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January 1

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
Jackie Biskupski is running for a seat in the Utah Legislature, and she's attracting a lot of attention because she's a lesbian. Her Republican opponent, Dan Alderson, is a staunch Mormon, and is running a negative ad campaign calling her lifestyle abnormal and deviant. His six wives agree. ~ Rick Mercer, on This Hour Has 22 Minutes (12 October 1998)
2005
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~
2006
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. ~ E. M. Forster (date of birth)
2007
I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith, and there are so many militant creeds that, in self defence, one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world where ignorance rules, and Science, which ought to have ruled, plays the pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy — they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long. ~ E. M. Forster
2008
What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse. ~ E. M. Forster
  • proposed by Fys
2009
The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. ~ E. M. Forster
2010
The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it. ~ J. D. Salinger
2011
All we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next. ~ J. D. Salinger
2012
Life is a gift horse in my opinion. ~ J. D. Salinger
2013
You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know from experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
~ E. M. Forster‎‎ ~
2014
A legend is sung of when England was young,
And Knights were brave and bold.
The good King had died, and no one could decide
Who was rightful heir to the Throne.
It seemed that the land would be torn by war,
Or saved by a miracle alone —
And that miracle appeared in London town:
The Sword in the Stone.
~ The Sword in the Stone ~
2015
I can't see why anybody — unless he was a child, or an angel, or a lucky simpleton like the pilgrim — would even want to say a prayer to a Jesus who was the least bit different from the way he looks and sounds in the New Testament. My God! He's only the most intelligent man in the Bible, that's all! Who isn't he head and shoulders over? Who? Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls — but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody. Not Moses. Don't tell me Moses. He was a nice man, and he kept in beautiful touch with his God, and all that — but that's exactly the point. He had to keep in touch. Jesus realized there is no separation from God.
~ J. D. Salinger ~
2016
I believe in aristocracy … — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.
~ E. M. Forster‎‎ ~
2017
My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century ... To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.
~ Barry Goldwater ~
2018
Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.
~ Barry Goldwater ~
2019
A humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
~ E. M. Forster‎‎ ~
2020
Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. … Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
~ Barry Goldwater ~
2021
I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
in
~ Four Quartets, "Little Gidding" ~
2022
I'm not looking forward to death; it's important to live while we are here. But those who have died, my mother said, now they know the secret. And someday we all will.
~ Betty White ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of her recent death.
2023
Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free … To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity.
~ Pope Benedict XVI ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.
2024
It is madness for any country to build its policy with an eye to nuclear war.
~ Leonid Brezhnev ~
2025
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New Year's Day
DOB: Leonid Brezhnev · E. M. Forster · James Frazer · Barry Goldwater · Joe Orton · J. D. Salinger

I have good dispositions; my life has been hitherto harmless and in some degree beneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable monster. ~ Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, published that day

  • 2. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 13:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 07:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC) Not a great lead for any "New Year", but could rank this a 3 eventually.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 09:21, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 17:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 allixpeeke (talk) 22:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC) (Ditto on what Kalki said)

If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious. ~ E. M. Forster

  • 3 InvisibleSun 09:21, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 17:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 01:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 2 allixpeeke (talk) 22:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Most of us will be eclectics to this side or that according to our temperament. The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism. And the only advice I would offer my fellow eclectics is: "Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful." ~ E. M. Forster

  • 3 InvisibleSun 09:21, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 17:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 01:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 (leaning toward 2) allixpeeke (talk) 22:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Civilizations have been founded and maintained on theories which refused to obey facts. ~ Joe Orton (born January 1, 1933)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 09:21, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 17:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 01:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

God will not forgive us if we fail. ~ Leonid Brezhnev (born January 1)

  • 4 Zarbon 06:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: Understanding the Cold War: A Historian's Personal Reflections - Page 269 - by Adam Bruno Ulam - History - 2002
  • 1 Kalki (talk · contributions) 19:54, 30 December 2011 (UTC) I can agree with much of the portent of this statement, but actually tend to embrace theologies which believe the Ultimate Being ultimately forgives everyone their mortal flaws, deficiencies and apparent imperfections — but that does not mean it is possible to pardon them — and doing their best to avoid the worst of unpardonable errors and helping others to do the same is the responsibility of the wise. 2 Kalki 01:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC).
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:51, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 allixpeeke (talk) 22:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid. ~ James Frazer

