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Wikiquote:Quote of the day/December

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Today is Tuesday, November 5, 2024; it is now 20:12 (UTC)


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This page lists quote of the day proposals specifically for dates in the month of December, 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: December 2008 · 2009 · 2010 · 2011 · 2012 · 2013 · 2014 · 2015 · 2016 · 2017

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.
2003
For myself, I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else. ~ Winston Churchill
2004
Ooh, with a little luck — December will be magic again. ~ Kate Bush
2005
The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns about that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever. ~ Woody Allen (born 1 December 1935)
2006
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank. ~ Woody Allen
2007
December will be magic again.
Don't miss the brightest star.
Kiss under mistletoe.
I want to hear you laugh.
Don't let the mystery go now.
~ Kate Bush ~
2008
There's an old joke... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life — full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness — and it's all over much too quickly. ~ Woody Allen
2009
The AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide. ~ Susan Sontag (anniversary of World AIDS Day)
2010
Stop the habit of wishful thinking and start the habit of thoughtful wishes. ~ Mary Martin
2011
December will be magic again.
Take a husky to the ice
While Bing Crosby sings White Christmas.
He makes you feel nice.
December will be magic again.
~ Kate Bush ~
2012
Neverland is the way I would like real life to be … timeless, free, mischievous, filled with gaiety, tenderness, and magic.
~ Mary Martin ~
2013
Why taunt me? Why upbraid me? I am merely a genius, not a god. A genius may discover the hidden secrets and display them; only a god could create new ones.
~ Rex Stout ~
in
~ Fer-de-Lance ~
2014
Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled.
~ Rex Stout ~
2015
The only difference between me and most people is that I'm perfectly aware that all my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made.
~ Rex Stout ~
2016
There are times when all the little demons disappear down their ratholes, and ugliness itself takes on the shape of beauty; when the darkest corner is touched by light; when the coldest heart feels the glow of warmth; when the trumpet call of good will and good cheer drowns out all the Babel of mean little noises. This is such a time. Merry Christmas! Merry merry merry!
~ Rex Stout ~
in
~ Christmas Party ~
2017
There's nothing as safe as ignorance — or as dangerous.
~ Rex Stout ~
in
~ "The Squirt and the Monkey"(AKA "See No Evil") ~
2018
The potency of knowledge depends on how and when it is used.
~ Rex Stout ~
in
~ Murder by the Book ~
2019
Nothing is simpler than to kill a man; the difficulties arise in attempting to avoid the consequences.
~ Rex Stout ~
in
~ Too Many Cooks ~
2020
I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions.
~ Rex Stout ~
in
~ The Rubber Band ~
2021
Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.
~ Josephine Baker ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of her recent induction into the French Pantheon.
2022
It is a fact that under equal conditions, large-scale battles and whole wars are won by troops which have a strong will for victory, clear goals before them, high moral standards, and devotion to the banner under which they go into battle.
~ Georgy Zhukov ~
2023
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
~ Henry Kissinger ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. ~ Helen Keller
2005
I do not believe that friendship today can flower out — can come out — of political life. I do believe that if there is something like a political life-to-be — to remain for us, in this world of technology — then it begins with friendship. ~ Ivan Illich (died 2 December 2002)
2006
The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. ~ Ivan Illich (date of death)
2007
Ultimately, leadership requires action: daring to take steps that are necessary but unpopular, challenging the status quo in order to reach a brighter future. And to push for peace is ultimately personal sacrifice, for leadership is not easy. It is born of a passion, and it is a commitment. Leadership is a commitment to an idea, to a dream, and to a vision of what can be. And my dream is for my land and my people to cease fighting and allow our children to reach their full potential regardless of sex, status, or belief. ~ Benazir Bhutto (became first female Prime Minister of Pakistan on 2 December 1988)
2008
Learned and leisured hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge. I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship. ~ Ivan Illich (date of death)
2009
I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied it is hospitality. A practice of hospitality— recovering threshold, table, patience, listening, and from there generating seedbeds for virtue and friendship on the one hand — on the other hand radiating out for possible community, for rebirth of community. ~ Ivan Illich
2010
It is not enough to have a beautiful voice. What does that mean? When you interpret a role, you have to have a thousand colors to portray happiness, joy, sorrow, fear. How can you do this with only a beautiful voice? Even if you sing harshly sometimes, as I have frequently done, it is a necessity of expression. You have to do it, even if people will not understand. But in the long run they will, because you must persuade them of what you're doing. ~ Maria Callas
2011
Jesus was an anarchist savior. That's what the Gospels tell us. ~ Ivan Illich
2012
Some say I have a beautiful voice, some say I have not. It is a matter of opinion. All I can say, those who don't like it shouldn't come to hear me.
~ Maria Callas ~
2013
We're just a conceited naked ape, but in our minds we're some "divine legend" and we see ourselves as some sort of god, seeing we can decide what will live and what will die, what will be saved and what will be destroyed, but honestly we're just a bunch of primates out of control.
~ Paul Watson ~
After the use of this, the author's page was amended to read:
I think the problem is that we don't really understand what we are. In essence we're just a conceited, naked ape. But in our minds we're some sort of "divine legend", and we see ourselves as some sort of god. That we can walk around the earth deciding who will live and who will die and what will be destroyed and what will be saved. But the fact is we're just a bunch of primates out of control.
2014
I wear this Saint Christopher medal sometimes because — I'm Jewish — but my boyfriend is Catholic. It was cute, the way he gave it to me. He said if it doesn't burn through my skin, it will protect me. Who cares? Different religions.
The only time it's an issue, I suppose, would be like if you're having a baby and you've got to figure out how you want to raise it. Which still wouldn't be an issue for us, because we'd be … honest, and just say, you know, like, "Mommy is one of the chosen people … and daddy believes that Jesus is magic!"
~ Sarah Silverman ~
2015
That we shall probably never know the whole "truth" about the universe does not really matter very much; the fun comes in trying to find out. The natural pattern of current astronomy … is provided by the cryptic unity of nature itself (belief in which is the chief act of faith of the scientist)… the human brain is itself a part of nature, fanned into existence by billions of years of sunshine acting on the molecules of the Earth. It is not perfectible in the immediate future, even if biologists should wish to alter the brain — which is a questionable ambition. What men make of the universe at large is a product of what they can see of it and of their own human nature.
~ Nigel Calder ~
2016
One of my complaints is that you've got far more scientists than ever before but the pace of discovery has not increased. Why? Because they're all busy just filling in the details of what they think is the standard story. And the youngsters, the people with different ideas have just as big a fight as ever and normally it takes decades for science to correct itself. But science does correct itself and that's the reason why science is such a glorious thing for our species.
~ Nigel Calder ~
2017
In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust.
Every atom in the human body, excluding only the primordial hydrogen atoms, was fashioned in stars that formed, grew old and exploded most violently before the Sun and the Earth came into being. The explosions scattered the heavy elements as a fine dust through space. By the time it made the Sun, the primordial gas of the Milky Way was sufficiently enriched with heavier elements for rocky planets like the Earth to form. And from the rocks atoms escaped for eventual incorporation in living things: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur for all living tissue; calcium for bones and teeth; sodium and potassium for the workings of nerves and brains; the iron colouring blood red… and so on.
No other conclusion of modern research testifies more clearly to mankind’s intimate connections with the universe at large and with the cosmic forces at work among the stars.
~ Nigel Calder ~
2018
I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good. …The old ideas are new again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in.
~ George H. W. Bush ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2019
Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semi-automatic weapon? This is a matter of national security.
We also need to make it harder for people to buy powerful assault weapons like the ones that were used in San Bernardino. I know there are some who reject any gun safety measures. But the fact is that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies — no matter how effective they are — cannot identify every would-be mass shooter, whether that individual is motivated by ISIL or some other hateful ideology. What we can do — and must do — is make it harder for them to kill.
~ Barack Obama ~
2020
The big discoveries raise questions that make astronomers work feverishly and argue with an agitation that verges on rudeness.
~ Nigel Calder ~
2021
When tales of the cosmos are told, this period of ours may always be recalled as that in which men first came to realise what a violent universe we inhabit.
~ Nigel Calder ~
2022
Can you hear me calling
Out your name?
You know that I'm falling
And I don't know what to say
I'll speak a little louder
I'll even shout
You know that I'm proud
And I can't get the words out
Oh, I
I want to be with you everywhere.
~ Christine McVie ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of her recent death.
2023
It is the individual who can and does make a difference even in this increasingly populous, complex world of ours. The individual can make things happen. It is the individual who can bring a tear to my eye and then cause me to take pen in hand. It is the individual who has acted or tried to act who will not only force a decision but also have a hand in shaping it. Whether acting in the legal, governmental, or private realm, one concerned and dedicated person can meaningfully affect what some consider an uncaring world. So give freely of yourself always to your family, your friends, your community, and your country. The world will pay you back many times over.
~ Sandra Day O'Connor ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of her recent death.
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education. ~ Mark Twain
2004
The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society. ~ Emma Goldman
2005
All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity - it is to destroy it. ~ Joseph Conrad in The Secret Agent (born 3 December 1857)
2006
There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind. ~ Joseph Conrad
2007
All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most insignificant tides of reality. ~ Joseph Conrad
2008
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. ~ Joseph Conrad
2009
He who wants to persuade should put his trust, not in the right argument, but in the right word. ~ Joseph Conrad
2010
The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition — and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation — and to the subtle but invincible, conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity — the dead to the living and the living to the unborn. ~ Joseph Conrad in The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'
2011
Truth shall prevail — don't you know Magna est veritas . . . Yes, when it gets a chance. There is a law, no doubt — and likewise a law regulates your luck in the throwing of dice. It is not Justice — the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune — the ally of patient Time — that holds an even and scrupulous balance. ~ Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim
2012
My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.
~ Joseph Conrad ~
in
~ The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' ~
2013
Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot
~ Joseph Conrad ~
in
~ The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' ~
2014
The mind of man is capable of anything — because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage — who can tell? — but truth — truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder — the man knows, and can look on without a wink.
~ Joseph Conrad ~
in
~ Heart of Darkness ~
2015
The last word is not said, — probably shall never be said. Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our last word — the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submissions, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be shaken, I suppose — at least, not by us who know so many truths about either. My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had achieved greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or rather in the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions — and safe — and profitable — and dull. Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone — and as short-lived, alas!
~ Joseph Conrad ~
in
~ Lord Jim ~
2016
An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
~ Joseph Conrad ~
2017
A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in its colours, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and in the facts of life, what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential — their one illuminating and convincing quality — the very truth of their existence.
~ Joseph Conrad ~
in
~ The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' ~
2018
To see! to see! — this is the craving of the sailor, as of the rest of blind humanity. To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
~ Joseph Conrad ~
2019
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more — the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort — to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires — and expires, too soon — too soon before life itself.
~ Joseph Conrad ~
2020
The good author is he who contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventures of his soul amongst criticisms.
~ Joseph Conrad ~
2021
Temperament, whether individual or collective, is not amenable to persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music — which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting, never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour; and the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage.
~ Joseph Conrad ~
in
~ The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' ~
2022
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
~ Joseph Conrad ~
in
~ Lord Jim ~
2023
It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much — everything — in a flash — before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence.
~ Joseph Conrad ~
in
~ Lord Jim ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. ~ George Carlin
  • selected by IP 68.227.198.159
2004
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
2005
Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (born 4 December 1875)
2006
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. ~ Thomas Carlyle (date of birth)
2007
You don't get very far in life without having to be brave an awful lot. Because we all have our frightening moments and difficult trials and we don't have much of a choice but to get through them, and it takes a lot of bravery to do that. The most important thing about bravery is this — It's not about not being scared — it's about being scared and doing it anyway — that's bravery. ~ Ysabella Brave
2008
Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those of any other? If so, this should be enough. I find the nicest and best people generally profess no religion at all, but are ready to like the best men of all religions. ~ Samuel Butler
2009
That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy. ~ Thomas Carlyle
2010
Standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards any one. ~ Edith Cavell
2011
Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful, something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy. ~ Edith Cavell
2012
You need to laugh more. Life is filled with too many problems, to not laugh every day. … We need to have a sense of humor going into this because it's too tough without it.
~ Ysabella Brave ~
2013
Words, words, words, are the stumbling-blocks in the way of truth. Until you think of things as they are, and not of the words that misrepresent them, you cannot think rightly. Words produce the appearance of hard and fast lines where there are none. Words divide; thus we call this a man, that an ape, that a monkey, while they are all only differentiations of the same thing. To think of a thing they must be got rid of: they are the clothes that thoughts wear — only the clothes. I say this over and over again, for there is nothing of more importance. Other men's words will stop you at the beginning of an investigation. A man may play with words all his life, arranging them and rearranging them like dominoes. If I could think to you without words you would understand me better.
~ Samuel Butler ~
2014
It is love that alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern. Our concern is so to order ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter into life — although we know it not.
~ Samuel Butler ~
2015
It is the manner of gods and prophets to begin: "Thou shalt have none other God or Prophet but me." If I were to start as a God or a prophet I think I should take the line: "Thou shalt not believe in me. Thou shalt not have me for a God. Thou shalt worship any d_____d thing thou likest except me." This should be my first and great commandment, and my second should be like unto it.
~ Samuel Butler ~
2016
I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved.
~ Edith Cavell ~
2017
The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.
~ Samuel Butler ~
2018
Every new idea has something of the pain and peril of childbirth about it; ideas are just as mortal and just as immortal as organised beings are.
~ Samuel Butler ~
2019
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
~ Samuel Butler ~
2020
The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh: it is meteoric — suspended in mid-air; it is the baseless fabric of a vision so vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails, a system based on faith fails also.
Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is an inflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another matter. If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable certainty for everything that they have taken hitherto as paper money on the credit of the bank of public opinion, is there money enough behind it all to stand so great a drain even on so great a reserve?
~ Samuel Butler ~
2021
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
~ Thomas Carlyle ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction. ~ Theodore Zeldin
2005
If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse. ~ Walt Disney (born 5 December 1901)
2006
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. ~ Werner Heisenberg (born 5 December 1901)
  • proposed by Fys
2007
Leadership means that a group, large or small, is willing to entrust authority to a person who has shown judgement, wisdom, personal appeal, and proven competence. ~ Walt Disney
2008
Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time. ~ Walt Disney
2009
Faith I have, in myself, in humanity, in the worthwhileness of the pursuits in entertainment for the masses. But wide awake, not blind faith, moves me. My operations are based on experience, thoughtful observation and warm fellowship with my neighbors at home and around the world. ~ Walt Disney
2010
Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding." ~ Werner Heisenberg
2011
Once a man has tasted freedom he will never be content to be a slave. That is why I believe that this frightfulness we see everywhere today is only temporary. Tomorrow will be better for as long as America keeps alive the ideals of freedom and a better life. ~ Walt Disney
2012
The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite.
~ Werner Heisenberg ~
2013
We're not trying to entertain the critics … I'll take my chances with the public.
~ Walt Disney ~
2014
Courage is the main quality of leadership, in my opinion, no matter where it is exercised. Usually it implies some risk — especially in new undertakings. Courage to initiate something and to keep it going, pioneering an adventurous spirit to blaze new ways, often, in our land of opportunity.
~ Walt Disney ~
2015
I don't believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn't treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should.
Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil, and that is what our pictures attempt to do.
~ Walt Disney ~
2016
There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality.
~ Werner Heisenberg ~
2017
Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life. I have watched constantly that in our movie work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether it deals with fable or with stories of living action.
~ Walt Disney ~
2018
I do not mistrust the future; I do not fear what is ahead. For our problems are large, but our heart is larger. Our challenges are great, but our will is greater. And if our flaws are endless, God's love is truly boundless.
Some see leadership as high drama, and the sound of trumpets calling, and sometimes it is that. But I see history as a book with many pages, and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning. The new breeze blows, a page turns, the story unfolds. And so today a chapter begins, a small and stately story of unity, diversity, and generosity — shared, and written, together.
~ George H. W. Bush ~
  • proposed by Kalki, for the 2018 national day of mourning for the 41st US President.
2019
I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.
~ Walt Disney ~
2020
I believe firmly in the efficacy of religion, in its powerful influence on a person's whole life. It helps immeasurably to meet the storms and stress of life and keep you attuned to the Divine inspiration. Without inspiration, we would perish.
~ Walt Disney ~
2021
All you've got to do is own up to your ignorance honestly, and you'll find people who are eager to fill your head with information.
~ Walt Disney ~
2022
In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas — and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.
~ Werner Heisenberg ~
2023
I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty. Call the child "innocence". The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be. In my work I try to reach and speak to that innocence, showing it the fun and joy of living; showing it that laughter is healthy; showing it that the human species, although happily ridiculous at times, is still reaching for the stars.
~ Walt Disney ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
2004
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. ~ Samuel Butler
2005
Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
It is a linnet's fluting after rain.
~ Joyce Kilmer (born 6 December 1886)
2006
Never think that you're not good enough. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning. ~ Anthony Trollope ( (died 6 December 1882))
2007
It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun and pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men: but Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done, would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again. ~ Joyce Kilmer (date of birth)
2008
The Science of Language has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship. ~ Max Müller
2009
Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp
To cheat a poet's eye?
Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause
In which to sing and to die!
~ Joyce Kilmer ~ (date of birth)
2010
Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who profess to be their disciples. ~ Max Müller
2011
There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art. ~ Anthony Trollope in Barchester Towers (date of death)
2012
The position which believers and unbelievers occupy with regard to their various forms of faith is very much the same all over the world. The difficulties which trouble us, have troubled the hearts and minds of men as far back as we can trace the beginnings of religious life. The great problems touching the relation of the Finite to the Infinite, of the human mind as the recipient, and of the Divine Spirit as the source of truth, are old problems indeed; and while watching their appearance in different countries, and their treatment under varying circumstances, we shall be able, I believe, to profit ourselves, both by the errors which others committed before us, and by the truth which they discovered. We shall know the rocks that threaten every religion in this changing and shifting world of ours, and having watched many a storm of religious controversy and many a shipwreck in distant seas, we shall face with greater calmness and prudence the troubled waters at home.
~ Max Müller ~
2013

Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
That the wind sways above a ruined shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.

Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath
Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod.
They shall not live who have not tasted death.
They only sing who are struck dumb by God.

~ Joyce Kilmer ~
2014
If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its first apostles.
~ Max Müller ~
2015
At the foot of the Cross on Calvary
Three soldiers sat and diced,
And one of them was the Devil
And he won the Robe of Christ.
~ Joyce Kilmer ~
2016

David is the song upon God's lips,
And Our Lady is the goblet that He sips:
And Gabriel's the breath of His command,
But Saint Michael is the sword in God's right hand.

The Ivory Tower is fair to see,
And may her walls encompass me!
But when the Devil comes with the thunder of his might,
Saint Michael, show me how to fight!

~ Joyce Kilmer ~
2017
The scene shall never fit the deed.
Grotesquely wonders come to pass.
The fool shall mount an Arab steed
And Jesus ride upon an ass.
~ Joyce Kilmer ~
2018
O Carpenter of Nazareth,
Whose mother was a village maid,
Shall we, Thy children, blow our breath
In scorn on any humble trade?
Have pity on our foolishness
And give us eyes, that we may see
Beneath the shopman's clumsy dress
The splendor of humanity!
~ Joyce Kilmer ~
2019
There will be and can be no rest till we admit, what cannot be denied, that there is in man a third faculty, which I call simply the faculty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion, but in all things; a power independent of sense and reason, a power in a certain sense contradicted by sense and reason; but yet, I suppose, a very real power, if we see how it has held its own from the beginning of the world — how neither sense nor reason has been able to overcome it, while it alone is able to overcome both reason and sense.
~ Max Müller ~
2020
The Science of Language has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship; and missionaries, instead of looking only for points of difference, will look out more anxiously for any common ground, any spark of the true light that may still be revived, any altar that may be dedicated afresh to the true God.
~ Max Müller ~
2021
I do believe we've lost something. … I can't get my hand on it, but we're just not quite where we should be, as the greatest democracy in the world. And I don't know how you correct it, but I keep hoping that there will be a change in my lifetime.
~ Bob Dole ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
2022
He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge it for the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he trusts his own life, and the lives of those who are dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahmin, or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu.
~ Max Müller ~
2023
Matter is the creation of the mind, not the reverse. Our entire world is thought, not wood and stone. We learn to think or reflect upon the thoughts, which the Thinker of the world, invisible, yet everywhere visible, has first thought. What we see, hear, taste, and feel, is all within us, not without. Sugar is not sweet, we are sweet. The sky is not painted blue, we are blue. Nothing is large or small, heavy or light, except as to ourselves. Man is the measure of all things, as an ancient Greek philosopher asserted; and man has inferred, discovered, and named matter.
~ Max Müller ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Oh, if a man tried to take his time on earth and prove before he died what one man's life could be worth, I wonder what would happen to this world? ~ Harry Chapin
2005
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. ~ Willa Cather (born (7 December 1873)
2006
I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for. ~ Thornton Wilder (died 7 December 1975)
2007
It's an alethiometer. It's one of only six that were ever made. Lyra, I urge you again: keep it private. … It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you'll have to learn by yourself. Now go — it's getting lighter... ~ Philip Pullman (Quote from The Golden Compass (1995) the movie adaptation opening on 7 December 2007)
2008
Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. ~ Willa Cather
2009
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. ~ Willa Cather
2010
That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed. ~ Algernon Sydney (executed on this date, no birthdate known)
2011
Being able to do as one pleases is the natural goal of the libertarian, but having nothing to do is not. While it may be correct to say that the human species is badly prepared for having nothing to do, it is quite a different matter to say that it is badly prepared for the freedom to do as one pleases. People who are able to do as they please may work very hard, given the opportunity to do interesting work. ~ Noam Chomsky
2012
And I feel that something's coming, and it's not just in the wind.
It's more than just tomorrow, it's more than where we've been,
It offers me a promise, it's telling me "Begin",
I know we're needing something worth believing in.
~ Harry Chapin ~
2013
In a three-minute stretch between commercials, or in seven hundred words, it is impossible to present unfamiliar thoughts or surprising conclusions with the argument and evidence required to afford them credibility. Regurgitation of welcome pieties faces no such problem.
~ Noam Chomsky ~
2014
As soon as one identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists. What they call themselves doesn’t matter to me. … This world is full of suffering, distress, violence and catastrophes. Students must decide: does something concern you or not? I say: look around, analyze the problems, ask yourself what you can do and set out on the work!
~ Noam Chomsky ~
2015
We live in an age that makes truth pass for treason, and as I dare not say anything against it, so the ears of those that are about me will probably be found too tender to hear it. This my trial and condemnation do sufficiently evidence.
~ Algernon Sydney ~
2016
Hello my Country
I once came to tell everyone your story
Your passion was my poetry
And your past my most potent glory
Your promise was my prayer
Your hypocrisy my nightmare
And your problems fill my present
Are we both going somewhere?
~ Harry Chapin ~
2017
This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People's speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark.
~ Willa Cather ~
2018
The world is always full of brilliant youth which fades into grey and embittered middle age: the first flowering takes everything. The great men are those who have developed slowly, or who have been able to survive the glamour of their early florescence and to go on learning from life.
~ Willa Cather ~
2019
I am persuaded to believe that God had left nations to the liberty of setting up such governments as best pleased themselves, and that magistrates were set up for the good of nations, not nations for the honor and glory of magistrates.
~ Algernon Sydney ~
2020
To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
~ Willa Cather ~
2021
Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. … Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounding determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~
2022
Jingoism, fear, racism, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you’re trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them.
~ Noam Chomsky ~
2023
Every person who is seeing me now — some are seeing me within months of my saying this, some are likely to see this years after I have said this, but whenever all of you are seeing it — that will be the moment you’re seeing it — as this is the moment I’m saying it. And what that means to me is: living in the moment. The moment between past and present, or present and past. The moment between after and next, the hammock in the middle of after and next. The moment. Treasure it. Use it with love.
~ Norman Lear ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one; I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will live as one. ~ John Lennon (died 8 December 1980)
2005
It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers. ~ James Thurber (born 8 December 1894)
2006
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
~ Delmore Schwartz ~ (born 8 December 1913)
2007
A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them. Obviously that can only work at moments. It can't be a lasting thing. That's not saying that people shouldn't keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Someday, who knows, we might conquer death, disease and war. ~ Jim Morrison (born 8 December 1943)
2008
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people — that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. ~ James Thurber
2009
I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter. ~ Horace
2010
Better than a thousand hollow words
Is one word that brings peace.
Better than a thousand hollow verses
Is one verse that brings peace.
Better than a hundred hollow lines
Is one line of the law, bringing peace.
~ Gautama Buddha (Bodhi Day a traditional date of celebration of his enlightenment)
2011
Just as a solid rock is not shaken by the storm, even so the wise are not affected by praise or blame. ~ Gautama Buddha (Bodhi Day a traditional date of celebration of his enlightenment)
2012
How could I think the brief years were enough
To prove the reality of endless love?
~ Delmore Schwartz ~
2013
It is difficult to speak of what is common in a way of your own.
~ Horace ~
2014
No one saves us but ourselves,
No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the path
Buddhas merely teach the way.
By ourselves is evil done,
By ourselves we pain endure,
By ourselves we cease from wrong,
By ourselves become we pure.
~ Gautama Buddha ~
as translated by
~ Paul Carus ~
2015
Whence, if ever, shall come the actuality
Of a voice speaking the mind's knowing,
The sunlight bright on the green windowshade,
And the self articulate, affectionate, and flowing,
Ease, warmth, light, the utter showing,
When in the white bed all things are made.
~ Delmore Schwartz ~
2016
Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.
~ Horace ~
2017
Semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum.
Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.
~ Horace ~
2018
He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin!
~ Horace ~
2019
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
~ James Thurber ~
2020
When I look at a body I know it gives me choices of what to put in a painting; what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.
~ Lucian Freud ~
2021
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door.
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before.
"Relax," said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
but you can never leave!"
~ Eagles ~
2022
I want to say thank you. And I want to say thank you to my mother, who is here tonight. You’ll see her in a little while. But she grew up in the 1950s, in Waycross, Georgia, picking somebody else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco. But tonight she helped pick her youngest son to be a United States senator.
~ Raphael Warnock ~
2023
Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.

