I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“In 1923 there were no government benefits for immigrants except one: Freedom!”
“In 1924–1929, sentences were determined by joint administrative and economic consideration. Beginning in 1924, because of national unemployment, the courts reduced the number of verdicts which sentenced prisoners to corrective labor while they continued to live at home and increased short-term prison sentences. These cases involved only nonpolitical offenders, of course. As a result, prisons were overcrowded with short-termers serving sentences of up to six months, and not enough use was being made of them in labor colonies. At the beginning of 1929, the People's Commissariat of justice of the U.S.S.R., in Circular No. 5, condemned short-term sentences and, on November 6, 1929, the eve of the twelfth anniversary of the October Revolution, when the country was supposedly entering on the construction of socialism, a decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars simply forbade all sentences of less than one year!”
Source: The Gulag Archipelago
“In 1924 Mao took a Chinese friend, newly arrived from Europe, to see the notorious sign in the Shanghai park, 'Chinese and Dogs Not Allowed'.”
Source: Modern times: the world from the twenties to the nineties
“In 1925 - 27 the revolution in China was destroyed by the false revolutionary strategy of the Stalinist faction. To this last question I consecrate my book, Problems of the Chinese Revolution (issued by the Pioneer Publishers, New York 1932).”
“In 1925, a master plan was instituted to blend the French neo-classical design with the tropical background. The Art Deco movement, both in Havana and in Miami Beach, took hold during the late 1920’s, and is found primarily in the residential section of Miramar. Miramar is where most of the embassies are located, including the massive Russian embassy.
The predominant street is Fifth Avenue known as La Quinta Avenida, along which is found the church of Jesus de Miramar, the Teatro Miramar and the Karl Marx Theater. There is also the Old Miramar Yacht Club and the El Ajibe Restaurant, recently visited and televised by Anthony Bourdain on his show, “No Reservations.” Anthony Bourdain originally on the Travel Channel is now being shown on CNN. The modern five-star Meliá Habana hotel, known for its cigar bar, is located opposite the Miramar Trade Centre.
Started in 1772, el Paseo del Prado, also known as el Paseo de Marti, became the picturesque main street of Havana. It was the first street in the city to be paved and runs north and south, dividing Centro Habana from Old Havana. Having been designed by Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier, a French landscape architect, it connects the Malecón, the city’s coastal esplanade, with a centrally located park, Parque Central.
Although the streets on either side are still in disrepair, the grand pedestrian walkway goes for ten nicely maintained blocks. The promenade has a decorated, inlaid, marble terrazzo pavement with a balustrade of small posts. It is shaded by a tree-lined corridor and has white marble benches for the weary tourist.
Arguably, the Malecón is the most photographed street in Havana. It lies as a bulwark just across the horizon from the United States, which is only 90, sometimes treacherous miles away. It is approximately 5 miles long, following the northern coast of the city from east to west. This broad boulevard is ideal for the revelers partaking in parades and is the street used for Fiesta Mardi Gras, known in Cuba as Los Carnavales. It has at times also been used for “spontaneous demonstrations” against the United States. It runs from the entrance to Havana harbor, alongside the Centro Habana neighborhood to the Vedado neighborhood, past the United States Embassy on the Calle Calzada.”
“In 1925, Gerardo Machado defeated the conservative Mario García Menocal by an overwhelming majority, becoming Cuba's 5th president. A colleague of Alfredo Zayas, he was also a popular Liberal Party member, and a General during the Cuban War of Independence. General Machado was best known for rustling cattle from the Spanish Imperial Army’s livestock herd, with the good intention of feeding the poor during the revolution. This brazen act of kindness won him a great deal of support among the people. As President, he undertook many popular public projects, including the construction of a highway running the entire length of Cuba. During the beginning of his career as president, he had the National Capitol, as well as other government buildings, constructed in Havana. At first, he did much to modernize and industrialize the mostly agrarian nation.
Benito Mussolini and his march on Rome impressed Machado. He admired Mussolini for demanding that liberal King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy elevate the Fascists to power, instead of the Socialists. Although Mussolini originally started his political career as a Socialist, with power and wealth he became a staunch anti-communist. When he was elected as the 27th Prime Minister, he turned Italy into a Totalitarian State.
