Subversives

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.
- Henry Steele Commager, 1902 - 1998

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.
- Anthony Trollope, 1815 - 1882

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defence, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defence of our nation worthwhile.
- Earl Warren, 1891 - 1974

And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state.
- Galileo Galilei, 1564 - 1642

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it.... It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
- Erica Jong

Michelangelo

Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold; beyond the world she soars; the wise man, I affirm, can find no rest in that which perishes, nor will he lend his heart to aught that doth on time depend.

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

After four tortured years, more than 400 over life-sized figures, I felt as old and as weary as Jeremiah. I was only 37, yet friends did not recognize the old man I had become.

It is necessary to keep one's compass in one's eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.

Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.

A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it.

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities

Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.

Genius is eternal patience.

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.

I am still learning.

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin's; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.

There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.
- All from Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1474 - 1564

About:
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on 6 Mar in 1475 at Caprese in il Republico Fiorenza. He considered himself a sculptor, but his patron Pope Julius II made sure we think of him mostly as a painter of walls and ceilings. He was also a poet and prolific letter writer, and left us with these quotations.

Rex Harrison

Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it.

Whatever it is that makes a person charming, it needs to remain a mystery.... Once the charmer is aware of a mannerism or characteristic that others find charming, it ceases to be a mannerism and becomes an affectation. And good Lord, there is nothing less charming than affectations!

When I was ten we moved and I decided that none of the names I was then called - Reggie, Bobby, Baa - suited me. Somehow I hit on Rex. I must have heard someone calling for their dog and thought it sounded rather nice.

It takes a long time to learn to treat the camera as a friend and confidant, which finally you have to do if you're to become a good film actor.

I'm now at the age where I've got to prove that I'm just as good as I never was.
- All from Rex Harrison, 1908 - 1990

About:
Reginald Carey Harrison was born at Huyton, Knowsley, England on 5 Mar in 1908, graduated from Liverpool College, and was on stage at Liverpool in 1924. He served in the RAF during World War II, then returned to the stage. He did great as Pope Julius II in The Agony and the Ecstasy, and is best known as Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, a role he played on Broadway for six years opposite Julie Andrews and in the 1964 film opposite Audrey Hepburn. He is one of a very short list of actors who have won both a Tony and Oscar for the same role. Knighted in 1989, he continued to act until three weeks before he died.

Traffic

Waiting until everything is perfect before making a move is like waiting to start a trip until all the traffic lights are green.
- Karen Ireland

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
- Mary Ellen Kelly

Good manners are like traffic rules for society.
- Michael Levine

It is disappointing to realize that, hidden beyond these magnificent and promising names, is the same checkerboard city, the same red and green traffic lights and the same provincial look.
- Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905 - 1980

People nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators, and so on. It's a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it's the togetherness of modern technology.
- James Graham Ballard

The beaten path is the safest, but the traffic's terrible.
- Jeff Taylor