Frederick Law Olmsted famous quotes

The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth.
-- Frederick Law Olmsted

#Power #Arbitrary #World

If we analyze the operations of scenes of beauty upon the mind, and consider the intimate relation of the mind upon the nervous system and the whole physical economy, the action and reaction which constantly occur between bodily and mental conditions, the reinvigoration which results from such scenes is readily comprehended. . . . The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system.
-- Frederick Law Olmsted

#Beauty #Exercise #Giving

The enjoyment of the choicest natural scenes in the country and the means of recreation connected with them is thus a monopoly, in a very peculiar manner, of a very few very rich people. The great mass of society, including those to whom it would be of the greatest benefit, is excluded from it. In the nature of the case private parks can never be used by the mass of the people in any country nor by any considerable number even of the rich, except by the favor of a few, and in dependence on them.
-- Frederick Law Olmsted

#Country #Mean #Numbers

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

Good and bad are really arbitrary words when it comes to character.

Rules are foolish, arbitrary, mindless things that raise you quickly to a level of acceptable mediocrity, then prevent you from progressing further.

The score must govern the music. It must have authority, and not merely be an arbitrary jumping-off point for improvisation.

Learning should take place when it is needed, when the learner is interested, not according to some arbitrary, fixed schedule

It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.

You either get the point of Africa or you don't. What draws me back year after year is that it's like seeing the world with the lid off.

As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.

And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.

I thought religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world.