Machado’s ambitions and admiration of Mussolini caused him to emulate the dictator and to misread the importance of his own office. Becoming a “legend in his own mind,” he overreached and started down a slope that led to his administration’s failure and earned him the hatred of the Cuban people. From the very beginning, he fought with the labor leaders and anarchists for control of the labor unions, which represented the workers in the sugar industry. This brought him into a serious conflict with the plantation owners who were mostly wealthy Cuban families and Americans. Keeping the cost of labor down became a priority for the Sugar Barons, and Machado used patriotism as a tool to keep the workers in line. His dictatorial, arrogant ways created unrest within the labor force, as well as with the politically active university students.”
“In 1925, the central committee of the Soviet Communist party declared that sport should be consciously used "as a means of rallying the broad masses of workers and peasants around the various Party Soviet and Trade Union organizations through which the masses of workers and peasants are to be drawn into social and political activity." Fortunately, people of all nations intuitively tend to resist such exhortations. They know that games remain gloriously pointless and that watching an exciting athletic contest, moreover, can be emotionally almost as exhausting as participation itself—hardly the "passive" experience it is made out to be by the guardians of public health and virtue.”
Source: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
“In 1925, when Britain went back to the gold standard, that was supported by the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Bank of England, the civil service, the CBI, the TUC, the Times, the Economist; that consensus was very strong.”
“In 1926 Werner Heisenberg developed his now famous uncertainty principle. [The original name used by Heisenberg was the “unsharpness” principle (Unsharfeprinzip). Later the name was mistranslated and popularized as the “uncertainty” principle (Unsicherheisrelation), from Elementary Quantum Chemistry, Second Edition by Frank L. Pilar, page 19.] It's a purely mathematical concept. It applies anywhere that there are waveforms. The Unsharpness Principle originates not from Quantum Mechanics, but rather from Classical Wave mechanics.”
Source: Pataphysics: Mastering Time Line Jumps for Personal Transformation
“In 1929 the discovery of the wonders of the geometric series struck Wall Street with a force comparable to the invention of the wheel.”
Source: THE GREAT CRASH 1929
“In 1930, the death rate for Milwaukee’s blacks was nearly 60 percent higher than the citywide rate, due in large part to poor housing conditions.”
Source: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.”
“In 1932 Pravda published a short story by Ilf and Petrov, titled 'How Robinson Was Created,' about a magazine editor who commissions a Soviet Robinson Crusoe from a writer named Moldavantsev. The writer submits a manuscript about a Soviet young man triumphing over nature on a desert island. The editor likes the story, but says that a Soviet Robinson would be unthinkable without a trade union committee consisting of a chairman, two permanent members, and a female activist to collect membership dues. The committee, in its turn, would be unthinkable without a safe deposit box, a chairman's bell, a pitcher of water, and a tablecloth ('red or green, it doesn't matter; I don't want to limit your artistic imagination'), and broad masses of working people. The author objects by saying that so many people could not possible be washed ashore by a single ocean wave:
'Why a wave?' asked the editor, suddenly surprised.
'How else would the masses end up on the island? It is a a desert island, after all!'
'Who said it was a desert island? You're getting me confused. Okay, so there's an island, or, even better, a peninsula. It's safer that way. And that's where a series of amusing, original, and interesting adventures will take place. There'll be some trade union work going on, but not enough. The female activist will expose certain deficiencies - in the area of due collection, for example. She'll be supported by the broad masses. And then there be the repentant chairman. At the end you could have a general meeting. That would be quite effective artistically. I guess that's about it.'
'But - what about Robinson?' stammered Moldavantsev.
'Oh yeah ..., thank for reminding me. I'm not wild about Robinson. Just drop him. He's a silly, whiny, totally unnecessary character.”
Source: The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution
“In 1932, lame duck president Herbert Hoover was so desperate to remain in the White House that he dressed up as Eleanor Roosevelt. When FDR discovered the hoax in 1936, the two men decided to stay together for the sake of the children.”
“In 1933, Batista closely allied himself with the newly created, five-man Presidency of Cuba named “The Pentarchy.” Sergio Carbó y Morera, an influential member of the new Executive Commission of the Pentarchy, became Batista’s inside man. On the morning of September 8th, with the country in a precarious state of instability, and as the self-appointed head of the Provisional Government of Cuba, Carbó y Morera appointed Batista as “Chief of the Army” instantly promoting him from sergeant stenographer, to the rank of Colonel. This promotion was supposedly “for merits of war and exceptional services to the country.” Of course, everyone knew that this appointment was only made because of Batista’s successful sergeants’ rebellion and insistent demands. It also mysteriously happened, without the approval of the other four members of the Pentarchy.
