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Wikiquote:Quote of the day/April

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Today is Monday, December 30, 2024; it is now 14:24 (UTC)


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This page lists quote of the day proposals specifically for dates in the month of April, and quotes proposed should ideally have some relation to the day, or persons born on it, though sometimes exceptions can be made, usually for notable quotes that relate to recent events, such as the death of prominent individuals. Developing ideas of people or works to quote on specific days can be explored through the Wikipedia page: List of historical anniversaries. The numeric section heading of each date is also a direct link to the Wikipedia list of births, deaths, and other events which occured on that date.

See also: April 2008 · 2009 · 2010 · 2011 · 2012 · 2013 · 2014 · 2015 · 2016 · 2017 · 2018 · 2019

Ranking system:

4 : Excellent - should definitely be used.
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.
2004
Years ago my mother used to say to me... "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh-so-smart, or oh-so-pleasant." Well, for years I was smart — I recommend pleasant. You may quote me. ~ Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in the film Harvey
2005
When you want to fool the world, tell the truth. ~ Otto von Bismarck (born 1 April 1815, and All Fools Day)
2006
The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year. ~ Mark Twain (All Fool's Day/April Fools' Day)
2007
Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread. ~ Alexander Pope
2008
What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered. ~ Milan Kundera (born 1 April 1929)
2009
Very many maintain that all we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown; nor do philosophers pin their faith to others' precepts in such wise that they lose their liberty, and cease to give credence to the conclusions of their proper senses. Neither do they swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity that they openly, and in sight of all, deny and desert their friend Truth. ~ William Harvey (born 1 April 1578)
2010
To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero. ~ Edmond Rostand
2011
I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. ~ Abraham Maslow
2012
They treat me like a fox, a cunning fellow of the first rank. But the truth is that with a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and when I have to deal with a pirate, I try to be a pirate and a half. ~ Otto von Bismarck
2013
The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals.
~ The Coen Brothers ~
in
~ The Big Lebowski ~
2014
That so much time was wasted in this pain.
Ten thousand years ago he might have let off down
To not return again!
A dreadful laugh at last escapes his lips;
The laughter sets him free.
A Fool lives in the Universe! he cries.
The Fool is me!
And with one final shake of laughter
Breaks his bonds.
The nails fall skittering to marble floors.
And Christ, knelt at the rail, sees miracle
As Man steps down in amiable wisdom
To give himself what no one else can give:
His liberty.
~ Ray Bradbury ~
2015
Now and then there's a fool such as I am over you.
You taught me how to love
And now you say that we are through.
I'm a fool, but I'll love you dear
Until the day I die
Now and then there's a fool such as I.
~ Bill Trader ~
2016
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
~ Douglas Adams ~
in
~ Mostly Harmless ~
2017
All of us, if we are of reflective habit, like and admire men whose fundamental beliefs differ radically from our own. But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or count himself lost. … All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
~ H. L. Mencken ~
2018
The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
~ Paul of Tarsus ~
in
~ First Epistle to the Corinthians ~
2019
There's not a thing on Earth, that I can name,
So foolish, and so false, as common fame.
It calls the courtier knave, the plain man rude,
Haughty the grave, and the delightful lewd,
Impertinent the brisk, morose the sad,
Mean the familiar, the reserv'd-one mad.
~ John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester ~
2020
When bad fortune occurs, the unresourceful, unimaginative man looks about him to attach the blame to someone else; the resolute accepts misfortune and endeavors to survive, mature, and improve because of it.
~ Anne McCaffrey ~
2021
Man comes into the world naked and unarmed, as if nature had destined him for a social creature, and ordained him to live under equitable laws and in peace; as if she had desired that he should be guided by reason rather than be driven by force; therefore did she endow him with understanding, and furnish him with hands, that he might himself contrive what was necessary to his clothing and protection. To those animals to which nature has given vast strength, she has also presented weapons in harmony with their powers; to those that are not thus vigorous, she has given ingenuity, cunning, and singular dexterity in avoiding injury.
~ William Harvey ~
2022
Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
~ Otto von Bismarck ~
2023
Pardon me, if I'm sentimental
When we say goodbye,
Don't be angry with me should I cry.
When you're gone, yet I'll dream
A little dream as years go by…
Now and then there's a fool such as I.
~ Bill Trader ~
2024
It is at night that faith in light is admirable.
~ Edmond Rostand ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…

Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:

  • I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me. All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. ~ Wangari Maathai

The Quote of the Day (QOTD) is a prominent feature of the Wikiquote Main Page. Thank you for submitting, reviewing, and ranking suggestions!

Ranking system
4 : Excellent – should definitely be used. (This is the utmost ranking and should be used by any editor for only one quote at a time for each date.)
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.
An averaging of the rankings provided to each suggestion produces it’s general ranking in considerations for selection of Quote of the Day. The selections made are usually chosen from the top ranked options existing on the page, but the provision of highly ranked late additions, especially in regard to special events (most commonly in regard to the deaths of famous people, or other major social or physical occurrences), always remain an option for final selections.
Thank you for participating!

Suggestions

edit

Were I, who to my Cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious Creatures Man,
A Spirit free, to choose for my own Share,
What sort of Flesh and Blood I pleas’d to wear,
I’d be a Dog, a Monkey, or a Bear,
Or any thing, but that vain Animal,
Who is so proud of being Rational.
~ John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (born April 1, 1647)

Whilst the misguided Follower climbs with Pain,
Mountains of Whimsies, heapt in his own Brain,
Stumbling from Thought to Thought, falls headlong down
Into Doubt’s boundless Sea, where like to drown,
Books bear him up a-while, and make him try
To swim with Bladders of Philosophy.
~ John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

For Wits are treated just like Common Whores;
First they're enjoy'd, and then kickt out of Doors.
~ John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish. ~ Milan Kundera

The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and biographies and histories rewritten. ~ Milan Kundera

It is a good world to live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in;
But to beg or to borrow, or to get a man's own,
It is the very worst world that ever was known.
~ John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester ~

Great Negative, how vainly would the Wise
Enquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise,
Didst thou not stand to point their dull Philosophies?

Is, or is not, the Two great Ends of Fate,
And, true or false, the Subject of Debate,
That perfect, or destroy, the vast Designs of Fate.
~ John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester ~

Man differs more from Man, than Man from Beast. ~ John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches. ~ Milan Kundera

Is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about? ~ Milan Kundera

Chance and chance alone has a message for us... Only chance can speak to us. ~ Milan Kundera

Love is our freedom. ~ Milan Kundera

I avow myself the partisan of truth alone. ~ William Harvey

I've been to Sugartown/I shook the Sugar down/Now I'm trying to get to heaven before they close the door. ~ Bob Dylan

—This unsigned comment is by 24.125.163.3 (talk • contribs) .

Not by speeches and votes of the majority, are the great questions of the time decided — but by iron and blood. ~ Otto von Bismarck

The wolf cannot help it that he was created by God the way he is, but one shoots him yet, if one can. ~ Otto von Bismarck

A conquering army on the border will not be stopped by eloquence. ~ Otto von Bismarck

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches. ~ Otto von Bismarck

As art is a habit with reference to things to be done, so is science a habit in respect to things to be known. ~ William Harvey

Politics is not an exact science. ~ Otto von Bismarck

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. ~ Abraham Maslow

Education is learning to grow, learning what to grow toward, learning what is good and bad, learning what is desirable and undesirable, learning what to choose and what not to choose. ~ Abraham Maslow

I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone. ~ Nikolai Gogol

Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever? ~ Daniel Daly

What I look for in a friend is someone who's different from me. The more different the person is, the more I'll learn from him. The more he'll come up with surprising takes on ideas and things and situations. ~ Samuel R. Delany

Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind. ~ Samuel R. Delany

Business is globalizing so fast that it has led to the often quoted ‘clash of civilizations’. People simply have not had time to get to know and understand people of other cultures sufficiently to live and work in harmony. ~ Begum Aga Khan

What say you? It is useless? Ay, I know
But who fights ever hoping for success?
I fought for lost cause, and for fruitless quest!
You there, who are you! — You are thousands! Ah!
I know you now, old enemies of mine!
Falsehood!
Have at you! Ha! and Compromise!
Prejudice, Treachery! …
Surrender, I?
Parley? No, never! You too, Folly, — you?
I know that you will lay me low at last;
Let be! Yet I fall fighting, fighting still!
~ Edmond Rostand

You strip from me the laurel and the rose!
Take all! Despite you there is yet one thing
I hold against you all, and when, tonight,
I enter Christ's fair courts, and, lowly bowed,
Sweep with doffed casque the heavens' threshold blue,
One thing is left, that, void of stain or smutch,
I bear away despite you ... My panache.
~ Edmond Rostand

Instinct is the direct connection with truth. ~ Laurette Taylor

Personality is more important than beauty, but imagination is more important than both of them. ~ Laurette Taylor

Twas Beauty that killed the beast! ~ Edgar Wallace

I present you with a Key. ~ Roger Williams

The God of Peace, the God of Truth will shortly seal this truth, and confirm this witness, and make it evident to the whole world, that the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience, is most evidently and lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace. ~ Roger Williams

I have read … the last will and testament of the Lord Jesus over many times, and yet I cannot find by one tittle of that testament that if He had been pleased to have accepted of a temporal crown and government that ever He would have put forth the least finger of temporal or civil power in the matters of His spiritual affairs and Kingdom. ~ Roger Williams

Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility. No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will. ~ Roger Williams

Only the foolish learn from experience - the wise learn from the experience of others. ~ Rolf Hochhuth

It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry. ~ Nikolai Gogol

We have a special responsibility to the ecosystem of this planet. In making sure that other species survive we will be ensuring the survival of our own. ~ Wangari Maathai

All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. It must be this voice that is telling me to do something, and I am sure it's the same voice that is speaking to everybody on this planet — at least everybody who seems to be concerned about the fate of the world, the fate of this planet. ~ Wangari Maathai

The people are starving. They need food; they need medicine; they need education. They do not need a skyscraper to house the ruling party and a 24-hour TV station. ~ Wangari Maathai

Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking. ~ Wangari Maathai

I'm trying to be a professional singer. … I've never been given the chance before. But here's hoping it'll change. ~ Susan Boyle (born 1 April 1961)

Exchange information, learn to speak sensibly about any subject, learn to express your thoughts, accept new ones, examine them, analyze. Think objectively. Think toward the future. ~ Anne McCaffrey, The White Dragon (dob)

There's something wrong in not appreciating one's own special abilities, my girl. Find your own limitations, yes, but don't limit yourself with false modesty. ~ Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsinger

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.
~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin ~
What kind of fool am I
Who never fell in love?
It seems that I'm the only one
That I have been thinking of.
…
Why can't I fall in love
Like any other man?
And maybe then I'll know
What kind of fool I am.
~ Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Newley ~
I lost my gun today when I left you and I'm the laughingstock of a lot of people. I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know and it's on my mind. And it makes me look like a fool. And I feel like a fool. And you asked that we should say things, that we should say what we're thinking and not lie about things. Well, I can tell you that, this, that I lost my gun today, and I am not a good cop. And I'm looked down at. And I know that. And I'm scared that once you find that out you may not like me.
~ Paul Thomas Anderson ~
in
~ Magnolia ~
Democracy does not reside in speeches but in actual practices of its votaries.
~ K. B. Hedgewar ~
One who is not perturbed by misfortune, who is beyond comfort, attachment and fear, who considers gold as dust. He neither speaks ill of others nor feels elated by praise and shuns greed, attachments and arrogance. He is indifferent to ecstasy and tragedy, is not affected by honors or humiliations. He renounces expectations, greed. He is neither attached to the worldliness, nor lets senses and anger affect him. In such a person resides God.
~ Guru Tegh Bahadur ~
Make no judgments where you have no compassion
~ Anne McCaffrey (dob) ~
It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~


2004
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on. ~ Robert Frost
2005
To be an artist is a blessing and a privilege. Artists must never betray their true hearts. Artists must look beneath the surface and show that there is more to this world than what meets the eye. ~ Marvin Gaye (born 2 April 1939)
2006
Whether it is happy or unhappy, a man's life is the only treasure he can ever possess. ~ Giacomo Casanova (born 2 April 1725)
2007
How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself. ~ Kenneth Tynan
2008
Forgiveness is the offspring of a feeling of heroism, of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness, and still oftener of a natural desire for calm and quietness. Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who delights in nursing it in his bosom. ~ Giacomo Casanova
2009
Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. ~ Émile Zola (born 2 April 1840)
2010
My spirit to yours dear brother,
Do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you,
I do not sound your name, but I understand you,
I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you, and to salute those who are with you, before and since, and those to come also,
That we all labor together transmitting the same charge and succession,
We few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times,
We, enclosers of all continents, all castes, allowers of all theologies,
Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men,
We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers nor any thing that is asserted,
We hear the bawling and din, we are reach'd at by divisions, jealousies, recriminations on every side,
They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade,
Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras,
Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races, ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are.
~ Walt Whitman in "To Him Who Was Crucified" in Leaves of Grass
(for Good Friday 2010, in both Western and Eastern Orthodox calculations)
2011
My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless. ~ Giacomo Casanova
2012
We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victory not to be despised. ~ Giacomo Casanova
2013
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate.

