OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Nicholas Rescher

Nicholas Rescher (15 July 1928 – 5 January 2024) was a German-American philosopher at the University of Pittsburgh.

## Quotes

* I have never thought for a moment that if you cannot say it with numbers that it just is not worth saying. But all the same, I do firmly believe that where you cannot put numbers to work you will understand the matter better and more clearly for being able to explain why.
** Epistemetrics (2006), Preface
* Leibniz ... envisioned real possibility in terms rooted in axiological considerations of evaluative optimality. To be sure, it is clear that one cannot just optimize. ... One has to optimize something, some feature or aspect of things. And if this factor is to be something that is qualified, be accepted as self-validating and self-sustaining, then the clearly most promising candidate would seem to be intelligence itself. ... The value at issue here with "being for the best" is a matter of being so as intelligent creatures see it—that is from the vantage point of intelligence itself. Assuredly, no intelligent being would prefer an alternative that is inferior in this regard. And so, for an intelligent being—a rational creature—intelligence itself must figure high on the scale of values.
** "Issues of Ultimate Explanation," in On Certainty and Other Philosophical Essays on Cognition (2011), Section 7, "Noophelia is the Crux," pp. 79-80

## Quotes about Nicholas Rescher

* Rescher's work envisions a dialectical tension between our synoptic aspirations for useful knowledge and our human limitations as finite inquirers. The elaboration of this project represents a many-sided approach to fundamental philosophical issues that weaves together threads of thought from the philosophy of science, and from continental idealism and American pragmatism.
** "About the Author," in Logical Inquiries: Basic Issues in Philosophical Logic. (2014),p. 129
# The Closer (1998 TV series)

The Closer (1998) is an American short-lived sitcom aired on CBS.

## Season 1
### Pilot [1.01]

    Jack McLaren: I'm wedged in here pretty good.

## External links

* The Closer quotes at the Internet Movie Database
Template:DEFUALTSORT:Closer
# The Cloud of Unknowing

The Cloud of Unknowing is a Middle English spiritual guide, dating from the second half of the 14th century. The name of the author is not known, but he is thought to have been a monk from the east Midlands.

## Quotes

    Quotations in Modern English are cited from James Walsh (ed.) The Cloud of Unknowing (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), to which page-numbers also refer.
* For when I sey derknes, I mene a lackyng of knowyng; as alle that thing that thou knowest not, or elles that thou hast forgetyn, it is derk to thee, for thou seest it not with thi goostly ighe. And for this skile it is not clepid a cloude of the eire, bot a cloude of unknowyng, that is bitwix thee and thi God.
** When I say "darkness", I mean a privation of knowing, just as whatever you do not know or have forgotten is dark to you, because you do not see it with your spiritual eyes. For this reason, that which is between you and your God is termed, not a cloud of the air, but a cloud of unknowing.
** Ch. 4, p. 128.
* He may wel be loved, bot not thought. By love may He be getyn and holden; bot bi thought neither.
** He can certainly be loved, but not thought. He can be taken and held by love but not by thought.
** Ch. 6, p. 130.
* Bete evermore on this cloude of unknowyng that is bitwix thee and thi God with a scharpe darte of longing love.
** Beat with a sharp dart of longing love upon this cloud of unknowing which is between you and your God.
** Ch. 12, p. 145.
* Meeknes in itself is not ellis bot a trewe knowyng and felyng of a mans self as he is.
** Humility…is nothing else but a true knowledge and experience of yourself as you are.
** Ch. 13, p. 181.
* Thinking may not goodly be getyn withoutyn reding or heryng comyng before…Ne preier may not goodly be getyn in bigynners and profiters withoutyn thinkyng comyng bifore.
** There can be no profitable reflection without previous reading, or hearing…Nor will beginners or proficients come to true prayer without previous reflection.
** Ch. 35, p. 188.
* Schort preier peersith heven.
** A short prayer pierces heaven.
** Ch. 37, p. 193.
* For not what thou arte, ne what thou hast ben, beholdeth God with his merciful ighe; bot that that thou woldest be.
** Because it is not what you are nor what you have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes, but what you desire to be.
** Ch. 75, p. 265.

