QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 12:16 (UTC)
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This page lists quote of the day proposals specifically for dates in the month of February, 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: February 2008 · 2009 · 2010 · 2011 · 2012 · 2013 · 2014 · 2015 · 2016 · 2017 · 2018
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.
- 2005
- There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. ~ American proverb
- 2006
- I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
~ Langston Hughes ~ (born 1 February 1902)
- 2007
- I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.
~ Langston Hughes ~
- 2008
- Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason. ~ Edward Coke
- 2009
- Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
~ Langston Hughes ~
- 2010
- What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
~ Langston Hughes ~
- 2011
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
~ Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ~ (Abraham Lincoln, largely responsible for the passage of this amendment, added his signature of approval to the archival copy of the document on this date, after it had been passed in Congress the day before.)
- 2012
When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left.
~ Langston Hughes ~
- 2013
| Any concepts or words which have been formed in the past through the interplay between the world and ourselves are not really sharply defined with respect to their meaning: that is to say, we do not know exactly how far they will help us in finding our way in the world. … It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
|
| ~ Werner Heisenberg ~
|
- 2014
| Dissidents should be paid 13 months' salary for a year, otherwise our mindless unanimity will bring us to an even more hopeless state of stagnation. It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.
|
| ~ Boris Yeltsin ~
|
- 2015
- 2016
| Every today is at the same time both a cradle and a shroud: a shroud for yesterday, a cradle for tomorrow. Today, yesterday, and tomorrow are equally near to one another, and equally far. … Today is doomed to die — because yesterday died, and because tomorrow will be born. Such is the wise and cruel law. Cruel, because it condemns to eternal dissatisfaction those who already today see the distant peaks of tomorrow; wise, because eternal dissatisfaction is the only pledge of eternal movement forward, eternal creation. He who has found his ideal today is, like Lot's wife, already turned to a pillar of salt, has already sunk into the earth and does not move ahead. The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy: tomorrow is an inevitable heresy of today, which has turned into a pillar of salt, and to yesterday, which has scattered to dust. Today denies yesterday, but is a denial of denial tomorrow. This is the constant dialectic path which in a grandiose parabola sweeps the world into infinity. Yesterday, the thesis; today, the antithesis, and tomorrow, the synthesis.
|
| ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin ~
|
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain —
All, all the stretch of these great green states —
And make America again!
|
| ~ Langston Hughes ~
|
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
Yesterday, there was a tsar, and there were slaves; today there is no tsar, but the slaves remain; tomorrow there will be only tsars. We march in the name of tomorrow's free man — the royal man. We have lived through the epoch of suppression of the masses; we are living in an epoch of suppression of the individual in the name of the masses; tomorrow will bring the liberation of the individual — in the name of man. Wars, imperialist and civil, have turned man into material for warfare, into a number, a cipher. Man is forgotten, for the sake of the sabbath. We want to recall something else to mind: that the sabbath is for man.
The only weapon worthy of man — of tomorrows's man — is the word.
|
| ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin ~
|
- 2024
| We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it.
|
| ~ Boris Yeltsin ~
|
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- My years are not advancing as fast as you might think. ~ Bill Murray as "Phil" in Groundhog Day
- 2005
- Anything different is good. ~ Bill Murray as "Phil" in Groundhog Day
- 2006
- There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Every one of these must be right for that particular moment of history, or nothing happens. ~ Coretta Scott King (recent death)
- 2007
- Well, it's Groundhog Day... again... ~ Bill Murray as "Phil" in Groundhog Day
- 2008
- History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. ~ James Joyce in Ulysses (Joyce born 2 February 1882)
- 2009
- History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. ~ Abba Eban (born 2 February 1915)
- 2010
- I'm not playing by their rules anymore! ~ Bill Murray as "Phil" in Groundhog Day
- 2011
- When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. ~ James Joyce
- 2012
- I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile and cunning. ~ James Joyce
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.
Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!
|
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ~
|
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
- 2022
I have loved my NFL career, and now it is time to focus my time and energy on other things that require my attention.
I've done a lot of reflecting the past week and have asked myself difficult questions. And I am so proud of what we have achieved. My teammates, coaches, fellow competitors, and fans deserve 100% of me, but right now, it's best I leave the field of play to the next generation of dedicated and committed athletes.
|
| ~ Tom Brady ~
|
- proposed by Kalki, in regard of his announcement of retirement from NFL football.
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- The things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. ~ Buckminster Fuller
- 2005
- The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn. ~ H. G. Wells
- 2006
- An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. ~ James A. Michener (born c. 3 February 1907)
- 2007
- At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being. ~ Simone Weil (born 3 February 1909)
- 2008
- When war is waged it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it. ~ Simone Weil
- 2009
- The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just … I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand. ~ Gertrude Stein (Date of birth)
- 2010
- Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice. ~ Simone Weil
- 2011
- Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at. ~ Simone Weil
- 2012
- I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The Day the Music Died.
~ Don McLean ~
- 2013
- 2014
| If a captive mind is unaware of being in prison, it is living in error. If it has recognized the fact, even for the tenth of a second, and then quickly forgotten it in order to avoid suffering, it is living in falsehood. Men of the most brilliant intelligence can be born, live and die in error and falsehood. In them, intelligence is neither a good, nor even an asset. The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
The longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.
Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect. This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
- 2020
- 2021
The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or colour, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever.
