Today

Today is the current day or date, sometimes more broadly used to refer to conditions of the present time.

Quotes

To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. ~ Emma Goldman

Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today. ~ Malcolm X

• What we are today represents an adjustment achieved over the millions and hundreds of millions of years.
  • Rachel Carson Speech at Scripps College (June 1962) In Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment

• Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
  • Attributed to Charles Dederich by The Washington Post (December 10, 1978), p. C5. He was the founder of Synanon, a self-help community for drug abusers and alcoholics, based in California.
  • The exact quote was used by Emmett Grogan in his book Ringolevio,published in 1972, a clear 6 years prior to Dederich. Grogan claims to have first used the phrase in the 1960s at the Dialectics of Liberation conference in London UK in 1967. Either wat the book publication proves his earlier use than Dederich.

• To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.
  • Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia (1923), existing in manuscript as "My Two Years in Russia" this work was published as My Disillusionment with Russia (1923), and My Further Disillusionment with Russia (1924) and finally as a complete one-volume edition (1925)

• The presence of perpetual change
  Is ever on the earth;
  To-day is only as the soil
  That gives to-morrow birth.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Ethel Churchill (or The Two Brides) (1837), Vol. II Chapter 29

• That the bird has no “next day” is certain enough. Therefore be like the bird; remove the next day and then you are without the care of self-torment – and this can be done just because the next day lies in the self. One the other hand, let today drop away almost entirely in comparison with the next day’s trouble, and then you are deepest in self-torment. It all is the difference of one day – and yet what an enormous difference!
  • Soren Kierkegaard Christian Discourses (Christelige Taler) by Soren Kierkegaard Apr 26, 1848 Hong translation 1997 P. 71

• Nothing that is can pause or stay;
  The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
  The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
  The rain to mist and cloud again,
  To-morrow be to-day.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kéramos (1878), line 34.

• Non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere ‘Vivam’:
  Sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie.
  • 'I'll live to-morrow', 'tis not wise to say:
    'Twill be too late to-morrow—live to-day.
  • Martial, Epigrams, i.15, tr. Francis Fawkes.

• Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.
  • Malcolm X, Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews, and a Letter (1970).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.
John Dryden

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 806.

• Out of Eternity
  The new Day is born;
  Into Eternity
  At night will return.
  • Thomas Carlyle, To-day.

• To-day is ours; what do we fear?
  To-day is ours; we have it here.
  Let's treat it kindly, that it may
  Wish, at least, with us to stay.
  Let's banish business, banish sorrow;
  To the gods belongs to-morrow.
  • Abraham Cowley, Anacreontique, The Epicure, line 7.

• To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
  Or in clouds hide them: I have lived to-day.
  • Abraham Cowley, A Vote, last lines.

• Days that need borrow
  No part of their good morrow,
  From a fore-spent night of sorrow.
  • Richard Crashaw, Wishes to his (Supposed) Mistress, Stanza 27.

• What dost thou bring to me, O fair To-day,
  That comest o'er the mountains with swift feet?
  • Julia C. R. Dorr, To-Day.

• Happy the man, and happy he alone,
  He, who can call to-day his own:
  He who, secure within, can say,
  To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day.
  • John Dryden, Imitation of Horace, Book III. Ode XXIX, line 66.

• Die Gegenwart ist eine mächtige Göttin.
  • The present is a powerful deity.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso, IV. 4. 67.

• The acts of to-day become the precedents of to-morrow.
  • F. Herschell, speech in support of Lord Harrington's resolution (May 23, 1878).

• What yesterday was fact to-day is doctrine.
  • Junius, in the dedication of his Letters.

• Oh, the nursery is lonely and the garden's full of rain,
  And there's nobody at all who wants to play,
  But I think if I should only run with all my might and main,
  I could leave this dreary country of To-day.
  • Caroline McCormick, Road to Yesterday.

• To-day what is there in the air
  That makes December seem sweet May?
  There are no swallows anywhere,
  Nor crocuses to crown your hair
  And hail you down my garden way.
  Last night the full moon's frozen stare
  Struck me, perhaps; or did you say
  Really—you'd come, sweet Fnend and fair!
  To-day?
  • Theopbile Marzials, Rondel.

• Rise! for the day is passing,
  And you lie dreaming on;
  The others have buckled their armour,
  And forth to the fight have gone:
  A place in the ranks awaits you,
  Each man has some part to play;
  The Past and the Future are nothing,
  In the face of the stern To-day.
  • Adelaide Procter, Legends and Lyrics.

• Yesterday is past. Tomorrow is but a dream. Today is a gift, cherish each moment.
  • Femi Obikunle and Jeff Kister, 2017

Misattributed

• Oogway: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the "present".
  • Jonathan Aibel and Glen Berger, Kung Fu Panda, (2008).
    • "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, Today is God's gift, that's why we call it the present." (Regarded as an "anonymous poem", in Joan Chittister's Heart of Flesh (1998), p. 129; in Vital Issues: The Journal of African American Speeches (1998), Bethune-DuBois Publications, p. 27, and in Joan Rivers' "From Mother to Daughter" (1998), p. 30.)
    • "Yesterday may be History, Tomorrow is Mystery and Today is our Golden Opportunity!" (As quoted in H.S. Cheesbrough's Canada Lumberman, Volume 62 (1942), Southam-Maclean.
    • "Live today. The past is gone. Today is God's gift to us, whether it be a day of storm or sunshine. Tomorrow may never come, and that is immaterial." (From Friends' Intelligencer, Volume 91, No.1-26 (1934), p. 21)
    • "Yesterday is history; to-morrow is merely a hope; to-day is the only absolute asset of time that is yours." From Frank Pixley's Thoughts and Things (1912), in , Duffield & Company, p. 29.
    • "TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE" appears in a poster by artist Sister Corita KENT in 1976. THIS INFO IS WRONG.

"Today Is the First Day of the Rest of My Life" is from a John Denver song released in 1969. I don't think changing "my" to "your" is something spectacular to credit Charles Dederich for.