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Activity Quotes

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Activity Quotes

“Our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and power of disposal; they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which we have made it our duty to exercise them that if we come to engage in an activity of a different kind, it catches us off guard and without the slightest awareness that it might involve the application of those same virtues.”

IfsMindKindMadeDifferentMightActionQualityVirtueAwarenessDutyExerciseActivityMade ItPermanentApplicationDifferent KindsFloatingLinkedConjunctions
Book:In Search Of Lost Time, Vol 2: Within a Budding Grove
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“Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power. ... The great man, whether we comprehend him in the most intense activity of his work or in the restful equipoise of his forces , is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind , the incarnation of the spirit .”

MenMindSpiritForcePowerfulPowerGreatnessActivityIntenseRealizationGreat MenIncarnationWill PowerAvidRestful
Book:Between Man and Man
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“When I assumed command of the Pacific Fleet in 31 December, 1941; our submarines were already operating against the enemy, the only units of the Fleet that could come to grips with the Japanese for months to come. It was to the Submarine Force that I looked to carry the load until our great industrial activity could produce the weapons we so sorely needed to carry the war to the enemy. It is to the everlasting honor and glory of our submarine personnel that they never failed us in our days of peril.”

WarForceEnemyProduceMonthsNeededHonorActivityWeaponsGloryCommandLoadUnitsEverlastingPerilDecemberPacificPersonnelSubmarines
Author:Chester W. Nimitz
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“Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.”

GivingDoePhilosophyBodyResultsClearActivityTasksPhilosophicalAimBoundariesDoctrineLogicalPropositionsCloudyClarification
Book:Tractatus Logico-philosophicus: The German Text of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung
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“Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions. It differs, however, from most other branches of human activity in that not only are the pathways of scientific thought determined by the presuppositions of the scientists but their goals are the testing and revision of old presuppositions and the creation of new.”

HumansArtGoalSleepCreationActivityScientistDeterminedBranchesCommerceWarfareTestingPathwaysHuman ActivityRevision
Author:Gregory Bateson
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“What causes [fragmentation] if not a need to act that specializes us and limits us to the horizon of a particular activity? Even if it turns out to be for the general interest (which generally isn't true), the activity that subordinates each of our aspects to a specific result suppresses our being as an entirety. Whoever acts substitutes a particular end for what he or she is, as a total being.”

IfsNeedsEndsTurnsCausesInterestResultsParticularActivityLimitsAspectSubstitutesHorizonSubordinatesEntiretyFragmentation
Author:Georges Bataille
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“The ultimate aim of politics is not politics, but the activities which can be practised within the political framework of the State. Therefore an effective statement of these activities - e.g. science, art, religion - is in itself a declaration of ultimate aims around which the political means will crystallise... a society with no values outside of politics is a machine carrying its human cargo, with no purpose in its institutions reflecting their care, eternal aspirations, loneliness, need for love.”

NeedsHumansMeanArtStatesCarePoliticalPurposeValuesLonelinessActivityEternalMachinesUltimateAimInstitutionsStatementsAspirationDeclarationFrameworkReflectingCargo
Author:Stephen Spender
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“In order to build a great socialist society it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity. Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production. Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.”

MenWholeOrderSexProcessPayActivityEqualMassMen And WomenImportanceTransformationProductionsGenuineProductiveBroadsSocialistEqual Pay
Book:Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works
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“Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.”

IfsThinkingStatesLastsChoicesEffortBreakDemocracyViolenceCitizensActivityEconomicsMajorityViolentResistanceOppressionMinoritiesMachineryResorts
Book:The free and prosperous commonwealth: an exposition of the ideas of classical liberalism
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“I shall always rebel against any attempt to reduce a human being to a kind of mannequin, whose deeds and questions would be comprehensible like the deeds and gestures of monarchs recorded day after day in official communiques. Six months of a life cannot catalogue the vitality, the activity of an individual; only death stops development and then, what is important is the overall meaning of a life, not the details of that life, edifying to some, scandalous to others.”

HumansKindImportantWould BeIndividualHuman BeingsMonthsDevelopmentActivitySixDetailsDeedsOfficialsRebelGesturesSix MonthsVitalityMonarchsCataloguesScandalous
Author:Louis Aragon
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“No longer can we consider what the artist does to be a self-contained activity, mysteriously inspired from above, unrelated and unrelatable to other human activities. Instead, we recognize the exalted kind of seeing that leads to the creation of great art as an outgrowth of the humbler and more common activity of the eyes in everyday life. Just as the prosaic search for information is "artistic" because it involves giving and finding shape and meaning, so the artist's conceiving is an instrument of life, a refined way of understanding who and where we are.”

WayGivingHumansKindDoeArtSelfEyeArtistUnderstandingCommonSeeingInformationCreationActivityShapesFindingsInstrumentsInspiredEverydayArtisticEveryday LifeGreat ArtRefinedExaltedHuman ActivitySelf ContainedConceiving
Book:Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
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“In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement.”

KnowsKindMayHandsMightFormOrderIndividualWatchesInformationMovementActivityEssentialsConcernedMetaphorProducersSymbolsEngineersMachineryWatch MePointersTelecommunications
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“I'm very proud that some people think that I'm a danger for the intellectual health of students. When people start thinking of health in intellectual activities, I think there is something wrong. In their opinion I am a dangerous man, since I am a crypto-Marxist, an irrationalist, a nihilist.”