There is no legitimate limit to the satisfaction of the needs of a human being except as imposed by necessity and by the needs of other human beings.
|
| ~ Simone Weil ~
|
- 2022
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel. ~ Jim Morrison
- 2005
- Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation, in turn, becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on to the future. ~ Charles Lindbergh (born 4 February 1902)
- 2006
- If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one’s outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. ~ Charles Lindbergh (born 4 February 1902)
- 2007
- Men weren't really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill. ~ Betty Friedan
- 2008
- Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player. ~ Alice Cooper (born 4 February 1948)
- 2009
- How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life. This is our modern danger — one of the waxen wings of flight. It may cause our civilization to fall unless we act quickly to counteract it, unless we realize that human character is more important than efficiency, that education consists of more than the mere accumulation of knowledge. ~ Charles Lindbergh
- 2010
- If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes. ~ Charles Lindbergh
- 2011
- Getting up and criticising the other fellow because he's in and you are not seems to me a futile waste of time. Especially as you know in your heart that you would be doing more or less the same thing if you were in his place. ~ Hartley Shawcross, Baron Shawcross
- 2012
- I grow aware of various forms of man and of myself. I am form and I am formless, I am life and I am matter, mortal and immortal. I am one and many — myself and humanity in flux. I extend a multiple of ways in experience in space. I am myself now, lying on my back in the jungle grass, passing through the ether between satellites and stars. My aging body transmits an ageless life stream. Molecular and atomic replacement change life's composition. Molecules take part in structure and in training, countless trillions of them. After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars. ~ Charles Lindbergh
- 2013
| I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves? … As one identity, I was born in AD 1902. But as AD twentieth-century man, I am billions of years old. The life I consider as myself has existed though past eons with unbroken continuity. Individuals are custodians of the life stream — temporal manifestations of far greater being, forming from and returning to their essence like so many dreams.
|
| ~ Charles Lindbergh ~
|
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
I have not heard a word of respect or compassion spoken of our enemy since I came here.
It is not the willingness to kill on the part of our soldiers which most concerns me. That is an inherent part of war. It is our lack of respect for even the admirable characteristics of our enemy — for courage, for suffering, for death, for his willingness to die for his beliefs, for his companies and squadrons which go forth, one after another, to annihilation against our superior training and equipment. What is courage for us is fanaticism for him. We hold his examples of atrocity screamingly to the heavens while we cover up our own and condone them as just retribution for his acts.
|
| ~ Charles Lindbergh ~
|
- 2018
The war might stop this winter, but that is improbable. It may go on for fifty years or more. That also is improbable. The elements are too conflicting and confused to form any accurate judgment of its length. There may be a series of wars, one after another, going on indefinitely.
Possibly the world will come to its senses sooner than I expect. But, as I have often said, the environment of human life has changed more rapidly and more extensively in recent years than it has ever changed before. When environment changes, there must be a corresponding change in life. That change must be so great that it is not likely to be completed in a decade or in a generation.
|
| ~ Charles Lindbergh ~
|
- 2019
| When I go onstage as Alice to this day, I play Alice to the hilt — I play him for everything he is worth, but when I’m offstage, I never think about Alice Cooper. He never occurs to me. … I walk off stage though and I turn away from the audience, I go back to being me again. Whenever I see an audience, that’s when I turn into Alice. If there was no audience there, there would be no reason to be Alice. … If I tried to be Alice Cooper all the time — I’d either be in an insane asylum or in jail or dead. Alice is just too intense, and you just can’t be Alice all the time.
|
| ~ Alice Cooper ~
|
- 2020
I recall standing on the edge of a deep valley in the Hawaiian island of Maui, thinking that the life stream is like a mountain river — springing from hidden sources, born out of the earth, touched by stars, merging, blending, evolving in the shape momentarily seen. It is molecules probing through time, found smooth-flowing, adjusted to shaped and shaping banks, roiled by rocks and tree trunks — composed again. Now it ends, apparently, at a lava brink, a precipitous fall.
Near the fall's brink, I saw death as death cannot be seen. I stared at the very end of life, and at life that forms beyond, at the fact of immortality. Dark water bent, broke, disintegrated, transformed to apparition — a tall, stately ghost soul emerged from body, and the finite individuality of the whole becomes the infinite individuality of particles. Mist drifted, disappeared in air, a vanishing of spirit. Far below in the valley, I saw another river, reincarnated from the first, its particles reorganized to form a second body. It carried the same name. It was similar in appearance. It also ended at a lava brink. Flow followed fall, and fall followed flow as I descended the mountainside. The river was mortal and immortal as life, as becoming.
|
| ~ Charles Lindbergh ~
|
- 2021
- 2022
We remain vigilant. We remain prepared.
Last night's operation took a major terrorist leader off the battlefield. And it sent a strong message to terrorists around the world: We will come after you and find you.
Once again, today, we continue our unceasing effort to keep the American people safe and to strengthen the security of our Allies and partners around the world.
I want to thank you all. And may God bless you. And may God protect our troops.
|
| ~ Joe Biden ~
|
- proposed by Kalki; comments regarding a recent military operation.
- 2023
- 2024
| All that I feared would happen has happened. We are at war all over the world, and we are unprepared for it from either a spiritual or a material standpoint. Fortunately, in spite of all that has been said, the oceans are still difficult to cross; and we have the time to adjust and prepare.