Then, as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.
~ Gautama Buddha ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it, they are wrong. I do not say give them up, for they may be all you have, but conceal them like a vice lest they spoil the lives of better and simpler people. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
2004
Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
2005
We take men for what they are worth — and that is why we hate the government of man by man, and that we work with all our might — perhaps not strong enough — to put an end to it. ~ Peter Kropotkin (born 9 December 1842)
2006
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all liberties. ~ John Milton (born 9 December 1608)
2007
Man is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not mutual struggle — has had the leading part. ~ Peter Kropotkin
2008
A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things. ~ Grace Hopper
2009
A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. … Acknowledging, as a fact, the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the past … it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst — not by subjecting all its members to an authority that is fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free association. ~ Peter Kropotkin
2010
Freely we serve,
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall.
~ John Milton in Paradise Lost ~
2011
When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions! ~ Peter Kropotkin
2012
Accuse not Nature: she hath done her part;
Do thou but thine.
~ John Milton ~
2013
I neither oblige the belief of other person, nor overhastily subscribe mine own. Nor have I stood with others computing or collating years and chronologies, lest I should be vainly curious about the time and circumstance of things, whereof the substance is so much in doubt. By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.
~ John Milton ~
2014
The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested — rulers, lawyers, clerics — have carefully enwound her.
She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness of the religious political, legal, and social prejudices amid which she has vegetated. She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences.
~ Peter Kropotkin ~
2015
All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague formulas as "The Right to work," or "To each the whole result of his labour." What we proclaim is The Right to Well-Being: Well-Being for All!
~ Peter Kropotkin ~
2016
Godspeed, John Glenn.
~ Scott Carpenter ~
  • proposed by Kalki in regard to recent death of Glenn.
2017
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
~ William Wordsworth ~
2018
When knowledge is the slave of social considerations, it defines a special class; when it serves its own ends only, it no longer does so. There is of course a profound logic in this paradox: genuine knowledge is egalitarian in that it allows no privileged source, testers, messengers of Truth. It tolerates no privileged and circumscribed data. The autonomy of knowledge is a leveller.
~ Ernest Gellner‎‎ ~
2019
Under what torments inwardly I groane;
While they adore me on the Throne of Hell,
With Diadem and Scepter high advanc’d
The lower still I fall, onely Supream
In miserie; such joy Ambition findes.
But say I could repent and could obtaine
By Act of Grace my former state; how soon
Would highth recal high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feign’d submission swore: ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have peirc’d so deep:
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall: so should I purchase deare
Short intermission bought with double smart.
~ John Milton ~
in
~ Paradise Lost ~
2020
While science and technology play critical roles in sustaining modern civilization, they are not part of our culture in the sense that they are not commonly studied or well comprehended. Neither the potential nor the limitations of science are understood so that what can be achieved and what is beyond reach are not comprehended. The line between science and magic becomes blurred so that public judgments on technical issues can be erratic or badly flawed. It frequently appears that some people will believe almost anything. Thus judgments can be manipulated or warped by unscrupulous groups. Distortions or outright falsehoods can come to be accepted as fact.
~ Henry Way Kendall ~
2021
I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. I know, only too well, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would spring up all over the place, smuggled Thick Descriptions would be brought in by the lorry-load from Canada by the Mafia, blood and thick meaning would clot in the gutter as rival gangs of semiotic bootleggers slugged it out in a series of bloody shoot-outs and ambushes. Addicts would be subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings and its attendant psychic consequences would in no way diminsh, but the criminal world would benefit, and the whole fabric of civil society would be put under severe strain. Never!
~ Ernest Gellner‎‎ ~
2022
Ideas, and even the detection of errors, require more than care and caution.
~ Ernest Gellner‎‎ ~
2023
With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons, and their change; all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glist'ring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful ev'ning mild; then silent night
With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train.
~ John Milton ~
in
~ Paradise Lost ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…

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

  • The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. ~ John Milton
  • As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. ~ John Milton in Areopagitica
  • One single war — we all know — may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good. ~ Peter Kropotkin
  • Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play on the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? ~ John Milton in Areopagitica
  • I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. ~ John Milton in Areopagitica
He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth.
~ John Milton ~
in
~ Areopagitica ~
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.
~ John Milton ~
in
~ Areopagitica ~
2004
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, therefore, The General Assembly, Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations...
~ From the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ~
Adopted and proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly, 10 December 1948
2005
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
~ Emily Dickinson (born 10 December 1830)
2006
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. ~ Elie Wiesel, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on this date in 1986.
2007
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ~ Desmond Tutu, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on this day in 1984.
2008
"Hope" is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —
And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —
~ Emily Dickinson ~
2009
We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, from his Nobel prize speech, the prize was awarded to him this day on 1906
2010
The history of the human race has generated several papers articulating basic moral imperatives, or fundamental principles, of human coexistence that… substantially influenced the fate of humanity on this planet. Among these historic documents, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights … holds a very special, indeed, unique position. It is the first code of ethical conduct that was not a product of one culture, or one sphere of civilization only, but a universal creation, shaped and subscribed to by representatives of all humankind. Since its very inception, the Declaration has thus represented a planetary, or global commitment, a global intention, a global guideline. For this reason alone, this exceptional document — conceived as a result of a profound human self-reflection in the wake of the horrors of World War II, and retaining its relevance ever since — deserves to be remembered today. ~ Václav Havel (quote from a speech on the 50th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted and proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly, 10 December 1948)
2011
THE BLUNDER is to estimate,—
“Eternity is Then,”
We say, as of a station.
Meanwhile he is so near,
He joins me in my ramble,
Divides abode with me,
No friend have I that so persists
As this Eternity.
- Emily Dickinson
2012
Dreams — are well — but Waking's better,
If One wake at morn —
If One wake at Midnight — better —
Dreaming — of the Dawn —
~ Emily Dickinson ~
2013
The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is — not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.
~ George MacDonald ~
2014
A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much.
~ George MacDonald ~
2015
Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God’s residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.
~ Emily Dickinson ~
2016
I firmly believe people have hitherto been a great deal too much taken up about doctrine and far too little about practice. The word doctrine, as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory. I preached a sermon about this. We are far too anxious to be definite and to have finished, well-polished, sharp-edged systems — forgetting that the more perfect a theory about the infinite, the surer it is to be wrong, the more impossible it is to be right.
~ George MacDonald ~
2017
One difference between God's work and man's is, that, while God's work cannot mean more than he meant, man's must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God's things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time with things that came from thoughts beyond his own.
~ George MacDonald ~
2018


Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
~ Universal Declaration of Human Rights ~
  • proposed by Kalki for Human Rights Day and the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
2019
I TOOK my power in my hand
And went against the world;
’T was not so much as David had,
But I was twice as bold.

I aimed my pebble, but myself
Was all the one that fell.
Was it Goliath was too large,
Or only I too small?
~ Emily Dickinson ~
2020
Let it never be said by future generations that indifference, cynicism or selfishness made us fail to live up to the ideals of humanism which the Nobel Peace Prize encapsulates.
Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war.
Let the efforts of us all, prove that he was not a mere dreamer when he spoke of the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace being more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.
Let a new age dawn!
~ Nelson Mandela ~
2021
I would not care whether truth is pleasant or unpleasant, and in consonance with or opposed to current views. I would not mind in the least whether truth is, or is not, a blow to the glory of my country. If necessary, I shall bear in patience the ridicule and slander of friends and society for the sake of preaching truth. But still I shall seek truth, understand truth, and accept truth. This should be the firm resolve of a historian.
~ Jadunath Sarkar ~
2022
LOVE is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.
~ Emily Dickinson ~
2023
It's such a little thing to weep —
So short a thing to sigh —
And yet — by Trades — the size of these
We men and women die!
~ Emily Dickinson ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. ~ Emo Phillips
2004
I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another. ~ Ellen Goodman
2005
Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (born 11 December 1918)
2006
In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim — that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people. ~ George Mason
2007
Let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2008
The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world. ~ Max Born (born 11 December 1882)
2009
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2010
Our All is at Stake, and the little Conveniencys and Comforts of Life, when set in Competition with our Liberty, ought to be rejected not with Reluctance but with Pleasure. ~ George Mason
2011
There are metaphysical problems, which cannot be disposed of by declaring them meaningless. For, as I have repeatedly said, they are "beyond physics" indeed and demand an act of faith. We have to accept this fact to be honest. There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible and those who believe that "belief" must be discarded and replaced by "the scientific method." ~ Max Born
2012
Existence is a mystery, and one should accept it as a mystery and not pretend to have any explanation. No, explanation is not needed — only exclamation, a wondering heart, awakened, surprised, feeling the mystery of life each moment. Then, and only then, you know what truth is. And truth liberates.
~ Osho ~
2013
We shall not look at caste or religion. All human beings in this land — whether they be those who preach the vedas or who belong to other castes — are one.
~ Subramanya Bharathi ~
2014
Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God. One must not have any negative attitude to any religion but nonetheless the depth of understanding God and the depth of applying God's commandments is different in different religions.
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ~
2015
All men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
~ George Mason ~
2016
The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.
~ George Mason ~
2017
He who writes poetry is not a poet. He whose poetry has become his life, and who has made his life his poetry — it is he who is a poet.
~ Subramanya Bharathi ~
2018
In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point.
Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ~
2019
When we are at the summit of a vain ambition, we are also at the depth of real misery. We are placed where time cannot improve, but must impair us; where chance and change cannot befriend, but may betray us; in short, by attaining all we wish, and gaining all we want, we have only reached a pinnacle, where we have nothing to hope, but every thing to fear.
~ Charles Caleb Colton ~
2020
Practised in acts of despotism and cruelty, we become callous to the dictates of humanity and all the finer feelings of the soul. Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes.
~ George Mason ~
2021
Fools! Do you argue, that things ancient ought, on that account, to be true and noble! Fallacies and Falsehoods there were from time immemorial, and dare you argue that because these are ancient these should prevail?
In ancient times, do you think that there was not the ignorant, and the shallow minded? And why after all should you embrace so fondly a carcass of dead thoughts. Live in the present and shape the future, do not be casting lingering looks to the distant past for the past has passed away, never again to return.
~ Subramanya Bharathi ~
2022
Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ~
2023
I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances — from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer’s pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ~
2024
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2004
Every single moment of a person's life, both of the understanding and of the will, is a new beginning. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
2005
I had some great things and I had some bad things. The best and the worst... In other words, I had a life. ~ Richard Pryor (recent death)
2006
The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments. ~ Gustave Flaubert (Date of birth)
2007
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. … I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD. ~ William Lloyd Garrison
2008
Klaatu barada nikto! ~ Patricia Neal as "Helen Benson" in The Day the Earth Stood Still
(The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), the remake of the classic movie, which also uses the line is opening in wide release on 12·12·2008)
2009
What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it. ~ Gustave Flaubert
2010
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. ~ Gustave Flaubert
2011
It seems to me that understanding that our theories are the source of all our conflicts would go a long way in helping people with different belief systems to get along. ~ Michael Gazzaniga
2012
With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
~ William Lloyd Garrison ~
2013
Our country is the world — our countrymen are all mankind.
~ William Lloyd Garrison ~
2014
Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage. The great mass of mankind shun the labor and responsibility of forming opinions for themselves.
~ William Lloyd Garrison ~
2015
You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.
~ Gustave Flaubert ~
2016
I have not come here with reference to any flag but that of freedom. If your Union does not symbolize universal emancipation, it brings no Union for me. If your Constitution does not guarantee freedom for all, it is not a Constitution I can ascribe to. If your flag is stained by the blood of a brother held in bondage, I repudiate it in the name of God. I came here to witness the unfurling of a flag under which every human being is to be recognized as entitled to his freedom. Therefore, with a clear conscience, without any compromise of principles, I accepted the invitation of the Government of the United States to be present and witness the ceremonies that have taken place today.
And now let me give the sentiment which has been, and ever will be, the governing passion of my soul: "Liberty for each, for all, and forever!"
~ William Lloyd Garrison ~
2017
One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.
~ Gustave Flaubert ~
2018
Our duty is to feel what is great and love what is beautiful — not to accept all the social conventions and the infamies they impose on us.
~ Gustave Flaubert ~
in
~ Madame Bovary ~
2019
I have been derisively called a "Woman's Rights Man". I know no such distinction. I claim to the a Human Rights Man, and wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.
~ William Lloyd Garrison ~
2020
An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.
~ Avicenna ~
2021
Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.
~ Gustave Flaubert ~
2022
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
~ Gustave Flaubert ~
2023
This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin. The district court rejected respondent's claims, correctly recognizing that former Presidents are not above the law and are accountable for their violations of federal criminal law while in office. … It is of imperative public importance that respondent's claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent's trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected. Respondent's claims are profoundly mistaken, as the district court held. But only this Court can definitively resolve them.
~ Jack Smith ~
2024
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2004
How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway... And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness! ~ Anne Frank
2005
The maple tree that night
Without a wind or rain
Let go its leaves
Because its time had come.
~ Eugene McCarthy (recent death)
2006
We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race. ~ Kofi Annan, elected Secretary General of the United Nations on this date, in 1996.
2007
Where they burn books, they will also burn people. ~ Heinrich Heine (born 13 December 1797)
2008
Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance. ~ Heinrich Heine
2009
Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery. ~ George Pólya (date of birth)
2010
The best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination. ~ George Pólya (date of birth)
2011
Life's an awfully lonesome affair. You can live close against other people yet your lives never touch. You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even coming and going. ~ Emily Carr
2012
If our animosities are born out of fear, then confident generosity is born out of hope. One of the central lessons I have learned after a half century of working in the developing world is that the replacement of fear by hope is probably the single most powerful trampoline of progress.
~ Aga Khan IV ~
2013
When words leave off, music begins.
~ Heinrich Heine ~
2014
A higher power than man power guided and watched over me and told me what to do. … There can be no doubt in the world of the fact of the divine power being in that. No other power under heaven could bring a man out of a place like that. Men were killed on both sides of me; and I was the biggest and the most exposed of all. Over thirty machine guns were maintaining rapid fire at me, point-blank from a range of about twenty-five yards.
~ Alvin C. York ~
2015

