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November 16

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. ~ Jimi Hendrix
2005
From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen. ~ Robert Nozick, (born 16 November 1938)
2006
We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves. ~ Alan Watts (died 16 November 1973)
2007
We must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions. And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we are only six percent of the world's population, that we cannot impose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem. ~ John F. Kennedy, (Speech made on 16 November 1961)
2008
You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break. ~ Chinua Achebe (born 16 November 1930)
2009
There is plenty of room at the top because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity. ~ Nnamdi Azikiwe
2010
There will not be one kind of community existing and one kind of life led in utopia. Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Some kinds of communities will be more attractive to most than others; communities will wax and wane. People will leave some for others or spend their whole lives in one. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others. ~ Robert Nozick
2011
Some anarchists have claimed not merely that we would be better off without a state, but that any state necessarily violates people's moral rights and hence is intrinsically immoral. Our starting point then, though nonpolitical, is by intention far from nonmoral. Moral philosophy sets the background for, and boundaries of, political philosophy. What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus. ~ Robert Nozick
2012
Utopia is a meta-utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably.
~ Robert Nozick ~
2013
Besides the conversation of women, it is dreams that keep the world in orbit. But dreams also form a diadem of moons, therefore the sky is that splendour inside a man's head, if his head is not, in fact, his own unique sky.
~ José Saramago ~
2014
There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules. The noetic enterprise is a primary obligation toward being. Our salvation is linked to it. Not everyone has to read alchemical texts or study superconducting biomolecules to make the transition. Most people make it naively by thinking clearly about the present at hand, but we intellectuals are trapped in a world of too much information. Innocence is gone for us. We cannot expect to cross the rainbow bridge through a good act of contrition; that will not be sufficient.
We have to understand.
~ Terence McKenna ~
2015
Any persons may attempt to unite kindred spirits, but, whatever their hopes and longings, none have the right to impose their vision of unity upon the rest.
~ Robert Nozick ~
2016
Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Taylor, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Merton, Yogi Berra, Allen Ginsberg, Harry Wolfson, Thoreau, Casey Stengel, The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Picasso, Moses, Einstein, Hugh Hefner, Socrates, Henry Ford, Lenny Bruce, Baba Ram Dass, Gandhi, Sir Edmund Hillary, Raymond Lubitz, Buddha, Frank Sinatra, Columbus, Freud, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand, Baron Rothschild, Ted Williams, Thomas Edison, H.L. Mencken, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Ellison, Bobby Fischer, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, you, and your parents. Is there really one kind of life which is best for each of these people?
~ Robert Nozick ~
2017
One persistent strand in utopian thinking, as we have often mentioned, is the feeling that there is some set of principles obvious enough to be accepted by all men of good will, precise enough to give unambiguous guidance in particular situations, clear enough so that all will realize its dictates, and complete enough to cover all problems which actually arise. Since I do not assume that there are such principles, I do not presume that the political realm will whither away. The messiness of the details of a political apparatus and the details of how it is to be controlled and limited do not fit easily into one's hopes for a sleek, simple utopian scheme.
~ Robert Nozick ~
2018
I think that people don't understand. As the Firesign Theater used to say, "Everything you know is wrong." But that is a very liberating understanding, because if everything you know is wrong, then all the problems you thought were insoluble can be framed differently. And there's a way to take the world apart and put it back unrecognizably. We don't really understand what consciousness is at the really deep levels.
~ Terence McKenna ~
2019
Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that's why laws were created.
~ José Saramago ~
2020
Nobody performs her or his duties. Governments do not, because they do not know, they are not able or they do not wish, or because they are not permitted by those who effectively govern the world: The multinational and pluricontinental companies whose power — absolutely non-democratic — reduce to next to nothing what is left of the ideal of democracy. We citizens are not fulfilling our duties either. Let us think that no human rights will exist without symmetry of the duties that correspond to them. It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up. With the same vehemence as when we demanded our rights, let us demand responsibility over our duties. Perhaps the world could turn a little better.
~ José Saramago ~
2021
You can't satisfy everybody; especially if there are those who will be dissatisfied unless not everybody is satisfied.
~ Robert Nozick ~
2022
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, —
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~
  • proposed by Kalki; stanzas of "To the Moon", in regard of the Artemis I lunar mission scheduled to launch early in the morning on this date.
2023
This week we saw the horrible images and stories from Israel and Gaza, and I know what you're thinking: "Who better to comment on it than Pete Davidson?"
Well, in a lot of ways, I am a good person to talk about it because when I was seven years old, my dad was killed in a terrorist attack. So I know something about what that's like.
I saw so many terrible pictures this week of children suffering — Israeli children and Palestinian children. And It took me back to a really horrible, horrible place.
No one in this world deserves to suffer like that, especially not kids, ya know? … My heart is with everyone whose lives have been destroyed this week. But tonight, I'm gonna do what I've always done in the face of tragedy, and that's try to be funny.
Remember, I said TRY.
~ Pete Davidson ~
2024
Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical, stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth. We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if that beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and that all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarled to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skien, or indeed, if we may be permitted on more stock phrase, in the skien of life. … These are the delusions of the pure and unprepared, the beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man, the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless.
~ José Saramago ~
2025
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What if, on a crowded street, you look up and see something appear that should not, given what we know, be there. The person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway to another place. If you choose to go inside you may find many unexpected things. ~ Shigeru Miyamoto (date of birth)

