— Susan Sontag American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist 1933 - 2004
"The Heroism of Vision", p. 85
— Ken Robinson UK writer 1950
Wit and humor combine in presenting serious message http://www.ourmidland.com/story_prep/article_8640fc8b-aed4-53a0-afa2-2076785c4fde.html (6 June 2011)
Matrix:Midland Festival
— Stanley Baldwin Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1867 - 1947
Context: September of the year 490 B. C. was to my mind a more cardinal moment of fate for Europe than August 1914. Western civilization... was saved in its infancy at Marathon, and ten years later by Leonidas and by the men of Salamis... had it not been for that decade there would have been nothing to prevent Eastern Europe being orientalized and the ultimate fight for the hegemony of Europe would have been left to the Persians and the Carthaginians. But for the Greeks there would have been no civilization as we know it, and we should all have been dark-skinned people with long noses... England is the natural home of liberty and free institutions, and in her endeavour to secure these blessings for the world no country ought to be quicker than she in acknowledging her debt to Hellas.
Speech to the annual meeting of the British School at Athens in London (2 November 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 205.
— Margaret Fuller American feminist, poet, author, and activist 1810 - 1850
"American Facts" in Life Without and Life Within (1860) edited by Arthur Buckminster Fuller, p. 108.
— Adlai Stevenson mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN 1900 - 1965
Remark upon learning of the death of Eleanor Roosevelt, drawing upon the motto of the Christopher Society: "It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness." ; quoted in The New York Times (8 November 1962)
— Oscar Hammerstein II American librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) theatre director of musicals 1895 - 1960
"Getting to Know You", The King and I (1956).
— Florence Nightingale English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing 1820 - 1910
— Russell Brand British comedian, actor, and author 1975
Context: It was a bizarre experience visiting him in there. Not least because I, as was the custom at the time, went to the powwow armed with a yoga teacher. I was hanging out with her a lot. I took her along to the MTV Movie Awards, which I was hosting, where at one point—perhaps the summit of my own personal Everest of Hollywood kookiness—she vetoed a joke from my opening monologue. It wasn’t unspiritual or mean; I think it was about Jennifer Aniston. It was cut “for time,” like the monologue was saggy. I don’t know if that makes it less weird. Tej, her name was, and she was a bloody good kundalini yoga teacher, and the lessons and techniques definitely induced interesting states of mind. Most people would’ve left it at that, but with my tendency for extremism, I first became teacher’s pet and then, in a macabre switcheroo, made the teacher into my pet. I’ve already told you I’m a sucker for a mystic costume. I’m like a wartime gal with a thing for uniforms, swooning at a G. I., and Tej’s get-up was world-class. Kundalini practitioners dress entirely in white—why not? They also wear a turban as the yogic practice they follow is derived from the Sikh faith. Tej was a lovely woman and we became good friends; I learned a lot and had a good laugh. A fair amount of that fun may have been derived, I realize in retrospect, from the novel thrill of turning up at unexpected places with a yogi. Like the MTV Movie Awards or the Ecuadorian embassy. During the production of my let’s call it experimental—with the emphasis on the “mental”—TV show Brand X (surely the last punning derivation my surname can provide), the whole of Tej’s yoga class, which consisted of about one hundred people, was uprooted and placed each morning at the studio where the show was recorded. That’s pretty mad, isn’t it? We left the comfort, tranquillity, sweet smells, and fine foods of the purpose-built yoga center to practice yoga in the functioning canteen of a TV production facility. Sometimes when you’re famous you can get away with being a lunatic. Especially if you’re like me and think the system is corrupt and rules have to be broken and conformity challenged. Before too long, you have a scenario where the teamsters who do all the heavy lifting on a TV show are confronted with the daily spectacle of a hundred yoga devotees descending on their canteen.
— Victor Davis Hanson American military historian, essayist, university professor 1953
— Joseph Beuys German visual artist 1921 - 1986
— Keshub Chunder Sen Indian academic 1838 - 1884
Speech at Hannover Square Rooms on the occasion of a Soiree held to welcome him on 12th April 1870.
— Calvin Coolidge American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929) 1872 - 1933
Quote from a program at a Coolidge memorial service (1933); cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999). The passage did not originate with Coolidge, but evolved over several decades, appearing as early as 1881 in a youth guidance book. From
— Gopal Krishna Gokhale social and political leader during the Indian Independence Movement 1866 - 1915
Extract from his speech during setting up and defining the charter of the Servants of Scoiety. Page=702
— Charles Otis Whitman American zoologist 1842 - 1910
lecture at Clark University, " A study in evolution, based on color-characters in pigeons, and bearing on moot questions http://books.google.com/books?id=TdcwAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA3" (1909), quoted in Eight Little Piggies (W.W. Norton, 1993) by Stephen Jay Gould, page 366
— Robert Louis Stevenson Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer 1850 - 1894
Context: All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas?
316.
— Swami Vivekananda Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher 1863 - 1902
Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 5, p. 190