## External links

* John Watkins 1922 London edition with introduction by Evelyn Underhill; alt
# The ClueFinders Search and Solve Adventures

The ClueFinders Search and Solve Adventures is a computer game created by the Learning Company.

## Dialogue

    Joni: Say isn't that where the abandoned amusement park is over on the edge of town?
    Owen: Cool, I've heard that place is haunted!
    Leslie: Don't be so credulous, Owen. Ghosts are fictitious. The park was abandoned because of seismic instability.
    Santiago: Yeah, that's right; earthquake danger or something. Too bad they had to shut it down. Did you know they had state-of-the-art animatronic robots?
    LapTrap: So what am I? Chopped liver?
    Joni: It looks like we're gonna need some keys to open these locks.
    LapTrap: Oh, keys, of course! Why can't it be easy for once?
    Owne: Hey, it's no fun if it's too easy, dude.
    Joni: Yeah, the tougher, the better.
    LapTrap: Oh, great! Here we go again!
    Monorail Cargo Robot: I load cargo. Cargo falls off. I load cargo again. Cargo falls off again. Bummer.
    Spaceball Splat Robot: Another prize for the gentleman and lady.
    Owen: Does he mean us?
    Joni: Yeah, that's the way these guys talk.
    Log Ride Pirate Robot: Log John Bones' me name. Heh, heh, get it?
    Joni: Cute, very cute.
    Mimi: Okay, kids, tell me what you know.
    Santiago: What do you mean? We were just exploring the park.
    Mimi: You think you can pull one over on me? You kids are up to something and I'll find out what it is or my name's not Mimi Ramone!
    Leslie: "Ramone?" As in "Jacques Ramone?"
    Mimi: Did I say "Ramone?" I meant, uh, "Smith."
    Mimi: I told you! No more batteries until you've finished loading the shipment!
    Robot #1: That is illogical. Without power, we cannot work.
    Mimi: You'll just have to cope. If I give you batteries now, how do I know you won't run away?
    Robot #2: If you did not give us reason to run, you would not have to worry about that.
    Mimi: I don't have time this! A lot of money is at stake here! Just get those crates loaded.
# Ronald J. Garan Jr.

Ronald John Garan (born October 30, 1961) is a NASA astronaut. After graduating from State University of New York College at Oneonta in 1982, he joined the Air Force, becoming a Second Lieutenant in 1984. He became an F-16 pilot, and flew combat missions in Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

## Quotes

* It [traveling to Mars] is important for our future. If the dinosaurs had a space program, they'd still be here.
** In a Reddit IAmA. (2012)
*** An earlier similar quotation can be found in:
*** The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!
**** By Larry Niven As quoted by Arthur C. Clarke in "Meeting of the Minds : Buzz Aldrin Visits Arthur C. Clarke" by Andrew Chaikin (27 February 2001)
# Ronald Inden

Ronald Inden is an American Indologist, and professor emeritus in the Departments of History and of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago and is a major scholar in South Asian and post-colonial studies. Inden has been a lifelong resident of Hyde Park, the Chicago community which contains the University.

## Quotes

* We should not be misled by this into thinking that these scholars were anti-racist. They did not have to rely on a theory of race as such, for they had their own global theory that was fully able to inferiorize the languages (and by implication the cultures) of the other purely on linguistic grounds. Max Müller's linguistic taxonomy was a Hegelian hierarchy in which . . . cultural geography [becomes] the same as world history.
** Quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines

