„Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth.“
δῶς[No omega+perispomene doric form per e.g. LSJ, March 2017] μοι πᾶ στῶ καὶ τὰν γᾶν κινάσω.
Dôs moi pâ stô, kaì tàn gân kinásō.
Said to be his assertion in demonstrating the principle of the lever; as quoted by Pappus of Alexandria, Synagoge, Book VIII, c. AD 340; also found in Chiliades (12th century) by John Tzetzes, II.130 http://books.google.com/books?id=dG0GAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA46. This and "Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world" are the most commonly quoted translations.
Variant translations:
Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.
This variant derives from an earlier source than Pappus: The Library of History of Diodorus Siculus, Fragments of Book XXVI http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/26*.html, as translated by F. R. Walton, in Loeb Classical Library (1957) Vol. XI. In Doric Greek this may have originally been Πᾷ βῶ, καὶ χαριστίωνι τὰν γᾶν κινήσω πᾶσαν [Pā bō, kai kharistiōni tan gān kinēsō [variant kinasō] pāsan].
Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth.
Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world.
Give me a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.
Original: (el) δῶς μοι πᾶ στῶ καὶ τὰν γᾶν κινάσω. [Dôs moi pâ stô, kaì tàn gân kinásō.]
Archimedes4
antiker griechischer Mathematiker, Physiker und Ingenieur -287 - -212 v.ChrÄhnliche Zitate
„Give me a place to stand, and I will include the world.“
— Northrop Frye Canadian literary critic and literary theorist 1912 - 1991
19.333
"Quotes", Notebooks
„Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one.“
— Alan Watts British philosopher, writer and speaker 1915 - 1973
Play to Live : Lectures of Alan Watts (1982)
Kontext: Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one. It is like betting on the future of the human race — I might wish to lay a bet that the human race would destroy itself by the year 2000, but there is nowhere to place the bet. On the contrary, I am involved in the world and must try to see that it does not blow itself to pieces. I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: "You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first." So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position. As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, "It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so." You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise.
„Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers,
things standing shall fall,
but the moving ever shall stay.“
— Basava a 12th-century Hindu philosopher, statesman, Kannada Bhakti poet of Lingayatism 1134 - 1196
Basava’s saying in his “The Lord of the Meeting Rivers: Devotional Poems of Basavanna” quoted in The Lord of the Meeting Rivers Quotes, 23 November 2013, Goodreads.com http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3772282-the-lord-of-the-meeting-rivers-devotional-poems-of-basavanna,
„If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.“
— Ronald Reagan American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989) 1911 - 2004
1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Kontext: If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
„Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others…
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.“
— Walt Whitman American poet, essayist and journalist 1819 - 1892
From the Preface to the 1855 edition of <i>Leaves of Grass</i>
Kontext: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . .
Kontext: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.... The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured.... others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches.... and shall master all attachment.
„The stones were dancing now. O yes, they were dancing! But it was not hopping and skipping like jigs or reels, nor was it the dismal revolving of a ballroom. Not a stone moved from its place, but they rocked and turned, slowly and with the greatest dignity, as if to say: "We are the lords of the earth and of the water. We shall stand when all has gone. We shall endure until better things come. But what can be better than we? So we shall endure forever."“
— Robertson Davies Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist 1913 - 1995
Harper of the Stones (1986).
„In the dark of the sun will you save me a place?