You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today.

~ Marvin Gaye ~
2014
Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.
~ Giacomo Casanova ~
2015
Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it; and the greater power he ascribes to faith, the more he deprives himself of that power which God has given to him when He endowed him with the gift of reason. Reason is a particle of the Creator's divinity. When we use it with a spirit of humility and justice we are certain to please the Giver of that precious gift.
~ Giacomo Casanova ~
2016
No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.
~ Kenneth Tynan ~
2017
The man who forgets does not forgive, he only loses the remembrance of the harm inflicted on him; forgiveness is the offspring of a feeling of heroism, of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness, and still oftener of a natural desire for calm and quietness. Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who delights in nursing it in his bosom.
~ Giacomo Casanova ~
2018
I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of "privileged despair."
~ Kenneth Tynan ~
2019
All writing is an antisocial act, since the writer is a man who can speak freely only when alone; to be himself he must lock himself up, to communicate he must cut himself off from all communication; and in this there is something always a little mad.
~ Kenneth Tynan ~
2020
We shall be judged by what we do, not by how we felt while we were doing it.
~ Kenneth Tynan ~
2021
Eternity is here (in the stable at Bethlehem and on the cross of Calvary) in time.
~ Karl Barth ~
  • proposed by Kalki, for the Good Friday on this date in 2010, and used for the Good Friday of 2021.
2022
Let Moscow not forget that the sanctions policy will only be continued and intensified. As long as there is no peace — sanctions are needed. Until Russia begins to invest as sincerely in the search for peace as it invests in the destruction of our state, sanctions will remain unalterable.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
The man who reacts to the universe with a cry of impotent anguish is acceptable as an artist only if he can persuade us that he has sanely considered the other possible reactions and found them inadequate.
~ Kenneth Tynan ~
2024
I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.
~ Giacomo Casanova ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they might have been. ~ William Hazlitt
2005
Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece. ~ Pope John Paul II (recent death)
2006
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place. ~ Washington Irving (born 13 April 1783)
2007
There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. ~ Washington Irving
2008

Stretch or contract me, Thy poor debtor;
This is but tuning of my breast,
To make the music better.

Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust,
Thy hands made both, and I am there;
Thy power and love, my love and trust
Make one place ev'rywhere.

~ George Herbert ~
2009
If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough. ~ "Meggido Message" (misattributed to Edward Everett Hale)
2010
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
~ Edward Everett Hale
2011
We do not want our world to perish. But in our quest for knowledge, century by century, we have placed all our trust in a cold, impartial intellect which only brings us nearer to destruction. We have heeded no wisdom offering guidance. Only by learning to love one another can our world be saved. Only love can conquer all. ~ Dora Russell
2012
I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles, my constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures. ~ Boss Tweed
2013
Humanity will ever seek but never attain perfection. Let us at least survive and go on trying.
~ Dora Russell ~
2014
Art that means anything in the life of a community must bear some relation to current interpretations of the mystery of the universe. Our rigid separation of the humanities and the sciences has temporarily left our art stranded or stammering and incoherent. Both art and science ought to be blended in our early education of our children's emotions and powers of observation, and that harmony carried forward in later education.
~ Dora Russell ~
2015
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things thee to see
And what I do in any thing,
To do it as for thee.
~ George Herbert ~
2016
The most important thing is to actually think about what you do. To become aware and actually think about the effect of what you do on the environment and on society. That's key, and that underlies everything else.
~ Jane Goodall ~
2017
You may not believe in evolution, and that is all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.
~ Jane Goodall ~
2018
I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior. This completely changes the perspective, if you start thinking that actually we tap into our biological resources to become moral beings. That gives a completely different view of ourselves than this nasty selfish-gene type view that has been promoted for the last 25 years.
~ Frans de Waal ~
  • proposed by Kalki — but originally improperly selected as a quote of Jane Goodall, due to section with an interview with Frans de Waal, rather than Goodall, having been posted to her page.
2019
My mission is to create a world where we can live in harmony with nature. And can I do that alone? No. So there is a whole army of youth that can do it. So I suppose my mission is to reach as many of those young people as I can through my own efforts.
~ Jane Goodall ~
2020
The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
~ Jane Goodall ~
2021
Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is all right, as long your values don't change.
~ Jane Goodall ~
2022
Ukraine has shown the world how to stand up for freedom & democracy, for our shared humanity & for our common values.
~ Roberta Metsola ~
2023
Show me a liar, and I'll show thee a thief.
~ George Herbert ~
2024
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity, that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble. It is only spurious pride that is morbid and sensitive, and shrinks from every touch.
~ Washington Irving ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Where there is great love there are always miracles. ~ Willa Cather
2005
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth...
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
~ Maya Angelou (born 4 April 1928)
2006
There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory. ~ Sir Francis Drake (knighted 4 April 1581)
2007
He who learns must suffer
And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despite, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
~ Aeschylus ~ (Quoted, in variant form, by Robert F. Kennedy in a speech, 4 April 1968, after learning of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which occurred that day.)
2008
All we are saying is give peace a chance. ~ John Lennon (50th anniversary of the first use of what became the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament logo, and later the "Peace symbol" in a march by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, 4 April 1958.)
2009
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men. ~ Black Elk
2010
If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. ~ Yeshua of Galilee (Jesus Christ) ~ For Easter Sunday 2010, in both Western and Eastern Orthodox calculations
2011
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
~ Maya Angelou ~
2012
Without music there can be no perfect knowledge, for there is nothing without it. For even the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony. ~ Isidore of Seville
2013
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
~ William Gladstone ~
2014
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
~ Maya Angelou ~
2015
The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.
~ Andrei Tarkovsky ~
2016
Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful.
~ Andrei Tarkovsky ~
2017
We never get anywhere in this world without the forces of history and individual persons in the background helping us to get there. If you have the privilege of a fine education, well, you have it because somebody made it possible. If you have the privilege to gain wealth and a bit of the world’s goods, well, you have it because somebody made it possible. So don’t boast, don’t be arrogant. You, at that moment, rise out of your self-centeredness to the type of living that makes you an integrated personality.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
2018
Our aim is to persuade. We adopt the means of non-violence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. We will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives to become witnesses to the truth as we see it. … But if physical death is the price that a man must pay to free his children and his white brethren from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive. This is the type of soul force that I am convinced will triumph over the physical force of the oppressor.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
  • proposed by Kalki regarding the 50th anniversary of MLK's death, and the 60th anniversary of the first use of the ☮ Peace sign, in a CND march on this date in 1958.
2019
Freedom is inseparable from conscience. And even if it is true that all the ideas developed by the social consciousness are the product of evolution, conscience at least has nothing to do with the historic process. Conscience, both as a sense and as a concept, is a priori immanent in man, and shakes the very foundations of the society that has emerged from our ill-conceived civilisation.
~ Andrei Tarkovsky ~
2020
⨀
 

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

~ Baruch Spinoza ~
2021
Your God still walks in Eden, between the ancient trees,
Where Youth and Love go wading through pools of primroses.
And this is the sign we bring you, before the darkness fall,
That Spring is risen, is risen again,
That Life is risen, is risen again,
That Love is risen, is risen again, and Love is Lord of all.
~ Alfred Noyes ~
2022
We had thought that invasions of other countries, savage street fighting and atomic threats were grim memories of a distant past. However, the icy winds of war, which bring only death, destruction and hatred in their wake, have swept down powerfully upon the lives of many people and affected us all. Once again, some potentate, sadly caught up in anachronistic claims of nationalist interests, is provoking and fomenting conflicts, whereas ordinary people sense the need to build a future that, will either be shared, or not be at all. Now in the night of the war that is fallen upon humanity, please, let us not allow the dream of peace to fade!
~ Pope Francis ~
2023
What is man? … a strange union of matter and mind! A machine for converting material into spiritual force.
~ Benjamin Peirce ~
2024
One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of the anniversary of MLK's death, and a peace quote for anniversary of CND "Peace symbol".
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Life is too deep for words, so don't try to describe it, just live it. ~ C.S. Lewis
2005
Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools. ~ Thomas Hobbes (born 5 April 1588)
2006
Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thy selfe. ~ Thomas Hobbes (born 5 April 1588)
2007
The world is fast learning that of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him. ~ Booker T. Washington (born 5 April 1856)
2008
I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak. ~ Booker T. Washington
2009
God's own hand
Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him
The end of all our ends is, but with us
Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works
Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this
At least is ours, to make them righteous.
~ Algernon Charles Swinburne ~
2010
Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible. ~ Colin Powell (born April 5)
2011
At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death;
Death could not sever my soul and you,
As these have severed your soul from me.
~ Algernon Charles Swinburne ~
2012
O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. ~ Jesus
2013
In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever, in any country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists.
~ Booker T. Washington ~
2014
Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance.
~ Thomas Hobbes ~
2015
Not from without us, only from within,
Comes or can ever come upon us light
Whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight.
~ Algernon Charles Swinburne ~
2016
I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
~ Booker T. Washington ~
2017
My whole life has largely been one of surprises. I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day of his life — that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful living.
~ Booker T. Washington ~
2018
Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood … progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.
~ Booker T. Washington ~
2019
To promise that which is known to be impossible is no covenant. But if that prove impossible afterwards, which before was thought possible, the covenant is valid and bindeth, though not to the thing itself, yet to the value; or, if that also be impossible, to the unfeigned endeavour of performing as much as is possible, for to more no man can be obliged.
Men are freed of their covenants two ways; by performing, or by being forgiven. For performance is the natural end of obligation, and forgiveness the restitution of liberty, as being a retransferring of that right in which the obligation consisted.
~ Thomas Hobbes ~
2020
I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power; but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. And from hence it is that kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavours to the assuring it at home by laws or abroad by wars; and, when that is done, there succeedeth a new desire, in some of fame from new conquest, in others of ease and sensual pleasure, in others of admiration or being flattered for excellence in some art or other ability of the mind.
~ Thomas Hobbes ~
2021
The source of every Crime, is some defect of the Understanding; or some error in Reasoning, or some sudden force of the Passions. Defect in the Understanding, is Ignorance; in Reasoning, Erroneous Opinion.
~ Thomas Hobbes ~
2022
The world has already seen many war crimes. At different times. On different continents. But it is time to do everything possible to make the war crimes of the Russian military the last manifestation of such evil on earth.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
From today, 31 flags will fly together — A symbol of our unity and our solidarity.
Joining NATO is good for Finland. It is good for Nordic security. And it is good for NATO as a whole.
Finland brings substantial and highly capable forces, expertise in national resilience, and years of experience working side by side with NATO allies.
I am deeply proud to welcome Finland as a full-fledged member of our alliance. And I look forward to also welcoming Sweden as soon as possible.
At times like these, friends and allies are more important than ever. And Finland now has the strongest friends and allies in the world.
~ Jens Stoltenberg ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of the recent acceptance of Finland into NATO.
2024
I have a dream where society will replace guns with dictionaries.
~ Anu Garg ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
There is no sincerer love than the love of food. ~ George Bernard Shaw
2005
See, I write jokes for a living, man. I sit in my hotel at night and think of something that's funny and then I go get a pen and write 'em down. Or, if the pen's too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny. ~ Mitch Hedberg (recent death)
2006
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. ~ Isaac Asimov (died 6 April 1992)
2007
I am less concerned with expressing the motions of the soul and mind than to render visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition which have something divine in their apparent insignificance and reveal magic, even divine horizons, when they are transposed into the marvellous effects of pure plastic art. ~ Gustave Moreau
2008
I have never looked for dream in reality or reality in dream. I have allowed my imagination free play, and I have not been led astray by it. ~ Gustave Moreau
2009

Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Make our pleasant earth below
Like the heaven above.

~ Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney ~

2010

Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean
And the pleasant land.

Thus the little minutes,
Humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages
Of eternity.
~ Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney ~

2011
I believe neither in what I touch nor what I see. I only believe in what I do not see, and solely in what I feel. ~ Gustave Moreau
2012
אלהי אלהי למא שבקתני
ελωι ελωι λεμα σαβαχθανι
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
~ Jesus ~
2013
No one could have less faith in the absolute and definitive importance of the work created by man, because I believe that this world is nothing but a dream.
~ Gustave Moreau ~
2014
Whenever the powers of government are placed in any hands other than those of the community, whether those of one man, of a few, or of several, those principles of human nature which imply that government is at all necessary, imply that those persons will make use of them to defeat the very end for which government exists.
~ James Mill ~
2015
Speak kindly to the erring;
Thou yet may'st lead them back,
With holy words and tones of love,
From misery's thorny track.
Forget not thou hast often sinned.
And sinful yet must be;
Deal gently with the erring one,
As God hath dealt with thee.
~ Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney ~
2016
Sleep and death of the senses; tears and the death of the heart. Do you understand the progression?
Sleep, though sad, is gentler than tears which, though painful, are gentler than death. Ecstasy is more delightful than song, which is gentler than work. Prayer is superior to dreaming which is more elevated than manual work.
~ Gustave Moreau ~
2017
Today I started loving you again
I'm right back where I've really always been;
I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend,
Then today I started loving you again.
~ Merle Haggard ~
2018
Of the laws of nature on which the condition of man depends, that which is attended with the greatest number of consequences is the necessity of labor for obtaining the means of subsistence, as well as the means of the greatest part of our pleasures. This is no doubt the primary cause of government; for if nature had produced spontaneously all the objects which we desire, and in sufficient abundance for the desires of all, there would have been no source of dispute or of injury among men, nor would any man have possessed the means of ever acquiring authority over another.
The results are exceedingly different when nature produces the objects of desire not in sufficient abundance for all. The source of dispute is then exhaustless, and every man has the means of acquiring authority over others in proportion to the quantity of those objects which he is able to possess. In this case the end to be obtained through government as the means, is to make that distribution of the scanty materials of happiness which would insure the greatest sum of it in the members of the community taken altogether, preventing every individual or combination of individuals from interfering with that distribution or making any man to have less than his share.
~ James Mill ~
2019
The government and the people are under a moral necessity of acting together; a free press compels them to bend to one another.
~ James Mill ~
2020
Sometimes in our lives we all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's always tomorrow.