|
| ~ Charles Lindbergh ~
|
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- Do what you can, with what you have, where you are ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- 2005
- I profoundly believe that there is on this horizon, as yet only dimly perceived, a new dawn of conscience. In that purer light, people will come to see themselves in each other, which is to say they will make themselves known to one another by their similarities rather than by their differences. Man's knowledge of things will begin to be matched by man's knowledge of self. The significance rtt a smaller world will be measured not in terms of military advantage, but in terms of advantage for the human community. It will be the triumph of the heartbeat over the drumbeat. ~ Adlai Stevenson (born 5 February 1900)
- 2006
- What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us — what convictions, what courage, what faith — win or lose. ~ Adlai Stevenson II (born 5 February 1900)
- 2007
- God needeth not the help of a material sword of steel to assist the sword of the Spirit in the affairs of conscience. ~ Roger Williams (early advocate of freedom of conscience in religious matters, and the separation of Church and State, he emigrated from England to America on this date in 1631)
- 2008
- Let’s talk sense to the American people. Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man — war, poverty, and tyranny — and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each. ~ Adlai Stevenson II
- 2009
- All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions. All change is the result of a change in the contemporary state of mind. Don't be afraid of being out of tune with your environment, and above all pray God that you are not afraid to live, to live hard and fast. To my way of thinking it is not the years in your life but the life in your years that count in the long run. You'll have more fun, you'll do more and you'll get more, you'll give more satisfaction the more you know, the more you have worked, and the more you have lived. For yours is a great adventure at a stirring time in the annals of men. ~ Adlai Stevenson II
- 2010
- Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility. No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will. ~ Roger Williams
- 2011
- For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance. ~ Adlai Stevenson II
- 2012
- Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be. ~ Adlai Stevenson II
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
| I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian, but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination.
|
| ~ Adlai Stevenson II ~
|
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
| I am a lawyer. I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities, not only of every citizen, but particularly of lawyers, is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly, and it will be a very unhappy day for Anglo-Saxon justice when a man, even a man in public life, is too timid to state what he knows and what he has heard about a defendant in a criminal trial for fear that defendant might be convicted. That would to me be the ultimate timidity.
|
| ~ Adlai Stevenson II ~
|
- 2021
- 2022
| There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, that I possessed unilateral authority to reject electoral college votes. And I heard this week, President Trump said I had the right to "overturn the election". But President Trump is wrong — I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election.
|
| ~ Mike Pence ~
|
- proposed by Kalki, regarding recent remarks on significant historical events.
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things. ~ Isaac Newton
- 2005, 2006
- You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down — up to a man's age-old dream; the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course. ~ Ronald Reagan (born 6 February 1911)
- selected by Kalki (who erroneously selected it for both 2005 and 2006 because of a failure to check the existing records)
- 2007
- I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can. ~ Babe Ruth (born 6 February 1895)
- 2008
- I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look. ~ Ronald Reagan
- 2009
- One love,
One heart,
Let's get together
And feel alright.
~ Bob Marley ~
- 2010
- Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same... ~ Ronald Reagan
- 2011
- I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security. ~ Ronald Reagan
- 2012
- It's hard to beat a person who never gives up. ~ Babe Ruth
- 2013
- 2014
| Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.
|
| ~ Babe Ruth ~
|
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
I acknowledge that my verdict will not remove the President from office. The results of this Senate Court will in fact be appealed to a higher court: the judgement of the American people. Voters will make the final decision, just as the President’s lawyers have implored. My vote will likely be in the minority in the Senate. But irrespective of these things, with my vote, I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me. I will only be one name among many, no more or less, to future generations of Americans who look at the record of this trial. They will note merely that I was among the senators who determined that what the President did was wrong, grievously wrong.
We’re all footnotes at best in the annals of history. But in the most powerful nation on earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that is distinction enough for any citizen.
|
| ~ Mitt Romney ~
|
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
- 2024
| The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
|
| ~ Ronald Reagan ~
|
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2005
- It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. ~ Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities (born 7 February 1812)
- 2006
- He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly; and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased with this variety; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what did not appear to him to be true. ~ Thomas More (born 7 February 1478)
- 2007
- Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people we most despise. ~ Charles Dickens
- 2008
- A man acts suitably to his nature, when he conquers his enemy in such a way as that no other creature but a man could be capable of, and that is by the strength of his understanding. ~ Thomas More
- 2009
- It is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day. ~ Charles Dickens
- 2010
- Extreme justice is an extreme injury: for we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; as if there were no difference to be made between the killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion. ~ Thomas More
- 2011
- In no victory do they glory so much as in that which is gained by dexterity and good conduct without bloodshed. In such cases they appoint public triumphs, and erect trophies to the honour of those who have succeeded; for then do they reckon that a man acts suitably to his nature, when he conquers his enemy in such a way as that no other creature but a man could be capable of, and that is by the strength of his understanding. ~ Thomas More
- 2012
- There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets. ~ Charles Dickens
- 2013
- 2014
The Prince himself has no distinction, either of garments, or of a crown; but is only distinguished by a sheaf of corn carried before him; as the high priest is also known by his being preceded by a person carrying a wax light.
They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many. They very much condemn other nations whose laws, together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes; for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both of such a bulk, and so dark as not to be read and understood by every one of the subjects.
|
| ~ Thomas More ~
|
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
| I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.
|
| ~ Charles Dickens ~
|
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2005
- All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. ~ Martin Buber (born 8 February 1878)
- 2006
- There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall 'inherit the earth.' Neither covetous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess. ~ John Ruskin (born 8 February 1819)
- 2007
- 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, died 8 February 1921.
- 2008
- The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one. ~ John Ruskin
- 2009
- Man's constitution is so peculiar that his health is purely a negative matter. No sooner is the rage of hunger appeased than it becomes difficult to comprehend the meaning of starvation. It is only when you suffer that you really understand. ~ Jules Verne, born 8 February 1828.
- 2010
- Punishment is the last and least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime. ~ John Ruskin
- 2011
- There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others. ~ John Ruskin
- 2012
- Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality. ~ John Ruskin
- 2013
- 2014
| Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance discontented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity
|
| ~ John Ruskin ~
|
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
| Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others.
|
| ~ Martin Buber ~
|
- 2021
The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and of me.