Quote found at: Miyamoto Shrine
—This unsigned comment is by Waluigi Twin (talk • contribs) .

The real historical entity that is becoming imminent is the human soul. The monkey body has served to carry us to this moment of release, and it will always serve as a focus of self-image, but we are coming more and more to exist in a world made by the human imagination. ~ Terence McKenna

  • 3 Kalki 09:19, 16 November 2007 (UTC) Though McKenna often rambles with all manner of radical or trivial conjectures, and I find many of his pronouncements, like some by Timothy Leary, bizarre or irresponsible, I yet find there are also often kernels of significant truth and important ideas among them as well. I did not add him to the suggestions earlier today because I did not have time to fully scan much of my material on him, but want to have at least a few suggestions ready for next year.
  • 1 Zarbon 06:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

There is no dualism in the world of light. The conventions of relativity say that time slows down as one approaches the speed of light, but if one tries to imagine the point of view of a thing made of light, one must realize that what is never mentioned is that if one moves at the speed of light there is no time whatsoever. … One exists in eternity, one has become eternal … One is then apart from the moving image; one exists in the completion of eternity. ~ Terence McKenna

  • 3 Kalki 09:19, 16 November 2007 (UTC) with a VERY strong lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 06:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

No matter how old an individual may be, no matter if he is young or old, if he thinks in accordance with the times, he is immortal. ~ Nnamdi Azikiwe

Pray assign me any part in the government you please; but remember that no single man can bear the whole burden of Empire — I need a colleague, or perhaps several colleagues. ~ Tiberius

  • 3 Zarbon 06:28, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 17:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Life is like a trumpet. If you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out. ~ W. C. Handy

  • 3 Zarbon 06:28, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The real truth that dare not speak itself is that no one is in control, absolutely no one. This stuff is ruled by the equations of dynamics and chaos. There may be entities seeking control, but to seek control is to take enormous aggravation upon yourself. It's like trying to control a dream. ~ Terence McKenna

  • 3 Kalki 17:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 03:10, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 bystander (talk) 06:01, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

We're playing with half a deck as long as we tolerate that the cardinals of government and science should dictate where human curiousity can legitimately send its attention and where it can not. ~ Terence McKenna

We're playing with half a deck as long as we tolerate that the cardinals of government and science should dictate where human curiousity can legitimately send its attention and where it can not. It's an essentially preposterous situation. It is essentially a civil rights issue, because what we're talking about here is the repression of a religious sensibility. In fact, not a religious sensibility, the religious sensibility. Not built on some con-game spun out by eunuchs, but based on the symbiotic relationship that was in place for our species for fifty thousand years before the advent of history, writing, priestcraft and propaganda.