You, the sought for; I, the seeker; this, the search:
And each is the mission of all.

For greatness is only the drayhorse that coaxes
The built cart out; and where we go is reason.
But genius is an enormous littleness, a trickling
Of heart that covers alike the hare and the hunter.

~ Kenneth Patchen ~
2016
There are those... who enter the world in such poverty that they are deprived of both the means and the motivation to improve their lot. Unless these unfortunates can be touched with the spark which ignites the spirit of individual enterprise and determination, they will only sink back into renewed apathy, degradation and despair. It is for us, who are more fortunate, to provide that spark.
~ Aga Khan IV ~
2017
The ability to make judgements that are grounded in solid information, and employ careful analysis, should be one of the most important goals for any educational endeavor. As students develop this capability, they can begin to grapple with the most important and difficult step: to learn to place such judgements in an ethical framework. For all these reasons, there is no better investment that individuals, parents and the nation can make than an investment in education of the highest possible quality. Such investments are reflected, and endure, in the formation of the kind of social conscience that our world so desperately needs.
~ Aga Khan IV ~
2018
Tolerance, openness and understanding towards other peoples' cultures, social structures, values and faiths are now essential to the very survival of an interdependent world.
~ Aga Khan IV ~
2019
I was sharpshooting. I don't think I missed a shot. It was no time to miss.
In order to sight me or to swing their machine guns on me, the Germans had to show their heads above the trench, and every time I saw a head I just touched it off. All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn't want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I. And I was giving them the best I had.
~ Alvin C. York ~
2020
The Muslim world, with its history and cultures, and indeed its different interpretations of Islam, is still little known in the West… The two worlds, Muslim and non-Muslim, Eastern and Western, must, as a matter of urgency, make a real effort to get to know one another, for I fear that what we have is not a clash of civilisations, but a clash of ignorance on both sides.
~ Aga Khan IV ~
2021
We cannot make the world safe for democracy unless we also make the world safe for diversity.
~ Aga Khan IV ~
2022
Pluralist societies are not accidents of history. They are a product of enlightened education and continuous investment by governments and all of civil society in recognizing and celebrating the diversity of the world’s peoples.
~ Aga Khan IV ~
2023
If our animosities are born out of fear, then confident generosity is born out of hope. One of the central lessons I have learned after a half century of working in the developing world is that the replacement of fear by hope is probably the single most powerful trampoline of progress.
~ Aga Khan IV ~
2024
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2004
Loving kindness is greater than laws; and the charities of life are more than all ceremonies. ~ The Talmud
2005
My creed is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned but not bought. ~ Margaret Chase Smith (born 14 December 1897)
2006
My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect. ~ Ellen Willis (born 14 December 1941)
2007
I had determined to go as far as declaring in abstruse and puzzling utterances the future causes of the "common advent", even those truly cogent ones that I have foreseen. Yet lest whatever human changes may be to come should scandalise delicate ears, the whole thing is written in nebulous form, rather than as a clear prophecy of any kind. ~ Nostradamus‎ (born 14 December 1503)
2008
The Art of Peace is not easy. It is a fight to the finish, the slaying of evil desires and all falsehood within. On occasion the Voice of Peace resounds like thunder, jolting human beings out of their stupor. ~ Morihei Ueshiba (born 14 December 1883)
2009
Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character. ~ Margaret Chase Smith
2010
The project of organizing a democratic political movement entails the hope that one's ideas and beliefs are not merely idiosyncratic but speak to vital human needs, interests and desires, and therefore will be persuasive to many and ultimately most people. But this is a very different matter from deciding to put forward only those ideas presumed (accurately or not) to be compatible with what most people already believe. ~ Ellen Willis
2011
There’s a day to ride thumb on a thunderhead
There’s a day to make fantasy real
There’s a day to deny and a day to decry
and a day for the man the wind at his heels.
~ Mike Scott ~
2012
Instructors can impart only a fraction of the teaching. It is through your own devoted practice that the mysteries of the Art of Peace are brought to life.
~ Morihei Ueshiba ~
2013
Some say the Gods are just a myth
but guess Who I've been dancing with...
The Great God Pan is alive!
~ Mike Scott ~
2014
At sea on a ship in a thunderstorm
on the very night the Christ was born
a sailor heard from overhead
a mighty voice cry "Pan is Dead!"
So follow Christ as best you can
Pan is dead — Long live Pan!
~ Mike Scott ~
2015
In the Art of Peace we never attack. An attack is proof that one is out of control. Never run away from any kind of challenge, but do not try to suppress or control an opponent unnaturally. Let attackers come any way they like and then blend with them. Never chase after opponents. Redirect each attack and get firmly behind it.
~ Morihei Ueshiba ~
2016
In its original literal sense, "moral relativism" is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an essentially religious vocabulary of absolute good and evil as the only legitimate framework for discussing social values have redefined "relative" as "arbitrary." That conflation has been reinforced by social theorists and advocates of identity politics who argue that there is no universal morality, only the value systems of particular cultures and power structures.
~ Ellen Willis ~
2017
I say, life and figure are distinct attributes of one substance, and as one and the same body may be transmuted into all kinds of figures; and as the perfecter figure comprehends that which is more imperfect; so one and the same body may be transmuted from one degree of life to another more perfect, which always comprehends in it the inferior.… the case is the same in diverse degrees of life, which have indeed a beginning, but no end; so that the creature is always capable of a farther and perfecter degree of life, ad infinitum, and yet can never attain to be equal with God; for he is still infinitely more perfect than a creature, in its highest elevation or perfection, even as a globe is the most perfect of all other figures, unto which none can approach.
~ Anne Conway ~
2018
As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it is an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.
This evening, Michelle and I will do what I know every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter, and we’ll tell them that we love them, and we’ll remind each other how deeply we love one another. But there are families in Connecticut who cannot do that tonight, and they need all of us right now. In the hard days to come, that community needs us to be at our best as Americans, and I will do everything in my power as president to help, because while nothing can fill the space of a lost child or loved one, all of us can extend a hand to those in need, to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them, that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their memories, but also in ours.
May God bless the memory of the victims and, in the words of Scripture, heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.
~ Barack Obama ~
2019
Yoga is like music. The rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind and the harmony of the soul creates the symphony of life.
~ BKS Iyengar ~
2020
A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, Brother Michael liked to say. A bad man survives but loses his soul.
~ John le Carré ~

2021

The stars are alive and nights like these
were born to be sanctified by you and me.
~ Mike Scott ~
2022
If your opponent strikes with fire, counter with water, becoming completely fluid and free-flowing. Water, by its nature, never collides with or breaks against anything. On the contrary, it swallows up any attack harmlessly.
~ Morihei Ueshiba ~
2023
I was grounded
While you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truth
You cut through lies
I saw the lone empty valley
You saw Brigadoon
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon.
~ Mike Scott ~
2024
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2003
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
2004
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. ~ Albert Einstein
2005
Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute. ~ Freeman Dyson (born 15 December 1923)
2006
To talk about the end of science is just as foolish as to talk about the end of religion. Science and religion are both still close to their beginnings, with no ends in sight. ~ Freeman Dyson (date of birth)
2007
It is not the right angle that attracts me,
Nor the hard, inflexible straight line, man-made.
What attracts me are free and sensual curves.
The curves in my country’s mountains,
In the sinuous flow of its rivers,
In the beloved woman’s body.
~ Oscar Niemeyer (his 100th Birthday — born 15 December 1907)
2008
It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. ~ Freeman Dyson
2009
It's kind of fun to do the impossible. ~ Walt Disney (Date of death)
2010
The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms. ~ Muriel Rukeyser
2011
A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad. ~ Freeman Dyson
2012
In time of crisis, we summon up our strength.
Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used.
In time of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all our need, our need for each other and our need for our selves. We call up, with all the strength of summoning we have, our fullness.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2013
Belief has its structures, and its symbols change. Its tradition changes. All the relationships within these forms are inter-dependent. We look at the symbols, we hope to read them, we hope for sharing and communication.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2014
We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God.
~ Freeman Dyson ~
2015
The meanings of poetry take their growth through the interaction of the images and the music of the poem.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2016
In this moment when we face horizons and conflicts wider than ever before, we want our resources, the ways of strength. We look again to the human wish, its faiths, the means by which the imagination leads us to surpass ourselves.
If there is a feeling that something has been lost, it may be because much has not yet been used, much is still to be found and begun.
Everywhere we are told that our human resources are all to be used, that our civilization itself means the uses of everything it has — the inventions, the histories, every scrap of fact. But there is one kind of knowledge — infinitely precious, time-resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2017
The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead. I am no Jedi, but I know the Force. It moves through and surrounds every living thing. Close your eyes … feel it. The light … it's always been there, it will guide you.
~ Star Wars : The Force Awakens ~
2018
The deepest pleasure in science comes from finding an instantiation, a home, for some deeply felt, deeply held image.
~ Wolfgang Pauli ~
  • proposed by UDScott for date of Pauli's death.
2019
I keep thinking what happens when the power of love is twisted into the love of power.
~ Maurice Davis ~
2020
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2021
I had some good opportunities. I was lucky to have had the chance to do things differently. Architecture is about surprise.
~ Oscar Niemeyer ~
2022
However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.
If we use the resources we now have, we and the world itself may move in one fullness. Moment to moment, we can grow, if we can bring ourselves to meet the moment with our lives.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2023
We are against war and the sources of war. We are for poetry and the sources of poetry.
They are everyday, these sources, as the sources of peace are everyday, infinite and commonplace as a look, as each new sun.
~ Muriel Rukeyser ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange. ~ G. K. Chesterton
2005
Fear... can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy. If you're afraid you don't commit yourself to life completely; fear makes you always, always hold something back. ~ Philip K. Dick (born 16 December 1928)
2006
What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art. ~ George Santayana (born 16 December 1863)
2007
Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future. ~ Arthur C. Clarke
2008
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. ~ Philip K. Dick
2009
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. ~ Arthur C. Clarke (Date of birth)
2010
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ George Santayana
2011
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ~ Arthur C. Clarke
2012
The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men’s minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.
~ George Santayana ~
2013
Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups … So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.
~ Philip K. Dick ~
2014
We'll know homo superior when he comes — by definition. He'll be the one we won't be able to euth.
~ Philip K. Dick ~
2015
It seems to me very important to continue to distinguish between two evils. It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.
~ Margaret Mead ~
2016
The Information Age offers much to mankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to the challenges it presents. But it is vital to remember that information — in the sense of raw data — is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~
2017
Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered. When our race has reached its ultimate achievements, and the stars themselves are scattered no more widely than the seed of Adam, even then we shall still be like ants crawling on the face of the Earth. The ants have covered the world, but have they conquered it — for what do their countless colonies know of it, or of each other?
So it will be with us as we spread out from Earth, loosening the bonds of kinship and understanding, hearing faint and belated rumors at second — or third — or thousandth hand of an ever dwindling fraction of the entire human race. Though the Earth will try to keep in touch with her children, in the end all the efforts of her archivists and historians will be defeated by time and distance, and the sheer bulk of material. For the numbers of distinct human societies or nations, when our race is twice its present age, may be far greater than the total number of all the men who have ever lived up to the present time.
We have left the realm of comprehension in our vain effort to grasp the scale of the universe; so it must ever be, sooner rather than later.
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~
2018
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~
2019
You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness.
~ Jane Austen ~
in
~ Pride and Prejudice ~
2020
Do not merely practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; it deserves that, for only art and science can exalt man to divinity.
~ Ludwig van Beethoven ~
2021
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~
2022
The way of water has no beginning and no end. The sea is around you and within you. The sea is your home — before your birth, and after your death. Our hearts beat in the womb of the world, our breath burns in the shadow of the deep. The sea gives, and the sea takes. Water connects all things, life to death, darkness to light.
~ Avatar: The Way of Water ~
  • proposed by Kalki; official release date of the film.
2023
Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost … perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that precious little fragment as well.
~ Philip K. Dick ~