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on.
~ Bill Withers ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
2021
This habit of forming opinions, and acting upon them without evidence, is one of the most immoral habits of the mind. ... As our opinions are the fathers of our actions, to be indifferent about the evidence of our opinions is to be indifferent about the consequences of our actions. But the consequences of our actions are the good and evil of our fellow-creatures. The habit of the neglect of evidence, therefore, is the habit of disregarding the good and evil of our fellow-creatures.
~ James Mill ~
2022
The war in Ukraine is one of the greatest challenges ever to the international order and the global peace architecture, founded on the United Nations Charter.
Because of its nature, intensity, and consequences.
We are dealing with the full-fledged invasion, on several fronts, of one Member State of the United Nations, Ukraine, by another, the Russian Federation — a Permanent Member of the Security Council — in violation of the United Nations Charter, and with several aims, including redrawing the internationally-recognized borders between the two countries.
The war has led to senseless loss of life, massive devastation in urban centres, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.
I will never forget the horrifying images of civilians killed in Bucha.
I immediately called for an independent investigation to guarantee effective accountability.
~ António Guterres ~
2023
No good government can ever want more than two things for its support: 1st, Its own excellence; and, 2dly, a people sufficiently instructed, to be aware of that excellence. Every other pretended support, must ultimately tend to its subversion, by lessening its dependence upon these.
~ James Mill ~
2024
Every fool has a rainbow
But he never seems to find
The reward that should be waiting
At the end of the line.

But he'll give up a bed of roses
For a hammock filled with thorns
And go chasing after rainbows
Every time a dream is born.
~ Merle Haggard ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of hell. ~ Saint Augustine
2005
Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are, and what this life is for. At the center humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul. ~ Saul Bellow (recent death)
2006
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
~ William Wordsworth (born 7 April 1770)
2007
In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs — in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. ~ William Wordsworth
2008
I always work on the theory that the audience will believe you best if you believe yourself. ~ Charlton Heston (recent death)
2009
Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves. ~ William Ellery Channing (born 7 April 1780)
2010
There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. There are periods when...to dare, is the highest wisdom. ~ William Ellery Channing
2011
When I die, I want to die in a Utopia that I have helped to build. ~ Henry Kuttner
2012
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict. ~ William Ellery Channing
2013
I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.
~ William Ellery Channing ~
2014
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be.
~ William Wordsworth ~
2015
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
~ William Wordsworth ~
2016
War is to be ranked among the most dreadful calamities which fall on a guilty world; and, what deserves consideration, it tends to multiply and perpetuate itself without end. It feeds and grows on the blood which it sheds. The passions, from which it springs, gain strength and fury from indulgence.
~ William Ellery Channing ~
2017
Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. … It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It's a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.
~ J.K. Rowling ~
2018
We need not war to awaken human energy. There is at least equal scope for courage and magnanimity in blessing, as in destroying mankind. The condition of the human race offers inexhaustible objects for enterprise, and fortitude, and magnanimity.
~ William Ellery Channing ~
2019
Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music; there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
In one society.
~ William Wordsworth ~
2020
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science …
In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, — in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time … Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge — it is as immortal as the heart of man.
~ William Wordsworth ~
2021
There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions. There will be no dialogue among the religions without global ethical standards. There will therefore be no survival of this globe without a global ethic.
~ Hans Küng ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
2022
We have all seen the atrocities that have been committed in Bucha and other places in Ukraine. This reveals the true nature of President Putin's war, and the targeting and killing of civilians is a war crime and therefore, NATO allies are supporting the international efforts to establish all the facts, to investigate, and to make sure that perpetrators are punished. ... We have seen no indication that President Putin has changed his ambition to control the whole of Ukraine and also to rewrite the international order. So we need to be prepared for the long haul. We need to support Ukraine, sustain our sanctions, and strengthen our defences and our deterrence, because this can last for a long time and we need to be prepared for that.
~ Jens Stoltenberg ~
2023
We are all part of some cosmic pattern, and this pattern works toward good and not evil.
~ Henry Kuttner ~
2024
I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
~ William Wordsworth ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous. ~ Zhuang Zi
2005
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. ~ Gautama Buddha
  • selected by Kalki; 8 April is Hana Matsuri (Flower Festival), the fixed-date celebration of Buddha's Birthday in Japan.
2006
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule. ~ Gautama Buddha
2007
Blessed are the poor in spirit:
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn:
    for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek:
    for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:
    for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful:
    for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart:
    for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers:
    for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake:
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) ~ (for Easter Sunday 2007 in both the Gregorian calendar and Eastern Orthodox reckonings)
2008
Look, look, look to the rainbow
Follow it over the hill and stream
Look, look, look to the rainbow
Follow the fellow who follows a dream.
~ Yip Harburg ~ (born 8 April 1896)
2009
Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.
~ Yip Harburg ~
2010
You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done. ~ Kofi Annan (born 8 April 1938)
2011
Life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When o’er the nursing sod,
The shadows broke and soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.
~ Langdon Smith ~ (died 8 April 1908)
2012
I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes. ~ Jesus
2013
Life is short, short, brother!
Ain't it the truth?
And there is no other
Ain't it the truth?
You gotta rock that rainbow while you still got your youth!
Oh! Ain't it the solid truth?
~ Yip Harburg ~
2014
Lives of great men all remind us greatness takes no easy way.
All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.
~ Yip Harburg ~
2015
If we only have love
We will never bow down
We'll be tall as the pines
Neither heroes nor clowns.
If we only have love
Then we'll only be men
And we'll drink from the Grail
To be born once again.
Then with nothing at all
But the little we are
We'll have conquered all time
All space, the sun, and the stars!
~ Jacques Brel ~
2016
One of these days when the air clears up
And the sun comes shining through
We'll all be drinking that free bubble up
And eating some rainbow stew.
~ Merle Haggard ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
2017
If we only have love
We can reach those in pain
We can heal all our wounds
We can use our own names.
~ Jacques Brel ~
2018
Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts.
~ J. Michael Straczynski ~
in
~ Babylon 5 : Ceremonies of Light and Dark ~
2019
Each of us believes, quite unconsciously of course, that we alone pursue the truth, which the rest are incapable of seeking out and unworthy of attaining. This madness is so deep-rooted and so useful that it is impossible to realize what would become of each of us if it were someday to disappear.
~ Emil Cioran ~
2020
Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
~ Yip Harburg ~
2021
I am a rebel by birth. … I contest anything that is unjust, that causes suffering in humanity. My feelings about that are so strong, I don't think I could live with myself if I weren't honest.
~ Yip Harburg ~
2022
The United States continues to work methodically to collect, to preserve, to analyze evidence of atrocities and to make this information available to the appropriate bodies. We’re supporting a multinational team of experts that’s assisting a war crimes unit set up by Ukraine’s prosecutor general, with a view toward eventually pursuing criminal accountability. These efforts will also ensure that Russia cannot escape the verdict of history.
Just moments ago, as I was coming into this room, I learned that UN member states had come together once again to condemn Russia’s aggression and suspend it from the Human Rights Council. A country that’s perpetrating gross and systematic violations of human rights should not sit on a body whose job it is to protect those rights.
~ Antony Blinken ~
2023
Say, its only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me.
~ Yip Harburg ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears. ~ John Vance Cheney
2005
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. ~ Richard Feynman
2006
I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another, and I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings — and I hate people like that! ~ Tom Lehrer (born 9 April 1928)
2007
It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one’s eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth. ~ Charles Baudelaire (born 9 April 1821)
2008
Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity. ~ Charles Baudelaire
2009
These tall and handsome ships, swaying imperceptibly on tranquil waters, these sturdy ships, with their inactive, nostalgic appearance, don’t they say to us in a speechless tongue: When do we cast off for happiness? ~ Charles Baudelaire
2010
All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good: they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed,
DO WHAT THOU WILT.
Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour.
~ François Rabelais ~
2011
Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul. ~ François Rabelais
2012
He would never take upon him the charge nor government of monks. For how shall I be able, said he, to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself: l If you think I have done you, or may hereafter do you any acceptable service, give me leave to found an abbey after my own mind and fancy. ~ François Rabelais
2013
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
~ Francis Bacon ~
2014
Men are not in hell because God is angry with them. They are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light, which infinitely flows forth from God, as that man does to the light who puts out his own eyes.
~ William Law ~
2015
He that has patience may compass anything.
~ François Rabelais ~
2016
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.
~ Tom Lehrer ~
2017
There is in the word, in the logos, something sacred which forbids us to gamble with it. To handle a language skilfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.
~ Charles Baudelaire ~
2018
"Life is like a sewer — what you get out of it depends on what you put into it."
It's always seemed to me that this is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need today in these trying times of crisis and universal brouhaha.
~ Tom Lehrer ~
2019
No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth". To be an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist.
~ Tom Lehrer ~
2020
When I get to heaven, I'm gonna shake God's hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I'm gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel, ain't the afterlife grand?
~ John Prine ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
2021
Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.
~ François Rabelais ~
2022
Russia is not full of terrible people. It’s just that their leadership has gone so horribly wrong. ... A lot of the world is reacting in the right way. They are angry and they are frustrated. You can see and hear the frustration in the leaders of the other world’s countries. We can see it in the voice of your president, President Biden. He has let slip a couple of his feelings a couple of times over there. Other world leaders have done the same. And I think there’s a groundswell of opinion worldwide. This sort of thing shouldn’t be able to happen. It shouldn’t be able to be allowed. But we are in a world where still, here we are, a fifth of the way through the 21st century and still this obscene situation can happen. The mind boggles.
~ David Gilmour ~
2023
"Christ the Lord is risen to-day,"
Sons of men and angels say.
Raise your joys and triumphs high;
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply!
Love's redeeming work is done,
Fought the fight, the battle won,
Lo! the Sun's eclipse is o'er,
Lo! He sets in blood no more.
~ Charles Wesley ~
  • proposed by Kalki); quote of an Easter Hymn, for Easter Sunday 2023.
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind. ~ Henry James
2005
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. ~ William Hazlitt (born 10 April 1778)
2006
Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality. ~ George William Russell (born 10 April 1867)
2007
To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead. ~ William Hazlitt (born 10 April 1778)
2008
They knew me from the dawn of time: if Hermes beats his rainbow wings,
If Angus shakes his locks of light, or golden-haired Apollo sings,
It matters not the name, the land; my joy in all the gods abides:
Even in the cricket in the grass some dimness of me smiles and hides.
~ Æ ~ [George William Russell] (born 10 April 1867)
2009
It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. ~ William Hazlitt
2010
It was the wise all-seeing soul
Who counselled neither war nor peace:
"Only be thou thyself that goal
In which the wars of time shall cease."
~ Æ ~
2011
Oh Master of the Beautiful,
Creating us from hour to hour,
Give me this vision to the full
To see in lightest things thy power!
This vision give, no heaven afar,
No throne, and yet I will rejoice,
Knowing beneath my feet a star,
Thy word in every wandering voice.
~ Æ ~
2012
Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity, who drink of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings in it for future flight. ~ William Hazlitt
2013
I know now that it was meant to be this way. Sometimes, we have to look beyond what we want and do what's best. This is the path that I've chosen. Let's talk about something else. …You've become a truly great warrior … yet, you've remained humble. You've shown me that power is nothing if not guided by love. And watching you grow has helped me grow … That's why I'm here.
~ Piccolo ~
in
~ Dragon Ball GT ~
2014

Far up the dim twilight fluttered
Moth-wings of vapour and flame:
The lights danced over the mountains,
Star after star they came.

The lights grew thicker unheeded,
For silent and still were we;
Our hearts were drunk with a beauty
Our eyes could never see.