Creation happens to us, burns itself into us, recasts us in burning — we tremble and are faint, we submit. We take part in creation, meet the Creator, reach out to Him, helpers and companions.
|
| ~ Martin Buber ~
|
- 2022
| It is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which we thank any man who pierces, as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert.
|
| ~ John Ruskin ~
|
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. ~ Eric Hoffer
- 2005
- My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue,
An everlasting vision of the everchanging view,
A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold,
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold.
~ Carole King (born 9 February 1942)
- 2006
- Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses? ~ Mrs Patrick Campbell (born 9 February 1865)
- 2007
- Belief may be no more, in the end, than a source of energy, like a battery which one clips into an idea to make it run. ~ J. M. Coetzee
- 2008
- You've got to get up every morning with a smile in your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
The people gonna treat you better,
You're gonna find, yes you will,
That you're beautiful as you feel.
~ Carole King ~
- 2009
- I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth — it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 2010
- I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever. But that does not make me angry any more. They are all dear to me now even while they laugh at me — yes, even then they are for some reason particularly dear to me. I shouldn't have minded laughing with them — not at myself, of course, but because I love them — had I not felt so sad as I looked at them. I feel sad because they do not know the truth, whereas I know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only man to know the truth! But they won't understand that. No, they will not understand. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 2011
- Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them. ~ Ecclesiastes
- 2012
To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky ~
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
| Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea — he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility…
|
| ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky ~
|
- 2018
My time coming, any day, don't worry about me, no
Been so long I felt this way, I'm in no hurry, no.
Rainbows end down that highway where ocean breezes blow
My time coming, voices saying, they tell me where to go.
Don't worry 'bout me, no no, don't worry 'bout me, no
And I'm in no hurry, no no no, I know where to go. California, preaching on the burning shore
California, I'll be knocking on the golden door
Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light
Rising up to paradise, I know I'm going to shine.
|
| ~ John Perry Barlow ~
|
- 2019
- 2020
| As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king’s firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict.
|
| ~ J. M. Coetzee ~
|
- 2021
| When my mother was dying in the hospital, he thought, when she knew her end was coming, it was not me she looked to but someone who stood behind me: her mother or the ghost of her mother. To me she was a woman but to herself she was still a child calling to her mother to hold her hand and help her. And her own mother, in the secret life we do not see, was a child too. I come from a line of children without end.
|
| ~ J. M. Coetzee ~
|
- 2022
- 2023
My heart goes out to the people of Türkiye and Syria in this hour of tragedy. I send my deepest condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to the injured. The United Nations is fully committed to supporting the response. Our teams are on the ground assessing the needs and providing assistance.
We count on the international community to help the thousands of families hit by this disaster, many of whom were already in dire need of humanitarian aid in areas where access is a challenge.
|
| ~ António Guterres ~
|
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in The Sorrows of Young Werther
- 2005
- Be nice to people on your way up, because you're going to meet them all on your way down. ~ Jimmy Durante (born 10 February 1893)
- 2006
- What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth. ~ Boris Pasternak (born 10 February 1890)
- 2007
- I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there. ~ Charles de Montesquieu (died 10 February 1755)
- 2008
- Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation. ~ Bertolt Brecht (born 10 February 1898)
- 2009
- Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life. ~ Bertolt Brecht
- 2010
- Reason gains all men, by compelling none.
Mercy was always Heaven's distinguished mark:
And he, who bears it not, has no friend there.
~ Aaron Hill ~
- 2011
- Let nothing be called natural
In an age of bloody confusion,
Ordered disorder, planned caprice,
And dehumanized humanity, lest all things
Be held unalterable!
~ Bertolt Brecht ~
- 2012
- No one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand. ~ Bertolt Brecht
- 2013
- proposed by Kalki as one of the most famous and striking quotes about serpents, for the start of the Chinese Year of the Snake
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
| I knew I was doing things different but at the same time I was doing things that were very natural for me … I wasn’t trying to break any rules. But I wrote the way I heard things.
|
| ~ Burt Bacharach ~
|
- proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. ~ George Santayana
- 2005
- If one knows only what one is told, one does not know enough to be able to arrive at a well-balanced decision. ~ Leó Szilárd (born 11 February 1898)
- 2006
- When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear. ~ René Descartes (died 11 February 1650)
- 2007
- Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of true democracy, that one moron is equal to one genius, is it necessary to go a further step and hold that two morons are better than one genius? ~ Leó Szilárd (born 11 February 1898)
- 2008
- In Common Sense Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again. ~ Thomas Alva Edison (born 11 February 1847)
- 2009
- Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ~ Thomas Edison
- 2010
- The people who have sufficient passion for the truth to give the truth a chance to prevail, if it runs counter to their bias, are in a minority. How important is this "minority?" It is difficult to say at this point, for, at the present time their influence on governmental decisions is not perceptible. ~ Leó Szilárd
- 2011
- I was sixteen years old when the first World War broke out, and I lived at that time in Hungary. From reading the newspapers in Hungary, it would have appeared that, whatever Austria and Germany did was right and whatever England, France, Russia, or America did was wrong. A good case could be made out for this general thesis, in almost every single instance. It would have been difficult for me to prove, in any single instance, that the newspapers were wrong, but somehow, it seemed to me unlikely that the two nations located in the center of Europe should be invariably right, and that all the other nations should be invariably wrong. History, I reasoned, would hardly operate in such a peculiar fashion, and it didn't take long until I began to hold views which were diametrically opposed to those held by the majority of my schoolmates. ~ Leó Szilárd (born February 11, 1898)
- 2012
- I'm looking for a market for wisdom. ~ Leó Szilárd
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?
