Wikiquote

February 24

date

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
Ethics and Aesthetics are one. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
2005
We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on. ~ Steve Jobs (born 24 February 1955)
2006
Our armament must be adequate to the needs, but our faith is not primarily in these machines of defense but in ourselves. ~ Chester W. Nimitz (born 24 February 1885)
2007
Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so irreparably his. ~ George A. Moore
2008
When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth. ~ Steve Jobs (born 24 February 1955)
2009
The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand. ~ George A. Moore
2010
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. ~ George A. Moore
2011
God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless. ~ Chester W. Nimitz
2012
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ~ Steve Jobs
2013
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
~ Steve Jobs ~
2014
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
~ Steve Jobs ~
2015
You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
~ Steve Jobs ~
2016
The United States was made by men of all races and colors, not for white men, but for the refuge and defense of man. If it does not rest upon the natural rights of man, it rests nowhere. If it does not exist by the consent of governed then any exclusion is possible, and it is a shorter step from an exclusive white man's government to an exclusively rich white man's government, than it is from a system for mankind to one for white men. The spirit which excludes some men today because they are of a certain color, may exclude others tomorrow because they are of a certain poverty or a certain church or a certain birthplace. There is no safety, no guarantee, no security in a prejudice. If we build strong and long, we must build upon moral principle.
~ George William Curtis ~
2017
It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
~ Steve Jobs ~
2018
Man is innately a creature of love … love is the most powerful force in the universe, and eventually — it's a very slow process — it will conquer.
~ Dennis Weaver ~
2019
Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?
~ Steve Jobs ~
2020
I am a white man, I believe. Will anybody undertake to teach me what are the antipathies and loathings of white men? What mean whites may or may not like is of small importance. But the generous soul of my race, which has led the van in the great march of liberty and civilization, and whose lofty path is marked by the broken chains of every form of slavery, has an instinctive hatred of injustice, of exclusive privilege, of arrogance, ignorance, and baseness, and an instinctive love of honor, magnanimity and justice. The white soul of my race naturally loves the man, of whatever race or color, who bravely fights and gloriously dies for equal rights, and instinctively loathes every man who, saved by the blood of such heroes, deems himself made of choicer clay.
~ George William Curtis ~
2021
Whoever, in the present juncture of our affairs, can proclaim his entire political creed as frankly in Charleston as in Boston, can do it only because he has stricken from the list our distinctive national principle, without which we are not Americans at all — the natural equal rights of men. If Washington or Jefferson or Madison should utter upon his native soil today the opinions he entertained and expressed upon this question, he would be denounced as a fanatical abolitionist. To declare the right of all men to liberty is sectional, because slavery is afraid of liberty and strikes the mouth that speaks the word.
~ George William Curtis ~
2022
Hindsight is notably cleverer than foresight.
~ Chester W. Nimitz ~
2023
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Quotes by people born this day, already usedEdit

  • See, I write jokes for a living, man. I sit in my hotel at night and think of something that's funny and then I go get a pen and write 'em down. Or, if the pen's too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny. ~ Mitch Hedberg
  • I had a stick of Carefree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality. ~ Mitch Hedberg

SuggestionsEdit

After all there is but one race — humanity. ~ George A. Moore

  • 3 InvisibleSun 06:31, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 20:07, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 22:48, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The public will accept a masterpiece, but it will not accept an attempt to write a masterpiece.. ~ George A. Moore

  • 3 Kalki 00:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 05:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

A great artist is always before his time or behind it. ~ George A. Moore

  • 3 Kalki 00:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 I like this one. Unique. Zarbon 05:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The mind petrifies if a circle be drawn around it, and it can hardly be denied that dogma draws a circle round the mind. ~ George A. Moore

Pearl Harbor has now been partially avenged. Vengeance will not be complete until Japanese sea power has been reduced to impotence. We have made substantial progress in that direction. Perhaps we will be forgiven if we claim we are about midway to our objective! ~ Chester W. Nimitz

The basic objectives and principles of war do not change.
The final objective in war is the destruction of the enemy's capacity and will to fight, and thereby force him to accept the imposition of the victor's will. ~ Chester W. Nimitz

Sir Walter Raleigh declared in the early 17th century that "whoever commands the sea, commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself." This principle is as true today as when uttered, and its effect will continue as long as ships traverse the seas. ~ Chester W. Nimitz

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into war. … The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. ~ Chester W. Nimitz