### Imagining India, 2001

* The most important shift, especially in South Asia, has been the rise to prominence of scholarship that returns not to Hegel but to Marx. (154-5)
* Throughout this book I have argued· that. the problem with orientalism is not just one of bias or o( bad motives and hence, confined to itself. The problem lies in my view, with the way in which the human sciences have displaced human agency on to essences in the first place. Taking up some leads of Collingwood, I have tried to show how an alternative approach that focuses on human agency might be constructed, and how it might be used, as a vantage­ point from which both to criticize previous scholarship and to reconstruct our knowledges of the human world. (264)
* Independence governments implemented secularism mostly by refusing to recognize the religious pasts of Indian nationalism, whether Hindu or Muslim, and at the same time (inconsistently) by retaining Muslim 'personal law' .
** also quoted in Adrija Roychowdhury. Secularism: Why Nehru dropped and Indira inserted the S-word in the Constitution. | New Delhi | August 5, 2018
* ". . . Euro-American Selves and Indian Others have not simply interacted as entities that remain fundamentally the same. They have dialectically constituted one another. Once one realizes the truth of this, he or she will begin to see that India has played a part in the making of nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe (and America) much greater than the "we" of scholarship, journalism, and officialdom would normally wish to allow. The subcontinent was not simply a source of colonial riches or a stage-setting in which Western hunters could stalk tigers, the sons of British merchants and aristocrats could make a financial killing, or the spiritualist find his or her innermost soul (or its Buddhist absence). More than that, India was (and to some extent still is) the object of thoughts and acts with which this "we" has constituted itself."
** Inden, Ronald. Imagining India, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1990. as quoted in
# Ronald Giere

Ronald Giere (born 1938 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American philosopher of science who is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota.

## Quotes about Giere

* Giere's book makes a serious case for constructivism, but those with strong objectivist inclinations will not be moved. For one thing, in spite of his best efforts and the excellent philosophical company he keeps, the constructivist position remains somewhat obscure. The notion of a physical world that emerges from the interaction of the objective and the subjective is difficult to grasp, even if you are a philosopher. And although Giere's arguments for constructivism are serious and provocative, they have uncertain force. Scientific descriptions surely are incomplete and affected by interest, but these are features the objectivist can take on board. Completeness and objectivity are orthogonal. Maybe in the end constructivism is true, or as true as a constructivist can consistently allow. Nevertheless, the thought that the world has determinate objective structures is almost irresistible, and Giere has not ruled out the optimistic view that science is telling us something about them.
** Peter Lipton, "The World of Science", Science (11 May 2007)
# Ronald Firbank

Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank (17 January 1886 – 21 May 1926) was an English novelist and playwright. His works have long enjoyed a cult success, and were a formative influence on the styles of Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell.

## Quotes

* There was a pause – just long enough for an angel to pass, flying slowly.
** Vainglory (1915), cited from The Complete Ronald Firbank (London: Duckworth, 1961) p. 117.
* The world is so disgracefully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.
** Vainglory, cited from The Complete Ronald Firbank (London: Duckworth, 1961) p. 149.
* I suppose when there's no more room for another crow's-foot, one attains a sort of peace?
** Valmouth (1918), cited from The Complete Ronald Firbank (London: Duckworth, 1961) p. 448.
* Princess: I am always disappointed with mountains. There are no mountains in the world as high as I could wish. Adrian: No? Princess: They irritate me invariably. I should like to shake Switzerland.
** The Princess Zoubaroff, Act I, sc. iv (1920), cited from Steven Moore (ed.) Complete Plays (Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive Press, 1994) p. 55.
* "Oh! help me, heaven," she prayed, "to be decorative and to do right!"
** The Flower Beneath the Foot (1923), cited from The Complete Ronald Firbank (London: Duckworth, 1961) p. 516.
* I remember the average curate at home as something between a eunuch and a snigger.
** The Flower Beneath the Foot, cited from The Complete Ronald Firbank (London: Duckworth, 1961) p. 534.

## Quotes about Ronald Firbank

* On we read, confusing the characters with the incidents and neglecting the outcome, but tickled by the images and the turns of the talk. It is frivolous stuff, and how rare, how precious is frivolity! How few writers can prostitute all their powers!
** E. M. Forster, "Ronald Firbank", in Abinger Harvest (1936; 1961), p. 139
* He had something of the air, if one can imagine such a combination, of a witty and decadent Red Indian.
** Osbert Sitwell, Noble Essences (1950), p. 69
* It is the peculiar temper of Firbank's humour which divides him from the nineties. His raw material, allowing for the inevitable changes of fashion, is almost identical with Oscar Wilde's – the lives of rich, slightly decadent people seen against a background of traditional culture, grand opera, the picture galleries and the Court; but Wilde's was at heart radically sentimental. His wit is ornamental; Firbank's is structural. Wilde is rococo; Firbank is baroque.
** Evelyn Waugh, 'Ronald Firbank', Life and Letters (March 1929), quoted in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher (1983), pp. 56-57
# Ronald Kessler

Ronald Borek Kessler (born December 31, 1943) is an American journalist and author of 21 non-fiction books about the White House, U.S. Secret Service, FBI, and CIA.

