Periods Quotes - Page 17

There are two processes which we adopt consciously or unconsciously when we try to prophesy. We can seek a period in the past whose conditions resemble as closely as possible those of our day, and presume that the sequel to that period will, save for some minor alterations, be similar. Secondly, we can survey the general course of development in our immediate past, and endeavor to prolong it into the near future. The first is the method the historian; the second that of the scientist. Only the second is open to us now, and this only in a partial sphere.

Winston Churchill

Future, Past, Two

Sir Winston Churchill, Jack Fishman (1974). “If I lived my life again”, W.H. Allen

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The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony--periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Happiness, Theatre, World

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (2012). “The Philosophy of History”, p.26, Courier Corporation

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It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterwards. The fortune of our lives therefore depends on employing well the short period of our youth.

Thomas Jefferson

Work, Youth, Habit

Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.85, Rowman & Littlefield

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[Asked, upon the death of her fast friend and sister suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816-1902), which period of their association she had enjoyed the most:] The days when the struggle was the hardest and the fight the thickest; when the whole world was against us and we had to stand the closer to each other; when I would go to her home and help with the children and the housekeeping through the day and then we would sit up far into the night preparing our ammunition and getting ready to move on the enemy. The years since the rewards began to come have brought no enjoyment like that.

Susan B. Anthony

Children, Struggle, Moving

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A period of high civilization is one in which thoughts fly freely from mind to mind, from one country to another-yes, from the past into the present.

Gilbert Highet

Country, Past, Civilization

Gilbert Highet (1954). “The migration of ideas: three lectures delivered on the North Foundation at Franklin and Marshall College on 18 and 19 March 1954”

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In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry.

Bertrand Russell

Daughter, Men, Poetry

Bertrand Russell (1960). “Sceptical Essays”

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... there has never been a period in history when there have been necessary killings which has not been instantly followed by a period when there have been unnecessary killings.

Rebecca West

History, Unnecessary, Killing

Rebecca West (1928). “The strange necessity: essays by Rebecca West”

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It is this that, finally, I will try to teach my sons about sex, after I've explained fertile periods and birth control and all the other mechanics that are important to understand but never really go to the heart of the matter: I believe I will say that when you sleep with someone you take off a lot more than your clothes.

Anna Quindlen

Sex, Believe, Heart

Anna Quindlen (2010). “Living Out Loud”, p.219, Ballantine Books

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I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted. When I cease to be carried along, when I no longer feel as though I were taking down dictation, I stop.

Francois Mauriac

Writing, Creative, Suits

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Past, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy.... Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one-the knowledge and the dream.

Ambrose Bierce

Dream, Disappointment, Moving

Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.160, 谷月社

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There is a continual exchange of ideas between all minds of a generation. Journalists, popular novelists, illustrators, and cartoonists adapt the truths discovered by the powerful intellects for the multitude. It is like a spiritual flood, like a gush that pours into multiple cascades until it forms the great moving sheet of water that stands for the mentality of a period.

Auguste Rodin

Spiritual, Art, Powerful

Auguste Rodin, Paul Gsell (1984). “Art: Conversations with Paul Gsell”, p.109, Univ of California Press

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Adolescence is a time of active deconstruction, construction, reconstruction--a period in which past, present, and future are rewoven and strung together on the threads of fantasies and wishes that do not necessarily follow the laws of linear chronology.

Louise J. Kaplan

Future, Past, Law

Louise J. Kaplan (1995). “Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood”, Touchstone Books

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We humans undergo two major growth spurts: one during infancy and another from eleven to twelve until fifteen or sixteen--pubescence. Between the two is a relatively quiescent growth period in which most of the body takes a rest from growing while the brain continues to mature. This period of life is general referred to as childhood or, sometimes, latency.

Louise J. Kaplan

Two, Childhood, Growth

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A painter like Picasso, who runs through many periods and phases, ends up by saying all those things which are on the tip of the tongue of the age to say, and finally sterilizes the originality of his contemporaries and juniors.

Norbert Wiener

Running, Age, Tongue

Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.120, Da Capo Press

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The use of the word royalty, as fee to a proprietor for the exploitation of a work or property, derives from the period when the sovereign assumed title to all wealth of the realm. It was the struggle for freedom from these encroachments of the state that chiefly marked the Nineteenth Century, and established everywhere constitutional regimes of limited authority. In the Twentieth Century, however, we have witnessed a gradual and almost unrestricted movement back to state authoritarianism, primarily in the economic sphere, accompanied by the spread of state monopoly and intervention.

Elgin Groseclose

Struggle, Sovereign, Spheres

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When the history of this period is written, [William Jennings] Bryan will stand out as one of the most remarkable men of his generation and one of the biggest political men of our country.

William Howard Taft

Country, Men, Political

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... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction betweenour present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority.

Hannah Arendt

Religious, Loss, Afterlife

Hannah Arendt (1968). “Between past and future: eight exercises in political thought”, Viking Adult

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Ask yourself whether our language is complete--whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Squares, Cities, Symbolism

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If the religious spirit be ever mentioned in any historical narration, we are sure to meet afterwards with a detail of the miseries which attend it. And no period of time can be happier or more prosperous, than those in which it is never regarded or heard of.

David Hume

Religious, Historical, Religion

David Hume, John Charles Addison Gaskin (1998). “Dialogues and Natural History of Religion”, p.122, Oxford University Press, USA

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It is the custom of the immortal gods to grant temporary prosperity and a fairly long period of impunity to those whom they plan to punish for their crimes, so that they may feel it all the more keenly as a result of the change in their fortunes.

Julius Caesar

Punishment, Long, May

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Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness when a glorious idea comes to mind and, secondly, when a last page has been written and you haven't had time to know how much better it ought to be.

J. B. Priestley

Ideas, Two, Mind

"International Herald Tribune", January 3, 1978.

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Liberals correctly perceive the Reagan record as their most dangerous enemy. Why? Because what happened during the 1980s - prosperity at home the longest period of peacetime growth in this nation's history, strength abroad - directly contradicts every liberal belief. Bill Clinton has confused many about the 1980s and the Reagan legacy. His patently false mantra states, "The rich got richer, the poor got poorer. The rich didn't pay their fair share, etc."

Rush Limbaugh

Confused, Home, Growth

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Why is it that Serge Lange's Linear Algebra, published by no less a Verlag than Springer, ostentatiously displays the sale of a few thousand copies over a period of fifteen years, while the same title by Seymour Lipschutz in the The Schaum's Outlines will be considered a failure unless it brings in a steady annual income from the sale of a few hundred thousand copies in twenty-six languages?

Gian-Carlo Rota

Science, Years, Fifteen

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One moment it's a cathedral, at another time there is no words to describe it when it ceases, for short periods of time, to have any regard for the proprieties that constitute not only Parliament, but its tradition. I've seen it in all its greatness. I have inwardly wept over it when it is degraded.

John Diefenbaker

Greatness, Tradition, Moments

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Cabinet members are soon overwhelmed by the insistent demands of running their departments. On the whole, a period in high office consumers intellectual capital; it does not create it....The less ministers know at the outset, the more dependent they are on the only sources of available knowledge; the permanent officials.

Tony Benn

Running, Office, Intellectual

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