But, again, don't misunderstand me. The only conclusion we can draw is that governments acting in a crisis are guided by questions of expediency, and moral considerations are given very little weight, and that America is no different from any other nation in this respect.
|
| ~ Leó Szilárd ~
|
- 2019
- 2020
| We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
|
| ~ Thomas Edison ~
|
- 2021
- 2022
| The most important step in getting a job done is the recognition of the problem. Once I recognize a problem I usually can think of someone who can work it out better than I could.
|
| ~ Leó Szilárd ~
|
- 2023
| In life you must often choose between getting a job done or getting credit for it. In science, the most important thing is not the ideas you have but the decision which ones you choose to pursue. If you have an idea and are not doing anything with it, why spoil someone else's fun by publishing it?
|
| ~ Leó Szilárd ~
|
- 2024
| Luckdragons are among the strangest animals in Fantastica.… Luckdragons are creatures of air, warmth, and pure joy. Despite their great size, they are as light as a summer cloud, and consequently need no wings for flying. They swim in the air of heaven as fish swim in water. Seen from the earth, they look like slow lightning flashes. The most amazing thing about them is their song. Their voice sounds like the golden note of a large bell, and when they speak softly the bell seems to be ringing in the distance. Anyone who has heard this sound will remember it as long as he lives and tell his grandchildren about it.
|
~ Michael Ende ~
in
~ The Neverending Story ~
|
- proposed by Kalki; in regard of the current starting celebrations of the Chinese Year of the Dragon.
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. ~ John F. Kennedy
- 2005
- The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller (recent death)
- 2006
- Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. ~ Abraham Lincoln (born 12 February 1809)
- 2007
- We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. ~ Abraham Lincoln
- 2008
- Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. ~ Charles Darwin (born 12 February 1809)
- 2009
- With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. ~ Abraham Lincoln
- 2010
- I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. ~ Abraham Lincoln
- 2011
- It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle. ~ Abraham Lincoln
- 2012
- Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. ~ Abraham Lincoln
- 2013
| As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
|
| ~ Abraham Lincoln ~
|
- 2014
- 2015
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.
|
| ~ Abraham Lincoln ~
|
- 2016
- 2017
Congratulations. You're alive.
There's an unbroken thread that stretches across more than three billion years that connects us to the first life that ever touched this world. Think of how tough, resourceful and lucky all of our countless ancestors must have been to survive long enough to pass on the message of life to the next and the next and the next generation, hundreds of millions of times before it came to us. There were so many rivers to cross, so many hazards along the way. Predators, starvation, disease, miscalculation, long winters, drought, flood and violence. Not to mention the occasional upheavals that erupted from within our planet and the apocalyptic bolts that come from the blue.
No matter where we hail from or who our parents were, we are descended from the hearty survivors of unimaginable catastrophes. Each of us is a runner in the longest and most dangerous relay race there ever was, and at this moment, we hold the baton in our hands.
|
| ~ Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey ~
|
- 2018
| Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
|
| ~ Abraham Lincoln ~
|
- 2019
- 2020
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you, "Be silent; I see it, if you don't."
The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
|
| ~ Abraham Lincoln ~
|
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
- 2024
| The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.
|
| ~ Abraham Lincoln ~
|
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2005
- In this moment, I need to be needed,
With this darkness all around me, I like to be liked,
In this emptiness and fear, I want to be wanted,
'Cause I love to be loved,
I love to be loved.
~ Peter Gabriel (born 13 February 1950)
- 2006
- Life is what it is, and you take what's handed, and you work as hard as you can, and hopefully you'll be successful, but I just don't spend too much time worrying about that. ~ Jerry Springer (born 13 February 1944)
- 2007
- Every man's life (and … every woman's life), awaits the hour of blossoming that makes it immortal … love is a divinity above all accidents, and guards his own with extraordinary obstinacy. ~ Eleanor Farjeon (born 13 February 1881)
- 2008
- Love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest. ~ Eleanor Farjeon
- 2009
- Morning has broken,
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the Word!
~ Eleanor Farjeon ~
- 2010
- Of what use to destroy the children of evil? It is evil itself we must destroy at the roots. ~ Eleanor Farjeon
- 2011
He could not be captured,
He could not be bought,
His running was rhythm,
His standing was thought;
With one eye on sorrow
And one eye on mirth,
He galloped in heaven
And gambolled on earth
And only the poet
With wings to his brain
Can mount him and ride him
Without any rein,
The stallion of heaven,
The steed of the skies,
The horse of the singer
Who sings as he flies.
~ Eleanor Farjeon ~
- 2012
- Some say the Gods are just a myth
but guess Who I've been dancing with...
The Great God Pan is alive!
~ Mike Scott ~
- proposed by Kalki for the first day of the ancient 3 day celebration of Lupercalia
- 2013
| In love there are no penalties and no payments, and what is given is indistinguishable from what is received.
|
| ~ Eleanor Farjeon ~
|
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
| The world never knows, and cannot for the life of it imagine, what this man sees in that maid and that maid in this man. The world cannot think why they fell in love with each other. But they have their reason, their beautiful secret, that never gets told to more than one person; and what they see in each other is what they show to each other; and it is the truth. Only they kept it hidden in their hearts until the time came.
|
| ~ Eleanor Farjeon ~
|
- 2020
Lying has always been a highly approved Nazi technique. Hitler, in Mein Kampf, advocated mendacity as a policy. … Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood. They all speak with a Nazi double meaning with which to deceive the unwary. … Before we accept their word at what seems to be its face value, we must always look for hidden meanings. … Besides outright false statements and those with double meanings, there are also other circumventions of truth in the nature of fantastic explanations and absurd professions. … Even Schacht showed that he, too, had adopted the Nazi attitude that truth is any story which succeeds. Confronted on cross-examination with a long record of broken vows and false words, he declared in justification — and I quote from the record: "I think you can score many more successes when you want to lead someone if you don't tell them the truth than if you tell them the truth."
