Background Quotes
More Background Quotes
Objectively, class differences in accent, dress, manners, and general style of life are very much smaller; and one cannot, strolling about the street or travelling on a train, instantly identify a person’s social background as one can in England. Subjectively, social relations are more natural and egalitarian, and less marked by deference, submissiveness, or snobbery, as one quickly discovers from the cab-driver, the barman, the air-hostess and the drug-store assistant.
anthony crosland— The Future of Socialism by Anthony Crosland
It (insecurity) is a feeling that is deeply felt and is shared by most members of my community, irrespective of religion, status, education, background or place of origin.
ratu joni madraiwiwi— Speech to the Fiji Law Society, 2 July 2005
Om is the mysterious cosmic energy that is the substratum of all the things and all the beings of the entire universe. It is an eternal song of the Divine. It is continuously resounding in silence on the background of everything that exists.
— In p.16 (OM Chanting and Meditation)
Most activist Muslims, like me, will always fight to protect Jews from anti-Semitism but will always fight the racist and apartheid goals of Zionism. Zionism requires a continuous shrill cacophony in the background, for it requires the suspension of reason in asserting that an end goal for one people can be justified by any means against another.
akber choudhry— [1].
How on earth are the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England, commending the 'Hard ECU' as they strive to, to be taken as serious participants in the debate against that kind of background noise? I believe that both the Chancellor and the Governor are cricketing enthusiasts, so I hope that there is no monopoly of cricketing metaphors. It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.
geoffrey howe— Hansard, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 180 col. 464.
— Personal statement in the House of Commons on his resignation, 13 November 1990.
Number, as it were, lies behind the psychic realm as a dynamic ordering principle, the primal element of which Jung called spirit. As an archetype, number becomes not only a psychic factor, but more generally, a world-structuring factor. In other words, numbers point to a background reality in which psyche and matter are no longer distinguishable.
marie-louise von franz— p. 216 (Creation Renewed & Reversed)
One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind . Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. Two-thirds of 2001 is realistic hardware and technology to establish background for the metaphysical , philosophical , and religious meanings later.
arthur c. clarke— As quoted in The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (1970) by Jerome Agel, p. 300
I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. […] I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents.
stephen jay gould— "Seventh Inning Stretch: Baseball, Father, and Me", p. 29
Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.
william james— Lectures IV and V, "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness"
Unconscious assumptions or opinions are the worst enemy of woman; they can even grow into a positively demonic passion that exasperates and disgusts men, and does the woman herself the greatest injury by gradually smothering the charm and meaning of her femininity and driving it into the background. Such a development naturally ends in profound psychological disunion, in short, in a neurosis.
carl jung— "Woman in Europe" (1927) In CW 10: Civilization in Transition. P.245
Meaning is found in relationship. Meaning is the relationship of the foreground figure to the background.
bruce lee— p. 4 (Striking Thoughts (2000))
A solid working knowledge of productivity software and other IT tools has become a basic foundation for success in virtually any career. Beyond that, however, I don't think you can overemphasise the importance of having a good background in maths and science .
— Bill Gates, Bill Gates: The skills you need to succeed. BBC News (14 December 2007).
His background is not simply the Abbey School of Dunfermline (where he is reputed to have been a schoolmaster), but the surrounding Scottish countryside and community to which he belonged. His wisdom – and his poems are very wise about life – evidently came from his having lived long and profoundly as a member of that whole Scottish community.
— John Speirs, in Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 85.
Today's serious nonfiction writer is important to society because from a solid background of social sciences, combined with the journalistic skills of a reporter, one moves beyond the reporter function to the front edge of our emerging society.
— Betty Friedan (May 1978) 30th Anniversary Journal, American Society of Journalists and Authors, quoted in American Society of Journalists and Authors; Edited by Glen Evans (1983). The Complete Guide to Writing Non-Fiction. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books. p. 5. ISBN 0-89879-117-0.
When I held that statuette, I felt as if I had won a triumph not just for myself, but for every other woman who'd struggled to overcome the same sort of background.
halle berry— On winning an Academy Award — reported in Barbara Davies (August 10, 2008) "Lost and Found", Sunday Telegraph Magazine, p. 18.
We all wear some disguise — make some professions — use some artifice to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom, though we may endeavour to keep some others that we think less to our credit as much as possible in the background…
william hazlitt— "On Cant and Hypocrisy"
His background is not simply the Abbey School of Dunfermline (where he is reputed to have been a schoolmaster), but the surrounding Scottish countryside and community to which he belonged. His wisdom – and his poems are very wise about life – evidently came from his having lived long and profoundly as a member of that whole Scottish community.