2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. ~ Bertrand Russell
2004
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring,
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
~ "Arwen" in the film The Return of the King ~
2005
I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. ~ Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol (first published 19 December 1843, but mistakenly suggested for this date)
2006
To even mention all the things the bird must constantly keep in mind in order to fly securely through the air would take a considerable part of the evening... The bird has learned this art of equilibrium, and learned it so thoroughly that its skill is not apparent to our sight. We only learn to appreciate it when we try to imitate it. ~ Wilbur Wright (designed the Wright Flyer which flew on 17 December 1903)
  • proposed by Fys
2007
It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me. ~ Ford Madox Ford
2008
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
~ John Greenleaf Whittier ~
2009
All he desired in life was that — that he could pick himself together again and go on with his daily occupations if — the girl, being five thousand miles away, would continue to love him. He wanted nothing more, He prayed his God for nothing more. ~ Ford Madox Ford
2010
Those who have served the cause of the revolution have plowed the sea. ~ Simon Bolivar (died 17 December 1830)
  • proposed by Fys
2011
Scrooge was better than his word. … He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One! ~ Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol (first published on 19 December 1843, but mistakenly suggested for this date)
2012
You may well ask why I write. And yet my reasons are quite many. For it is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to set down what they have witnessed for the benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight out of their heads.
~ Ford Madox Ford ~
2013
Every discovery opens a new field for investigation of facts, shows us the imperfection of our theories. It has justly been said, that the greater the circle of light, the greater the boundary of darkness by which it is surrounded.
~ Humphry Davy ~
2014
We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.
~ Pope Francis ~
2015
The fullness of grace can transform the human heart and enable it to do something so great as to change the course of human history. … This Extraordinary Holy Year is itself a gift of grace. To pass through the Holy Door means to rediscover the infinite mercy of the Father who welcomes everyone and goes out personally to encounter each of them. This will be a year in which we grow ever more convinced of God’s mercy. How much wrong we do to God and his grace when we speak of sins being punished by his judgment before we speak of their being forgiven by his mercy! But that is the truth. We have to put mercy before judgment, and in any event God’s judgement will always be in the light of his mercy. In passing through the Holy Door, then, may we feel that we ourselves are part of this mystery of love. Let us set aside all fear and dread, for these do not befit men and women who are loved. Instead, let us experience the joy of encountering that grace which transforms all things.
~ Pope Francis ~
2016
God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
They touch the shining hills of day;
The evil cannot brook delay,
The good can well afford to wait.
~ John Greenleaf Whittier ~
2017
Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer.
~ Humphry Davy ~
2018
God is the light that illuminates the darkness, even if it does not dissolve it, and a spark of divine light is within each of us … our species will end but the light of God will not end and at that point it will invade all souls and it will all be in everyone.
~ Pope Francis ~
2019
We must not place the burden on the next generations to take on the problems caused by the previous ones. Instead, we should give them the opportunity to remember our generation as the one that renewed and acted on — with honest, responsible and courageous awareness — the fundamental need to collaborate in order to preserve and cultivate our common home. May we offer the next generation concrete reasons to hope and work for a good and dignified future!
~ Pope Francis ~
2020
The Son of God became incarnate to infuse into the human soul the feeling of brotherhood. All are brothers and all children of God. Abba, as he called the Father. I will show you the way, he said. Follow me and you will find the Father and you will all be his children and he will take delight in you. Agape, the love of each one of us for the other, from the closest to the furthest, is in fact the only way that Jesus has given us to find the way of salvation and of the Beatitudes.
~ Pope Francis ~
2021
Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.
~ Humphry Davy ~
2022
It is beautiful to celebrate Christmas, but let us lower the level of Christmas spending. Let's have a more humble Christmas, with more humble gifts, and send what we save to the Ukrainian people, who need it. … They are suffering so much, they are going hungry, they feel the cold and many are dying because there are not enough doctors and nurses available … Let's not forget. Christmas, yes. In peace with the Lord, yes. But with Ukrainians in our hearts. Let's make this concrete gesture for them.
~ Pope Francis ~
2023
Do you know how many children have died in Gaza in this last war? More than 3,000. It is incredible, but it is the reality … And in Ukraine there are more than 500, and in Yemen, in years of war, thousands … Their memory leads us to be ourselves lights for the world, to touch the hearts of many people, especially those who can stop the whirlwind of violence.
~ Pope Francis ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as anothers. We see so much only as we possess. ~ Henry David Thoreau
2004
The Tree that was withered shall be renewed, and he shall plant it in the high places, and the City shall be blessed. Sing all ye people! ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
(From The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King (Book VI, Chapter 5, "The Steward and the King"); in the novel this is a song of a great Eagle heralding the victory of Aragorn's forces against those of Sauron and the Dark Tower.)
2005
It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die. ~ Steve Biko (born 18 December 1946)
2006
Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental. ~ Paul Klee (born 18 December 1879)
2007
I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For I reside just as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough. ~ Paul Klee
2008
Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give us second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
"Glory to the new born King!"

~ Charles Wesley ~ (born 18 December 1707, and song for the Christmas season)

2009
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. ~ Paul Klee
2010
Hark! the herald angels sing,
"Glory to the new-born King;
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!"
Joyful, all ye nations, rise.
Join the triumph of the skies.
With th'angelic hosts proclaim
Christ is born in Bethlehem!

~ Charles Wesley ~ (born 18 December 1707, and song for the Christmas season)

2011
Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail. Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn. ~ Paul Klee
2012
Come, Desire of nations, come,
fix in us thy humble home;
rise, the woman's conquering Seed,
bruise in us the serpent's head.
Adam's likeness, Lord, efface;
stamp thine image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
"Glory to the new born King!"
~ Charles Wesley ~
2013
The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.
~ Paul Klee ~
2014
God buries his workmen, but carries on his work.
~ Charles Wesley ~
2015
The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.
~ George Lucas ~
in
~ Star Wars ~
2016
The animal which the Egyptians worshipped as divine, which the Romans venerated as a symbol of liberty, which Europeans in the ignorant Middle Ages anathematised as an agent of demonology, has displayed to all ages two closely blended characteristics — courage and self-respect. No matter how unfavourable the circumstances, both qualities are always to the fore. Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission to the impending visitation, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance. … The cat of the slums and alleys, starved, outcast, harried, still keeps amid the prowlings of its adversity the bold, free, panther-tread with which it paced of yore the temple courts of Thebes, still displays the self-reliant watchfulness which man has never taught it to lay aside.
~ Saki ~
2017
The immediate facts are what we must relate to. Darkness and light, beginning and end.
~ Peter Wessel Zapffe ~
2018
Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down,
Fix in us thy humble dwelling,
All thy faithful mercies crown;
Jesu, thou art all compassion,
Pure unbounded love thou art,
Visit us with thy salvation,
Enter every trembling heart.
~ Charles Wesley ~
2019
You'll never know until you try it
You don't have to keep it quiet

And I know it makes you nervous
But I promise you, it's worth it
To show 'em everything you kept inside
Don't hide, don't hide
Too shy to say, but I hope you stay
Don't hide away
Come out and play.
~ Billie Eilish ~
2020
Was I stupid to love you?
Was I reckless to help?
Was it obvious to everybody else
That I'd fallen for a lie?
You were never on my side.

Fool me once, fool me twice
Are you death or paradise?
Now you'll never see me cry
There's just no time to die.
~ Billie Eilish ~
2021
When I'm away from you
I'm happier than ever
Wish I could explain it better
I wish it wasn't true.
Give me a day or two
To think of something clever
To write myself a letter
To tell me what to do.
~ Billie Eilish ~
2022
The internet's gone wild watching movie stars on trial
While they're overturning Roe v. Wade.
Now all of my friends are missing again
'Cause that's what happens when you fall in love
You don't have the time, you leave them all behind
And you tell yourself it's fine, you're just in love.
And I don't get along with anyone
Maybe I'm the problem.
~ Billie Eilish ~
2023
I don't know how to feel
But I wanna try
I don't know how to feel
But someday I might
Someday I might

Think I forgot how to be happy
Something I'm not, but something I can be
Something I wait for
Something I'm made for.
~ Billie Eilish ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
In the winter season, for seven days of calm, Alcyone broods over her nest on the surface of the waters while the sea-waves are quiet. Through this time Aeolus keeps his winds at home, and ocean is smooth for his descendants’ sake. ~ Ovid
2005
The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them. ~ Emily Brontë (died 19 December 1848)
2006
It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life. ~ Phil Ochs (born 19 December 1940)
2007
In such an ugly time the true protest is beauty. ~ Phil Ochs
2008
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
~ Wallace Stevens ~
2009
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" ~ Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol (first published on this date in 1843)
2010

And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone
Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here.

~ Phil Ochs ~

2011

And the evil is done in hopes that evil surrenders
but the deeds of the devil are burned too deep in the embers
and a world of hunger in vengeance will always remember
So please be reassured, we seek no wider war,
we seek no wider war.