This was the philosophy of the National Socialists. When for years they have deceived the world, and masked falsehood with plausibilities, can anyone be surprised that they continue that habit of a lifetime in this dock? Credibility is one of the main issues of this trial. Only those who have failed to learn the bitter lessons of the last decade can doubt that men who have always played on the unsuspecting credulity of generous opponents would not hesitate to do the same now.
|
| ~ Robert H. Jackson ~
|
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
| When we went to school we were told that we were governed by laws, not men. As a result of that, many people think there is no need to pay any attention to judicial candidates because judges merely apply the law by some mathematical formula and a good judge and a bad judge all apply the same kind of law. The fact is that the most important part of a judge's work is the exercise of judgment and that the law in a court is never better than the common sense judgment of the judge that is presiding.
|
| ~ Robert H. Jackson ~
|
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- True love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- 2005
- Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. ~ Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
- 2006
- Some things you don't need until they leave you; they're the things that you miss. ~ Rob Thomas (born 14 February 1972)
- 2007
- When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love. ~ Søren Kierkegaard
- 2008
- Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. ~ Paul of Tarsus
- 2009
- How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~
- 2010
- Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
~ William Shakespeare in Sonnet 116 ~
- 2011
- Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. ~ Paul of Tarsus ~
- 2012
- Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never till Time is done
Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.
~ Edith Sitwell ~
- 2013
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile — her look — her way
Of speaking gently, — for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" —
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, — and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, —
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.
|
| ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~
|
- 2014
| Love all God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love.
|
| ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky ~
|
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2005
- All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. ~ Galileo Galilei (born 15 February 1564)
- 2006
- I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use. ~ Galileo Galilei (born 15 February 1564)
- 2007
- The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires. ~ Susan B. Anthony (born 15 February 1920)
- 2008
- Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. ~ U.S. Congressman Abraham Lincoln, 15 February 1848 letter to William H. Herndon, opposing the Mexican-American War
- 2009
- Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation. ~ Susan B. Anthony (born 15 February 1920)
- 2010
- A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity. ~ Alfred North Whitehead (born 15 February 1861)
- 2011
- Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development. ~ Alfred North Whitehead
- 2012
- I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." ~ Susan B. Anthony ~
- 2013
- 2014
| Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.
|
| ~ Miranda July ~
|
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
| I guess my favorite thing in the world is when I look at a piece of art, or read a story, or watch a movie where I walk away feeling like "Oh my god — I have to do something, I have to make something or talk to someone — things are not the same anymore" — and so I try to make work where you come away with that feeling. It's like, yeah, you're thinking about what you just saw, but even more than that — you feel able, you feel like, kind of propelled.
|
| ~ Miranda July ~
|
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
| It always seems to me extreme rashness on the part of some when they want to make human abilities the measure of what nature can do. On the contrary, there is not a single effect in nature, even the least that exists, such that the most ingenious theorists can arrive at a complete understanding of it. This vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never understanding anything. For anyone who had experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.
|
| ~ Galileo Galilei ~
|
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. ~ e. e. cummings
- 2005
- A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. ~ Henry Adams (born 16 February 1838)
- 2006
- Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. ~ Henry Adams (born 16 February 1838)
- 2007
- The counsels of impatience and hatred can always be supported by the crudest and cheapest symbols; for the counsels of moderation, the reasons are often intricate, rather than emotional, and difficult to explain. And so the chauvinists of all times and places go their appointed way: plucking the easy fruits, reaping the little triumphs of the day at the expense of someone else tomorrow, deluging in noise and filth anyone who gets in their way, dancing their reckless dance on the prospects for human progress, drawing the shadow of a great doubt over the validity of democratic institutions. And until people learn to spot the fanning of mass emotions and the sowing of bitterness, suspicion, and intolerance as crimes in themselves — as perhaps the greatest disservice that can be done to the cause of popular government — this sort of thing will continue to occur. ~ George F. Kennan
- 2008
- Public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics. It may be true, and I suspect it is, that the mass of people everywhere are normally peace-loving and would accept many restraints and sacrifices in preference to the monstrous calamities of war. But I also suspect that what purports to be public opinion in most countries that consider themselves to have popular government is often not really the consensus of the feelings of the mass of the people at all, but rather the expression of the interests of special highly vocal minorities — politicians, commentators, and publicity-seekers of all sorts: people who live by their ability to draw attention to themselves and die, like fish out of water, if they are compelled to remain silent. ~ George F. Kennan
- 2009
- All experience is an arch, to build upon. ~ Henry Brooks Adams
- 2010
- What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn. ~ Henry Adams
- 2011
- Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education. ~ Henry Adams
- 2012
- Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. ~ Henry Adams
- 2013
- 2014
| The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.
|
| ~ Henry Adams ~
|
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
| Boys never see a conclusion; only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything; but the first impulse given to the boy is apt to lead or drive him for the rest of his life into conclusion after conclusion that he never dreamed of reaching.
|
| ~ Henry Adams ~
|
- 2020
- 2021
| Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power-houses. The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive the men, and the men tend to succumb to their own motive forces.
|
| ~ Henry Adams ~
|
- 2022
| I don't have any answers. Use your common sense. Be nice. This is the best I can do. All the trouble in the world is human trouble. Well, that's not true. But when cancer cells run amok and burst out of the prostate and take over the liver and lymph glands and end up killing everything in the body including themselves, they certainly are acting like some humans we know.
|
| ~ P. J. O'Rourke ~
|
- proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
- 2023
| A lot of times I would play a lot of roles a man would play…In One Million Years B.C. — yes, the costume was revealing. But I was outdoors all the time, I was fighting to survive, there was a girlfight. I was participating, it was physical, and I was independent. I wasn’t that pushover kind of a girl. And I think that left an impression.
|
| ~ Raquel Welch ~
|
- proposed by Kalki; in regard of her recent death.
