- DOB: Nikos Kazantzakis · Toni Morrison · Yoko Ono · Ramakrishna · John Travolta · Wendell Willkie
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. ~ Mark Twain (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published for the first time)
- proposed by user Sir John Alexander Macdonald
- 0 Kalki 19:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2 Kalki 23:38, 17 February 2006 (UTC) I would rank this higher with a stronger date tie-in, but I don't believe it's actually from Huckleberry Finn I had suspected this wasn't Twain, but was pretty certain that it wasn't from Huckleberry Finn; as JeffQ's research below indicates there is no reason to accept Twain as the author of this.
- 0 Jeff Q (talk) 04:51, 29 April 2006 (UTC), unless we can find the correct source. Neither Wikisource nor Project Gutenberg, both of which include Huckleberry Finn, appear to have any Twain work with both the words "belittle" and "ambitions", so we can't even confirm Twain said it, let alone the appropriateness of this date.
- 0 Zarbon 22:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
You forgot the first rule of the fanatic: when you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy. ~
The Real Ghost Busters - Season 5 Episode 9 "The Halloween Door" - (Original Air Date—29 October 1989)......
Michael O'Hare as "Jeffrey Sinclair", Babylon 5 episode "Infection" (first aired 18 February 1994)
- 2 Jeff Q (talk) 04:51, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 19:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
- 2 InvisibleSun 11:09, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
- 3 because this is true. Many times opponents have become the very thing they hate. I like this quote. Zarbon 22:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
The highest point a man can obtain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe! ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
- 3 Kalki 19:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
- 3 InvisibleSun 11:09, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 22:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis OR perhaps a variant translation of this: "I expect nothing. I fear no one. I am free."
- 3 Kalki 19:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4, but would now prefer this variant:
- I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free.
I choose the ascending path because my heart drives me toward it. "Upward! Upward! Upward!" my heart shouts, and I follow it trustingly. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
- 3 Kalki 10:39, 17 February 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4, but would now extend this to read:
- I choose the ascending path. Why? For no intelligible reason, without any certainty; I know how ineffectual the mind and all the small certainties of man can be in this moment of crisis.
I choose the ascending path because my heart drives me toward it. "Upward! Upward! Upward!" my heart shouts, and I follow it trustingly.
With clarity and quiet, I look upon the world and say: All that I see, hear, taste, smell, and touch are the creations of my mind.
The sun comes up and the sun goes down in my skull. Out of one of my temples the sun rises, and into the other the sun sets.
The stars shine in my brain; ideas, men, animals browse in my temporal head; songs and weeping fill the twisted shells of my ears and storm the air for a moment. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
Future generations do not move far from you in an uncertain time. They live, desire, and act in your loins and your heart.
In this lightning moment when you walk the earth, your first duty, by enlarging your ego, is to live through the endless march, both visible and invisible, of your own being. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
I said to the almond tree: "Speak to me of God."
and the almond tree blossomed.
~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
- 3 Kalki (talk · contributions) 03:03, 11 February 2011 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4, but this might be better on first day of spring.
I know of nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. Instead of the sound powerful judgement which would probably have grown up if they had learned nothing, their thoughts creep timidly and hypnotically after words, principles and formulae, constantly by the same paths. What they have acquired is a spider's web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but complicated enough to provide confusion. ~ Ernst Mach (born 1838 Feb 18)
- 3 bystander 17:21, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 19:38, 14 February 2012 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted. ~ Ernst Mach (born 1838 Feb 18)
- 2 bystander 17:21, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 19:38, 14 February 2012 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
| The function of science, as we take it, is to replace experience. Thus, on the one hand, science must remain in the province of experience, but, on the other, must hasten beyond it, constantly expecting confirmation, constantly expecting the reverse. Where neither confirmation nor refutation is possible, science is not concerned.
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| ~ Ernst Mach ~
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| When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
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| ~ Audre Lorde ~
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In a violent flash of lightning I discern on the highest peak of power the final, the most fearful pair embracing:
Terror and Silence. And between them, a Flame.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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| At every moment of crisis an array of men risk their lives in the front ranks as standard-bearers of God to fight and take upon themselves the whole responsibility of the battle.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
| Die every day. Be born every day. Deny everything you have every day. The superior virtue is not to be free but to fight for freedom.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
| Every body, every soul is a Holy Sepulcher. Every seed of grain is a Holy Sepulchre; let us free it! The brain is a Holy Sepulchre, God sprawls within it and battles with death; let us run to his assistance!
