Wikiquote

August 20

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent. ~ H. L. Mencken
2005
The Government of the State of Israel and the Palestinian team representing the Palestinian people agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security to achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process. ~ Oslo Accords, finalized in Oslo, Norway on 20 August 1993.
2006
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
~ H. P. Lovecraft ~
2007
The world we live in is driven not solely by mindless physical forces but, more crucially, by subjective human values. Human values become the underlying key to world change. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry
2008
There probably is no more important quest in all science than the attempt to understand those very particular events in evolution by which brains worked out that special trick that has enabled them to add to the cosmic scheme of things: color, sound, pain, pleasure, and all the other facets of mental experience. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry
2009
Science traditionally takes the reductionist approach, saying that the collective properties of molecules, or the fundamental units of whatever system you're talking about, are enough to account for all of the system's activity. But this standard approach leaves out one very important additional factor, and that's the spacing and timing of activity — its pattern or form. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry
2010
The grand design of nature perceived broadly in four dimensions, including the forces that move the universe and created man, with special focus on evolution in our own biosphere, is something intrinsically good that it is right to preserve and enhance, and wrong to destroy and degrade. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry
2011
Some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy. ~ H. P. Lovecraft
2012
Futurists and common sense concur that a substantial change, worldwide, in life style and moral guidelines will soon become an absolute necessity.
~ Roger Wolcott Sperry ~
2013
We're beginning to learn the hard way that today's global ills are not cured by more and more science and technology.
~ Roger Wolcott Sperry ~
2014
Isn't life the strangest thing you've ever seen?
~ Patricia Rozema ~
2015
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
~ H. P. Lovecraft ~
2016
The centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension that no one I know of has been able to imagine their nature.
~ Roger Wolcott Sperry ~
2017
Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.
~ H. P. Lovecraft ~
2018
Man's respect for the imponderables varies according to his mental constitution and environment. Through certain modes of thought and training it can be elevated tremendously, yet there is always a limit.
~ H. P. Lovecraft ~
2019
The behavioral and cognitive disciplines are leading the way to a more valid framework for all science. Although the theoretic changes make little difference in physics, chemistry, molecular biology, and so on, they are crucial for the behavioral, social, and human sciences. They don't change the analytic, reductive methodology, just the interpretations and conclusions.
~ Roger Wolcott Sperry ~
2020
To see a promising solution to a dilemma and then just leave it to questionable development at its own pace without trying to aid its implementation would seem a dereliction.
~ Roger Wolcott Sperry ~
2021
Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.
~ H. P. Lovecraft ~
2022
There are moments, as I myself have emphasized on different occasions, in which "kairos," the right time, is united with "logos," the "eternal truth," and in which the fate of philosophy is decided for a special period.
~ Paul Tillich ~
2023
The courage to be as oneself is never completely separated from the other pole, the courage to be as a part; and even more, that overcoming isolation and facing the danger of losing one's world in the self-affirmation of oneself as an individual are a way toward something which transcends both self and world. Ideas like the microcosm mirroring the universe, or the monad representing the world, or the individual will to power expressing the character of will to power in life itself — all these point to a solution which transcends the two types of the courage to be.
~ Paul Tillich ~
2024
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DOB: Joan Allen · Benjamin Harrison · Isaac Hayes · Robert Plant · Jim Reeves · Patricia Rozema · Thomas Simpson · Roger Wolcott Sperry · Paul Tillich

Something terrible came to the hills and valleys on that meteor, and something terrible — though I know not in what proportion — still remains. ~ H. P. Lovecraft

  • 2 because this can be interpreted in many ways. A moral interpretation would recount to the inner-most lurkings of human evil, which has remained stagnant for years and years to come. Zarbon 15:48, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 //Gbern3 (talk) 01:22, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Prior to the advent of brain, there was no color and no sound in the universe, nor was there any flavor or aroma and probably rather little sense and no feeling or emotion. Before brains the universe was also free of pain and anxiety. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

  • 2 Zarbon 15:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC) though I might rank it at 3 with just the first sentence.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 01:22, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
Man is estranged from what he essentially is. His existence in a transitory world contradicts his essential participation in the eternal world of ideas.
~ Paul Tillich ~
A self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. You must participate in a self in order to know what it is. But by participating you change it. In all existential knowledge both subject and object are transformed by the very act of knowing.
~ Paul Tillich ~
Our task is to serve the logos out of the depths of our new kairos, a kairos that is now emerging in the crises and catastrophes of our day. Hence, the more deeply we understand fate — our own personal fate and that of our society — the more our intellectual work will have power and truth.
~ Paul Tillich ~
You cannot underestimate what a radical thing it is to change from one art form to another. An author slaves to start with just the right word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph. The sounds of the words are crucial. But all the demands of words and prose are lifted when you make a movie. The physical presence makes many unnecessary and some necessary ones impossible. So you serve two masters as an adapting filmmaker: the author's intention and the needs of film. Sometimes "fidelity" can mean only focusing on one day of a story told over twenty years in a book
~ Patricia Rozema ~
I believe in tension and release, in that if you stay in the the same tone and mode and intensity for too long, it actually becomes monotonous. When you change up your pace or your humour level, then the release is welcome. … I believe that's my biggest job: tone control, and maintaining enough unity so that it all feels like one movie and all the scenes belong together, and yet diversity so that emotional and narrative interest is maintained.
~ Patricia Rozema ~


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