~ Æ ~
2015
A young man who had been troubling society with impalpable doctrines of a new civilization which he called "the Kingdom of Heaven" had been put out of the way; and I can imagine that believer in material power murmuring as he went homeward, "it will all blow over now." Yes. The wind from the Kingdom of Heaven has blown over the world, and shall blow for centuries yet.
~ Æ ~
2016
We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.
~ Æ ~
2017
The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.
~ William Hazlitt ~
2018
The true barbarian is he who thinks every thing barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
~ William Hazlitt ~
2019
There is … no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
~ William Hazlitt ~
2020
The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
~ William Hazlitt ~
2021
It is an old cliché to say that the future is in the hands of the young. This is no longer true. The quality of life to be enjoyed or the existence to be survived by our children and future generations is in our hands now.
~ Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2022
The brave people of Ukraine are fighting for their freedom — and for ours — in the face of unspeakable violence and an unjust invasion. More than 4 million people, mostly women and children, have had to flee for their lives — a population nearly the size of Ireland. World leaders must stand up and stand by Ukranians[sic] now ... those who are fighting and those who have fled ... and stand with refugees everywhere who have been forced from their homes and their lands.
~ U2 ~
2023
Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
~ William Hazlitt ~
2024
I am no politician, and still less can I be said to be a party-man: I have a hatred of tyranny, and a contempt for its tools; and this feeling I have expressed as often and as strongly as I could. I cannot sit quietly down under the claims of barefaced power, and have tried to expose the little arts of sophistry by which they are defended. I have no mind to have my person made a property of, nor my understanding made a dupe of. I deny that liberty and slavery are convertible terms, that right and wrong, truth and falsehood, plenty and famine, the comforts or wretchedness of a people, are matters of perfect indifference. That is all I know of the matter; but on these points I am likely to remain incorrigible, in spite of any arguments that I have seen used to the contrary. It needs no sagacity to discover that two and two make four; but to persist in maintaining this obvious position, if all the fashion, authority, hypocrisy, and venality of mankind were arrayed against it, would require a considerable effort of personal courage, and would soon leave a man in a very formidable minority.
~ William Hazlitt ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. ~ Yeshua of Galilee (Jesus Christ) (Easter Sunday 2004)
2005
Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed'. ~ Charles Evans Hughes (born 11 April 1862)
2006
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others. ~ Leo Rosten (born 11 April 1908)
2007
Extremists think "communication" means agreeing with them. ~ Leo Rosten (born 11 April 1908)
2008
When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. ~ Charles Evans Hughes
2009
No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. … Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses. .. The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope! ~ Charles Evans Hughes
2010
The only real progress to abiding peace is found in the friendly disposition of peoples and … facilities for maintaining peace are useful only to the extent that this friendly disposition exists and finds expression. War is not only possible, but probable, where mistrust and hatred and desire for revenge are the dominant motives. Our first duty is at home with our own opinion, by education and unceasing effort to bring to naught the mischievous exhortation of chauvinists; our next is to aid in every practicable way in promoting a better feeling among peoples, the healing of wounds, and the just settlement of differences. ~ Charles Evans Hughes
2011
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong. ~ Leo Rosten
2012
History is merely a list of surprises. … It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down. ~ Kurt Vonnegut with a lean toward 4.
2013
A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.
~ Kurt Vonnegut ~
2014
Many people need desperately to receive this message: "I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone."
~ Kurt Vonnegut ~
in
~ Timequake ~
2015

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC.

~ Kurt Vonnegut ~
2016
We still proclaim the old ideals of liberty but we cannot voice them without anxiety in our hearts. The question is no longer one of establishing democratic institutions but of preserving them. … The arch enemies of society are those who know better but by indirection, misstatement, understatement, and slander, seek to accomplish their concealed purposes or to gain profit of some sort by misleading the public. The antidote for these poisons must be found in the sincere and courageous efforts of those who would preserve their cherished freedom by a wise and responsible use of it. Freedom of expression gives the essential democratic opportunity, but self-restraint is the essential civic discipline.
~ Charles Evans Hughes ~
2017
Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward — and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.
~ Kurt Vonnegut ~
2018
In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear. To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign proclaiming: Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong!
Open your eyes that you may see, Oh men of mildewed minds, and listen to me ye bewildered millions!
For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the "laws" of man and of "God"!
I request reason for your golden rule and ask the why and wherefore of your ten commandments. … I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness.
I raise up in stern invasion the standard of the strong!
~ Anton LaVey ~
2019
Black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole, both to the outside, and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up. There's a way out.
~ Stephen Hawking ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to the release of the first direct photograph of a Black Hole.
2020
We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.
~ Primo Levi ~
2021
When my own time comes to join the choir invisible or whatever, God forbid, I hope someone will say, "He's up in Heaven now." Who really knows? I could have dreamed all this.
My epitaph in any case? "Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt." I will have gotten off so light, whatever the heck it is that was going on.
~ Kurt Vonnegut ~
2022
The War on Ukraine is an unimaginable tragedy ... As a human, and as an artist, I felt compelled to respond in the most significant way I could. ... I had always said, that the only time I would ever consider singing 'IMAGINE' would be if it was the 'End of the World'
But also because his lyrics reflect our collective desire for peace worldwide. Because within this song, we’re transported to a space, where love and togetherness become our reality, if but for a moment in time…
The song reflects the light at the end of the tunnel, that we are all hoping for...
As a result of the ongoing murderous violence, millions of innocent families, have been forced to leave the comfort of their homes, to seek asylum elsewhere.
I’m calling on world leaders and everyone who believes in the sentiment of IMAGINE, to stand up for refugees everywhere!
~ Julian Lennon ~
2023
There is no path to peace except as the will of peoples may open to it. The way of peace is through agreement, not through force.
~ Charles Evans Hughes ~
2024
There is a sort of mythology that grows up about what happened, which is different from what really did happen.
~ Peter Higgs ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.


2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt. ~ Pierre Trudeau (on Canadian relations with the US)
2005
A living body is not merely an integration of limbs and flesh but it is the abode of the soul which potentially has perfect perception, perfect knowledge, perfect power, and perfect bliss. ~ Mahavira (599 or 549 BC) Mahavira Jayanti 2005 celebrating Mahavira's birth (Cregorian calendar and the traditional Jain calculations do not correspond precisely from year to year).
2006
Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed. ~ Tom Clancy (born 12 April 1947)
2007
Fighting wars is not so much about killing people as it is about finding things out. The more you know, the more likely you are to win a battle. ~ Tom Clancy
2008
The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments. - Henry Clay (born 12 April 1777)
2009
He that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) (Easter Sunday 2009)
2010
No matter what you or anyone else does, there will be someone who says that there's something bad about it. Whenever somebody comes up with a good idea, there's somebody else who has never had a good idea in his life who stands up and says, "Oh, you can't do that..." ~ Tom Clancy
2011
I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty. There are some ten thousand religious sects — each with its own cosmology, each with its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but are instruments of evil, besides. None of the ten thousand has yet persuaded me to make the requisite leap of faith. In the absence of conviction, I've come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain — which doesn't strike me as something to lament. Accepting the essential inscrutability of existence, in any case, is surely preferable to its opposite: capitulating to the tyranny of intransigent belief. And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why — which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive. ~ Jon Krakauer
2012
Historically, anything that gets information to people is good for the world. The most important human being whoever lived, if you want to leave out religious figures, would be Johannes Gutenberg... that's when the liberation of human thought happened, because people could read the thoughts of people across the world, and have thoughts of their own, and publish them and spread information around. Anything that gets information to people is good. ~ Tom Clancy
2013
The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers. Each of us emerges from the preconsciousness of babyhood and simply finds himself here, in it, in the world. That experience alone astonishes some people. What is all this — what is the world? And what are we? From the beginning of humanity some have been under a compulsion to ask these questions, and have felt a craving for the answers. This is what is really meant by any such phrase as "mankind's need for metaphysics."
~ Bryan Magee ~
2014
I have very strongly this feeling... that our everyday life is at one and the same time banal, overfamiliar, platitudinous and yet mysterious and extraordinary.
~ Bryan Magee ~
2015
Religion is another name for the realization of Truth. It consists in becoming and being one with the Supreme Being. Doctrines and dogmas are only details of a secondary nature.
~ Swami Narayanananda ~
2016
Life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die.
~ Tom Clancy ~
2017
The average guy is smart enough to know the difference between what works and what doesn't, and if you have bad information, sooner or later, you figure it out and you get onto something else.
~ Tom Clancy ~
2018
The drafters of the Constitution had made one simple but far-reaching error. They'd assumed that the people selected by The People to manage the nation would be as honest and honorable as they'd been. One could almost hear the "Oops!" emanating from all those old graves.
~ Tom Clancy ~
2019
I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain't so.
~ Josh Billings ~
2020
Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.
~ Gospel of Luke ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to Easter Sunday 2020, by the Western calendar.
2021
I have heard something said on this and a former occasion about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance. I owe allegiance to two sovereignty, and only two: one is the sovereignty of this Union, and the other is the sovereignty of the state of Kentucky. My allegiance is to this Union and to my state; but if gentlemen suppose they can exact from me an acknowledgement of allegiance to any ideal or future contemplated confederacy of the South, I here declare that I owe no allegiance to it; nor will I, for one, come under any such allegiance if I can avoid it.
~ Henry Clay ~
2022
There are no words for the horror I have seen in Bucha, the ugly face of Putin's army terrorising people. And I have so much admiration for our brave Ukrainian friends fighting against this. They are fighting our war. It is our fight that they are in. Because it is not only Ukraine fighting for its sovereignty and integrity, but they are also fighting for the question whether humanity will prevail or whether heinous devastation will be the result. It is the question whether democracy will be stronger or if it is autocracy that will dominate. It is the question whether there is the right of might dominating or whether it is the rule of law.
~ Ursula von der Leyen ~
2023
The one Reality takes manifold names and forms as a result of human ignorance. It is one and the same Thing that a Bhakta calls God, a Jnani calls Brahman, a Shakta calls Shakti, an Atheist calls Nature, a Scientist calls Force or Energy, a Christian calls Father in Heaven, a Mussulman calls Allah, some others call Infinity or Truth and a Vedantin calls Atman or Self. Whatever different names there may be, the fact remains that the Thing is one and the same. The difference is only in names. The Absolute Thing, which is beyond name and form, is birthless, growthless, decayless, deathless, sexless, All-pervading, All-knowing, All-blissful, without beginning, without end, changeless, beyond time, space and causation. The One Thing or the Ocean of Consciousness by Itself is ever the same — One only without a second.
~ Swami Narayanananda ~
2024
The Ultimate Truth is called God. This one can realize in the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. A circle can have only one centre but it can have numerous radii. The centre can be compared to God and the radii to religions. So, no one sect, no one religion or book can make an absolute claim of It.
~ Swami Narayanananda ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
2005
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. ~ Thomas Jefferson (born 13 April 1743 (N.S.))
2006
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. ~ Thomas Jefferson
2007
The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths. ~ Christopher Hitchens
2008
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. ~ Thomas Jefferson
2009
I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. ~ Thomas Jefferson
2010
History says don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.
~ Seamus Heaney ~
2011
There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive. ~ Thomas Jefferson
2012
A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy. ~ Guy Fawkes
2013
Let us do something while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us!
~ Samuel Beckett ~
2014
Over the mountains,
And over the waves,
Over the fountains,
And under the graves;
Over the floods that are deepest,
Which do Neptune obey;
Over the rocks that are steepest,
Love will find out the way.
~ Thomas Percy ~
2015
I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another, for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.
~ Thomas Jefferson ~
2016
I've learned some things from having lived:
If you're alive, experience largely, merge with rivers, heavens, cosmos
For what we call living is a gift given to life
And life is a gift bestowed upon us
~ Ataol Behramoğlu ~
2017
I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.
~ Thomas Jefferson ~
2018
It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights; that confidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther, our confidence may go; and let the honest advocate of confidence read the Alien and Sedition Acts, and say if the Constitution has not been wise in fixing limits to the government it created, and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits; let him say what the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on the President, and the President of our choice has assented to and accepted, over the friendly strangers, to whom the mild spirit of our country and its laws had pledged hospitality and protection; that the men of our choice have more respected the bare suspicions of the President than the solid rights of innocence, the claims of justification, the sacred force of truth, and the forms and substance of law and justice.
In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
~ Thomas Jefferson ~
  • proposed by InvisibleSun in 2007 in a shorter form; a more extensive form proposed in 2018 by Kalki
2019
To know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.
~ Samuel Beckett ~
2020
If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.
~ Thomas Jefferson ~
2021
If we do not learn to sacrifice small differences of opinion, we can never act together. Every man cannot have his way in all things. If his own opinion prevails at some times, he should acquiesce on seeing that of others preponderate at others. Without this mutual disposition we are disjointed individuals, but not a society.
~ Thomas Jefferson ~


2022
Ukraine is now on the front line of the war — global war — of freedom against tyranny. The war the free world didn't want to admit existed. It cannot be ignored any longer.
Brave Ukrainians are fighting like hell and dying right now to remind us not to take liberty for granted. Putin, like every dictator before him, underestimated the free will of free people. They deserve every weapon, every resource to win this war. Because they're fighting for us. Not only for the whole and free Ukraine.
...
This is not chess. This is not a battle between opposite colors, but of opposite values. Freedom, life and love versus tyranny, death and hatred.
This is not chess. But sometimes things are black and white. Sometimes you have to fight for what you believe. Or you lose it.
This is not chess. There are no draws, no compromises in our battle with true evil. It's win or lose. And so we must fight. And so we must win.
Slava Ukraini! Glory to Ukraine. Glory to freedom.
~ Garry Kasparov ~
2023
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
~ Thomas Jefferson ~
2024
I have ever deemed it more honorable and profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
~ Thomas Jefferson ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…