## Quotes

* When in public, Hillary smiles and acts graciously. As soon as the cameras are gone, her angry personality, nastiness, and imperiousness become evident … Hillary Clinton can make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi.
** Ronald Kessler, describing interviews with Secret Service agents serving Secretary Clinton, in First Family Detail (2015)
* You feel like you don’t want to express your own opinion about Trump or anti-Trump because of getting into some very divisive arguments. But on the other hand, it’s all pretty much peaceful. It's not the way it actually was during the Vietnam War and also during the riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King where buildings were burnt down and people were shot. I lived through that. So in that sense, it's actually much better than it was. I have faith in the American system that does allow for all these disagreements. Let's just hope for the best.
** Ronald Kessler: Donald J. Trump likes to be loved for achievements, Eximia (2018)
# Sacvan Bercovitch

Sacvan Bercovitch (4 October 1933 – 8 December 2014) was a Canadian literary and cultural critic who spent most of his life teaching and writing in the United States. During an academic career spanning five decades, he was considered to be one of the most influential and controversial figures of his generation in the emerging field of American studies.

## Quotes

* Only "America," of all national designations, took on the combined force of eschatology and chauvinism. Many forms of nationalism have laid claims to a world-redeeming promise; many Christian sects have sought, in open or secret heresy, to find the sacred in the profane; many European Protestants have linked the soul’s journey and the way to wealth. But only the "American Way," of all modern symbologies, has managed to circumvent the contradictions inherent in these approaches. Of all symbols of identity, only "American" has succeeded in uniting nationality with universality, civic and spiritual selfhood, sacred and secular history, the country’s past and the paradise to be, in a single transcendent ideal.
** As quoted in "Donald Trump Hates America: The rest of us can love America well" (18 July 2019), by David Brooks, The New York Times

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Sacvan Bercovitch on Wikipedia
# Sadhu

A sadhu (IAST: sādhu (male), sādhvī or sādhvīne (female)), also spelled saddhu, is a religious ascetic, mendicant (monk) or any holy person in Hinduism and Jainism who has renounced the worldly life. They are sometimes alternatively referred to as jogi, sannyasi or vairagi.

## Quotes

* Two miles to his west lay Gokul, the seat of the pontiff of the rich Vallabhacharya sect. The Abdali’s policy of frightfulness had defeated his cupidity: dead men could not be held to ransom. The invader’s unsatisfied need of money was pressing him; he sought the help of Imad’s local knowledge as to the most promising sources of booty. A detachment from his camp was sent to plunder Gokul. But here the monks were martial Naga sannyasis of upper India and Rajputana. Four thousand of these naked ash-smeared warriors stood outside Gokul and fought the Afghans, till half of their own number was killed after slaying an equal force of the enemy. Then at the entreaty of the Bengal subahdar’s envoy (Jugalkishor) and his assurance that a hermitage of faqirs could not contain any money, the Abdali recalled the detachment. ‘All the vairagis perished but Gokulnath [the deity of the city] was saved’, as a Marathi newsletter puts it.”
** [Rajwade, i. 63.]. About Ahmed Shah Durrani. Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.70-71
* The Hindu Bethlehem now lay utterly prostrate before the invaders. Early at dawn on 1st March the Afghan cavalry burst into the unwalled and unsuspecting city of Mathura, and neither by their master's orders nor from the severe handling they received in yesterday's fight, were they in a mood to show mercy.... A Muslim eyewitness thus describes the scene in the ruined city a fortnight later. 'Everywhere in the lanes and bazaars lay the headless trunks of the slain and the whole city was burning. Many buildings had been knocked down. The water of the Jamuna flowing past was of a yellowish color, as if polluted by blood. The man [a Muslim jeweller of the city, robbed of his all and fasting for several days] said that for seven days following the general slaughter the water had turned yellow. At the edge of the stream I saw a number of huts of vairagis and sannyasis [i.e., Hindu ascetic], in each of which lay a severed head with the head of a dead cow applied to its mouth and tied to it with a rope round its neck.'
** Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.70-71

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Sadhu on Wikipedia
# Sade Adu

Sade Adu (born 16 January 1959) is a British-Nigerian songwriter who is best known as the lead singer of Sade.