Give me hope, give me comfort, get me to a better place?“
— Tom Petty American musician 1950 - 2017
The Dark Of The Sun, written with Jeff Lynne
Lyrics, Into The Great Wide Open (1991)
„I will have to forego the car and even the aeroplane when I move from place to place, for the crowds pressing around them will be too huge; I will have to move across the sky; yes, that too will happen, believe Me.“
— Sathya Sai Baba Indian guru 1926 - 2011
Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. II, p. 92
„I can't stand those French pancake shops. They give me the crepes.“
— Paul Sloane British author and puzzle designer 1950
Facebook post June 2019
„If you please to give me leave I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true.“
— Anne Hutchinson participant in the Antinomian Controversy 1591 - 1643
Trial and Interrogation (1637)
Kontext: If you please to give me leave I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true. Being much troubled to see the falseness of the constitution of the church of England, I had like to have turned separatist; whereupon I kept a day of solemn humiliation and pondering of the thing; this scripture was brought unto me — he that denies Jesus Christ to be come in the flesh is antichrist — This I considered of and in considering found that the papists did not deny him to be come in the flesh nor we did not deny him — who then was antichrist?... The Lord knows that I could not open scripture; he must by his prophetical office open it unto me.... I bless the Lord, he hath let me see which was the clear ministry and which the wrong. Since that time I confess I have been more choice and he hath let me to distinguish between the voice of my beloved and the voice of Moses, the voice of John Baptist and the voice of antichrist, for all those voices are spoken of in scripture. Now if you do condemn me for speaking what in my conscience I know to be truth I must commit myself unto the Lord.
„Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow.“
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, buch Sonnets from the Portuguese
No. VI
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)
„I feel a rush in the air tonight,
I can feel the Earth moving.
Love is beacon, a guiding light,
can't you feel the Earth moving?“
— Mike Oldfield English musician, multi-instrumentalist 1953
Song lyrics, Earth Moving (1989)
„We are bound, you and I, and nothing on this earth shall part me from you.“
— Diana Gabaldon, buch Dragonfly in Amber
Quelle: Dragonfly in Amber
„I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.“
— Sylvia Plath American poet, novelist and short story writer 1932 - 1963
Quelle: The Journals of Sylvia Plath
„Victor I will remain
Or on this earth lie slain,
Never shall she sustain
Loss to redeem me.“
— Michael Drayton English poet 1563 - 1631
Quelle: To the Cambro-Britons and Their Harp, his Ballad of Agincourt (1627), Lines 37-40.
„Blind Instinct is indeed annihilated, and in its place there now stands the clearly perceived Shall.“
— Johann Gottlieb Fichte German philosopher 1762 - 1814
XIII.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)
Kontext: I know now that I shall. But all Actual Knowledge brings with it, by its formal nature, its schematised apposition; — although I now know of the Schema of God, yet I am not yet immediately this Schema, but I am only a Schema of the Schema. The required Being is not yet realised.
I shall be. Who is this I? Evidently that which is, — the Ego gives in Intuition, the Individual. This shall be.
What does its Being signify? It is given as a Principle in the World of Sense. Blind Instinct is indeed annihilated, and in its place there now stands the clearly perceived Shall. But the Power that at first set this Instinct in motion remains, in order that the Shall my now set it (the Power) in motion, and become its higher determining Principle. By means of this Power, I shall therefore, within its sphere, — the World of Sense, — produce and make manifest that which I recognise as my true Being in the Supersensuous World.
„Ah, what shall we say then, but that earth threatened often
Shall live on for ever that such things may be,
That the dry seed shall quicken, the hard earth shall soften,
And the spring-bearing birds flutter north o'er the sea,
That earth's garden may bloom round my love's feet and me?“
— William Morris author, designer, and craftsman 1834 - 1896
Love is Enough (1872), Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow
„Who owns the earth? Did we want the earth that we should wander on it? Did we need the earth that we were never still upon it? Whoever needs the earth shall have the earth: he shall be still upon it, he shall rest within a little place, he shall dwell in one small room for ever.“
— Thomas Wolfe, buch Of Time and the River
Book 1. This excerpt is also cited in a short story "Forever and the Earth" (1950) by Ray Bradbury.
Of Time and the River (1935)
„If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,
If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,
Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,
A lamp in darkness.“
— Sara Teasdale American writer and poet 1884 - 1933
"The Lamp"
Love Songs (1917)