We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it's worth. ~ Terence McKenna

We have to claim anarchy and realize that systems have a life of their own that is anti-humanist. There is definitely an anti-humanist tendency in all systems. ~ Terence McKenna

If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed. ~ Terence McKenna

Progress of human civilization in the area of defining human freedom is not made from the top down. No king, no parliment, no government ever extended to the people more rights than the people insisted upon. ~ Terence McKenna

From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen. ~ Robert Nozick

Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited, to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified, but any more extensive state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right. ~ Robert Nozick

Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights) ~ Robert Nozick

Is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people that constitute the membership of both houses of Congress? ~ Robert Nozick

1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.
2. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.
3. No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of 1 and 2. ~ Robert Nozick

Some communities will be abandoned, others will struggle along, others will split, others will flourish, gain members, and be duplicated elsewhere. Each community must win and hold the voluntary adherence of its members. No pattern is imposed on everyone, and the result will be one pattern if and only if everyone voluntarily chooses to live in accordance with that pattern of community. ~ Robert Nozick

Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire,individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning "capitalist" institutions; or that some communities have them and others don't or some communities have some of them, or what you will. ~ Robert Nozick

Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just. ~ Robert Nozick

Is not the minimal state, the framework for utopia, an inspiring vision?
The minimal state treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual right with the dignity this constitutes. Treating us with respect by respecting our rights, it allows us, individually or with whom we please, to choose our life and to realize our ends and our conception of ourselves, insofar as we can, aided by the voluntary cooperation of other individuals possessing the same dignity. How dare any state or group of individuals do more? Or less? ~ Robert Nozick

Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another. ~ Robert Nozick

In a free system any large, popular, revolutionary movement should be able to bring about its ends by such a voluntary process. As more and more people see how it works more and more will wish to participate in or support it. And so it will grow, without being necessary to force everyone or a majority or anyone into the pattern. ~ Robert Nozick

The nexus of space and time where you are — NOW — is the most immediate sector of your universe. And if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered. You're giving it all away to ICONS. Icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that, you want to dress like X or have lips like Y... This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion. What is real is you, and your friends, your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And, we are told No, you're unimportant, you're peripheral — get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that, and then you're a player. You don't even want to play that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.
~ Terence McKenna ~

So often we need a whole lifetime in order to change our life, we think a great deal, weigh things up and vacillate, then we go back to the beginning, we think and think, we displace ourselves on the tracks of time with a circular movement, like those clouds of dust, dead leaves, debris, that have no strength for anything more, better by far that we should live in a land of hurricanes. ~ José Saramago

We humans are, at bottom, carriers of the time, because we take it with us, we use it, sometimes we waste it and sometimes something remains, though everything is doomed to oblivion.
~ José Saramago ~
Be content to bless each other, that is all the blessing you need, and how I wish that all blessings were so.
~ José Saramago ~
To hope, Hope in what, Hope, just hope, one reaches a point where there is nothing but hope, and that is when we discover that hope is everything.
~ José Saramago ~
Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.
~ José Saramago ~
Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.
~ José Saramago ~
Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.
~ José Saramago ~
The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done.
~ José Saramago ~
The best way to killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.
~ José Saramago ~
Our biggest tragedy is not knowing what to do with our lives.
~ José Saramago ~
You can learn almost everything from reading, But I read too, So you must know something, Now I’m not so sure, You’ll have to read differently then, How, The same method doesn’t work for everyone, each person has to invent his or her own, whichever suits them best, some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don’t understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they’re there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it’s the other side that matters, Unless, Unless what, Unless those river don’t just have two shores but many, unless each reader is his or own shore, and that shore is the only shore worth reaching,
~ José Saramago ~


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