2004
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. ~ Kurt Vonnegut
2005
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. ~ James Branch Cabell (born 14 April 1879)
2006
Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) (Good Friday 2006)
2007
All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist... It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever... Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes." ~ Kurt Vonnegut (recent death)
2008
What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts. … But you, I think, have always comprehended this. ~ James Branch Cabell
2009
Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over;
One thing unshaken stays:
Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover;
Whereby decays
Each thing save one thing: — mid this strife diurnal
Of hourly change begot,
Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal,
And changes not.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2010
I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug; as well as that, among other requisites, the gallant person will always consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful — being thoroughly persuaded that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational. ~ James Branch Cabell
2011
It is necessary that I climb very high because of my love for you, and upon the heights there is silence. ~ James Branch Cabell
2012

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

Alien they seemed to be;
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,

Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

~ Thomas Hardy ~

2013
Criticism, whatever may be its pretensions, never does more than to define the impression which is made upon it at a certain moment by a work wherein the writer himself noted the impression of the world which he received at a certain hour.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2014
Everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2015
I agree with Freydis that, for various reasons, nobody ever, quite, knew Manuel well.
The hero of "The Silver Stallion" is, thus, no person, but an idea, — an idea presented at the moment of its conception... I mean, of course, the idea that Manuel, who was yesterday the physical Redeemer of Poictesme, will by and by return as his people's spiritual Redeemer.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2016
I quite fixedly believe the Wardens of Earth sometimes unbar strange windows, that face on other worlds than ours. And some of us, I think, once in a while get a peep through these windows. But we are not permitted to get a long peep, or an unobstructed peep, nor very certainly, are we permitted to see all there is — out yonder. The fatal fault, sir, of your theorizing is that it is too complete. It aims to throw light upon the universe, and therefore is self-evidently moonshine. The Wardens of Earth do not desire that we should understand the universe, Mr. Kennaston; it is part of Their appointed task to insure that we never do; and because of Their efficiency every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2017
You waste time, my friend, in trying to convince me of all human life's failure and unimportance, for I am not in sympathy with this modern morbid pessimistic way of talking. It has a very ill sound, and nothing whatever is to be gained by it.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2018
While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2019
Everywhere in the world people were expecting the latter coming of one or another kickshaw messiah who would remove the discomforts which they themselves were either too lazy or too incompetent to deal with; and nobody had anything whatever to gain with electing for peculiarity among one's fellow creatures and a gloomier outlook.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2020
I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to die valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man has but one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from you, my pigs, to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to discharge my geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall not come back to you, my pigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and into the last limits of earth, so that I may see the ends of this world and may judge them while my life endures. For after that, they say, I judge not, but am judged: and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even good bacon.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2021
The purblind majority quite honestly believed that literature was meant to mimic human life, and that it did so. And in consequence, their love-affairs, their maxims, their so-called natural ties and instincts, and above all, their wickedness, became just so many bungling plagiarisms from something they had read, in a novel or a Bible or a poem or a newspaper. People progressed from the kindergarten to the cemetery assuming that their emotion at every crisis was what books taught them was the appropriate emotion, and without noticing that it was in reality something quite different. Human life was a distorting tarnished mirror held up to literature: this much at least of Wilde's old paradox — that life mimicked art — was indisputable. Human life, very clumsily, tried to reproduce the printed word.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2022
Ukrainians did not believe in war — we believed in civilized dialogue. But when the attack took place, we did not become a "frightened crowd," as the enemy had hoped. No. We became an organized community.
At once, the political and other controversies that exist in every society disappeared. Everyone came together to protect their home.
I see examples every day, and I never get tired of writing about it.
~ Olena Zelenska ~
2023
The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills — and as immortal.
~ James Branch Cabell ~
2024
Kennaston no longer thought of himself as a man of flesh-and-blood moving about a world of his compeers. Or, at least, that especial aspect of his existence was to him no longer a phase of any particular importance.
~ James Branch Cabell ~


2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr. ~ Will Rogers (US income tax filing deadline, April 15)
2005
Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing … Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity — by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles... ~ Leonardo da Vinci (born 15 April 1452)
2006
Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena. ~ Leonhard Euler (born 15 April 1707)
2007
We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. ~ Henry James
2008
Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative — much more when it happens to be that of a man of genius — it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations. ~ Henry James
2009
 

Gentlemen, that is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth.

~ Benjamin Peirce on Euler's identity ~

2010
Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition. ~ Leonardo da Vinci
2011
I am a being of Heaven and Earth,
of thunder and lightning,
of rain and wind,
of the galaxies,
of the suns and the stars
and the void through which they travel.
The essence of nature,
eternal, divine that all men seek to know to hear,
known as the great illusion time,
and the all-prevailing atmosphere.
And now you know my background.
~ eden ahbez ~
2012
This is the law: Every thing existing on the physical plane is an exteriorization of thought, which must be balanced through the one who issued the thought, and in accordance with that one’s responsibility, at the conjunction of time, condition, and place. ~ Harold W. Percival
2013
The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
~ Leonardo da Vinci ~
2014
A thought has no size in the physical sense but is vast as compared to the physical acts and objects into which it is later precipitated. The power of a thought is enormous and superior to all the successive physical acts, objects, and events that body forth its energy. A thought often endures for a time much greater than the whole life of the man who thought it.
~ Harold W. Percival ~
2015
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than with the imagination being awake?
~ Leonardo da Vinci ~
2016
To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.
~ Leonardo da Vinci ~
2017
Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest.
~ Leonardo da Vinci ~
2018
He who thinks little, errs much.
~ Leonardo da Vinci ~
2019
If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions, and some of the most interesting experiments of which it is capable are hidden in the bosom of common things.
~ Henry James ~
2020
Doubt comes in at the window, when Inquiry is denied at the door.
~ Benjamin Jowett ~
2021
Life being all inclusion and confusion, and art being all discrimination and selection, the latter, in search of the hard latent value with which it alone is concerned, sniffs round the mass as instinctively and unerringly as a dog suspicious of some buried bone.
~ Henry James ~
2022
From time immemorial to the present day, mankind has been looking for heroes. People always appreciate heroes. They always support those who are brave. And always feel who is fighting for the good. During the 50 days of this war, Ukraine became a hero for the whole free world. For those who have the courage to call a spade a spade. For those who are not poisoned by propaganda. You have all become heroes. All Ukrainian men and women who withstood and do not give up. And who will win. Who will return peace to Ukraine.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
~ Leonardo da Vinci ~
2024
Movement will cease before we are weary of being useful.
~ Leonardo da Vinci ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Curse on all laws but those which love has made! ~ Alexander Pope
2005
In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. ~ Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator (born 16 April 1889)
2006
The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) (Easter Sunday 2006)
2007
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. ~ Anatole France (born 16 April 1844)
2008
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~ Anatole France
2009
What one man can do himself directly is but little. If however he can stir up ten others to take up the task he has accomplished much. ~ Wilbur Wright
2010
It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously. ~ Peter Ustinov
2011
It is well for the heart to be naive and for the mind not to be. ~ Anatole France
2012
It is by acts, and not by ideas that people live. ~ Anatole France
2013
The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them.
~ Anatole France ~
2014
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
~ William Feather ~
  • proposed by Zarbon; this originally was selected as having been a quote of Anatole France, to whom it had sometimes been attributed to since the 1990s. During the day it was used as QOTD, this was found to be a misattribution, and the proper attribution given to William Feather.
2015
The gods conform scrupulously to the sentiments of their worshippers: they have reasons for so doing. Pay attention to this. … The Emperor Julian's morals were almost those of St. Gregory Nazianzen. There is nothing in this but what is natural and usual. The transformations undergone by morals and ideas are never sudden. The greatest changes in social life are wrought imperceptibly, and are only seen from afar. Christianity did not secure a foothold until such time as the condition of morals accommodated itself to it, and as Christianity itself had become adjusted to the condition of morals. It was unable to substitute itself for paganism until such time as paganism came to resemble it, and itself came to resemble paganism.
~ Anatole France ~
2016
The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
~ Leonardo da Vinci ~
2017
Your God still walks in Eden, between the ancient trees,
Where Youth and Love go wading through pools of primroses.
And this is the sign we bring you, before the darkness fall,
That Spring is risen, is risen again,
That Life is risen, is risen again,
That Love is risen, is risen again, and
Love is Lord of all.
~ Alfred Noyes ~
  • proposed by Kalki for Easter Sunday 2017.
2018
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
~ Anatole France ~
2019
The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice. But, beautiful as it has been preserved in growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last.
On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar. Tempus edax, homo edacior; which I should be glad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid.
~ Victor Hugo ~
in
~ The Hunchback of Notre-Dame ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to the massively destructive fire at Notre-Dame de Paris.
2020
We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,
And pass both tropics and behold the poles,
When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,
And unacquainted still with our own souls.
~ John Davies ~
2021
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
~ Anatole France ~
2022
We are in the days preceding Easter. We are preparing to celebrate the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ over sin and death — over sin and death — not over someone and against someone else. But today, there is a war. Why do we want to win like this, according to the way of the world? There are only losses this way. Why not allow Him to win? Christ bore his cross to free us from the dominion of evil. He died so that life, love, peace may reign.
Let the weapons be put down! Let the Easter truce begin. But not to reload the weapons and pick up the fighting again — no! — a truce that will lead to peace, through real negotiation that is also willing to make some sacrifice for the good of the people. Indeed, what victory is there in planting a flag on a pile of rubble?
~ Pope Francis ~
2023
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
~ Anatole France ~
2024
It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion.
~ Anatole France ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. ~ B. F. Skinner
2005
We ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning. ~ Thornton Wilder (born 17 April 1897)
2006
Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence. ~ Karen Blixen (born 17 April 1885)
2007
Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day. ~ Thornton Wilder
2008
I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy. ~ Karen Blixen
2009
The real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. ~ Karen Blixen
2010
The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority. ~ Benjamin Tucker
2011
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began.
~ Wallace Stevens ~
A poem involving peristyles and palms for Palm Sunday 2011, in both Western and Eastern Orthodox calendars.
2012
It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves. ~ Thornton Wilder
2013
If rules make you nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the Wiki, then ignore them and go about your business.
~ Lee Daniel Crocker ~
2014
We designate by the term "State" institutions that embody absolutism in its extreme form and institutions that temper it with more or less liberality. We apply the word alike to institutions that do nothing but aggress and to institutions that, besides aggressing, to some extent protect and defend. But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.
~ Benjamin Tucker ~
2015
"Passive resistance," said Ferdinand Lassalle, with an obtuseness thoroughly German, "is the resistance which does not resist." Never was there a greater mistake. It is the only resistance which in these days of military discipline resists with any result. There is not a tyrant in the civilized world today who would not do anything in his power to precipitate a bloody revolution rather than see himself confronted by any large fraction of his subjects determined not to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no army is willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people who do not even gather in the streets but stay at home and stand back on their rights. Neither the ballot nor the bayonet is to play any great part in the coming struggle; passive resistance is the instrument by which the revolutionary force is destined to secure in the last great conflict the people's rights forever.
~ Benjamin Tucker ~
2016
Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.
~ Thornton Wilder ~
2017
The population of the world is gradually dividing into two classes, Anarchists and criminals.
~ Benjamin Tucker ~
2018
The idea that Anarchy can be inaugurated by force is as fallacious as the idea that it can be sustained by force. Force cannot preserve Anarchy; neither can it bring it. In fact, one of the inevitable influences of the use of force is to postpone Anarchy. The only thing that force can ever do for us is to save us from extinction, to give us a longer lease of life in which to try to secure Anarchy by the only methods that can ever bring it. But this advantage is always purchased at immense cost, and its attainment is always attended by frightful risk. The attempt should be made only when the risk of any other course is greater.
~ Benjamin Tucker ~
2019
As angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.
~ Henry Vaughan ~
2020
As a general rule, the better people are, the more Anarchists and Socialists will be found among them.
~ Benjamin Tucker ~
2021
Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.
~ Thornton Wilder ~
2022
I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
~ Jesus ~
in
~ Gospel of John ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of Easter Sunday 2022.
2023
On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being; the words are rising to their lips in immediate spontaneity … The theater is supremely fitted to say: "Behold! These things are."
~ Thornton Wilder ~
2024
Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense.
~ Thornton Wilder ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. ~ Bill Hicks
2005
Music can be all things to all persons. It is like a great dynamic sun in the center of a solar system which sends out its rays and inspiration in every direction.... Music makes us feel that the heavens open and a divine voice calls. Something in our souls responds and understands. ~ Leopold Stokowski (born 18 April 1882)
2006
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means. ~ Clarence Darrow (born 18 April 1857)
2007
History repeats itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history. ~ Clarence Darrow
2008
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free. ~ Clarence Darrow
2009
I believe that music can be an inspirational force in all our lives — that its eloquence and the depth of its meaning are all-important, and that all personal considerations concerning musicians and the public are relatively unimportant — that music come from the heart and returns to the heart — that music is spontaneous, impulsive expression — that its range is without limit — that music is forever growing — that music can be one element to help us build a new conception of life in which the madness and cruelty of wars will be replaced by a simple understanding of the brotherhood of man. ~ Leopold Stokowski
2010
Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed. ~ George Henry Lewes
2011
Instead … of saying that Man is the creature of Circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that Man is the architect of Circumstance. It is Character which builds an existence out of Circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels, one warehouses, another villas. ~ George Henry Lewes
2012
If there is to be any permanent improvement in man and any better social order, it must come mainly from the education and humanizing of man. I am quite certain that the more the question of crime and its treatment is studied the less faith men have in punishment. ~ Clarence Darrow
2013
The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced — that without intelligence we should be Brutes — but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.
~ George Henry Lewes ~
2014
No deeply-rooted tendency was ever extirpated by adverse argument. Not having originally been founded on argument, it cannot be destroyed by logic.
~ George Henry Lewes ~
2015
Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature.
~ George Henry Lewes ~
2016
Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.
~ Kathy Acker ~
2017
The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.
~ Samuel P. Huntington ~
2018
Cultural and civilizational diversity challenges the Western and particularly American belief in the universal relevance of Western culture. … Normatively the Western universalist belief posits that people throughout the world should embrace Western values, institutions, and culture because they embody the highest, most enlightened, most liberal, most rational, most modern, and most civilized thinking of humankind.
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.
~ Samuel P. Huntington ~
2019
The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.
~ Clarence Darrow ~
2020
As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever. The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.
~ Clarence Darrow ~
2021
The greatest artist is he who is greatest in the highest reaches of his art, even although he may lack the qualities necessary for the adequate execution of some minor details. It is not by his faults, but by his excellences, that we measure a great man. The strength of a beam is measured by its weakest part, of a man by his strongest.
~ George Henry Lewes ~
2022
Russia calls it a "military operation", and not a war. But look what happened in Bucha. It's clear that is not even a war. It's a genocide.
They just killed people, not soldiers, people. They just shot people in the streets. People were riding bicycles, taking the bus, or just walking down the street. There were corpses lying in the streets. These were not soldiers. They were civilians.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
The great desire of this age is for a Doctrine which may serve to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that Conduct may really be the consequence of Belief.
~ George Henry Lewes ~
2024
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.
~ Samuel P. Huntington ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Materialists and madmen never have doubts. ~ G. K. Chesterton
2005
Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius. ~ Benjamin Disraeli (died 19 April 1881)
2006
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought on 19 April 1775)
2007
Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth. ~ Jehanne Darc (Joan of Arc) (Official Beatification by the Roman Catholic Church in 1903)
2008
When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist. ~ Albert Hofmann (for Bicycle Day)
2009
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) (Easter Sunday by the reckonings of the Eastern Orthodox traditions 2009
2010
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation. ~ Albert Hofmann‎ (for Bicycle Day)
2011
We painters use the same license as poets and madmen. ~ Paolo Veronese
2012
I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced. Your mind slides into a groove, and once it is in that groove, has difficulty noticing anything outside of it. During this time, my sense must be sharp; that is the main thing — to be sharp, yet open. ~ Bernd Heinrich
2013
Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one commonly takes as "the reality," including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous — that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego.
~ Albert Hofmann‎‎ ~
2014
There is a beauty in discovery. There is mathematics in music, a kinship of science and poetry in the description of nature, and exquisite form in a molecule. Attempts to place different disciplines in different camps are revealed as artificial in the face of the unity of knowledge. All literate men are sustained by the philosopher, the historian, the political analyst, the economist, the scientist, the poet, the artisan and the musician.
~ Glenn T. Seaborg ~
2015