~ Phil Ochs ~

2012
I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me.
~ Charles Dickens ~
in
~ A Christmas Carol ~
2013
"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead", said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
~ Charles Dickens ~
in
~ A Christmas Carol ~
2014
Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
~ Charles Dickens ~
in
~ A Christmas Carol ~
2015
Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?
~ Charles Dickens ~
in
~ A Christmas Carol ~
2016
Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.
~ Charles Dickens ~
in
~ A Christmas Carol ~
2017
When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.
~ Carter G. Woodson ~
2018
"… I am here — the shadows of the things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!"
His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance.
"I don’t know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. …"
~ Charles Dickens ~
in
~ A Christmas Carol ~
  • proposed by Kalki, for the 175th anniversary of the publication of the story in 1843.
2019
One good song with a message can bring a point more deeply to more people than a thousand rallies.
~ Phil Ochs ~
2020
Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!
~ Charles Dickens ~
in
~ A Christmas Carol ~
2021
Show me a prison, show me a jail
Show me a pris'ner whose face has grown pale
And I'll show you a young man
With many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I.
~ Phil Ochs ~
2022
I never set out to be the best player in history. I think I'm just another footballer. On the pitch we are all the same and when the game starts I always try to improve myself. My intention is that when I retire, I will be remembered for being a good person.
~ Lionel Messi ~
2023
Show me a country where the bombs had to fall
Show me the ruins of buildings so tall
And I'll show you a young land
With many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I.
~ Phil Ochs ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed. ~ Joseph Campbell
2005
For most of human history we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Who are we? What are we? We find that we inhabit an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions, and by the depth of our answers. ~ Carl Sagan (died 20 December 1996)
2006
Learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. ~ Edwin Abbott Abbott (Born 20 December 1838)
2007
This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost. ~ John Steinbeck
2008
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. ~ John Steinbeck
2009
Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
~ John Fletcher (baptized 20 December 1579)
2010
We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent "elementary parts" of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole. ~ David Bohm
2011
Men are divided in opinion as to the facts. And even granting the facts, they explain them in different ways. ~ Edwin Abbott Abbott
2012
Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.
~ David Bohm ~
2013
You call me a Circle; but in reality I am not a Circle, but an infinite number of Circles... For even a Sphere — which is my proper name in my own country — if he manifest himself at all to an inhabitant of Flatland — must needs manifest himself as a Circle.
~ Edwin Abbott Abbott ~
2014
Why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused, only to be disappointed and punished? My volition shrinks from the painful task of recalling my humiliation; yet, like a second Prometheus, I will endure this and worse, if by any means I may arouse in the interiors of Plane and Solid Humanity a spirit of rebellion against the Conceit which would limit our Dimensions to Two or Three or any number short of Infinity.
~ Edwin Abbott Abbott ~
2015
I see a fulfilment of the great Law of all worlds, that while the wisdom of Man thinks it is working one thing, the wisdom of Nature constrains it to work another, and quite a different and far better thing.
~ Edwin Abbott Abbott ~
2016
Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you. You're better than that!
~ Rocky Balboa ~
2017
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה', אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו, וְצִוָּנוּ לְהַדְלִיק נֵר חֲנֻכָּה.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us by His commandments, and has commanded us to kindle the lights of Hanukkah.
~ Traditional blessing in lighting the lights of Hanukkah ~
  • proposed by Kalki for the last day of Hanukkah, 2017.
2018
I exist in the hope that these memoirs, in some manner, I know not how, may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimension, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality.
That is the hope of my brighter moments.
~ Edwin Abbott Abbott ~
2019
Our enemy really isn't capitalism, it's cynicism. That's one the things I learned from Woody … Not to be cynical … That cynicism … It destroys you, it rots you away from the inside. So that sense of optimism and humanity … which 20 years ago I would have called socialism but now I'll call compassion … You know, that idea is still out there and alive and if you can plug into that and encourage that it makes it all worth while.
~ Billy Bragg ~
2020
If I am right in saying that thought is the ultimate origin or source, it follows that if we don't do anything about thought, we won't get anywhere. We may momentarily relieve the population problem, the ecological problem, and so on, but they will come back in another way.
~ David Bohm ~
2021
To be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy.
~ Edwin Abbott Abbott ~
2022
In a work of art, however modest, the peculiar character of life is always reflected in the fact that it has no parts which keep their qualitative identity in isolation. In the simplest design, the virtual constituents are indivisible, and inalienable from the whole.
~ Susanne Langer ~
2023
The way a question is asked limits and disposes the ways in which any answer to it — right or wrong — may be given.
~ Susanne Langer ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. ~ Thomas Jefferson
2004
i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday... ~ e. e. cummings
2005
I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom. ~ George S. Patton (died 21 December 1945)
2006
This is the stillness behind motion, when time itself stops; the center is also the circumference of all.
We are awake in the night.
We turn the Wheel to bring the light.
We call the sun from the womb of night.
Blessed Be!
~ Starhawk ~
2007
If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to Him. I often have a suspicion that God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished. ~ Rebecca West (born 21 December 1892)
2008
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald (died 21 December 1940)
2009
All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character or illustrates an existence. ~ Benjamin Disraeli in Coningsby
2010
I was persuaded and am, that God's way is first to turn a soul from its idols, both of heart, worship, and conversation, before it is capable of worship to the true and living God. ~ Roger Williams
2011
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 ~
2012
It will happen — a seeing …
It is the display of B'olon-Yokte'
in a great investiture.
~ Mayan prophecy relating to 21st December 2012 ~
2013
Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and the harmony of the whole Universe, if only we face the facts, as they say, "with both eyes open."
~ Nicolaus Copernicus ~
2014
The light
Begin to bleed,
Begin to breathe,
Begin to speak.
D'you know what?
I love you better now.
~ Kate Bush ~
  • proposed by Kalki, for the day of the Solstice, with the darkest periods in the Northern hemisphere again proceeding toward the lighter days, as the Sun's path again begins it ascent in the sky, though many of the coldest days remain... for a time.
2015

I am waking from a dream,
I am choking on a scream,
You were trying to show me something.
But the dark is wide and long,
The gates are closed, the crowd's all gone,
You're still shimmering and leading me on…

Firefly that's what you are
Burning for me in my darkest hour
"Light breaks where no sun shines"
So shine for me tonight — firefly.

~ Greta Gaines ~
2016
It is infinitely better that the profane and loose be unmasked than to be muffled up under the veil and hood of traditional hypocrisy, which turns and dulls the very edge of all conscience either toward God or man.
~ Roger Williams ~
2017
I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
~ Rebecca West ~
2018
Life ought to be a struggle of desire towards adventures whose nobility will fertilise the soul and lead to the conception of new, glorious things.
~ Rebecca West ~
2019
Fascism … is a headlong flight into fantasy from the necessity for political thought … persons supporting Fascism behave as if man were already in possession of principles which would enable him to deal with all our problems, and as if it were only a question of appointing a dictator to apply them.
~ Rebecca West ~
2020
The tide has turned!
The light will come again!
In a new dawn, in a new day,
The sun is rising!
Io! Evohe! Blessed Be!
~ Starhawk ~
2021
What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.
~ Benjamin Disraeli ~
2022
The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.
~ Gary Zukav ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of this solstice date for 2022.
2023
President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three; because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.
We do not reach these conclusions lightly. We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.
~ Supreme Court of Oregon ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Good fortune attend each merry man's friend
That doth but the best that he may,
Forgetting old wrongs with carols and songs
To drive the cold winter away.
~ "All Hail to The Days" (or "The Praise of Christmas") ~
Traditional 17th century English carol
2005
My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy. ~ George Eliot (died 22 December 1880)
2006
It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence. ~ Kenneth Rexroth
2007
The holiness of the real
Is always there, accessible
In total immanence. The nodes
Of transcendence coagulate
In you, the experiencer,
And in the other, the lover.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2008
While you live … you have a duty to life. … The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them. … Otherwise they fade away. ~ Charles de Lint
2009
That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you. ~ Charles de Lint
2010
God is not, as in scholasticism, the final subject of all predicates. He is being as unpredicable. The existence of the creature, in so far as it exists, is the existence of God, and the creature’s experience of God is therefore in the final analysis equally unpredicable. Neither can even be described; both can only be indicated. We can only point at reality, our own or God’s. The soul comes to the realization of God by knowledge, not as in the older Christian mysticism by love. Love is the garment of knowledge. The soul first trains itself by systematic unknowing until at last it confronts the only reality, the only knowledge, God manifest in itself. The soul can say nothing about this experience in the sense of defining it. It can only reveal it to others. ~ Kenneth Rexroth
2011
By enlarging your knowledge of things, you will find your knowledge of self is enlarged. ~ Charles de Lint
2012
When all's said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it's not so much which road you take, as how you take it.
~ Charles de Lint ~
2013
For one heart beat the
Heart was free and moved itself. O love,
I who am lost and damned with words,
Whose words are a business and an art,
I have no words. These words, this poem, this
Is all confusion and ignorance.
But I know that coached by your sweet heart,
My heart beat one free beat and sent
Through all my flesh the blood of truth.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2014
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
~ George Eliot ~
2015
An equation has no meaning for me unless it expresses a thought of GOD.
~ Srinivasa Ramanujan ~
2016
It's the questions we ask, the journey we take to get to where we are going that is more important than the actual answer. It's good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there's more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.
~ Charles de Lint ~
2017
I think each of us knows his own mystery with a knowing that precedes the origins of all knowledge. None of us ever gives it away. No one can. We envelop it with talk and hide it with deeds.
Yet we always hope that somehow the others will know it is there, that a mystery in the other we cannot know will respond to a mystery in the self we cannot understand. The only full satisfaction life offers us is this sense of communion. We seek it constantly. Sometimes we find it. As we grow older we learn that it is never complete and sometimes it is entirely illusory.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2018
Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2019
I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. My poems are acts of force and violence directed against the evil which murders us all.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2020
As concentration and depersonalization increase in the dominant society, as the concentration of capital increases with the takeover of ever larger businesses by conglomerates and international corporations, as more and more local initiative is abandoned to the rule of the central State, and as computerization and automation narrow the role of human initiative in both labor and administration, life becomes ever more unreal, aimless, and empty of meaning for all but a tiny elite who still cling to the illusion they possess initiative. Action and reaction — thesis and antithesis — this state of affairs produces its opposite. All over the world we are witnessing an instinctive revolt against dehumanization.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2021
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man’s critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character.
~ George Eliot ~
2022
This battle is not only for the territory, for this or another part of Europe. The battle is not only for life, freedom and security of Ukrainians or any other nation which Russia attempts to conquer. This struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren.
It will define whether it will be a democracy of Ukrainians and for Americans — for all.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on major events.
2023
Each solstice shows us that we can choose. We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the Universe that we cannot refuse. But we can choose what we will contribute to Life when each arrives.
~ Gary Zukav ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of this solstice date of 2023, as reckoned by UTC.
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
~ Joseph Brackett ~
2005
Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way . . . out of that a new holiday was born . . . a Festivus for the rest of us! ~ Jerry Stiller as "Frank Costanza" in Seinfeld (Festivus holiday)
2006
The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it's also the most important — and that's the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface — differences of color, ethnicity, and gender — to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result.
Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations. ~ Wesley Clark
2007
I think we should be very clear on this... this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment... It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get struck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can’t lose that in this country. We've got to get it back. ~ Wesley Clark (born 23 December 1944)
2008
Working together, we can build a world in which the rule of law — not the rule of force — governs relations between states. A world in which leaders respect the rights of their people, and nations seek peace, not destruction or domination. And neither we nor anyone else should live in fear ever again. ~ Wesley Clark
2009
"Heaven helps those who help themselves" is a well-tried maxim, embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless. ~ Samuel Smiles
2010
We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery. ~ Samuel Smiles
2011
Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform. ~ Samuel Smiles
2012
Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.
~ Samuel Smiles ~
2013
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.
~ Norman Maclean ~
2014
All I'm saying is, if you celebrate Festivus, you may live a little longer.
You are getting back to the essentials, to the days of gods on mountaintops and howling wolves. Because you are saying the holidays are in the heart, a celebration of being alive with our fellow humans. For that purpose, an aluminum pole will do just as well as anything else — as long as it's not stuck in the wrong place.
~ Jerry Stiller ~
2015
Welcome, newcomers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it!
~ Seinfeld : The Strike ~
2016
Unless we are willing to escape into sentimentality or fantasy, often the best we can do with catastrophes, even our own, is to find out exactly what happened and restore some of the missing parts.
~ Norman Maclean ~
2017
For some people the revelation comes too late that life is best kept to the essentials. Some people are given their last rites and that person might say in their last breath, "I should have celebrated Festivus."
~ Jerry Stiller ~
2018
In the ancient days when gods played their own games, and had their own celebrations, tossing lightning bolts between mountaintops, hurling great boulders — Festivus came out of that. It's a holiday that celebrates being alive at a time when it was hard to be alive.
There was no Christ yet, no Yahweh, no Buddha. There were great ruins and raw nature. But there was a kindling spark of hope among men. They celebrated that great thunderous storms hadn't enveloped them in the past year, that landslides hadn't destroyed them. They made wishes that there crops would grow in the fields, that they'd have food the next year and the wild animals wouldn't attack and eat them.
There's something pure about Festivus, something primal, raw in the hearts of humans.
~ Jerry Stiller ~
2019
Laws, wisely administered, will secure men in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labour, whether of mind or body, at a comparatively small personal sacrifice; but no laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy, and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.
The Government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflex of the individuals composing it. The Government that is ahead of the people will inevitably be dragged down to their level, as the Government that is behind them will in the long run be dragged up. In the order of nature, the collective character of a nation will as surely find its befitting results in its law and government, as water finds its own level. The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly. Indeed all experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a State depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men. For the nation is only an aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of the personal improvement of the men, women, and children of whom society is composed.
~ Samuel Smiles ~
2020
When you're talking about cybersecurity, you're talking about being able to protect your points. It's not directed against a country, but to secure your points of access or specific end points or network access. It's not as though you're arming yourself against a specific threat — you're simply undertaking all aspects of protection.
~ Wesley Clark ~
2021
I think we're at a time in American history that's probably analogous to, maybe, Rome before the first emperors, when the Republic started to fall … I think if you look at the pattern of events, if you look at the disputed election of 2000, can you imagine? In America, people are trying to recount ballots and a partisan mob is pounding on the glass and threatening the counters? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a political party which does its best to keep any representatives from another party — who've even been affiliated with another party — from getting a business job in the nation's capital? Can you imagine a political party that wants to redistrict so that its opponents can be driven out entirely? … it's a different time in America and the Republic is — this election is about a lot more than jobs. I'm not sure everybody in America sees it right now. But I see it, I feel it.
~ Wesley Clark ~
2022
The Christmas story is at the heart of the … Christian faith.  But the message of hope, love, peace, and joy — they’re also universal.
It speaks to all of us, whether we’re Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or any other faith, or no faith at all.  It speaks to all of us as human beings who are here on this Earth to care for one another, to look out for one another, to love one another.
~ Joe Biden ~
2023
Sanaka and the others were my sons through my mental powers and were born before you. Without any desires, they travel through the sky and go to all the worlds and the residents there. They once went to Vaikuntha, where the illustrious one with the unblemished atman resides. All the worlds revere Vaikuntha. All the people who reside in Vaikuntha have a form like Vaikuntha. They are not driven by any material aspirations, but worship Hari because of dharma. The original and illustrious Purusha is there and he can be approached through the use of words. He accepts the pure form of sattva and the foremost confers happiness on us, his devotees.
~ Bhagavata Purana ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)
2004
I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
~ Sydney Carter ~
2005
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
~ "A Visit from St. Nicholas"
2006
A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. ~ John Muir
2007
Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. ~ Francis Pharcellus Church in "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus"
2008
Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. ~ John Muir (Date of death)
2009
People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success. ~ Norman Vincent Peale (Date of death)
2010
Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city’s jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.
~ Matthew Arnold ~ (born December 24, 1822)
2011
For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry. ~ Matthew Arnold
2012
The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.
~ Dana Gioia ~
2013
If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their powerful and profound application of ideas to life, which surely no good critic will deny, then to prefix to the word ideas here the term moral makes hardly any difference, because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree moral.
It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life — to the question, How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion, they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had their day, they are fallen into the hands of pedants and professional dealers, they grow tiresome to some of us … the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2014
I feel like a spinning top or a Dreidel
The spinning don't stop when you leave the cradle
You just slow down
Round and around this world you go
Spinning through the lives of the people you know
We all slow down.
~ Don McLean ~
2015
Give us, O God, the vision which can see Your love in the world in spite of human failure.
Give us the faith to trust Your goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness.
Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts.
And show us what each one of us can do to set forward the coming of the day of universal peace.
~ Frank Borman ~
2016
I think it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2017
Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we,
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill’d;
For whom each year we see
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
Who hesitate and falter life away,
And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day —
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2018
"God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good."
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.
~ Frank Borman ~
  • proposed by Kalki, for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo flight, the Earthrise photograph, and of this message, in 2018.
2019
As far as I'm concerned we are all God.
That's the difference.
If you really think another guy is God he doesn't lock you up …
Funny about that.
~ Ram Dass ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2020
What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2021
He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2022
Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2023
But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us, to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)
2005
My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that? ~ Bob Hope
2006
Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. ~ Calvin Coolidge
2007
He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.
~ Isaac Watts ~
2008
The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart. ~ Helen Keller
2009
How many observe Christ's Birth-day! how few his Precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments. ~ Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanack (in relation to Christmas)
2010
Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King.
Let ev'ry heart prepare Him room,
And heav'n and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.
~ Isaac Watts ~ (traditional Christmas carol)
2011