  • 3 Zarbon 06:22, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 01:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC) but might rank this a 3 if extended for more context, it has no clear context in this form. I could probably also rank it a 3, if the initial "The" were trimmed to simply read "Danger, however, is not less real..."; otherwise it should be extended to:
In primitive society the rules of ceremonial purity observed by divine kings, chiefs, and priests agree in many respects with the rules observed by homicides, mourners, women in childbed, girls at puberty, hunters and fishermen, and so on. To us these various classes of persons appear to differ totally in character and condition; some of them we should call holy, others we might pronounce unclean and polluted. But the savage makes no such moral distinction between them; the conceptions of holiness and pollution are not yet differentiated in his mind. To him the common feature of all these persons is that they are dangerous and in danger, and the danger in which they stand and to which they expose others is what we should call spiritual or ghostly, and therefore imaginary. The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid.

I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one. ~ J. D. Salinger (born 1 January 1919)

  • 3 Kalki 20:29, 31 December 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:51, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 (leaning toward 4) allixpeeke (talk) 22:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

  • proposed by AJMH : —This unsigned comment is by 98.14.194.204 (talk • contribs) .
  • 2 Kalki (talk · contributions) 18:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC) No strong relation to the date.
  • 3 allixpeeke (talk) 22:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC) (Although, given the greatness of this quote, it might be prudent to find a date that further heightens its importance.)

It is right to be kind and even sacrifice ourselves to people who need kindness and lie in our way — otherwise, besides failing to help them, we run into the aridity of self-development. To seek for recipients of one's goodness, to play the Potted Jesus leads to the contrary the Christian danger. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

How can I tell what I think till I see what I say? ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver — in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

A man does not talk to himself quite truly — not even to himself: the happiness or misery that he secretly feels proceeds from causes that he cannot quite explain, because as soon as he raises them to the level of the explicable they lose their native quality. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

It is now only in letters I write what I feel: not in literature any more, and I seldom say it, because I keep trying to be amusing. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now — I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which — thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you — is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

Pathos, piety, courage, — they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think is creation's. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

She might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

Poetry is a spirit; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

Two Cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people — a very few people, but a few novelists are among them — are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest is against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent. ~ E. M. Forster‎‎

I can't believe God recognizes any form of blasphemy. It's a prissy word invented by the clergy. ~ J. D. Salinger

The religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world. ~ J. D. Salinger

Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions. ~ J. D. Salinger

Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. ~ J. D. Salinger

I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. ~ J. D. Salinger

I swear to you, you're missing the whole point of the Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer has one aim, and one aim only. To endow the person who says it with Christ-Consciousness. Not to set up some little cozy, holier-than-thou trysting place with some sticky, adorable divine personage who'll take you in his arms and relieve you of all your duties and make all your nasty Weltschmerzen and Professor Tuppers go away and never come back. And by God, if you have intelligence enough to see that — and you do — and yet you refuse to see it, then you're misusing the prayer, you're using it to ask for a world full of dolls and saints and no Professor Tuppers. ~ J. D. Salinger

If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable. ~ J. D. Salinger

Jesus knew — knew — that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff. ~ J. D. Salinger

Even if you went out and searched the whole world for a master — some guru, some holy man — to tell you how to say your Jesus Prayer properly, what good would it do you? How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose? Can you tell me that? ~ J. D. Salinger

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid. ~ J. D. Salinger

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal.  They weren't only equal before God and the law.  They were equal every which way.  Nobody was smarter than anybody else.  Nobody was better looking than anybody else.  Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.  All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. ~ "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

  • 4 if used on 1 January 2081, 2 (leaning toward 1) if used on any other date.  allixpeeke (talk) 22:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 20:48, 31 December 2014 (UTC) but with a strong lean toward 4, IF used on 1 January 2081, and a strong lean toward 2 otherwise.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! ~ Barry Goldwater


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