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
2016
Of justice yet must God in fine restore,
This noble crowne unto the lawful heire
For right will alwayes live, and rise at length,
But wrong can never take deepe roote to last.
~ Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset ~
2017
In studying the literature connected with my work, I became aware of the great universal significance of visionary experience. It plays a dominant role, not only in mysticism and the history of religion, but also in the creative process in art, literature, and science. More recent investigations have shown that many persons also have visionary experiences in daily life, though most of us fail to recognize their meaning and value. Mystical experiences, like those that marked my childhood, are apparently far from rare.
~ Albert Hofmann ~
2018
For heaven's sake enjoy life. Don't cry over things that were or things that aren't. Enjoy what you have now to the fullest. In all honesty you really only have two choices; you can like what you do OR you can dislike it. I choose to like it and what fun I have had. The other choice is no fun and people do not want to be around a whiner. We can always find people who are worse off and we don't have to look far! Help them and forget self!
I would certainly say, above all, seek God. He will come to you if you look. There is absolutely NO down side.
~ Barbara Bush ~
2019
And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him. And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer: For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves: For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come. And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.
~ Gospel of Luke ~
2020
Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language cannot be avoided. We cannot choose to distance ourselves from it. We can only choose to employ it in one way rather than another.
~ Stanley Fish ~
2021
It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature. … In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans … The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature.
~ Albert Hofmann ~
2022
It can now be stated that Russian troops have begun the battle for Donbas, for which they have been preparing for a long time. A very large part of the entire Russian army is now focused on this offensive.
No matter how many Russian soldiers are driven there, we will fight. We will defend ourselves. We will do it daily. We will not give up anything Ukrainian, and we do not need what’s not ours.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
I paint my pictures with all the considerations which are natural to my intelligence, and according as my intelligence understands them.
~ Paolo Veronese ~
2024
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
~ Jimmy Carter ~


2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. ~ Elbert Hubbard
2005
Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope, John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard. The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers. ~ Pope Benedict XVI (recent papal election)
2006
Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~ Dinah Craik (born 20 April 1826)
2007
It may often be noticed, the less virtuous people are, the more they shrink away from the slightest whiff of the odour of un-sanctity. The good are ever the most charitable, the pure are the most brave. ~ Dinah Craik
2008
The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. … Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story. ~ Peter S. Beagle in The Last Unicorn
2009
Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people — as may be noticed of most young children — does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years. ~ Dinah Craik
2010
Schmendrick stepped out into the open and said a few words. They were short words, undistinguished either by melody or harshness, and Schmendrick himself could not hear them for the Red Bull's dreadful bawling. But he knew what they meant, and he knew exactly how to say them, and he knew that he could say them again when he wanted to, in the same way or in a different way. Now he spoke them gently and with joy, and as did so he felt his immortality fall from him like an armour, or like a shroud. ~ Peter S. Beagle in The Last Unicorn
2011
Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of "eccentricity" it will stand from anybody who takes the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences. ~ Dinah Craik
2012
Awakener, come!
Fling wide the gate of an eternal year,
The April of that glad new heavens and earth
Which shall grow out of these, as spring-tide grows
Slow out of winter's breast.
Let Thy wide hand
Gather us all — with none left out (O God!
Leave Thou out none!) from the east and from the west.
Loose Thou our burdens: heal our sicknesses;
Give us one heart, one tongue, one faith, one love.
In Thy great Oneness made complete and strong —
To do Thy work throughout the happy world —
Thy world, All-merciful, Thy perfect world.

~ Dinah Craik ~

2013
When the last eagle flies over the last crumbling mountain
And the last lion roars at the last dusty fountain
In the shadow of the forest though she may be old and worn
They will stare unbelieving at the last unicorn.
~ Jimmy Webb ~
for
The Last Unicorn
by
~ Peter S. Beagle ~
2014
We never know through what Divine mysteries of compensation the great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; but those three words, "God is love" ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things.
~ Dinah Craik ~
2015
When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.
~ Dinah Craik ~
2016
I have forgotten that men cannot see Unicorns. If men no longer know what they're looking at, there may well be other unicorns in the world yet — unknown — and glad of it.
~ Peter S. Beagle ~
in
~ The Last Unicorn ~
2017
It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is … There is much misjudgment in the world. … We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.
~ Peter S. Beagle ~
in
~ The Last Unicorn ~
2018
I can never regret. I can feel sorrow, but it's not the same thing.
~ Peter S. Beagle ~
in
~ The Last Unicorn ~
2019
Autumn to winter, winter into spring,
Spring into summer, summer into fall, —
So rolls the changing year, and so we change;
Motion so swift, we know not that we move.
~ Dinah Craik ~
2020
There never was night that had no morn.
~ Dinah Craik ~
2021
Excuse me while I light my spliff (spliff)
Good God I gotta' take a lift (lift)
From reality I just can't drift (drift)
That's why I am staying with this riff (riff)

Take it easy, easy skanking
Got to take it easy, easy skanking.
~ Bob Marley ~
2022
I am determined … to see to it that a change is made in the relationship between Germany and Poland that shall ensure a peaceful co-existence. In this I am resolved to continue to fight until either the present Polish government is willing to continue to bring about this change or until another Polish Government is ready to do so. I am resolved to remove from the German frontiers the element of uncertainty, the everlasting atmosphere of conditions resembling civil war. … I will not war against women and children. I have ordered my air force to restrict itself to attacks on military objectives. If, however, the enemy thinks he can form that draw carte blanche on his side to fight by the other methods he will receive an answer that will deprive him of hearing and sight. … Whoever departs from the rules of humane warfare can only expect that we shall do the same. I will continue this struggle, no matter against whom, until the safety of the Reich and its rights are secured.
~ Adolf Hitler ~
  • proposed by Kalki; a bit over fourscore years ago, HItler began his invasion of Poland with these quite false declarations of noble and peaceful dispositions and intentions — in such ways as have many parallels with other aggressive dictators throughout the ages, unto the present times.
2023
I'm always dreaming, even when I'm awake; it is never finished.
~ Peter S. Beagle ~
in
~ The Last Unicorn ~
2024
I have not come into this world to make men better, but to make use of their weaknesses.
~ Adolf Hitler ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do. ~ Molière
2005
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. ~ John Muir (born 21 April 1838)
2006
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. ~ John Muir (born 21 April 1838)
2007
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. ~ Charlotte Brontë
2008
How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountaintop it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make — leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone — we all dwell in a house of one room — the world with the firmament for its roof — and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track. ~ John Muir
2009
We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind — mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality. ~ J. G. Ballard
2010
We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for. ~ Rollo May (born 21 April 1909)
2011
Therapy isn't curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human. Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, "This is me and the world be damned!" Leaders have always been the ones to stand against the society — Socrates, Christ, Freud, all the way down the line. ~ Rollo May
2012
Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom … For through doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth. ~ Peter Abelard
2013
To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive — to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before.
~ Rollo May ~
2014
Is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?
~ Charlotte Brontë ~
2015
Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.
~ Rollo May ~
2016
The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that He might illuminate the world by His wisdom and excite it to the love of Himself.
~ Peter Abelard ~
2017
It is not violence that best overcomes hate — nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury. … Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how he acts — make his word your rule, and his conduct your example. … Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.
~ Charlotte Brontë ~
2018
A "war against terrorism" is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism. The feelings on both sides are not that they are taking part in some evil and criminal act but risking their lives heroically for what they consider to be a just cause.
~ John Mortimer ~
2019
The word "resurrection" has for many people the connotation of dead bodies leaving their graves or other fanciful images. But resurrection means the victory of the New state of things, the New Being born out of the death of the Old.
Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow. Where there is a New Being, there is resurrection, namely, the creation into eternity out of every moment of time. The Old Being has the mark of disintegration and death. The New Being puts a new mark over the old one. Out of disintegration and death something is born of eternal significance. That which is immersed in dissolution emerges in a New Creation. Resurrection happens now, or it does not happen at all. It happens in us and around us, in soul and history, in nature and universe.
Reconciliation, reunion, resurrection — this is the New Creation, the New Being, the New state of things.
~ Paul Tillich ~
2020
Beneath our feet and o'er our head
Is equal warning given:
Beneath us lie the countless dead,
Above us is the heaven!