PeopleThinkingMenOpinionDangerousDangerStudentsProudActivityIntellectualMarxistNihilistDangerous Man
Book:Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault
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“1) Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive (the a of différance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of this opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function.”

MeanPlayTermDifferencesActivityElementsConcernFunctionProductionsActiveRelatedOppositionPassiveSystematicIntervalsIndecisionPassivitySpacing
Author:Jacques Derrida
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“Darwin theorized that mankind (both male and female) evolved alongside each other over millions of years, both reproducing after their own kind before the ability to physically have sex evolved. They did this through "asexuality" ("without sexual desire or activity or lacking any apparent sex or sex organs"). Each of them split in half.”

YearsKindDesireSexAbilityHalfMillionsMankindActivityFemaleMalesOrgansSplitsLackingSexual DesireReproducing
Book:Nothing Created Everything: The Scientific Impossibility of Atheistic Evolution
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“The question of crime is one of concern to everybody. But the position is that the security forces in our country for the last four decades did not concentrate on suppressing crime. Their main objective was to suppress, to crush political activity. And in the process, crime grew to unacceptable proportions. And criminals were able to form powerful syndicates, and they virtually took over the control of the life of the community in certain areas.”

CountryAbleLastsFormPoliticalCertainForceProcessCommunityPowerfulFourSecurityCrimePositionGrewActivityAreasConcernDecadesCriminalsObjectivesOur CountryCrushProportionSuppressingSecurity ForcesSyndicate
Author:Nelson Mandela
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“Technically speaking, since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents,they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. These disruptions can, with minimum expense, have considerably destructive consequences. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.”

OpportunityGoalOffersActivityNormalConsequenceIdealsComplexesExtremesTerrorismAccidentsVulnerabilityDestructiveExpensesRealisticCynicalExploitationMinimumInterferenceDisruptionPromptsSusceptibleComplex SystemsRealistic Goals
Author:Jurgen Habermas
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“Iran, as we have already discussed, has carried out very, very harmful activities inside Iraq. Funding, trainings, arming and, in some cases, even directing the activities of the special groups associated with the Jaish al-Mahdi and the Sadr Militia.”

CasesGroupsSpecialActivityTrainingIraqIranAlsFundingMilitiaMahdi
Book:The status of the war and political developments in Iraq: joint hearing before the Committee on Armed Services meeting jointly with Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, first session, hearing held, September 10, 2007
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“This priesthood became a closed group, able to control enormous wealth and incomes, and concerned very largely with the study of the solar and astronomical periodicities on which there influence was originally based. With the surplus thus created, the priesthood was able to command human labor in huge amounts and to direct this labor from the simple tillage of the peasant peoples to the diversified and specialized activities that constitute civilized living.”

HumansAbleWealthSimpleStudyGroupsInfluenceHugeAmountActivityConcernedLaborDirectEnormousIncomeCommandCivilizedPeasantsPriesthoodSurplusPeriodicity
Author:Carroll Quigley
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“In fact, violence as a symbol of our growing irrationality has had an increasing role in activity for its own sake, when no possible justification could be made that the activity was seeking to resolve a problem.”

MadeFactsProblemRolesGrowingViolenceActivitySakeSeekingSymbolsResolveJustificationIrrationality
Book:The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis
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“Boredom has to be the most life sapping, mental disease you can be afflicted with.The most accurate definition of boredom I have ever heard is this - Boredom is the absence of a creative idea. But there is a simple cure - begin to think immediately of a better way to do something. The creative juices are within you but you must turn on the tap. Those who are bored are not living; they are dying. When their heart stops beating, it will be a mere formality. The best way to do anything has never been thought of. Get on a creative improvement kick and jar others mentally into the same activity.”

ThinkingWayHeartIdeasTurnsSimpleCreativeHeardDyingActivityDiseaseMereDefinitionsAbsenceImprovementBest WayCuresBoredKicksBoredomAccurateWithin YouJuiceTurn-onBetter WaysJarsCreative IdeasFormalityCreative Juices
Author:Bob Proctor
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“Language is inherently not concerned with logic. As an expression of the psychological activities of humankind, it simply follows a linear process as it seeks actualisation. Moreover, it does not obey the objective concepts of time and space that belong to the physical world. When the discussion of time and space is imported into linguistic art from scientific aims and research methods, that linguistic art is entirely reduced to trifling pseudo-philosophical issues.”

WorldDoeArtLanguageProcessSpaceIssuesExpressionActivityResearchArt IsConceptsConcernedLogicPhilosophicalAimMethodObjectivesPsychologicalDiscussionHumankindTime And SpaceLinearPseudoTriflingConcept Of Time
Author:Gao Xingjian
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“As you are aware, no perceptions obtained by the senses are merely sensations impressed on our nervous systems. A peculiar intellectual activity is required to pass from a nervous sensation to the conception of an external object, which the sensation has aroused. The sensations of our nerves of sense are mere symbols indicating certain external objects, and it is usually only after considerable practice that we acquire the power of drawing correct conclusions from our sensations respecting the corresponding objects.”

CertainPracticeObjectsActivityPerceptionIntellectualMereDrawingSensesConclusionNervousSymbolsAcquireSensationsNervesConceptionPeculiarImpressedNervous SystemCorresponding
Author:Hermann von Helmholtz
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