A very Merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear.
War is over,
If you want it —
War is over now.

~ John Lennon & Yoko Ono ~

2012

Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.

They will live again in freedom
In the Garden of the Lord.
They will walk behind the plough-share,
They will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken
And all men will have their reward!

~ Les Misérables ~
2013
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
~ Gospel of Luke ~
2014
The earth has grown old with its burden of care
But at Christmas it always is young,
The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair
And its soul full of music breaks the air,
When the song of angels is sung.
~ Phillips Brooks ~
2015
On this day, Christians reflect on their faith and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. This occasion inspires families and communities to come together, share what they have, and give back to those less fortunate.
May we take this time to reflect on our many blessings, and remind our loved ones how much they mean to us.
~ Justin Trudeau ~
  • proposed by Kalki — last year's Christmas greetings by Trudeau, for what is also his own first birthday after becoming Prime Minister of Canada.
2016
Except the Christ be born again tonight
In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame,
The world will never see his kingdom bright.
Stars of all hearts, lead onward thro' the night
Past death-black deserts, doubts without a name,
Past hills of pain and mountains of new sin
To that far sky where mystic births begin,
Where dreaming ears the angel-song shall win.
~ Vachel Lindsay ~
2017
The central core of truth is that Christmas turns everything upside down, the upside of heaven come down to earth. The Christmas story puts a new value on every man. He is not a thing to be used, not a chemical accident, not an educated ape. Every man is a V.I.P., because he has divine worth. That was revealed when “Love came down at Christmas.” A scientist said, making a plea for exchange scholarships between nations, “The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person.” That was what happened at Christmas. The idea of divine love was wrapped up in a person.
Christmas is good news in a world of bad news. … Christmas brings hope to a dark world.
~ Halford E. Luccock ~
2018
Christmas turns everything upside down. This is the central truth of the incarnation — "Immanuel, God with us." The upside of heaven come down to earth. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, . . . full of grace and truth." Men miss the entire meaning of Jesus when they see in him the highest upreach of man; he is God reaching down and making common cause with man's struggle. The meaning of Christmas puts down the mighty things in men's minds from their seats — place, riches, talents — and exalts the things of low degree — humility, simplicity, and trust.
~ Halford E. Luccock ~
2019
Charles Lamb, in one of his most delightful essays, sets high worth on the observance of All Fools' Day, because it says to a man: "You look wise. Pray correct that error!" Christmas brings the universal message to men: "You look important and great; pray correct that error." It overturns the false standards that have blinded the vision and sets up again in their rightful magnitude those childlike qualities by which we enter the Kingdom.
Christmas turns things inside out. Under the spell of the Christmas story the locked up treasures of kindliness and sympathy come from the inside of the heart, where they are often kept imprisoned, to the outside of actual expression in deed and word. … It is the vision of the Christ-child which enables all men to get at the best treasures of their lives and offer them for use.
~ Halford E. Luccock ~
2020
The advent of every baby completely upsets his little world, both physically and spiritually. And it is not one of the smallest values of the fact that the Saviour of the world came into it as a baby, that it reminds men that every baby is born a savior, to some extent, from selfishness and greed and sin in the little circle which his advent blesses.
~ Halford E. Luccock ~
2021
He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming!
IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!
And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
"It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes, or bags!"
And he puzzled and puzzled, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
Maybe Christmas … perhaps … means a little bit more."
~ Dr. Seuss ~
  • proposed by Ningauble (in slightly shorter form, beginning with "It came without ribbons!")
2022
Someplace between apathy and anarchy is the stance of the thinking human being; he does embrace a cause, he does take a position, and can’t allow it to become business as usual. Humanity is our business.
~ Rod Serling ~
2023
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy. ~ J. D. Salinger
2005
It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion. ~ Norman Angell (born 26 December 1872)
2006
Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually, genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole, of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made, not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right. ~ Norman Angell
2007
The responsibility of the great states is to serve and not to dominate the world. ~ Harry S. Truman (died 26 December 1972)
2008
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring, as she sings,
Waves in the eye of Heav'n her many-colour'd wings.
~ Thomas Gray ~
2009
The obstacles to peace are in the minds and hearts of men.
In the study of matter we can be honest, impartial, true. That is why we succeed in dealing with it. But about the things we care for — which are ourselves, our desires and lusts, our patriotisms and hates — we find a harder test of thinking straight and truly. Yet there is the greater need. Only by intellectual rectitude and in that field shall we be saved. There is no refuge but in truth, in human intelligence, in the unconquerable mind of man. ~ Norman Angell
2010
To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan,
The tender for another's pain;
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
~ Thomas Gray ~
2011
The force which makes for war does not derive its strength from the interested motives of evil men; it derives its strength from the disinterested motives of good men. ~ Norman Angell
2012
We’re creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.
~ Henry Miller ~
2013
No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
~ Henry Miller ~
2014
Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjiev, Krishnamurti.
~ Henry Miller ~
2015
Bright-eyed Fancy, hov'ring o'er,
Scatters from her pictured urn
Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.
~ Thomas Gray ~
2016
There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.
~ Elizabeth Kostova ~
2017
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
~ Henry Miller ~
2018
All about us we see a world in revolt; but revolt is negative, a mere finishing-off process. In the midst of destruction we carry with us also our creation, our hopes, our strength, our urge to be fulfilled. The climate changes as the wheel turns, and what is true for the sidereal world is true for man. The last two thousand years have brought about a duality in man such as he never experienced before, and yet the man who dominates this whole period was one who stood for wholeness, one who proclaimed the Holy Ghost. No life in the whole history of man has been so misinterpreted, so woefully misunderstood as Christ's.
~ Henry Miller ~
2019
War has no longer the justification that it makes for the survival of the fittest; it involves the survival of the less fit. The idea that the struggle between nations is a part of the evolutionary law of man's advance involves a profound misreading of the biological analogy.
The warlike nations do not inherit the earth; they represent the decaying human element.
~ Norman Angell ~
2020
Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.
~ Henry Miller ~
2021
The fight for ideals can no longer take the form of fight between nations, because the lines of division on moral questions are within the nations themselves and intersect the political frontiers.
~ Norman Angell ~
2022
Men are more or less reconciled to the thought of death, but they also know that it is not necessary to kill one another. They know it intermittently, just as they know other things which they conveniently proceed to forget where there is danger of having their sleep disturbed. To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in. But man refuses to stay awake because if he did, he would be obliged to become something other than he now is, and the thought of that is apparently too painful for him to endure.
~ Henry Miller ~
2023
One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.
~ Henry Miller ~


2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
The time is always right to do what is right ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
2004
Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight — always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary? ~ J. M. Barrie (100th Anniversary of first performance of Peter Pan)
2005
Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between. ~ Sarah Vowell (born 27 December 1969)
2006
I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner. ~ Louis Pasteur (born 27 December 1822)
2007
I am utterly convinced that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will eventually unite not to destroy but to edify, and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for the sake of suffering humanity. ~ Louis Pasteur
2008
There never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost. ~ Harold Pinter (recent death)
2009
Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. ~ Louis Pasteur
2010
One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me... ~ Louis Pasteur
2011
Let me tell you the secret that has lead me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity. ~ Louis Pasteur
2012
There is nothing of such force as the power of a person content merely to be himself, nothing so invincible as the power of simple honesty, nothing so successful as the life of one who runs alone.
~ Louis Bromfield ~
2013
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.
~ Oscar Levant ~
2014
Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.
~ Louis Pasteur ~
2015
It is a fallacy to think that carping is the strongest form of criticism: the important work begins after the artist's mistakes have been pointed out, and the reviewer can't put it off indefinitely with sneers, although some neophytes might be tempted to try: "When in doubt, stick out your tongue" is a safe rule that never cost one any readers. But there's nothing strong about it, and it has nothing to do with the real business of criticism, which is to do justice to the best work of one's time, so that nothing gets lost.
~ Wilfrid Sheed ~
2016

If we have faith in each other
Then we can be
Strong, baby

I will be your father figure
Put your tiny hand in mine
I will be your preacher teacher
Anything you have in mind
I will be your father figure
I have had enough of crime
I will be the one who loves you …
'Til the end of time.