Ascending to the rank of Colonel without proper approval, Batista took over “Command and Control” of the Cuban army and unbelievably, summarily discharged the entire cadre of Commissioned Officers.”
“In 1933, the regional elections held in many parts of Germany, overwhelmingly favored the NAZI Partei. The full name of this vile group was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei and actually was originally abbreviated NSDAP, not NAZI. With what seemed to be decisive popular approval, the Reichstag endorsed Hitler. On the morning of January 30, 1933, at the Presidential Palace, Hindenburg swore in Adolf Hitler as the Reich Chancellor of Germany, a title equivalent to that of the Prime Minister of England.
However, as the Reich Chancellor, Hitler was in a relatively stronger position of authority than the Prime Minister of England. Everything being equal, it would be much more difficult to remove him from power since the Chancellor of Germany remains in office until the majority of the Bundestag can agree on a successor, whereas the Prime Minister serves at the whim of his party.
Hindenburg publicly denounced any responsibility for appointing this “Austrian Corporal” to the Reich Chancellery, while he prudently caved in to Adolf Hitler’s popular demands. On the other hand, Hitler frequently referred to Hindenburg as “that old fool.” Although the men maintained an appearance of cordiality to each other in public, Hitler did not respect the “Old War Horse” and there was definitely no love lost between them.
During the following summer, Hindenburg grew increasingly concerned about the radical Nazi rallies in Nuremburg, and the political demonstrations that were being carried out throughout Germany. During the summer of 1934, the elderly German President became extremely ill and was close to death at his mansion in East Prussia. Having contracted lung cancer, he had been incapacitated and bedridden for several months, thereby giving Hitler enough time to plan and impose his next move.
On August 2, 1934, at 9:00 a.m., the long awaited demise of 86-year-old Hindenburg finally occurred in the town of Neudeck, near Rosenberg, East Prussia. Within hours after the announcement of Hindenburg’s death, Hitler seized total control of Germany by establishing himself in the contrived, dictatorial and ultimate position of “der Führer.” It was in this way that he became the supreme leader of Germany, ruling until 1945.”
“In 1933, the Nazis came to power and the more systematic persecution of the Jews followed quickly. Laws were enacted which excluded Jewish children from higher education in public schools.”
“In 1933-34, the Belgians conducted a census in order to issue ‘ethnic’ identity cards, which labelled every Rwandan as either Hutu (85%) of Tutsi (14%) or Twa (1%). The identity cards made it virtually impossible for Hutus to become Tutsis, and permitted the Belgians to perfect the administration of an apartheid system rooted in the myth of Tutsi superiority… Whatever Hutu and Tutsi identity may have stood for in the pre-colonial state no longer mattered; the Belgians had made ‘ethnicity’ the defining feature of Rwandan existence.”
“In 1934, at the January Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of the Soviet Communist Party, the Great Leader (having already in mind, no doubt, how many he would soon have to do away with) declared that the withering away of the state (which had been awaited virtually from 1920 on) would arrive via, believe it or not, the maximum intensification of state power.
This was so unexpectedly brilliant that it was not given to every little mind to grasp it, but Vyshinsky, ever the loyal apprentice, immediately picked it up: "And this means the maximum strengthening of corrective-labor institutions."
Entry into socialism via the maximum strengthening of prisons! And this was not some satirical magazine cracking a joke, either, but was said by the Prosecutor General of the Soviet Union!”
Source: The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
“In 1934, Bill W., cofounder of AA [Alcoholics Anonymous], was treated for his alcoholism with a hallucinogenic belladonna alkaloid. The resulting mystical experience led him to become sober and inspired him to write the book and cofound the organization that have changed the lives of so many millions around the world. In the 1950's Bill W underwent LSD therapy, and found his experience so inspiring that the sought to have the drug made part of the AA program.”
