Wikiquote

August 31

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians. ~ Chester Bowles
2004
Know Thyself ~ Ancient proverb that was inscribed upon the temple of the Oracle of Delphi.
2005
Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. ~ William Saroyan
2006
Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. ~ William Saroyan
2007
Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it. ~ William Saroyan
2008
The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy— the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops. ~ William Saroyan
2009
There’s not a war between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between extremists and moderates of all the religions. … What is important is not to live in fear. The most dangerous thing to do is to give up and lose hope. The main enemy is not terrorism or extremism, but ignorance. ~ Queen Rania of Jordan
2010
The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less. ~ Eldridge Cleaver
2011
At his best, things do not happen to the artist; he happens to them. ~ William Saroyan
2012
I was never interested in the obvious, or in the details one takes for granted, and everybody seemed to be addicted to the obvious, being astonished by it, and forever harping about the details which I had long ago weighted, measured, and discarded as irrelevant and useless. If you can measure it, don't. If you can weigh it, it isn't worth the bother. It isn't what you're after. It isn't going to get it. My wisdom was visual and as swift as vision. I looked, I saw, I understood, I felt, "That's that, where do we go from here?"
~ William Saroyan ~
2013
To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the first duty of the educator.
~ Maria Montessori ~
2014
I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it.
~ William Saroyan ~
2015
Jesus never said anything about absurdity, and he never indicated for one flash of time that he was aware of the preposterousness of his theory about himself. And he didn't even try to make the theory understandable in terms of the reality and experience of the rest of us. For if everybody else is also not what Jesus said he was, what good is what he said?
~ William Saroyan ~
2016
I don't expect you to understand anything I'm telling you. But I know you will remember this — that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world — no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life.
~ William Saroyan ~
2017
I have always been a Laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres … I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. Laughter to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed.
~ William Saroyan ~
2018
Every great deed of which history tells us, every mighty passion which art can represent, every picture of manners, of civic arrangements, of the culture of peoples of distant lands or of remote times, seizes and interests us, even if there is no exact scientific connection among them. We continually find points of contact and comparison in our own conceptions and feelings; we get to know the hidden capacities and desires of the mind, which in the ordinary peaceful course of civilised life remain unawakened.
It is not to be denied that, in the natural sciences, this kind of interest is wanting. Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications. But intellectual satisfaction we obtain only from a connection of the whole, just from its conformity with law.
~ Hermann von Helmholtz ~
2019
If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future.
~ Maria Montessori ~
2020
The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.
~ William Saroyan ~
2021
I'm here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third country nationals and vulnerable Afghans. The last C-17 lifted off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 30th, this afternoon, at 3:29 p.m. east coast time, and the last manned aircraft is now clearing the space above Afghanistan. … Tonight's withdrawal signifies both the end of the military component of the evacuation, but also the end of the nearly 20-year mission that began in Afghanistan shortly after September 11th 2001.
~ Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. ~
  • proposed by Kalki, from the historic announcement of the end of US military operations in Afghanistan.
2022
Solidarity is a universal value which is becoming indispensable for progress and for the survival of humankind.
But a modern state has to be worthy of solidarity, in other words, it should pursue, in both domestic and international affairs, policies that bring together the interests of its people and those of the world community. This task, however obvious, is not a simple one. Life is much richer and more complex than even the most perfect plans to make it better. It ultimately takes vengeance for attempts to impose abstract schemes, even with the best of intentions.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev ~
  • proposed by Kalki); in regard of his recent death.
2023
The real story can never be told. It is untellable. The real (as real) is inaccessible, being gone in time. There is no point in glancing at the past, in summoning it up, in re-examining it, except on behalf of art — that is, the meaningful-real.
~ William Saroyan ~
2024
Wars, for us, are either inevitable, or created. Whatever they are, they should not wholly vitiate art. What art needs is greater men, and what politics needs is better men.
~ William Saroyan ~
2025
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And that is the story of Alma,//Who knew how to receive and to give.//The body that reached her embalma'//Was one that had known how to live. ~ Alma, Tom Lehrer, dedicated to Alma Mahler (b. August 31, 1879)

Honorable people, do not become a tool in the hands of irresponsible political people. That is not your game. You will not win that game. You will only lose and the country will lose. ~ Robert Kocharyan (born August 31)

Stability is not furniture, and cannot be inherited. ~ Robert Kocharyan (born August 31)

  • 3 because it takes a lot to maintain stability. Zarbon 05:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: BBC Archive - NewsBank - Jul 26, 2001
  • 2 Kalki 00:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