~ George Michael ~
2017
He who proclaims the existence of the Infinite, and none can avoid it — accumulates in that affirmation more of the supernatural than is to be found in all the miracles of all the religions; for the notion of the Infinite presents that double character that forces itself upon us and yet is incomprehensible. When this notion seizes upon our understanding we can but kneel ... I see everywhere the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world; through it the supernatural is at the bottom of every heart. The idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite. As long as the mystery of the infinite weighs on human thought, temples will be erected for the worship of the Infinite, whether God is called Brahma, Allah, Jehovah, or Jesus; and on the pavement of these temples, men will be seen kneeling, prostrated, annihilated by the thought of the Infinite.
~ Louis Pasteur ~
2018
The greatness of human actions is measured by the inspiration that it brings. Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal of beauty and obeys it: an ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of country, ideal virtues of the Gospel! These are the wellsprings of great thoughts and great actions. All reflections illuminate infinity.
~ Louis Pasteur ~
2019
The Greeks understood the mysterious power of the hidden side of things. They bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language — the word "enthusiasm" — en theos [Εν Θεος] — a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within and obeys it.
~ Louis Pasteur ~
2020
Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.
~ Charles Darwin ~
2021
Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.
~ Louis Pasteur ~
2022
You bring me the deepest joy that can be felt by a man whose invincible belief is that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will unite, not to destroy, but to build, and that the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity.
~ Louis Pasteur ~
2023
I don't say "Ho-ho-ho", but I do say "Oh-oh-oh" when I look out of the window, where I can see a night, then the evening, and then the night again.
The 20 days of my transportation were pretty exhausting, but I'm still in a good mood, as befits a Santa Claus. … I was transported with such precaution and on such a strange route … I didn't expect anyone to find me here before mid-January. That's why I was very surprised when the cell door was opened yesterday with the words: "A lawyer is here to see you". He told me that you had lost me, and some of you were even worried. Thanks very much for your support!
~ Alexei Navalny ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks after being located in a northern Russian prison camp.
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is. ~ Richard Feynman
  • selected by Kalki, — This statement has been discovered to very probably be a misattribution, and seems to have been created as part of a paraphrase of Feynman's note to the mother of Marcus Chown: "Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science — for to fill your heart with love is enough." ~ Kalki 01:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
2005
No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation. ~ Woodrow Wilson, (born 28 December 1856)
2006
The length of one's days matters less than the love of one's family and friends. ~ Gerald Ford (recent death)
2007
The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated. … Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it. ~ Benazir Bhutto (recent death)
2008
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (Date of death)
2009
At terrestrial temperatures matter has complex properties which are likely to prove most difficult to unravel; but it is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star. ~ Arthur Stanley Eddington
2010
The external world of physics has … become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. … The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and evil.
The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances. ~ Arthur Stanley Eddington
2011
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about "and." ~ Arthur Stanley Eddington
2012
It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference — inference either intuitive or deliberate.
~ Arthur Stanley Eddington ~
2013
A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but or if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb.
~ Alasdair Gray ~
2014
There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't.
~ John von Neumann ~
2015
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
~ John von Neumann ~
2016
I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.
~ Carrie Fisher ~
  • proposed by Kalki in regard to her recent death.
2017
Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
~ John von Neumann ~
2018
Work as if you live in the early days of a better world.
~ Alasdair Gray ~
2019
The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind … To put the conclusion crudely — the stuff of the world is mind-stuff. As is often the way with crude statements, I shall have to explain that by "mind" I do not exactly mean mind and by "stuff" I do not at all mean stuff. Still that is about as near as we can get to the idea in a simple phrase. The mind-stuff of the world is something more general than our individual conscious minds; but we may think of its nature as not altogether foreign to feelings in our consciousness … Having granted this, the mental activity of the part of world constituting ourselves occasions no great surprise; it is known to us by direct self-knowledge, and we do not explain it away as something other than we know it to be — or rather, it knows itself to be.
~ Arthur Eddington ~
2020
Attention, please note! Attention, please note! The expansion committee announces that after the hundred and eightieth all twittering is to be treated as a sign of hopelessness!
~ Alasdair Gray ~
in
~ Lanark: A Life in Four Books ~
2021
Forgiveness is one of the key ideas in this world. Forgiveness is not just some nebulous, vague idea that one can easily dismiss. It has to do with uniting people through practical politics. Without forgiveness there is no future.
~ Desmond Tutu ~
2022
Our faiths are similar — it's merely our religions that may differ. I have faith in the inherent goodness of man and I'm sure you feel the same. ... I have the greatest respect for any discipline that preaches kindness and charity and love for one's fellow man. Most important of all, to me — "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" is the greatest phrase ever written. If everyone followed that creed, this world would be a paradise.
~ Stan Lee ~
2023
The emperor needs all the headmasters he can get. If a quarter of his people were headmasters he would be perfectly happy. But more than two poets would tear his kingdom apart.
~ Alasdair Gray ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I will make company with creators, with harvesters, with rejoicers; I will show them the rainbow and the stairway to the Superman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2005 & 2006 (mistakenly used twice)
If I am shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet. ~ Andrew Johnson (born 29 December 1808)
2007
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
2008
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? There is a brotherhood among all men. This must be recognized if life is to remain. We must learn the love of man. ~ Pablo Casals
2009
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (Date of death)
2010
Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home. ~ William Ewart Gladstone (born December 29, 1809)
2011
Yes, the springtime was in need of you. Often a star
waited for you to espy it and sense its light.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,
or as you walked below an open window,
a violin gave itself to your hearing.
All this was trust. But could you manage it?
Were you not always distraught by expectation,
as if all this were announcing the arrival
of a beloved?
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
2012
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 Ewart Gladstone ~
2013
Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man's will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
2014
Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.
~ Mary Tyler Moore ~
2015
There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the development of individual character; and the best provision for the happiness of the nation at large.
~ William Ewart Gladstone ~
2016
Men learn little from others' experience.
But in the life of one man, never
The same time returns. Sever
The cord, shed the scale. Only
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
2017
We praise thee, O God, for thy glory displayed
in all the creatures of the earth,
In the snow, in the rain, in the wind, in the storm,
in all of thy creatures, both the hunters and the hunted,
For all things exist as seen by thee,
only as known by thee, all things exist
Only in thy light, and thy glory is declared
even in that which denies thee;
the darkness declares the glory of light.
Those who deny thee could not deny, if thou didst not exist;
and their denial is never complete,
for if it were so, they would not exist.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
2018
Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow.
Pain nourishes your courage.
You have to fail in order to practice being brave.
~ Mary Tyler Moore ~
2019
Every child, at birth, is the Universal Man. But, as it grows, we turn it into "a petty man." It should be the function of education to turn it again into the original "Universal Man."
The child which by birth was the universal man is fettered by us with such constraints as country, language, religion, caste, race and colour. To free it from all these limitations and transform it into "the enlightened soul", that is to say, the universal man, — this should become the first and foremost function of our education, culture, civilization, and what not.
~ Kuvempu ~
2020
The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the world.
~ William Ewart Gladstone ~
2021
Winnow the chaff of a hundred creeds
Beyond these systems, hollow as reeds,
Turn unhorizened to where Truth leads,
To be unhoused, O my soul!
~ Kuvempu ~
2022
Be unhoused, O my soul!
Only the Infinite be your goal.

Leave those myriad forms behind,
Leave the million names that bind.
A flash will pierce your heart and mind,
And unhouse you, O my soul!
~ Kuvempu ~


2023
It is out of time that my decision is taken
If you call that decision
To which my whole being gives entire consent.
I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
in
~ Murder in the Cathedral ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity. ~ David Sedaris
2004
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~
2005 & 2006 (mistakenly used twice)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too...

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And — which is more — you'll be a Man, my son!
~ Rudyard Kipling ~ (born 30 December 1865)

2007
The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest. ~ Romain Rolland (died 30 December 1944)
2008
It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails. ~ Romain Rolland
2009
Justice has nothing to do with victor nations and vanquished nations, but must be a moral standard that all the world's peoples can agree to. To seek this and to achieve it — that is true civilization. ~ Hideki Tojo
2010
One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved. ~ Romain Rolland
2011
I am not all that is. I am Life fighting Nothingness. I am not Nothingness, I am the Fire which burns in the Night. I am not the Night. I am the eternal Light; I am not an eternal destiny soaring above the fight. I am free Will which struggles eternally. Struggle and burn with Me. ~ Romain Rolland
2012
Never do I hesitate to look squarely at the unexpected face that every passing hour unveils to us, and to sacrifice the false images of it formed in advance, however dear they may be. In me, the love of life in general predominates over love of my own life (that, indeed, would never have sufficed to bear me up). May life herself speak! However inadequate I may be in listening to her, and in repeating her words, I shall try to record them, even if they contradict my most secret desires. In all that I write, may her will, not mine, be done!
~ Romain Rolland ~
2013
The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivaled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe.
~ Romain Rolland ~
2014
God was Life, the drop of light fallen into the darkness, spreading out, reaching out, drinking up the night. But the night is limitless, and the Divine struggle will never cease: and none can know how it will end. It was a heroic symphony wherein the very discords clashed together and mingled and grew into a serene whole!
~ Romain Rolland ~
2015
Every man who is truly a man must learn to be alone in the midst of all others, and if need be against all others.
~ Romain Rolland ~
2016
I was a simple kid who was thrown into the wonderful world of show business. I've loved every moment.
~ Debbie Reynolds ~
2017
Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.
~ Romain Rolland ~
2018
I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can. The others do not do it.
~ Romain Rolland ~
2019
The emperor needs all the headmasters he can get. If a quarter of his people were headmasters he would be perfectly happy. But more than two poets would tear his kingdom apart.
~ Alasdair Gray ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2020
Ye know who use the Crystal Ball
⁠(To peer by stealth on Doom),
⁠The Shade that, shaping first of all,
⁠⁠Prepares an empty room.
⁠⁠⁠Then doth It pass
⁠⁠⁠Like breath from glass,
⁠But, on the extorted vision bowed intent,
⁠No man considers why It came or went.
~ Rudyard Kipling ~
2021
I said … unprepared, unscripted, that, "I know how to fight and I know how to dance, and I'd much rather dance than fight." ... What I didn't tell everybody was I was always a better fighter than dancer.
~ Harry Reid ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
2022
Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pelé. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player, but how to be like a man.
~ Pelé ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.


2023
I conclude… that the record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power. I likewise conclude that Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it. … I do not reach this conclusion lightly. … I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.
~ Shenna Bellows ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on a major historical decision.
2024
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2003
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
2004
Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:
And down the wave and in the flame was borne
A naked babe...
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~
2005
For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!
~ "Auld Lang Syne" by Robert Burns ~
2006
When a thing is done, it's done. Don't look back. Look forward to your next objective. ~ George Marshall
2007
For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself. ~ Henri Matisse (born December 31, 1869)
2008
It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... Let's go exploring! ~ Bill Watterson - Final strip of Calvin and Hobbes, published December 31, 1995
2009
The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it. ~ George Marshall
2010
At each stage I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find that there is a weakness in the whole, I make my way back into the picture by means of the weakness — I re-enter through the breach — and I reconceive the whole. Thus everything becomes fluid again. ~ Henri Matisse (born 31 December 1869)
2011
Military power wins battles, but spiritual power wins wars. ~ George Marshall
2012
I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.
~ Henri Matisse ~
2013
The most important thing for the world today in my opinion is a spiritual regeneration which would reestablish a feeling of good faith among men generally. Discouraged people are in sore need of the inspiration of great principles. Such leadership can be the rallying point against intolerance, against distrust, against that fatal insecurity that leads to war. It is to be hoped that the democratic nations can provide the necessary leadership.
~ George Marshall ~
2014
If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.
~ George Marshall ~
2015
You study, you learn, but you guard the original naiveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.
~ Henri Matisse ~
2016
Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering.
~ Donald E. Westlake ~
2017
I need not tell you that the world situation is very serious. That must be apparent to all intelligent people. I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. … it is of vast importance that our people reach some general understanding of what the complications really are, rather than react from a passion or a prejudice or an emotion of the moment. … It is virtually impossible at this distance merely by reading, or listening, or even seeing photographs or motion pictures, to grasp at all the real significance of the situation. And yet the whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment. It hangs, I think, to a large extent on the realization of the American people, of just what are the various dominant factors. What are the reactions of the people? What are the justifications of those reactions? What are the sufferings? What is needed? What can best be done? What must be done?
~ George Marshall ~
2018
We must present democracy as a force holding within itself the seeds of unlimited progress by the human race. By our actions we should make it clear that such a democracy is a means to a better way of life, together with a better understanding among nations. Tyranny inevitably must retire before the tremendous moral strength of the gospel of freedom and self-respect for the individual, but we have to recognize that these democratic principles do not flourish on empty stomachs, and that people turn to false promises of dictators because they are hopeless and anything promises something better than the miserable existence that they endure. However, material assistance alone is not sufficient. The most important thing for the world today in my opinion is a spiritual regeneration which would reestablish a feeling of good faith among men generally. Discouraged people are in sore need of the inspiration of great principles. Such leadership can be the rallying point against intolerance, against distrust, against that fatal insecurity that leads to war. It is to be hoped that the democratic nations can provide the necessary leadership.
~ George Marshall ~
2019
We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country, the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons — reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve. None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is "just the way things are now." If we simply become inured to this condition, thinking that it is just politics as usual, then heaven help us.
Without fear of the consequences and without consideration of the rules of what is politically safe or palatable, we must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal.
They are not normal.
~ Jeff Flake ~
2020
I believe our students must first seek to understand the conditions, as far as possible without national prejudices, which have led to past tragedies and should strive to determine the great fundamentals which must govern a peaceful progression toward a constantly higher level of civilization. There are innumerable instructive lessons out of the past, but all too frequently their presentation is highly colored or distorted in the effort to present a favorable national point of view. In our school histories at home, certainly in years past, those written in the North present a strikingly different picture of our Civil War from those written in the South. In some portions it is hard to realize they are dealing with the same war. Such reactions are all too common in matters of peace and security. But we are told that we live in a highly scientific age. Now the progress of science depends on facts and not fancies or prejudice. Maybe in this age we can find a way of facing the facts and discounting the distorted records of the past.
~ George Marshall ~
2021
The authoritarian impulse is reasserting itself, to challenge free people and free societies, everywhere.
In our own country, from the trivial to the truly dangerous, it is the range and regularity of the untruths we see that should be cause for profound alarm, and spur to action. Add to that the by-now predictable habit of calling true things false, and false things true, and we have a recipe for disaster. As George Orwell warned, "The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." … The question of why the truth is now under such assault may well be for historians to determine. But for those who cherish American constitutional democracy, what matters is the effect on America and her people and her standing in an increasingly unstable world — made all the more unstable by these very fabrications. What matters is the daily disassembling of our democratic institutions.
We are a mature democracy — it is well past time that we stop excusing or ignoring — or worse, endorsing — these attacks on the truth. For if we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost.
~ Jeff Flake ~
2022
A very strong military posture is vitally necessary today. How long it must continue I am not prepared to estimate, but I am sure that it is too narrow a basis on which to build a dependable, long-enduring peace. The guarantee for a long continued peace will depend on other factors in addition to a moderated military strength, and no less important. Perhaps the most important single factor will be a spiritual regeneration to develop goodwill, faith, and understanding among nations. Economic factors will undoubtedly play an important part. Agreements to secure a balance of power, however disagreeable they may seem, must likewise be considered. And with all these there must be wisdom and the will to act on that wisdom.
~ George C. Marshall ~
2023
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