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be. ~ Anonymous
- 2005
- There is one simple Divinity found in all things, everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being. ~ Giordano Bruno (died 17 February 1600)
- 2006
- Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen. ~ Michael Jordan (born 17 February 1963)
- 2007
- Even to have come forth is something, since I see that being able to conquer is placed in the hands of fate. However, there was in me, whatever I was able to do, that which no future century will deny to be mine, that which a victor could have for his own: Not to have feared to die, not to have yielded to any equal in firmness of nature, and to have preferred a courageous death to a noncombatant life. ~ Giordano Bruno (executed 17 February 1600)
- 2008
- A voiceless song in an ageless light
Sings at the coming dawn
Birds in flight are calling there
Where the heart moves the stones
It's there that my heart is calling
All for the love of you.
~ Loreena McKennitt ~
- 2009
- All things are in the Universe, and the universe is in all things: we in it, and it in us; in this way everything concurs in a perfect unity. ~ Giordano Bruno
- 2010
- The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it. ~ Giordano Bruno
- 2011
- I understand Being in all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in Being, and there is no being without Essence. Thus nothing can be free of the Divine Presence. ~ Giordano Bruno
- 2012
- When the end comes, you will be esteemed by the world and rewarded by God, not because you have won the love and respect of the princes of the earth, however powerful, but rather for having loved, defended and cherished one such as I … what you receive from others is a testimony to their virtue; but all that you do for others is the sign and clear indication of your own. ~ Giordano Bruno
- 2013
- 2014
| We recognize a noble image, a marvellous conception, a supreme figure, an exalted shadow, an infinite representation of the represented infinity, a spectacle worthy of the excellence and supremacy of Him who transcendeth understanding, comprehension or grasp. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of his kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.
|
| ~ Giordano Bruno ~
|
- 2015
| Our philosophy... reduceth to a single origin and relateth to a single end, and maketh contraries to coincide so that there is one primal foundation both of origin and of end. From this coincidence of contraries, we deduce that ultimately it is divinely true that contraries are within contraries; wherefore it is not difficult to compass the knowledge that each thing is within every other.
|
| ~ Giordano Bruno ~
|
- 2016
- 2017
| If all things are in common among friends, the most precious is Wisdom. What can Juno give which thou canst not receive from Wisdom? What mayest thou admire in Venus which thou mayest not also contemplate in Wisdom? Her beauty is not small, for the lord of all things taketh delight in her. Her I have loved and diligently sought from my youth up.
|
| ~ Giordano Bruno ~
|
- 2018
| Diverse living things represent diverse divinities and diverse powers, which, besides the absolute being they possess, obtain the being communicated to all things according to their capacity and measure. Whence all of God is in all things (although not totally, but in some more abundantly and in others less) … Just as Divinity descends in a certain manner, to the extent that one communicates with Nature, so one ascends to Divinity through Nature, just as by means of a life resplendent in natural things one rises to the life that presides over them.
|
| ~ Giordano Bruno ~
|
- 2019
| Nature is not merely present, but is implanted within things, distant from none; naught is distant from her except the false, and that which existed never and nowhere — nullity. And while the outer face of things changeth so greatly, there flourisheth the origin of being more intimately within all things than they themselves. The fount of all kinds, Mind, God, Being, One, Truth, Destiny, Reason, Order.
|
| ~ Giordano Bruno ~
|
- 2020
| Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action. And it is unwilling to gloss over and obliterate that tension and thus to obfuscate both the moral and the political issue by making it appear as though the stark facts of politics were morally more satisfying than they actually are, and the moral law less exacting than it actually is.
|
| ~ Hans Morgenthau ~
|
- 2021
The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice — and our parents — to call BS.
Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn't reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS.
Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS.
They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS.
They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS.
They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS.
They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS.
That us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.
If you agree, register to vote. Contact your local congresspeople. Give them a piece of your mind.
|
| ~ Emma González ~
|
- 2022
Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. In order to improve society it is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives. The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure.
Realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics, must also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects, however imperfectly and one-sidedly, these objective laws. It believes also, then, in the possibility of distinguishing in politics between truth and opinion — between what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgment, divorced from the facts as they are and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking.
|
| ~ Hans Morgenthau ~
|
- 2023
| The struggle for power is universal in time and space and is an undeniable fact of experience. It cannot be denied that throughout historic time, regardless of social, economic and political conditions, states have met each other in contests for power. Even though anthropologists have shown that certain primitive peoples seem to be free from the desire for power, nobody has yet shown how their state of mind can be re-created on a worldwide scale so as to eliminate the struggle for power from the international scene. … International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim.
|
| ~ Hans Morgenthau ~
|
- 2024
| I want Putin and his entourage, Putin’s friends, his government to know — that they will have to pay for what they’ve done with our country, with my family, and my husband. And that day will come very soon. I want to call on the entire world community, everyone present here, people all over the world — so that we shall all together defeat this evil, defeat the terrifying regime that is currently in Russia. This regime and Vladimir Putin must be held accountable for all the horrors they are doing to my country, to our country — to Russia.
|
| ~ Yulia Navalnaya ~
|
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
Hello! This is New York calling.
~ With these words the U.S. Voice of America (VOA) began its first radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union on February 17, 1947.
| Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe. As it distinguishes between truth and opinion, so it distinguishes between truth and idolatry. All nations are tempted — and few have been able to resist the power for long — to clothe their own aspirations and action in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one's side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also.
|
| ~ Hans Morgenthau ~
|
- 2004
- What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts. ~ George Bernard Shaw
- 2005
- Teachers are those who use themselves as bridges, over which they invite their students to cross; then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis (born 18 February 1883)
- 2006
- At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can. ~ Toni Morrison (born 18 February 1931)
- 2007
- The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
- 2008
- My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the petty reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you. My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I encountered, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
- 2009
- The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
- 2010
- Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and I rejoice in it all. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
- 2011
- The Great Spirit does not toil within the bounds of human time, place, or casualty.