Death rides on every passing breeze,
And lurks in every flower;
Each season has its own disease,
Its peril every hour.
~ Reginald Heber ~
2021
If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused.
~ Walter Mondale ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2022
I made a decision to carry out a special military operation.
The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.
It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force. … The current events have nothing to do with a desire to infringe on the interests of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. … I would now like to say something very important for those who may be tempted to interfere in these developments from the outside. No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.
~ Vladimir Putin ~
2023
Imagination is the outreaching of mind … the bombardment of the conscious mind with ideas, impulses, images and every sort of psychic phenomena welling up from the preconscious. It is the capacity to "dream dreams and see visions…"
~ Rollo May ~
2024
The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities.
~ Rollo May ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. ~ Anne Frank
2005
Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. ~ Immanuel Kant (born 22 April 1724)
2006
I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more. ~ Vladimir Nabokov (born 22 April 1899) {10 April O.S.}
2007
It is certainly not then — not in dreams — but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction. ~ Vladimir Nabokov
2008
There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew. ~ Marshall McLuhan (quote for Earth Day)
2009
The death of dogma is the birth of morality. ~ Immanuel Kant
2010
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. … We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it. ~ Wendell Berry (quote for Earth Day)
2011
Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex. ~ Vladimir Nabokov
2012
In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time. ~ Charles Mingus
2013
Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end…
~ Anne Louise Germaine de Staël ~
2014
Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
~ Immanuel Kant ~
2015
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
Life's but a means unto an end; that end
Beginning, mean, and end to all things, — God.
~ Philip James Bailey ~
2016
How can U just leave me standing?
Alone in a world that's so cold? (So cold)
Maybe I'm just 2 demanding
Maybe I'm just like my father, 2 bold
Maybe you're just like my mother
She's never satisfied (She's never satisfied)
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like
When doves cry.
~ Prince ~
— Added to QOTD layout as tribute to Prince after his death on 21 April 2016 —
I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small but precious measure of the freedom from the accidents of incarnation, and charity, and that detachment which preserves the world which it renounces.
~ Robert Oppenheimer ~
2017
Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
~ Immanuel Kant ~
2018
Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons, as they were in fact used, dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
~ Robert Oppenheimer ~
2019
Our own political life is predicated on openness. We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to enquire. We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.
~ Robert Oppenheimer ~
2020
It is impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth.
This … becomes obvious enough when it is considered that the earth is what we all have in common, that it is what we are made of and what we live from, and that we therefore cannot damage it without damaging those with whom we share it. But I believe it goes farther and deeper than that. There is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each other and our behavior toward the earth. … By some connection we do not recognize, the willingness to exploit one becomes the willingness to exploit the other.
~ Wendell Berry ~
2021
The advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last.
~ Louise Glück ~
2022
Further escalation of the war, whether by accident or design, threatens all of humanity.
Raising the alert of Russian nuclear forces is a bone-chilling development.
The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility. … It’s time to stop the horror unleashed on the people of Ukraine and get on the path of diplomacy and peace.
I have been in close contact with a number of countries — including China, France, Germany, India, Israel and Turkey — on mediation efforts to bring an end to this war.
The appeals for peace must be heard.
This tragedy must stop.
It is never too late for diplomacy and dialogue.
We need an immediate cessation of hostilities and serious negotiations based on the principles of the UN Charter and international law.
We need peace.
Peace for the people of Ukraine.
Peace for the world.
We need peace now.
~ António Guterres ~
2023
The soul is silent.
If it speaks at all
it speaks in dreams.
~ Louise Glück ~
2024
If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of the nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people of this world must unite or they will perish. This war that has ravaged so much of the earth, has written these words. The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand. Other men have spoken them in other times, and of other wars, of other weapons. They have not prevailed. There are some misled by a false sense of human history, who hold that they will not prevail today. It is not for us to believe that. By our minds we are committed, committed to a world united, before the common peril, in law and in humanity.
~ Robert Oppenheimer ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go. ~ Martha Washington
2005
We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep. ~ "Prospero" in The Tempest by William Shakespeare (birth traditionally celebrated 23 April 1564, died 23 April 1616 O.S.)
2006
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. ~ William Shakespeare in As You Like It (birth traditionally celebrated 23 April 1564, died 23 April 1616 O.S.)
2007
We defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. ~ "Hamlet" in Hamlet by William Shakespeare
2008
We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again:
And by that destiny, to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.
~ William Shakespeare in The Tempest ~
2009
I would not so dishonour God as to lend my voice to perpetuate all the mad and foolish things which men have dared to say of Him. I believe that we may find in the Bible the highest and purest religion most of all in the history of Him in whose name we all are called. His religion — not the Christian religion, but the religion of Christ — the poor man's gospel; the message of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of love; and, oh, how gladly would I spend my life, in season and out of season, in preaching this! But I must have no hell terrors, none of these fear doctrines; they were not in the early creeds, God knows whether they were ever in the early gospels, or ever passed His lips. He went down to hell, but it was to break the chains, not to bind them. ~ James Anthony Froude
2010
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. ~ Max Planck
2011
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
~ William Shakespeare ~ in A Midsummer Night's Dream
2012
Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with. ~ Max Planck
2013
Now I will believe
That there are unicorns; that in Arabia
There is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix
At this hour reigning there.
~ William Shakespeare ~
in
~ The Tempest ~
2014
Know thus far forth:
By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune —
Now my dear lady — hath mine enemies
Brought to this shore; and by my prescience
I find my zenith doth depend upon
A most auspicious star, whose influence
If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop.
~ William Shakespeare ~
in
~ The Tempest ~
2015
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
~ Max Planck ~
2016
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
When mercy seasons justice.
~ William Shakespeare ~
in
~ The Merchant of Venice ~
2017
If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer! A brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her,
Dash'd all to pieces! O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perish'd!
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er
It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and
The fraughting souls within her.
~ William Shakespeare ~
in
~ The Tempest ~
2018
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again.
~ William Shakespeare ~
in
~ The Tempest ~
2019
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
~ Max Planck ~
2020
A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain:
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.
~ William Shakespeare ~
in
~ Twelfth Night ~
2021
Be collected;
No more amazement; tell your piteous heart
There's no harm done.
~ William Shakespeare ~
in
~ The Tempest ~
2022
Our work to date has detailed a horror story of violations perpetrated against civilians. First and foremost, this senseless war must stop. But as the fighting shows no sign of abating, it is vital that all parties to the conflict give clear instructions to their combatants to strictly respect international humanitarian law and international human rights law. … This means distinguishing between civilian and military objects. It means not targeting or deliberately killing civilians. It means not committing sexual violence. People, including prisoners of war, must not be tortured. Civilians, prisoners and others hors de combat must be treated humanely. … Those in command of armed forces must make it clear to their fighters that anyone found to have been involved in such violations will be prosecuted and held accountable.
~ Michelle Bachelet ~
2023
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
~ William Shakespeare ~
in
~ The Tempest ~
2024
We are still waging Peloponnesian wars. Our control of the material world and our positive science have grown fantastically. But our very achievements turn against us, making politics more random and wars more bestial.
~ George Steiner ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
In war, you win or lose, live or die — and the difference is just an eyelash. ~ Douglas MacArthur
2005
Everything seems an echo of something else. ~ Robert Penn Warren (born 24 April 1905)
2006
The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him. ~ Robert Penn Warren (born 24 April 1905)
2007
I judge a man by his actions with men, much more than by his declarations Godwards. When I find him to be envious, carping, spiteful, hating the successes of others, and complaining that the world has never done enough for him, I am apt to doubt whether his humility before God will atone for his want of manliness. ~ Anthony Trollope
2008
The poem... is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see — it is, rather, a light by which we may see — and what we see is life. ~ Robert Penn Warren
2009
The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to defend himself from it. ~ Vincent de Paul
2010
One need not hope in order to undertake, nor succeed in order to persevere. ~ William the Silent
2011
However great the work that God may achieve by an individual, he must not indulge in self-satisfaction. He ought rather to be all the more humbled, seeing himself merely as a tool which God has made use of. ~ Vincent de Paul
2012
So little time we live in Time,
And we learn all so painfully,
That we may spare this hour's term
To practice for Eternity.
~ Robert Penn Warren ~
2013
In all things there must be order, but it must of such a kind as is possible to observe … to see a man burnt for doing as he thought right, harms the people, for this is a matter of conscience.
~ William the Silent ~
2014
I cannot approve of monarchs who want to rule over the conscience of the people, and take away their freedom of choice and religion.
~ William the Silent ~
2015
You will find out that Charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the kettle of soup and the full basket. But you will keep your gentleness and your smile. It is not enough to give soup and bread. This the rich can do. You are the servant of the poor, always smiling and good-humored. They are your masters, terribly sensitive and exacting master you will see. and the uglier and the dirtier they will be, the more unjust and insulting, the more love you must give them. It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them.
~ Vincent de Paul ~
2016
things explain each other,
Not themselves.
~ George Oppen ~
2017
The end will show the whole truth.
~ William the Silent ~
2018
The best way to be thankful is to use the goods the gods provide you.
~ Anthony Trollope ~
2019
I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.
~ Anthony Trollope ~
2020
From all evil against which the law bars you, you should be barred, at an infinite distance, by honour, by conscience, and nobility. Does the law require patriotism, philanthropy, self-abnegation, public service, purity of purpose, devotion to the needs of others who have been placed in the world below you? The law is a great thing, — because men are poor and weak, and bad. And it is great, because where it exists in its strength, no tyrant can be above it. But between you and me there should be no mention of law as the guide of conduct. Speak to me of honour, of duty, and of nobility; and tell me what they require of you.
~ Anthony Trollope ~
2021
The good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence.
~ Anthony Trollope ~
2022
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!
~ Jesus Christ ~
in
~ Gospel of Matthew ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of Eastern Orthodox Easter 2022.
2023
Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.
~ Robert Penn Warren ~
2024
Poetry is more than fantasy and is committed to the obligation of trying to say something, however obliquely, about the human condition. Therefore, a poem dealing with history is no more at liberty to violate what the writer takes to be the spirit of his history than it is at liberty to violate what he takes to be the nature of the human heart. What he takes those things to be is, of course, his ultimate gamble.
~ Robert Penn Warren ~

</noinclude>

Suggestions

edit

Growing to full manhood now,
With the care-lines on our brow,
We, the youngest of the nations,
With no childish lamentations,
Weep, as only strong men weep,
For the noble hearts that sleep,
Pillowed where they fought and bled,
The loved and lost, our glorious dead.
~ Frederick George Scott (anniversary of the Battle of Fish Creek)

2004
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. ~ Gautama Buddha
2005
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them. ~ Edward R. Murrow (born 25 April 1908)
2006
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue. ~ Edward R. Murrow (born 25 April 1908)
2007
It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts. ~ Boris Yeltsin (recent death)
2008
The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it. ~ Edward R. Murrow
2009
I will either find a way, or make one. ~ Hannibal
2010
It is best to keep one’s own state intact; to crush the enemy’s state is only second best. ~ Sun Tzu
2011
What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease. ~ Sun Tzu
2012
Reason, in fact, is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason — nothing which He has not willed should be handled and understood by reason. All, therefore, who are ignorant of God, must necessarily be ignorant also of a thing which is His, because no treasure-house at all is accessible to strangers. And thus, voyaging all the universal course of life without the rudder of reason, they know not how to shun the hurricane which is impending over the world. ~ Tertullian
2013
Man is one name belonging to every nation upon earth. In them all is one soul though many tongues. Every country has its own language, yet the subjects of which the untutored soul speaks are the same everywhere.
~ Tertullian ~
2014
No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.
~ Edward R. Murrow ~
2015
Cum ergo spiritus Dei descendit, indiuidua patientia comitatur eum.
·
When God's Spirit descends, then Patience accompanies Him indivisibly.
~ Tertullian ~
2016
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
~ Edward R. Murrow ~

