Wikiquote:Quote of the day/April 2019

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Today is Monday, December 30, 2024; it is now 14:36 (UTC)


April 1
 
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 ~
 

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April 2
 
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 ~
 

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April 3
 
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 ~
 

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April 4
File:Andrei Tarkovsky.jpg  
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 ~
 

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April 5
 
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 ~
 

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April 6
 
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 ~
 

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April 7
 
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 ~
 

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April 8
 
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 ~
 

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April 9
 
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 ~
 

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April 10
 
There is … no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
~ William Hazlitt ~
 

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April 11
 
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 ~
 

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April 12
 
I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain't so.
~ Josh Billings ~
 

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April 13
 
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 ~
 

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April 14
 
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 ~
 

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April 15
 
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 ~
 

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April 16
 
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 ~
 

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April 17
 
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 ~
 

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April 18
 
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 ~
 

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April 19
 
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 ~
 

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April 20
 
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 ~
 

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April 21
 
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 ~
 

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April 22
 
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 ~
 

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April 23
 
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 ~
 

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April 24
 
I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.
~ Anthony Trollope ~
 

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April 25
 
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 ~
 

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April 26
 
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.
~ Nick Fury ~
in
~ The Avengers ~
 

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April 27
 
Tempt me no more, for I
Have known the lightning's hour,
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power.
~ Cecil Day Lewis ~
 

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April 28
 
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 ~
 

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April 29
 
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 ~
 

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April 30
 
To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give.
~ Taisen Deshimaru ~
 

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Today is Monday, December 30, 2024; it is now 14:36 (UTC)