## Quotes
### Background

* I am fairly classless because it is very difficult to class someone who comes from a mixed marriage. There isn’t a class structure in Nigeria, there’s a tribal structure and prestige as far as money is concerned. My mother comes from a family where her mother was very working-class and her father was middle-class stroke artsy-fartsy.
** On her maternal side in “Sade: Our 1985 Interview” in SPIN (2019 Jul 20)

### Music

* One bloke approached an entire interview as if I was trying to be a jazz musician. I’ve never said that. I’ve never even tried it. And if we did we’d do a darn sight better job than we are doing now.
** On her comparisons to torch singers such as Billie Holiday in “Sade: Our 1985 Interview” in SPIN (2019 Jul 20)
* Most things around are very similar in every respect, the music and the way people look. In order to be in a band, you have to have certain colors in your hair—still! Our image is striking because it is different, not because it is particularly outstanding.
** On the appeal of her band in “Sade: Our 1985 Interview” in SPIN (2019 Jul 20)
* I don’t like segregation…Music is something which should be available to all people. When you go into a club there is no color bar on the dance floor, so why should it apply to radio station? Unfortunately it does. It does not only apply to black and white, it also applies to heavy metal, pop, all that. It’s such a big place with such big corporations everywhere that in order to feel safe they have to categorize things.
** On how the music scene was divided between Black and White musicians during the 1980s in “Sade: Our 1985 Interview” in SPIN (2019 Jul 20)
* You sort of feel like you’re a gladiator going out there because even though you know most of these people have come from a good place and they love your music and they come with a feeling of love, which is what you walk away with…It’s a bit like being thrown at the lions when you go out there because you have this sort of fear, even though it’s irrational, (that) you’re going to get torn apart, so you go out and you have to be good.
** On still having stage fright despite having performed for years in “SADE AT 60: “I STILL GET NERVOUS…” at BlackDoctor.org
# Sade Adeniran

Sade Adeniran (born 1960s) is a Nigerian novelist whose debut novel, Imagine This, won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in Africa. Imagine This was originally self-published by the author. Based in London, she is also a filmmaker.

## Quotes

* I figured that it would be better to make all my rookie mistakes on More Cake rather than on Imagine.
* the most important thing is access. Access to finance, access to decision-makers who can greenlight projects and access to top talent who can help bring your project alive.
* The toughest challenge is to keep going in the face of overwhelming odds.

### Imagine This

* It was mean of him to expel her just because she didn't keep her legs closed. Maybe if I kept my legs open I'd also get expelled and Daddy would have to find me another school for me to go in Lagos
** Page 54
* I went into the bushes to do a number two… I thought I had finished, but I could still feel something there so I used some leaves to wipe my bottom and there it was – a giant worm sticking out of my bottom! I screamed and started running with the worm dangling behind me… I stood there crying with my pants down, dress up and worm sticking out.
** Page 50
* If someone dies every week or so for the next five years then I'll never go hungry again…
** Page 39
* If hunger forces a farmer to eat both his yam tubers and his seed yams, the years to come will have no yams to eat and none to plant
** Page 47
* The time has come for me to start my life
** Page 266
* Why, why, why, why? I hate them all, I want to go home. I don't want to live with my Auntie, I don't want to live in Idogun. I want everything to go back to the way it once was, with Daddy, Adebola and me living at number 4 Egbecombe House.
** Page 4
* "Whatever the dead man see in the burial ground is caused by death"
** A yoruba proverb. Page 4
* It is a pity i don't have long hair or live in tower, I could've left strands of hair along the way, which my prince could have followed after to Idogun and we would have lived happily ever after
** Page 5
* I was going to live with her and no amount of sobbing and begging was going to change his decision
** Page 5

## External links

* Critical literature review
* Amazon
* Goodreads
* Internet Archive