Wikiquote

November 21

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
Fame is something which must be won; honor is something which must not be lost. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
2005
We must believe in free will — we have no choice. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer (born 21 November 1902 or 14 July 1904; uncertainties exist)
2006
Man is free at the instant he wants to be. ~ Voltaire (date of birth)
2007
It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him. ~ Voltaire
2008
If your object is to secure liberty, you must learn to do without authority and compulsion. If you intend to live in peace and harmony with your fellow-men, you and they should cultivate brotherhood and respect for each other. If you want to work together with them for your mutual benefit, you must practice cooperation. The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower it is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence. ~ Alexander Berkman
2009
Although I came to doubt all revelation, I can never accept the idea that the Universe is a physical or chemical accident, a result of blind evolution. Even though I learned to recognize the lies, the clichés and the idolatries of the human mind, I still cling to some truths which I think all of us might accept some day. There must be a way for man to attain all possible pleasures, all the powers and knowledge that nature can grant him, and still serve God — a God who speaks in deeds, not in words, and whose vocabulary is the Cosmos. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
2010
"Man's inhumanity to man" is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep. ~ Alexander Berkman
2011
I know as a writer how valuable a tool is the wastebasket. Perhaps God throws away many experiments before He finds the right expression. Perhaps we are the discards — or we could be the part He keeps. This mystery is what keeps us all going, to see what happens in the next chapter. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
2012
The principles of terrorism unavoidably rebound to the fatal injury of liberty and revolution. Absolute power corrupts and defeats its partisans no less than its opponents. A people that knows not liberty becomes accustomed to dictatorship: fighting despotism and counter-revolution, terrorism itself becomes their efficient school. Once on the road of terrorism, the State necessarily becomes estranged from the people.
~ Alexander Berkman ~
2013
Wherever we are, God's in that moment, God's speaking to us, and if we've just got our ears open and our antennas up, there's no lack of inspiration. He's not silent. We just have to be listening.
~ Steven Curtis Chapman ~
2014
Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it. Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty. My thought is no more subject to authority than is sickness or health.
~ Voltaire ~
2015
Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men.
~ Voltaire ~
2016
Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed: when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so.
~ Voltaire ~
2017
When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.
~ Isaac Bashevis Singer ~
2018
All mortals are equal; it is not their birth,
But virtue itself that makes the difference.
~ Voltaire ~
2019
We think we write definitively of those parts of our nature that are dead and therefore beyond change, but that which writes is still changing — still in doubt. Even a monotonously undeviating path of self-examination does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. I stumble towards my grave confused and hurt and hungry.
~ Quentin Crisp ~
  • proposed by N6n
2020
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly — that is the first law of nature.
~ Voltaire ~
2021
All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.
~ Voltaire ~
2022
Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. If you do not use the intelligence with which God endowed your mind to resist believing impossibilities, you will not be able to use the sense of injustice which God planted in your heart to resist a command to do evil. Once a single faculty of your soul has been tyrannized, all the other faculties will submit to the same fate.
~ Voltaire ~
2023
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edit

Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors. ~ Voltaire

  • 3 InvisibleSun 01:09, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
  • 4 Zarbon 06:47, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki with a lean toward 0 — as such is the human condition ONLY when very ignorant and confused … there are MANY humans who do not succumb to such delusions, which this portion of a quip does not make clear. (talk · contributions) 20:20, 20 November 2009 (UTC) 2 Kalki 19:31, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free! ~ Bryan Procter

  • 2 Zarbon 02:31, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 19:31, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

There's obviously always danger in making music or art for art's sake. Even as Christians we can be guilty of that, being more about the art than the Artist who gave us this gift. ~ Steven Curtis Chapman

  • 2 Zarbon 23:22, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:31, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Only the heel
Of splendid steel
Shall stand secure on sliding fate,
When golden navies weep their freight. ~ Arthur Quiller-Couch

  • 3 Zarbon 23:22, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 19:31, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 22:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I could not find the way to God;
There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road
Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned—
I was bewildered and I turned. ~ Arthur Quiller-Couch

  • 2 Zarbon 23:22, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:31, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
~ Voltaire ~
Nothing is so common as to imitate one's enemies, and to use their weapons.
~ Voltaire ~
The Eternal has his designs from all eternity. If prayer is in accord with his immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of him what he has resolved to do. If one prays to him to do the contrary of what he has resolved, it is praying that he be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is believing that he is thus, it is to mock him. Either you ask him a just thing, in which case he must do it, the thing being done without your praying to him for it, and so to entreat him is then to distrust him; or the thing is unjust, and then you insult him. You are worthy or unworthy of the grace you implore: if worthy, he knows it better than you; if unworthy, you commit another crime by requesting what is undeserved.
In a word, we only pray to God because we have made him in our image. We treat him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke or appease.
~ Voltaire ~
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
~ Voltaire ~
If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.
~ Voltaire ~
Almost everything is imitation. … The most original minds borrowed from one another. … It is with books as with the fire in our hearths; we go to a neighbor to get the embers and light it when we return home, pass it on to others, and it belongs to everyone.
~ Voltaire ~
We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.
~ Voltaire ~
A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.
~ Voltaire ~
Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.
~ Voltaire ~
The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.
~ Voltaire ~
A company of solemn tyrants is impervious to all seductions.
~ Voltaire ~
Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. ... Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty.
~ Voltaire ~
Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil.
~ Voltaire ~
One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.
~ Voltaire ~
I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!" God granted it.
~ Voltaire ~


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