It is apparent that any tool that is used for ten years will eventually rust, will luckily break, and already used tools are no longer in demand. ~ Robert Kocharyan (born August 31)

  • 4 because there is a strong comparison here, that of a tool to humans. And humans have always been tools in the hands of politicians and this quote says a lot. Zarbon 05:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 19:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

You educate a woman, you educate a family. You educate a girl, you educate the future. ~ Queen Rania of Jordan

  • 2 Zarbon 22:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4 — but only if a definite source is found. (as of 2016·08·28 I cannot locate a definite source).
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 4 Great quote. MurielMary 08:58, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

All the gods are dead except the god of war. ~ Eldridge Cleaver

The loneliness you feel has come to you because you are no longer a child. But the whole world has always been full of that loneliness. The loneliness does not come from the War. The War did not make it. It was the loneliness that made the War. ~ William Saroyan

One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater. ~ William Saroyan

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness. ~ William Saroyan

In the most commonplace, tiresome, ridiculous, malicious, coarse, crude, or even crooked people or events I had to seek out rare things, good things, comic things, and I did so. ~ William Saroyan

My writing is careless, but all through it is something that is good, that is mine alone, that no other writer could ever achieve. ~ William Saroyan

Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play. ~ William Saroyan

Every man alive in the world is a beggar of one sort or another, every last one of them, great and small. The priest begs God for grace, and the king begs something for something. Sometimes he begs the people for loyalty, sometimes he begs God to forgive him. No man in the world can have endured ten years without having begged God to forgive him. ~ William Saroyan

The whole world and every human being in it is everybody's business. ~ William Saroyan

There is a small area of land in Asia Minor that is called Armenia, but it is not so. It is not Armenia. It is a place. There are only Armenians, and they inhabit the earth, not Armenia, since there is no Armenia. There is no America and there is no England, and no France, and no Italy. There is only the earth. ~ William Saroyan

Everything and everybody is sooner or later identified, defined, and put in perspective. The truth as always is simultaneously better and worse than what the popular myth-making has it. ~ William Saroyan

Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else. ~ William Saroyan

I see the war as death in one form or another for men dressed as soldiers, and all the men who survived the war, including myself, I see as men who died with their brothers, dressed as soldiers. There is no such thing as a soldier. I see death as a private event, the destruction of the universe in the brain and in the senses of one man, and I cannot see any man's death as a contributing factor in the success or failure of a military campaign. ~ William Saroyan

All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too. ~ William Saroyan

I have managed to conceal my madness fairly effectively, and as far as I know it hasn't hurt anybody badly, for which I am grateful. ~ William Saroyan

Art can no longer afford to be contemptuous of politics, and it appears to be time politics took a little instruction from art. ~ William Saroyan

I believed from the beginning of remembered experience that I was somebody with an incalculable potential for enlargement, somebody who both knew and could find out, upon whom demands could be made with the expectation of having them fulfilled.
I felt at the same time, and pretty much constantly, that I was nothing in relation to Enormity, the Unknown, and the Unknowable. ~ William Saroyan

I have read Schopenhauer at the age of twelve with no bewilderment and no contempt of his contempt for the world and its strange inhabitants, and no contempt for the strange inhabitant himself. ~ William Saroyan

You act as if you know more than I'll ever know, but I've forgotten more than you'll ever know. ~ William Saroyan

Somewhere among every man's ancestors is a prince or a lord, a priest or a saint, and don't forget it. Wake up! Inherit the wealth of your ancestors! ~ William Saroyan

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know. ~ William Saroyan

Don't forget that some things count more than other things. ~ William Saroyan

Everything alive is part of each of us, and many things which do not move as we move are part of us. The sun is part of us, the earth, the sky, the stars, the rivers, and the oceans. All things are part of us, and we have come here to enjoy them and to thank God for them. ~ William Saroyan

We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in. ~ William Saroyan

You must remember always to give, of everything you have. You must give foolishly even. You must be extravagant. You must give to all who come into your life. Then nothing and no one shall have power to cheat you of anything, for if you give to a thief, he cannot steal from you, and he himself is then no longer a thief. And the more you give, the more you will have to give. ~ William Saroyan

I did my best, and let me urge you to do your best, too. Isn't it the least we can do for one another? ~ William Saroyan

The quantity of force which can be brought into action in the whole of Nature is unchangeable, and can neither be increased nor diminished. ~ Hermann von Helmholtz (born 31 August 1821)

There is a kind, I might almost say, of artistic satisfaction, when we are able to survey the enormous wealth of Nature as a regularly ordered whole — a kosmos, an image of the logical thought of our own mind. ~ Hermann von Helmholtz (born 31 August 1821)


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