2017

Truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by persuading.
~ Tertullian ~
2018
You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.
~ Tertullian ~
2019
The layman always means, when he says "reality" that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality.
~ Wolfgang Pauli ~
2020
The best that most of us can hope to achieve in physics is simply to misunderstand at a deeper level.
~ Wolfgang Pauli ~
2021
Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him. But as far as he is concerned there is no split between science and religion: the central order is part of the subjective as well as the objective realm, and this strikes me as being a far better starting point.
~ Wolfgang Pauli ~
2022
I'm not the candidate of one faction anymore, but the president for all of us. … I know full well that many in this country voted for me not because they support my ideas but to block the far-right. I want to thank them tonight, and know I owe them a debt in the years to come. … We have so much to do, and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are going through tragic times, times where France must be heard, France must clearly make its choices, and France must anchor its strength in all fields, and we will do just that. … We also need to be careful and respectful because our country is full of division and doubt. Therefore we must be strong and no one will be left by the wayside. Together we must work towards that unity which is the only way through which we can live happier in France, and can overcome the challenges of the coming years. The coming years won't be easy for sure, but they will be historic, and together, we will write that story for the coming generations.
~ Emmanuel Macron ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent re-election.
2023
I don't believe that it can end. Now that I've seen what war is, what civil war is, I know that everybody, if one day it should end, ought to ask himself: "And what shall we make of the fallen? Why are they dead?" I wouldn't know what to say. Not now, at any rate. Nor does it seem to me that the others know. Perhaps only dead know, and only for them is the war really over.
~ Cesare Pavese ~
  • proposed by Nemo; as the day of the liberation from fascism (national holiday).
2024
  All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
~ Sun Tzu ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Nothing is better than the unintended humor of reality. ~ Steve Allen
2005
If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein (born 26 April 1889)
2006
Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to. ~ Marcus Aurelius (born 26 April 121)
2007
They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other. ~ Eugène Delacroix (born 26 April 1798)
2008
I had the good fortune and opportunity to come home and to tell the truth; many soldiers, like Pat Tillman... did not have that opportunity. The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype. ~ Jessica Lynch (born 26 April 1983)
2009
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein ~
2010
If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine. ~ Morris West (born 26 April 1916)
2011
It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment, or the courage, to pay the price … One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying. ~ Morris West
2012
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
2013
No man — prince, peasant, pope, — has all the light, who says else is a mountebank. I claim no private lien on truth, only a liberty to seek it, prove it in debate, and to be wrong a thousand times to reach a single rightness. It is that liberty they fear. They want us to be driven to God like sheep, not running to him like lovers, shouting joy!
~ Morris West ~
2014
Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein ~
2015
To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein ~
2016
If God be God and man a creature made in image of the divine intelligence, his noblest function is the search for truth.
~ Morris West ~
2017
Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.
~ Eugène Delacroix ~
2018
Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in "philosophical propositions", but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein ~
2019
There was an idea … called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people — see if they could become something more — see if they could work together when we needed them to to fight the battles we never could.
~ The Avengers ~
2020
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein ~
2021
If mind is common to us, then also the reason, whereby we are reasoning beings, is common. If this be so, then also the reason which enjoins what is to be done or left undone is common. If this be so, law also is common; if this be so, we are citizens; if this be so, we are partakers in one constitution; if this be so, the Universe is a kind of Commonwealth.
~ Marcus Aurelius ~
2022
Russia has sought as its principal aim to totally subjugate Ukraine — to take away its sovereignty, to take away its independence. That has failed. It’s sought to assert the power of its military and its economy. We of course are seeing just the opposite — a military that is dramatically underperforming; an economy, as a result of sanctions, as a result of a mass exodus from Russia, that is in shambles. And it’s sought to divide the West and NATO; of course, we’re seeing exactly the opposite … We don’t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene. And our support for Ukraine going forward will continue.
~ Antony Blinken ~
2023
We still have wars and we still have poverty — as long as these things exist, there's always going to be something to do. But that cannot distract from the fact that we're on the way.
~ Harry Belafonte ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.
2024
If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.
~ Marcus Aurelius ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. ~ Anatole France
2005
Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft (born 27 April 1759)
2006
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. ~ Edward Gibbon (born 27 April 1737 O.S. but actually 8 May in the Gregorian Calendar — confusions existed when this choice was made.)
2007
Though I have been trained as a soldier, and participated in many battles, there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when a court, recognized by all nations, will settle international differences. ~ Ulysses S. Grant
2008
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools. ~ Herbert Spencer
2009
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft
2010
It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft
2011
The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful to society, had that society been well organized. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft
2012
I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution. ~ Ulysses S. Grant
2013
Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience.
~ Coretta Scott King ~
2014
The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. … Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses any thing in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? … The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
~ Herbert Spencer ~
2015
Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.
~ Mary Wollstonecraft ~
2016
Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation. And the belief in human perfectibility merely amounts to the belief that, in virtue of this process, man will eventually become completely suited to his mode of life. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower.
~ Herbert Spencer ~
2017
We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.
~ Robert M. Pirsig ~
2018
I now hold omnipotence.
What should I do with such almighty power?
The answer to that is actually quite simple:
Anything I want.
Anything.
I am incapable of error.
Any result that displeases me I can simply reverse.
There is nothing I need to worry on, for I am Thanos.
And Thanos is supreme.
~ Jim Starlin ~
2019
Tempt me no more, for I
Have known the lightning's hour,
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power.
~ Cecil Day Lewis ~
2020
Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.
~ Ulysses S. Grant ~
2021
My confidence in General Grant was not entirely due to the brilliant military successes achieved by him, but there was a moral as well as military basis for my faith in him. He had shown his single-mindedness and superiority to popular prejudice by his prompt cooperation with President Lincoln in his policy of employing colored troops, and his order commanding his soldiers to treat such troops with due respect. In this way he proved himself to be not only a wise general, but a great man.
~ Frederick Douglass ~
2022
We want to see Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country able to protect its sovereign territory. We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine … it has already lost a lot of military capability, and a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.
~ Lloyd Austin ~
2023
It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse —
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
~ Cecil Day Lewis ~
2024
  They who in folly or mere greed
Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom's cause.
~ Cecil Day Lewis ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
2005
It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done. ~ Terry Pratchett (born 28 April 1948)
2006
War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost. ~ Karl Kraus (born 28 April 1874)
2007
The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret. ~ Terry Pratchett
2008
The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp. ~ Terry Pratchett
2009
Too much magic could wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn't good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes. ~ Terry Pratchett in Sourcery ~
2010
You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage. ~ Terry Pratchett
2011

“The secret is not to dream … The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from and I know where I'm going. You cannot fool me anymore. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine.”
I'll never be like this again, she thought, as she saw the terror in the Queen's face. I'll never again feel as tall as the sky and as old as the hills and as strong as the sea. I've been given something for a while, and the price of it is that I have to give it back.
And the reward is giving it back, too. No human could live like this. You could spend a day looking at a flower to see how wonderful it is, and that wouldn't get the milking done. No wonder we dream our way through our lives. To be awake, and see it all as it really is … no one could stand that for long.

~ Terry Pratchett ~
in
The Wee Free Men

2012
Everything makes sense a bit at a time. But when you try to think of it all at once, it comes out wrong. ~ Terry Pratchett
2013
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
~ Harper Lee ~
2014
Ninety per cent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.
~ Terry Pratchett ~
2015
We ARE history! Everything we've ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are. Would you like the rest of the story? I'm made up of the memories of my parents and my grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the color of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think.
~ Terry Pratchett ~
2016
I have never disliked religion. I think it has some purpose in our evolution.
I don't have much truck with the "religion is the cause of most of our wars" school of thought because that is manifestly done by mad, manipulative and power-hungry men who cloak their ambition in God.
I number believers of all sorts among my friends. Some of them are praying for me. I'm happy they wish to do this, I really am, but I think science may be a better bet.
~ Terry Pratchett ~
2017
"Good evening, gentlemen!" said the vampire. "Please pay attention. I am a reformed vampire, which is to say, I am a bundle of suppressed instincts held together with spit and coffee. It would be wrong to say that violent, tearing carnage does not come easily to me. It's not tearing your throats out that doesn't come easily to me. Please don't make it any harder."
~ Terry Pratchett ~
in
~ Monstrous Regiment ~
2018
Do you know what it feels like to be aware of every star, every blade of grass? Yes. You do. You call it "opening your eyes again." But you do it for a moment. We have done it for eternity. No sleep, no rest, just endless … endless experience, endless awareness. Of everything. All the time. How we envy you, envy you! Lucky humans, who can close your minds to the endless deeps of space! You have this thing you call … boredom? That is the rarest talent in the universe! We heard a song — it went "Twinkle twinkle little star …" What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds, and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!
~ Terry Pratchett ~
in
~ A Hat Full of Sky ~
2019
This is the school, isn't it. The magic place? The world. Here. And you don't realize it until you look. Do you know the pictsies think this world is heaven? We just don't look.
~ Terry Pratchett ~
in
~ The Wee Free Men ~
2020
The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he.
~ Karl Kraus ~
2021
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
~ Harper Lee ~
2022
Russia’s invasion is indefensible. And so are Russian atrocities.
We all start today from a position of moral clarity. Russia is waging a war of choice to indulge the ambitions of one man. Ukraine is fighting a war of necessity to defend its democracy, its sovereignty, and its citizens.
But the stakes stretch beyond Ukraine — and even beyond Europe.
Russia’s invasion is baseless, reckless, and lawless. It is an affront to the rules-based international order. It is a challenge to free people everywhere.
As we see this morning, nations of goodwill from around the world stand united in our resolve to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s imperial aggression. And that’s the way it should be.
~ Lloyd Austin ~
2023
One of the hardest lessons of young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking.
~ Terry Pratchett ~
in
~ Night Watch ~
2024
  All fungi are edible …
Some fungi are not edible more than once.
~ Terry Pratchett ~
in
~ The Discworld Almanak ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Prejudice comes from being in the dark; sunlight disinfects it. ~ Muhammad Ali
2005
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. ~ Jerry Seinfeld (born April 29 1954)
2006
Despite the best that has been done by everyone — the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of Our servants of the State, and the devoted service of Our one hundred million people — the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. ~ Hirohito (born 29 April 29 1901)
2007
I have been in a multitude of shapes,
Before I assumed a consistent form.
I have been a sword, narrow, variegated,
I will believe when it is apparent.
I have been a tear in the air,
I have been the dullest of stars.
I have been a word among letters,
I have been a book in the origin.
~ Taliesin ~ (listed as born this date on the WIkipedia date page; traditionally said to have been born just before Beltane — the date of which varies slightly among traditions.)
2008
The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognizable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the past centuries. ~ Henri Poincaré (born April 29, 1854)
2009
He who hopes to grow in spirit
will have to transcend obedience and respect.
He'll hold to some laws
but he'll mostly violate
both law and custom, and go beyond
the established, inadequate norm.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy ~
2010

Night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy (born April 29, 1863)

2011
If all the parts of the universe are interchained in a certain measure, any one phenomenon will not be the effect of a single cause, but the resultant of causes infinitely numerous. ~ Henri Poincaré
2012
The Scientist must set in order. Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. ~ Henri Poincaré
2013
It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.
~ Henri Poincaré ~
2014
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.
~ Henri Poincaré ~
2015
Of course many people will have much to say.
We should listen. But we won't be deceived
by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great.
Someone else indispensable and unique and great
can always be found at a moment's notice.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy ~
2016
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
~ Henri Poincaré ~
2017

Of what’s to come the wise perceive
things about to happen.

Sometimes during moments of intense study
their hearing’s troubled: the hidden sound
of things approaching reaches them,
and they listen reverently, while in the street outside
the people hear nothing whatsoever.

~ Constantine P. Cavafy ~
2018
I look before me at my lighted candles,
I don’t want to turn around and see with horror
How quickly the dark line is lengthening,
How quickly the candles multiply that have been put out.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy ~
2019
The principal aim of mathematical education is to develop certain faculties of the mind, and among these intuition is not the least precious. It is through it that the mathematical world remains in touch with the real world, and even if pure mathematics could do without it, we should still have to have recourse to it to fill up the gulf that separates the symbol from reality.
~ Henri Poincaré ~
2020
Whatever is right can be achieved through the irresistible power of awakened and informed public opinion. Our object, therefore, is not to enquire whether a thing can be done, but whether it ought to be done, to so exert the forces of publicity that public opinion will compel it be done.
~ William Randolph Hearst ~
2021
I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied. I am not a naïve man. I don’t believe that a glance from 100,000 miles would cause a Prime Minister to scurry back to his parliament with a disarmament plan, but I do think it would plant a seed that ultimately could grow into such concrete action.
~ Michael Collins ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
2022
Despite the disturbing rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin, the facts are plain for everybody to see. We’re not attacking Russia; we’re helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression.
And just as Putin chose to launch this brutal invasion, he could make the choice to end this brutal invasion.
Russia is the aggressor. No if, ands, or buts about it. Russia is the aggressor. And the world must and will hold Russia accountable.
~ Joe Biden ~
2023
The fact is: almost everything is funny. You just have to have a way of looking at it.
~ Jerry Seinfeld ~
2024
When the night's here, I don't do tears
Baby, no chance
I could dance, I could dance, I could dance
Watch me dance, dance the night away
My heart could be burnin', but you won't see it on my face
Watch me dance, dance the night away
I'll still keep the party runnin', not one hair out of place.
~ Dua Lipa ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. ~ Robert J. Hanlon
2005
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss (born 30 April 1777)
2006
You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss (born 30 April 1777)
2007
In a political struggle, never get personal — else the dagger digs too deep. ~ Jack Valenti (recent death)
2008
The Gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools. ~ Larry Niven
2009
Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. It's enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance — embracing all opposites. ~ Taisen Deshimaru
2010
The god of war has gone over to the other side. ~ Adolf Hitler (died April 30)
2011
Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance. ~ Taisen Deshimaru (date of death)
2012
I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss
2013
Anything you don't understand is dangerous until you do understand it.
~ Larry Niven ~
2014
There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science.
~ Carl Friedrich Gauss ~
2015
I still get laughed at but it doesn't bother me,
I'm just so glad to hear laughter around me.
~ Amanda Palmer ~
2016
I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.
~ Carl Friedrich Gauss ~
2017
I have not come into this world to make men better, but to make use of their weaknesses.
~ Adolf Hitler ~
2018
We don’t think the world can be Woodstock … Who’d think the world could be a perpetual carnival? But we do think that the world could rediscover values that used to be automatically produced by culture but aren’t anymore because culture is subject to the commodification in our world. Everything is sold back to us, targeted to demographics. What we have to do is make progress in the quality of connection between people, not the quantity of consumption.
~ Larry Harvey ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2019
To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give.
~ Taisen Deshimaru ~
2020
Life does not forgive weakness.
~ Adolf Hitler ~
2021
Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.
~ Taisen Deshimaru ~
2022
Now we are at ground zero as regards the world we need to build. A world of respect for international law, the UN Charter, and the power of multilateralism. A world where civilians have protection. Where human rights are a priority. Where leaders live up to the declared values they have committed to. It is also a struggle, but we must win it for the sake of every country, community and person around the world.
~ António Guterres ~
2023
I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.
~ Carl Friedrich Gauss ~
2024
  If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or saki. Meditation is Drinking it.
~ Taisen Deshimaru ~
2025
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