They fought together as brothers in arms; they died together and now they sleep side by side...To them, we have a solemn obligation — the obligation to ensure that their sacrifice will help make this a better and safer world in which to live. ~ Chester W. Nimitz

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me. ~ Steve Jobs

We used to dream about this stuff. Now we get to build it. It's pretty great. ~ Steve Jobs

I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates. ~ Steve Jobs

I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next. ~ Steve Jobs

Don't you know that what happens to you once always happens again? You always react in the same way to the same thing. It's no accident when you make a mess. Then you do it again. It's called destiny. ~ Cesare Pavese

A white man's government? Not a government of intelligence, of justice, of virtue? Not a government by the consent of the governed, but a government of complexion? Where reason is skin deep? Who is a white man? Is a Spaniard? Is a Creole? Is an octoroon? Ohio says that a blood mixture of half-and-half will do for her. But if you have a qualification for the enjoyment of equal rights which vast numbers of our population cannot by nature satisfy, it is as if you made it depend upon a man's height or the color of his hair. You ask us to prefer a system of accidents to one of principles. You ask us to agree that a worthless, idle, drunken rascal, whose face might possibly be white if it could ever be washed clean enough, may be more safely trusted with political power, than an honest, intelligent, sober, industrious colored citizen.
~ George William Curtis ~
Inferior race? Was it they who carved the skulls of our boys into drinking-cups and their bones into trinkets? Was it they who starved and froze our brothers into idiocy and madness at Andersonville and Belle-Isle? Was it they who hunted our darlings with bloodhounds, or hung faithful Union men before the very eyes of their wives and children? Come! Come! Brothers of my race, whether at the north or south, these things which we all execrate and abhor were the work of men of our own color. Let us clasp hands in speechless shame, and confess that manhood in America is to be measured not by the color of the skin, but by the quality of the soul.
~ George William Curtis ~
  • 3.25. Shorter version: "Manhood in America is to be measured not by the color of the skin, but by the quality of the soul." – Illegitimate Barrister, 07:17, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
  • 2 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:14, 23 February 2016 (UTC), with 3 leaning to 4, for the shorter suggestion.
There is no gentleman in America, but he who feels that every man is his equal in natural right, and who does not know that he is cheated if every man does not have fair play.
~ George William Curtis ~
It would have been perfectly easy to say: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all white men of the European race upon this continent are created equal – to their brethren across the water; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; but that yellow, blacky brown, and red men have no such rights." It would have been very easy to say this. Our fathers did not say it, because they did not mean it. They were men who meant what they said, and who said what they meant, and meaning all men, they said all men. They were patriots asserting a principle and ready to die for it, not politicians pettifogging for the presidency.
~ George William Curtis ~
The spirit of caste asks us to believe the outraged race inferior. Inferior? Inferior in what? In sagacity? In fidelity? In nobility of soul? In the prime qualities of manhood? And who are asked to believe this? We? We, hot, panting, exhausted from a fight for our national life in a part of the country where every white face was probably that of an enemy, and every colored face was surely that of a friend. We are asked to say it, whose brothers and sons, escaping from horrible pens of torture and death hundreds of miles from our lines, made their way through swamps and forests, safe from hungry bloodhounds and fiercer men, back to our homes and hearts, only because the men whom in our triumphant fortune we are asked to betray, in our darkest hour of misfortune risked their lives to save ours.
~ George William Curtis ~
You say you want to rest. Very well, so do we – and don't blame us if you stuff your pillow with thorns. You say you are tired of the eternal Negro. Very well, stop trying to turn a man into a thing because he happens to be black, and you'll stop our mouths at the same time. But while you keep at your work, be perfectly sure that we shall keep at ours. If you are up at five o'clock, we shall be up at four. We shall agitate, agitate, agitate, until the Supreme Court, obeying the popular will, proclaims that all men have original equal rights which government did not give and cannot justly take away.
~ George William Curtis ~
Slavery originated in force, by the stronger against the weaker party, and not by natural right; that it is maintained and upheld by oppression and wrong, and against the law of nature. This usurped ownership in man is not that kind of property which is recognized by the general consent of mankind. The advanced state of civilized society does not recognize the right of one man to own another man against his will. The inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is conceded to all. The right of every man to himself, to enjoy the fruits of his own ingenuity and industry, are among the natural rights of every person.
~ Elbridge G. Spaulding ~



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