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December 15

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
2004
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. ~ Albert Einstein
2005
Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute. ~ Freeman Dyson (born 15 December 1923)
2006
To talk about the end of science is just as foolish as to talk about the end of religion. Science and religion are both still close to their beginnings, with no ends in sight. ~ Freeman Dyson (date of birth)
2007
It is not the right angle that attracts me,
Nor the hard, inflexible straight line, man-made.
What attracts me are free and sensual curves.
The curves in my country’s mountains,
In the sinuous flow of its rivers,
In the beloved woman’s body.
~ Oscar Niemeyer (his 100th Birthday — born 15 December 1907)
2008
It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. ~ Freeman Dyson
2009
It's kind of fun to do the impossible. ~ Walt Disney (Date of death)
2010
The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms. ~ Muriel Rukeyser
2011
A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad. ~ Freeman Dyson
2012
In time of crisis, we summon up our strength.
Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used.
In time of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all our need, our need for each other and our need for our selves. We call up, with all the strength of summoning we have, our fullness.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2013
Belief has its structures, and its symbols change. Its tradition changes. All the relationships within these forms are inter-dependent. We look at the symbols, we hope to read them, we hope for sharing and communication.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2014
We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God.
~ Freeman Dyson ~
2015
The meanings of poetry take their growth through the interaction of the images and the music of the poem.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2016
In this moment when we face horizons and conflicts wider than ever before, we want our resources, the ways of strength. We look again to the human wish, its faiths, the means by which the imagination leads us to surpass ourselves.
If there is a feeling that something has been lost, it may be because much has not yet been used, much is still to be found and begun.
Everywhere we are told that our human resources are all to be used, that our civilization itself means the uses of everything it has — the inventions, the histories, every scrap of fact. But there is one kind of knowledge — infinitely precious, time-resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2017
The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead. I am no Jedi, but I know the Force. It moves through and surrounds every living thing. Close your eyes … feel it. The light … it's always been there, it will guide you.
~ Star Wars : The Force Awakens ~
2018
The deepest pleasure in science comes from finding an instantiation, a home, for some deeply felt, deeply held image.
~ Wolfgang Pauli ~
  • proposed by UDScott for date of Pauli's death.
2019
I keep thinking what happens when the power of love is twisted into the love of power.
~ Maurice Davis ~
2020
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2021
I had some good opportunities. I was lucky to have had the chance to do things differently. Architecture is about surprise.
~ Oscar Niemeyer ~
2022
However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.
If we use the resources we now have, we and the world itself may move in one fullness. Moment to moment, we can grow, if we can bring ourselves to meet the moment with our lives.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2023
We are against war and the sources of war. We are for poetry and the sources of poetry.
They are everyday, these sources, as the sources of peace are everyday, infinite and commonplace as a look, as each new sun.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2024
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Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:

  • In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad. ~ Freeman Dyson

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Architecture was my way of expressing my ideals: to be simple, to create a world equal to everyone, to look at people with optimism, that everyone has a gift. I don’t want anything but general happiness. Why is that bad? ~ Oscar Niemeyer

  • 3 Kalki 15:21, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:59, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:25, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

My ambition has always been to reduce a building’s support to a minimum. The more we diminish supporting structures, the more audacious and important the architecture is. That has been my life’s work. ~ Oscar Niemeyer

  • 3 Kalki 15:21, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:59, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:25, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

What an artist dies in me! ~ Nero (born December 15)

  • 2 Zarbon 03:33, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: Nero by Edward Champlin - History - 2003 - Page 51
  • 2 Kalki 22:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Hidden talent counts for nothing. ~ Nero (born December 15)

  • 3 because talent is worth nothing if it isn't seen. The same can be said for decisions, ideas, and solutions. Hiding qualities will never allow others to comprehend and understand them. Zarbon 03:33, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: The Flames of Rome - Page 221 by Paul L. Maier - 1991
  • 1 Kalki 22:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC) the ultimate measure of the effectiveness of both talent and genius is knowing when to show it, and when not to. Hidden talents can sometimes count a great deal.

I am acutely aware of the fact that the marriage between mathematics and physics, which was so enormously fruitful in past centuries, has recently ended in divorce. ~ Freeman Dyson

  • 3 Zarbon 07:00, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 22:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I love the war because there is victory at its end. ~ Alp Arslan

  • 2 Zarbon 07:00, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 22:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
To be against war is not enough, it is hardly a beginning.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
The world of this creation, and its poetry, is not yet born. The possibility before us is that now we enter upon another time, again to choose. Its birth is tragic, but the process is ahead: we must be able to turn a time of war into a time of building.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
As we live our truths, we will communicate across all barriers, speaking for the sources of peace. Peace that is not lack of war, but fierce and positive. We hear the saints saying: Our brother the world. We hear the revolutionary: Dare we win? All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us, the wounds, the young and the unborn-we will define that peace, we will live to fight its birth, to build these meanings, to sing these songs. Until the peace makes its people, its forests, and its living cities; in that burning central life, and wherever we live, there is the place for poetry. And then we will create another peace.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
The meanings of poetry take their growth through the interaction of the images and the music of the poem. The music is not the rhythm, which is a representation of life, alone. The music involves the interplay of the sounds of words, the length of the sequences, the keeping and breaking of rhythms, and the repetition and variation of syllables unrhymed and rhymed. It also involves the play of ideas and images.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
We sit here, very different each from the other, until the passion arrives to give us our equality, to make us part of the play, to make the play part of us.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
The great ideas are always emerging, to be available to all men and women. And one hope of our lives is the communication of these truths.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~


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