Wikiquote

October 8

date

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
We've moved away from being a culture of people who think about movies to one made up of people who believe that spouting a list of preferences is the same as registering an opinion. ~ Stephanie Zacharek
2004
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else. ~ Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend
2005
Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known. ~ Frank Herbert in Dune (born 8 October 1920)
2006
Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife? ~ Frank Herbert in Dune
2007
The sequential nature of actual events is not illuminated with lengthy precision by the powers of prescience except under the most extraordinary circumstances. The oracle grasps incidents cut out of the historic chain. Eternity moves. It inflicts itself upon the oracle and the supplicant alike. Let Muad'dib's subjects doubt his majesty and his oracular visions. Let them deny his powers. Let them never doubt Eternity. ~ Frank Herbert in Dune Messiah
2008

The year of jubilee has come;
Gather the gifts of Earth with equal hand;
Henceforth ye too may share the birthright soil,
The corn, drink the wine and all the harvest-home.

~ Edmund Clarence Stedman ~

2009
Muad'Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us "The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door." And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning "That path leads ever down into stagnation." ~ Frank Herbert in Dune ~
2010
One always feels that a merely educated man holds his philosophical views as if they were so many pennies in his pocket. They are separate from his life. Whereas with a cultured man there is no gap or lacuna between his opinions and his life. Both are dominated by the same organic, inevitable fatality. They are what he is. ~ John Cowper Powys
2011
Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum. ~ Frank Herbert in Chapterhouse : Dune ~
2012
The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such demands. "I already know the important things!" we say. Then Changer comes and throws our old ideas away.
~ Frank Herbert ~
in
~ Chapterhouse : Dune ~
2013
To know a thing well, know it limits. Only when pushed beyond its tolerances will true nature be seen. Do not depend only on theory if your life is at stake.
~ Frank Herbert ~
in
~ Chapterhouse : Dune ~
2014
Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.
~ John Cowper Powys ~
2015
The permanent mental attitude which the sensitive intelligence derives from philosophy is an attitude that combines extreme reverence with limitless skepticism.
~ John Cowper Powys ~
2016
Every day that we allow ourselves to take things for granted, every day that we allow some little physical infirmity or worldly worry to come between us and our obstinate, indignant, defiant exultation, we are weakening our genius for life.
~ John Cowper Powys ~
2017
Bless the Maker and all His Water.
Bless the coming and going of Him,
May His passing cleanse the world.
May He keep the world for his people.
~ Frank Herbert ~
in
~ Dune ~
2018
Man is the animal who weeps and laughs – and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back – in a book.
~ John Cowper Powys ~
2019
When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom.
~ Frank Herbert ~
2020
The thing we must do intensely is be human together. People are more important than things. We must get together. The best thing humans can have going for them is each other. We have each other. We must reject everything which humiliates us. Humans are not objects of consumption. We must develop an absolute priority of humans ahead of profit — any humans ahead of any profit. Then we will survive. … Together.
~ Frank Herbert ~
2021
Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.
~ Frank Herbert ~
in
~ Dune ~
2022
Does a populace have informed consent when a ruling minority acts in secret to ignite a war, doing this to justify the existence of the minority's forces? History already has answered that question. Every society in the ConSentiency today reflects the historical judgment that failure to provide full information for informed consent on such an issue represents an ultimate crime.
~ Frank Herbert ~
2023
Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all. Such extremism comes easily to men who have doped themselves with delusions of their own overriding virtue and the rascality of others.
~ John W. Gardner ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…

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3 : Very Good – strong desire to see it used.
2 : Good – some desire to see it used.
1 : Acceptable – but with no particular desire to see it used.
0 : Not acceptable – not appropriate for use as a quote of the day.
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Suggestions

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Let us abolish weapons of mass destruction at home. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. Discrimination is a weapon of mass destruction. ~ Dennis Kucinich (born 8 October 1946)

America stands strongest in challenging terrorism when we do not give up an inch of our civil liberties. ~ Dennis Kucinich

  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:46, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 23:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC) * 3 Kalki 16:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 3; I much like this assertion, but don't have a strong desire to see it used this year, and there are several others I much prefer above it.
  • 2 Zarbon 04:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Denji 21:32, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 N6n 16:08, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Give me to die unwitting of the day,
And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear! ~ Edmund Clarence Stedman