Robert Henryson— John Speirs, in Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 85.
The way that the background fields generates mass is rather like the way in which when light passes through a transparent medium like glass or water, it gets slowed down. It no longer travels with the fundamental velocity of light c. And that's the way to think of the generation of mass.
peter higgs— in video Meet Peter Higgs by CERN (July 2004).
The Venetian Bridge and the fine cliff walks are a handsome background for a wealth of entertainment which most visitors find irresistible.
arthur mee— Page 63, Clacton on Sea.
It struck me that it might be interesting for once to do an almost blue-collar warlock. Somebody who was streetwise, working class, and from a different background than the standard run of comic book mystics. Constantine started to grow out of that.
alan moore— On the creation of the character John Constantine in Swamp Thing, as quoted in "The Unexplored Medium" in Wizard Magazine (November 1993); the character he created later appeared in other works, including Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman, and his own series Hellblazer.
I've always paid attention to religion ... because I grew up in a religious background, but I've never felt a part of any of them. I think there's something to be drawn from most of them — other than goat sacrificing.
brad pitt— As quoted in "A Conversation Runs Through It" by Bruce Handy in Time magazine (13 October 1997)
We have a large reservoir of engineers (and scientists) with a vast background of engineering know how. They need to learn statistical methods that can tap into the knowledge. Statistics used as a catalyst to engineering creation will, I believe, always result in the fastest and most economical progress…
george e. p. box— Statement of 1992, quoted in Introduction to Statistical Experimental Design — What is it? Why and Where is it Useful? (2002) Johan Trygg & Svante Wold
“Having presented all the relevant nanoscale mechanisms, thus laying down a firm background for the readers’ understanding, the author moves to the topic of architectural challenges in Chapter 7. This field is claimed still to be an unsolved problem so the author gives examples of currently used technologies and points out potential architectural solutions such as self-assembly, carbon nanotubes, or quantum systems. That is why it makes the book even more valuable for those who intend to involve nanonetworks in their research.”
stephen bush— Book Reviews, REVIEWER: JAKUB PALIDER, NANOSCALE COMMUNICATION NETWORKS STEPHEN F. BUSH, ARTECH HOUSE, 2010, ISBN-13: 978-1-60807-003-9, HARDCOVER, 308 PAGES, IEEE Communications Magazine, August 2011
The clerical work is par for the course. "Keep on file in numerical order" means throw in wastebasket. You'll soon learn the language. "Let it be a challenge to you" means you're stuck with it; "interpersonal relationships" is a fight between kids; "ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline" means call the cops; "Language Arts Dept." is the English office; "literature based on child's reading level and experiential background" means that's all they've got in the Book Room; "non-academic-minded" is a delinquent; and "It has come to my attention" means you're in trouble.
bel kaufman— Part I, ch. 2 (Bea Schachter)
Teaching here isn't so bad. Once you accept as one of the ineluctable laws of nature that kids will continue to say "Silas Mariner" and "Ancient Marner" and "between you and I" and "mischievious" and that the administration will continue to use phrases like "egregious conduct" and "ethnic background" you can go on from there.
bel kaufman— Part XI, ch. 57 (Bea Schachter)
[Mead saw at least two major problems in dating. First, it encourages men and women to define heterosexual relationships as situational, rather than ongoing] You "have a date," you "go out with a date," you "groan because there isn't a decent date in town." A situation defined as containing a girl or boy of the right social background, the right degree of popularity, a little higher than your own,
Margaret Mead— p.286, with bracket text from: Mary Ann Lamanna, Agnes Czerwinski Riedmann, Agnes Riedmann [2006] Marriages & Families: Making Choices and Facing Change. p.191
It was as if the whole western mind-training of individual differences had been made background instead of figure, so that you'd look at another human being and say, "Here we are." You'd see differences more as clothing, rather than as core stuff.
— Contrasting the attitude of those who believe that they are especially "divine" and thus believe other people "owe" them deference — and those who assert all are divine, and thus are respectful of others proper rights and dignity as both human and divine beings.
There were no lights, stoves, or window panes.... We slept on army cots with our clothes on. ... The barbed wire fence which surrounded the camp was visible against the background of the snow-covered Sierra mountain range.
— Karl Yoneda on conditions at the internment camp for Japanese migrants and Japanese-Americans at Manzanar, California.[ ]