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
Humanity is such a lump of mud, each one of us is such a lump of mud. What is our duty? To struggle so that a small flower may blossom from the dunghill of our flesh and mind.
Out of things and flesh, out of hunger, out of fear, out of virtue and sin, struggle continually to create God.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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Our God is not an abstract thought, a logical necessity, a high and harmonious structure made of deductions and speculations.
He is not an immaculate, neutral, odorless, distilled product of our brains, neither male nor female.
He is both man and woman, mortal and immortal, dung and spirit. He gives birth, fecundates, slaughters — death and eros in one — and then he begets and slays once more, dancing spaciously beyond the boundaries of a logic which cannot contain the antinomies.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
Within the province of our ephemeral flesh all of God is imperiled. He cannot be saved unless we save him with our own struggles; nor can we be saved unless he is saved.
We are one.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
| We must understand well that we do not proceed from a unity of God to the same unity of God again.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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| It is not God who will save us — it is we who will save God, by battling, by creating, and by transmuting matter into spirit.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
| Someone within me is struggling to lift a great weight, to cast off the mind and flesh by overcoming habit, laziness, necessity.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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| I keep my heart flaming, courageous, restless. I feel in my heart all commotions and all contradictions, the joys and sorrows of life. But I struggle to subdue them to a rhythm superior to that of the mind, harsher than that of my heart — to the ascending rhythm of the Universe.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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Love responsibility. Say: "It is my duty, and mine alone, to save the earth. If it is not saved, then I alone am to blame."
Love each man according to his contribution in the struggle. Do not seek friends; seek comrades-in-arms.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
Our profound human duty is not to interpret or to cast light on the rhythm of God's arch, but to adjust, as much as we can, the rhythm of our small and fleeting life to his.
Only thus may we mortals succeed in achieving something immortal, because then we collaborate with One who is Deathless.
Only thus may we conquer mortal sin, the concentration on details, the narrowness of our brains; only thus may we transubstantiate into freedom the slavery of earthen matter given us to mold.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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| Everything you do reverberates throughout a thousand destinies. As you walk, you cut open and create that river bed into which the stream of your descendants shall enter and flow.
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| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 12:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 01:37, 18 February 2015 (UTC) famous statement, written on a ceiling, in one of her art exhibits.
| I trust in the human wisdom. We are incredibly intelligent beings. So we might know something without thinking that we know…
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| ~ Yoko Ono ~
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| John and I felt that we were like people in an H. G. Wells story. Two people who are walking so fast that nobody else can see them.
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| ~ Yoko Ono ~
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I usually stay away from being carried away,
But one day I saw a silver horse.
I thought he might take me to that somewhere high,
I thought he might take me to that deep blue sky. I came to realize that the horse had no wings.
No wings, well, it wasn't so bad, you know. I learnt to travel the world around
And run on the ground in the morning.
And that's the story of a wandering soul,
A story of a dreamer.
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| ~ Yoko Ono ~
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| Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.
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| ~ Toni Morrison ~
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Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
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| ~ Toni Morrison ~
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| Language can never "pin down" slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable. Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction.
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| ~ Toni Morrison ~
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| The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie.
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| ~ Toni Morrison ~
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| A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences.
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| ~ Toni Morrison ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 01:55, 18 February 2015 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
| Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.
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| ~ Toni Morrison ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 01:55, 18 February 2015 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
| We are the moral inhabitants of the globe. And to deny it is to lie in prison. Oh yes, there’s cruelty, and cruelty, because it destroys the perpetuator as well as the victim, is a very mysterious thing. But if you look at the world as one long brutal game between “us” and “them,” then you bump into another mystery … unless all races and all ages of man have been totally deluded, there seems to be such a thing as grace, such a thing as beauty, such a thing as harmony — all of which are wholly free, and available to us.
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| ~ Toni Morrison ~
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Racial ignorance is a prison from which there is no escape because there’re no doors. And there are old, old men, and old, old women running institutions, governments, homes all over the world who need to believe in their racism and need to have the victims of racism concentrate all their creative abilities on them. And they are very easily identified.
They are the petulant ones who call themselves proud, and they are the disdainful ones who call themselves fastidious, and they are the mean-spirited ones who call themselves just. They thrive on the failures of those unlike them; they are the ones who measure their wealth by the desperation of the poor. They are the ones who know personal success only when they can identify deficiencies in other racial and ethnic groups. They are in prisons of their own construction: and their ignorance and their stunted emotional growth consistently boggle the mind.
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| ~ Toni Morrison ~
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