Source: A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life
“In 1934, my parents and the aunts and uncles that accompanied them on their return to Germany, stayed with my grandmother and other family members during this difficult time. To get away from the overwhelming stress everyone felt, they took a day’s outing to the grassy countryside known as die Luneburger Heide, which lay about 50 km southeast of Hamburg. North Germany is not known for its good weather, but I heard that on that particular day it was sunny and perfect for a picnic. From their slightly elevated vantage point, they watched a parade of young men in the Hitler Youth march by. As the band played and the Nazi flag fluttered, most of the people got up out of respect… or could it have been from fear? That is, everyone but my family stood up! They were new Americans and proud of their adopted country, so they alone didn’t salute the repressive flag that was paraded by and they certainly didn’t feel that they had to show any loyalty to it. It did not take long before my family was aggressively surrounded by “Nazi Brown Shirts” and confronted for this unpardonable violation. Pretending not to understand German or the importance of the circumstances, they were allowed to depart from the scene, being thought of as uneducated schweinehunde, another derogatory slang word meaning pig-dogs. It seems that this conflict could have been avoided, had they just stood up and paid due deference to the flag. Considering the times, it was lucky that they got away with their little scam. To the Nazis it was not just a game, the swastika represented their new order, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. I don’t know if my family realized how lucky they were, that this incident didn’t escalate.
It is interesting to note that civil servants and members of the German military were expected to take oaths pledged to Hitler himself, and not to the Constitution or the German state. Oaths were taken very seriously by members of the German armed forces. They considered them to be part of a personal code of honor. This put the military in a position of personal servitude, making them the personal instrument of Hitler.
In September of that year, at the annual Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies, Hitler euphemistically proclaimed that the German form of life would continue for the next thousand years.”
“In 1934 there were very few Cubans in Miami.”
Source: A Book
“In 1934, the American Jewish charities offered to find homes for 300 German refugee children. We were on the SS Washington, bound for New York, Christmas 1934.”
“In 1935, when there were no other programs, the founders of AA, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, stepped up to the plate and took action to help a crippled population. All credit for the establishment of their wonderful, life-saving group goes to them and to those who came after them who have continued the tradition. However, there are hundreds of millions of people who still need help who are not among the estimated two or three million who attend twelve-step meetings.”
Source: The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery
“In 1935, when there were no other programs, the founders of AA, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, stepped up to the plate and took action to help a crippled population. All credit for the establishment of their wonderful, life-saving group goes to them and to those who came after them who have continued the tradition. However, there are not among the estimated two or three million who attend twelve-step meetings.”
Source: The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery
“In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.”
Source: Witness
“In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt reminded us that the Constitution is, and I quote, "a layman's document, not a lawyer's contract."”
“In 1938, after Austria, our universe had become accustomed to inhumanity, to lawlessness, and brutality as never in centuries before. In a former day the occurrences in unhappy Vienna alone would have been sufficient to cause international proscription, but in 1938 the world conscience was silent or merely muttered surlily before it forgot and forgave.”
“In 1938, I. G. Farben sent a letter to (a major drug firm), one of its American subsidiaries, (that)..all advertising contracts must contain '...a legal clause whereby the contract is immediately cancelled if overnight the attitude of the paper toward Germany should be changed.”
“In 1938, when I had decided that the only way to see the country was in a trailer, and I built the trailer which I still have and lived in it for eighteen months, and learned America from San Diego to the Canadian border, from Miami to New Jersey, and east to west in between.”
“In 1938... the year's #1 newsmaker was not FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. Nor was it Lou Gehrig or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn't even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit.”
“In 1939, a poet and author, Robert P. Tristram Coffin, recorded and put his version of this bizarre story to paper, as prose. I presume that he changed the name from Bucksport to Tucksport, to allow it to be considered fiction. In this rendition, Colonel Buck, being a Justice of the Peace and the highest civil authority, took it upon himself to have the woman nailed to the door of her home and then callously had the house set on fire. In this interpretation, her last words were that she would haunt the Colonel forever.
In Robert P. Tristram Coffin’s version, it almost seems that the story of Robert Trim was commingled with the story of Jonathan Buck. The story continues that after the roar of the fire subsided, the woman’s son pulled his mother’s only remaining limb out of the fire and struck Colonel Buck on his back with his mother’s barbequed leg, thereby crippling Colonel Buck for life. Bad as the story was before, it became even more macabre under the pen of Robert P. Tristram Coffin.”
“In 1939 I wrote my first article ("Intime banaliteter" [Intimate banalities] in the journal Helhesten) in which I expressed my love for sofa painting, and for the last twenty years I have been preoccupied with the idea of rendering homage to it. Thus I act with full responsibility and after extensive reflection. Only my current situation has enabled me to accomplish the expensive task of demonstrating that the preferred sustenance of painting is painting.”
