude'. We can discern eternal standards in the deeds of William Wilberforce and John Quincy Adams and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln. These men and women, black and white, burned with a zeal for freedom and they left behind a different and better nation. Their moral vision caused Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution and to teach our children the dignity and equality of every person of every race.
George W. Bush
During the Vietnam war, a number of young Americans refused military service on the grounds that the United States was committing war crimes in Vietnam and that if they took part in the war they too, under the principles laid down at Nuremberg, would be guilty of war crimes. One of the most prominent of these cases was that of David Mitchell of Connecticut. At Mitchell's trial in September 1965, Judge William Timbers dismissed his defense as "tommyrot" and "degenerate subversion", and found the Nuremberg principles to be "irrelevant" to the case. Mitchell was sentenced to prison.
William Blum
Now the terrible responsibility and blame rests upon the Government, because they were warned in March and April of the danger to General Gordon; because they received every intimation which men could reasonably look for that his danger would be extreme; and because they delayed from March and April right down to the 15th of August before they took a single measure to relieve him. What were they doing all that time? It is very difficult to conceive. ... Some people think there were divisions in the Cabinet, and that, after division on division, a decision was put off lest the Cabinet should be broken up. I am rather inclined to think that it was due to the peculiar position of the Prime Minister [William Gladstone]. He came in as the apostle of the Midlothian campaign, loaded with all the doctrines and all the follies of that pilgrimage.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Woody Allen later wrote in a letter: "My observation was that once a person actually completed a play or a novel, he was well on his way to getting it produced or published, as opposed to a vast majority of people who tell me their ambition is to write, but who strike out on the very first level and indeed never write the play or book. In the midst of the conversation, as I'm now trying to recall, I did say that 80 percent of success is showing up." - 1989 August 13, New York Times, On Language: The Elysian Fields by William Safire.
Woody Allen
So it was done: one administration, Democratic, succeeded another, Republican. ...She had heard nothing from the Department of Labor; her predecessor, William N. Doak... did not plan any ceremonial welcome. ...Except for an occasional fee from an article or speech, she had only her salary as a cabinet officer, $13,000 a year, to support herself, her child and husband. Sussana was doing well at the Brearly School and [her husband, Paul] Wilson was in a sanitarium... able, on occasion to come home. ...In Washington Perkins felt she... could afford, only a small apartment or a single room.
Frances Perkins
I first heard of the 23 Enigma from William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark's ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another Captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23.
Robert Anton Wilson
Then the Quakers, five in number. Never was there such a rout. They had absolutely nothing to say. Every charge against Penn came out as clear as any case at the Old Bailey. They had nothing to urge but what was true enough, that he looked worse in my History than he would have looked on a general survey of his whole life. But that is not my fault. I wrote the History of four years during which he was exposed to great temptations; during which he was the favourite of a bad king, and an active solicitor in a most corrupt court. His character was injured by his associations. Ten years before, or ten years later, he would have made a much better figure. But was I to begin my book ten years earlier or ten years later for William Penn's sake? The Quakers were extremely civil. So was I. They complimented me on my courtesy and candour.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
I have no sympathy at all with the new Radicalism of which Sir William Harcourt is now a conspicuous supporter, although a recent convert. I have no sympathy with the policy of men whose representatives abet and aid the projects of the enemies of this country (hear, hear)-the men who whine over the fate of Lobengula, but denounce as murderers the British officers and the brave Englishmen, who, at the risk of their lives and fortunes in all parts of the world, are doing their part to maintain the great Empire of the Queen. (Cheers.) I have no sympathy with men who apparently approve of French aggression, and who at the same time deprecate any increase of the British Navy; or with those who preach consistently in all parts of the world, in Africa, in Asia, and in Ireland their favourite doctrine of "Scuttle."
Joseph Chamberlain