A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

  • 4 Zarbon 05:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 23:03, 2 October 2009 (UTC) * 2 Kalki 19:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 any truth is better than a falsehood ~ Thoreau N6n 16:08, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it. ~ Jesse Jackson

We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams. ~ Jesse Jackson

Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up. ~ Jesse Jackson

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. ~ John W. Gardner

  • 2 Zarbon 05:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 19:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC) with a VERY strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 tending to 4 N6n 16:08, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. ~ John W. Gardner

History never looks like history when you are living through it. ~ John W. Gardner

O, our feeble tests of greatness! Look for one so calm of soul
As to take the even chalice of his life and drink the whole.
Noble deeds are held in honor, but the wide world sorely needs
Hearts of patience to unravel this, — the worth of common deeds.

~ Edmund Clarence Stedman ~

  • 3 Kalki 00:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 02:05, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 N6n 16:08, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I've lost any belief I ever had in scientific policy. I don't think you can have scientific policy. I think science is something like weeds, it just grows of its own accord … and if you've got the right atmosphere, the right situation … then it grows and develops of its own accord. And I believe that science is best left to scientists, that you cannot have managers or directors of science, it's got to be carried out and done by people with ideas, people with concepts, people who feel in their bones that they want to go ahead and develop this, that, or the other concept which occurs to them. ~ Mark Oliphant (born 8 October 1901)

The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man. ~ Frank Herbert in Dune

  • 3 Kalki 20:52, 7 October 2009 (UTC) with a VERY strong lean toward 4.

Our rulers at the present day, with their machines and their preachers, are all occupied in putting into our heads the preposterous notion that activity rather than contemplation is the object of life. ~ John Cowper Powys

  • 3 Kalki 21:05, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
  • 4 N6n 16:08, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The love that interferes and knows not how to leave alone is a love alien to Nature's ways. ~ John Cowper Powys

  • 3 Kalki 21:05, 7 October 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 tending to 4 N6n 16:08, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose. ~ John Cowper Powys

  • 3 Kalki 21:05, 7 October 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 tending to 4 N6n 16:08, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious. Allow for surprises. When we create, there are always other forces at work. ~ Frank Herbert in Chapterhouse : Dune ~

  • 3 Kalki 01:47, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 tending to 4 N6n 16:08, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.
~ Michael Jackson ~
Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.
~ Frank Herbert ~
We sift reality through screens composed of ideas. (And such ideas have their roots in older ideas.) Such idea systems are necessarily limited by language, by the ways we can describe them. That is to say: language cuts the grooves in which our thoughts move. If we seek new validity forms (other laws and other orders) we must step outside language.
~ Frank Herbert ~
We are questioning more than the philosophy behind our dependence upon limited and limiting systems. We question the power structures that have grown up around such systems.
~ Frank Herbert ~
Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking.
~ Frank Herbert ~
Learning a language represents training in the delusions of that language.
~ Frank Herbert ~
Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem.
It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced — in a word, insane. … Heroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe. The mistakes of superheroes involve too many of us in disaster.
It is the systems themselves that I see as dangerous.
~ Frank Herbert ~
No matter how finely you subdivide time and space, each tiny division contains infinity.

But this could imply that you can cut across linear time, open it like a ripe fruit, and see consequential connections. You could be prescient, predict accurately. Predestination and paradox once more.
The flaw must lie in our methods of description, in languages, in social networks of meaning, in moral structures, and in philosophies and religions — all of which convey implicit limits where no limits exist.

~ Frank Herbert ~
Technology is both a tool for helping humans and for destroying them. This is the paradox of our times which we're compelled to face.
~ Frank Herbert ~
What I'm saying in my books boils down to this: Mine religion for what is good and avoid what is deleterious. Don't condemn people who need it. Be very careful when that need becomes fanatical.
~ Frank Herbert ~
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action in mind.
~ Frank Herbert ~
Ecology is a dirty seven-letter word to many people. They are like heavy sleepers refusing to be aroused. "Leave me alone! It's not time to get up yet!"
~ Frank Herbert ~
When we speak of defending the environment, we are speaking of defending our own lives.
~ Frank Herbert ~
I now believe that evolution, or deevolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability.
~ Frank Herbert ~
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
~ Frank Herbert ~


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