“In 1939 war was probably a counterproductive move for the Axis powers – yet it did not save the world. One of the astounding things about the Second World War is that following the war the defeated powers prospered as never before. Twenty years after the complete annihilation of their armies and the utter collapse of their empires, Germans, Italians and Japanese were enjoying unprecedented levels of affluence. Why, then, did they go to war in the first place? Why did they inflict unnecessary death and destruction on countless millions? It was all just a stupid miscalculation. In the 1930s Japanese generals, admirals, economists and journalists concurred that without control of Korea, Manchuria and the Chinese coast, Japan was doomed to economic stagnation.8 They were all wrong. In fact, the famed Japanese economic miracle began only after Japan lost all its mainland conquests.”
Source: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
“In 1939 Winston Churchill, describing the 5000-mile peaceful border dividing Canada and the United States, said, 'That long frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, guarded only by neighborly respect and honorable obligations, is an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world.”
Source: Ronald Reagan
“In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can't say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues.”
“In 1940 I was just turning 5 years old and being taken to the movies. For those of us who were not old enough to understand the horror of war it was a very romantic era because these guys were kissing their wives and girlfriends goodbye and going off to fight and become heroes.”
“In 1941, as the United States faced the threat of another horrific war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was leading the nation from a wheelchair. Struck down by polio at age thirty-nine, he rehabilitated and marshaled himself, despite severe pain, to press on with his career in politics. Eleven years later, delivering his message of confidence and optimism, he was elected President of the United States.”
Source: Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway
“In 1941 Richard Owen said that the dinosaurs were almost hot blooded.”
“In 1942 Cachao wrote a tune for Arcao, 'Rareza de Melitn,' with a memorable catchy tumbao. In 1957 Arcao recorded a reworking of it under the name 'Chanchullo'; and in 1962 Tito Puente reworked that into 'Oye como va,' still with that same groove. In this form, audibly the same, it powered Carlos Santana's multiplatinum 1970 cover version, close to three decades after Cachao first played it.”
“In 1942, everyone was ready to go and fight for the good guys. It was so simple.”
“In 1944, Nehru wrote an interesting book [The Discovery of India] from a British prison. He pointed out that if you trace British influence and control in each region of India, and then compare that with the level of poverty in the region, they correlate. The longer the British have been in a region, the poorer it is. (56)”
Source: The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many
“In 1945 J.A. Ratcliffe ... suggested that I [join his group at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge] to start an investigation of the radio emission from the Sun, which had recently been discovered accidentally with radar equipment. ... [B]oth Ratcliffe and Sir Lawrence Bragg, then Cavendish Professor, gave enormous support and encouragement to me. Bragg's own work on X-ray crystallography involved techniques very similar to those we were developing for "aperture synthesis", and he always showed a delighted interest in the way our work progressed.”
“In 1945, just at the end of World War II, the American poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote a remarkable book called The Life of Poetry. In it she says that on any particular day in the world, if poetry ceased to exist, it would immediately be reinvented on that same day.”
“In 1945, peace broke out. It was the end of the Joke. Joke warfare was banned at a special session of the Geneva Convention, and in 1950 the last remaining copy of the joke was laid to rest here in the Berkshire countryside, never to be told again.”
“In 1945, there were more people killed, more buildings destroyed, more high explosives set off, more fires burning than before or since.”
“In 1946 there was no money in art, no dealer galleries, no craft shops. After the war we started to teach art in every school for the first time. Our generation played a crucial role. We were the stepping stones towards today's galleries.”
“In 1946, Oxford University in England was offered large funds to create a new Institute of Human Nutrition. The University refused the funds on the ground that the knowledge of human nutrition was essentially complete, and that the proposed institution would soon run out of meaningful research projects.”
“In 1947, Eduardo Chibás, known to his listening public as “Eddie Chibás,” formed the Partido del Pueblo Cubano, Ortodoxo Party. A large assembly of Grau’s former constituents rethought their previous convictions and joined this non-communist group of political reformers, whose goal it was to clean up politics and expose corruption. Chibás felt that a revolutionary change was necessary in Cuba, but that it should be constitutional instead of violent. He ran for the Cuban presidency in 1948, but still being relatively unknown, came in third place. Having had name recognition and the backing of lobbyists, Carlos Prío won the election, leaving Chibás as the leader of the opposition party. Fidel joined the Ortodoxo Party, and years later on August 26, 2007, Castro even wrote an article in the Communist Youth newspaper, the Juventud Rebelde, praising Eduardo Chibás for the consistent honesty he had always shown.”
“In 1947 I defended my thesis on nuclear physics, and in 1948 I was included in a group of research scientists whose task was to develop nuclear weapons.”