The Great Spirit is superior to these human questionings. It teems with many rich and wandering drives which to our shallow minds seem contradictory; but in the essence of divinity they fraternize and struggle together, faithful comrades-in-arms.
The primordial Spirit branches out, overflows, struggles, fails, succeeds, trains itself. It is the Rose of the Winds. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
- 2012
- All hopes and despairs vanish in the voracious, funneling whirlwind of God. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
- 2013
- 2014
We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.
But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic.
Within this gigantic circle of divinity we are in duty bound to separate and perceive clearly the small, burning arc of our epoch.
|
| ~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
|
- 2015
| It's enough to have faith in one aspect of God. You have faith in God without form. That is very good. But never get into your head that your faith alone is true and every other is false. Know for certain that God without form is real and that God with form is also real. Then hold fast to whichever faith appeals to you.
|
| ~ Ramakrishna ~
|
- 2016
- 2017
| We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public. Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world’s resources. The alarm, the disquiet, writers raise is instructive because it is open and vulnerable, because if unpoliced it is threatening. Therefore the historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties that will follow.
|
| ~ Toni Morrison ~
|
- 2018
- 2019
| Tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience. The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek — it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language — all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
|
| ~ Toni Morrison ~
|
- 2020
| I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect.
|
| ~ Audre Lorde ~
|
- 2021
You know, I have a philosophy there’s good that happens in everything.
It may not reveal itself immediately, and even in the most dire circumstances, if you just wait, if you just remain open to things, the good in it will reveal itself. And that has happened to me as well in countless, countless ways.
|
| ~ Rush Limbaugh ~
|
- proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.
- 2022
- 2023
- proposed by Kalki; in regard of it's official opening day.
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us ~ Bill Watterson
- 2005
- I am not so enamored of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them. I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgement of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavor to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. Yet I hold that completely erroneous views should be shunned. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus (born 19 February 1473)
- 2006
- External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It's important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you can come from really different places in the world and find your own place in the world that's unique for yourself. ~ Amy Tan (born 19 February 1952)
- 2007
- Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
~ Paul Simon ~
(Lyrics to "The Sound of Silence" — written on this day in 1964)
- 2008
- Now that your rose is in bloom,
A light hits the gloom on the grave,
I've been kissed by a rose on the grave.
~ Seal ~
- 2009
- And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence."
~ Paul Simon ~ (song written on this day in 1964)
- 2010
- People have such terrible assumptions about ghosts — you know, phantoms that haunt you, that make you scared, that turn the house upside down. Yin people are not in our living presence but are around, and kind of guide you to insights. Like in Las Vegas when the bells go off, telling you you've hit the jackpot. Yin people ring the bells, saying, "Pay attention." And you say, "Oh, I see now." Yet I'm a fairly skeptical person. I'm educated, I'm reasonably sane, and I know that this subject is fodder for ridicule. … To write the book, I had to put that aside. As with any book. I go through the anxiety, "What will people think of me for writing something like this?" But ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses. ~ Amy Tan
- 2011
- Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grave.
Ooh, the more I get of you,
Stranger it feels, yeah.
And now that your rose is in bloom,
A light hits the gloom on the grave.
~ Seal ~
- 2012
- External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It's important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you can come from really different places in the world and find your own place in the world that's unique for yourself. ~ Amy Tan
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- proposed by Kalki for the beginning of the Year of the Goat/Sheep
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
- 2022
| Art today can only be revolutionary, that is, it must aspire at the complete and radical reconstruction of society, even if for no other reason than to emancipate intellectual creation from the chains which obstruct it and to allow all mankind to rise to the heights that only geniuses could reach in the past.
|
| ~ André Breton ~
|
- 2023
I don't like you
But I love you.
See that I'm always
Thinking of you.
Oh, oh, oh,
You treat me badly;
I love you madly.
You've really got a hold on me.
|
| ~ Smokey Robinson ~
|
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom. Friendship loves a free Air, and will not be penned up in streight and narrow Enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is, ’twill easily forgive, and forget too, upon small Acknowledgments. ~ William Penn
- 2005
- All in all is all we are. ~ Kurt Cobain (born 20 February 1967)
- 2006
- We picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. ~ Hunter S. Thompson (died 20 February 2005)
- 2007
- If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. ~ Frederick Douglass
- 2008
- Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. ~ Frederick Douglass (died February 20, 1895; born February 1817/1818, birthdate unknown)
- 2009
- No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. ~ Frederick Douglass
- 2010
- Our world is in profound danger. Mankind must establish a set of positive values with which to secure its own survival.
This quest for enlightenment must begin now.
It is essential that all men and women become aware of what they are, why they are here on Earth and what they must do to preserve civilization before it is too late. ~ Richard Matheson (born 20 February 1926)
- 2011
- I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgement is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. ~ Frederick Douglass
- 2012
- The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel. ~ John Glenn (50th Anniversary of first American orbitting Earth, 20 February 1962) John Glenn Friendship 7 Day
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
| You just never know. You drift along, year after year, presuming certain values to be fixed; like being able to drive on a public thoroughfare without somebody trying to murder you. You came to depend on that sort of thing. Then something occurs and all bets are off. One shocking incident and all the years of logic and acceptance are displaced and, suddenly, the jungle is in front of you again. Man, part animal, part angel.
|
| ~ Richard Matheson ~
|
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
| Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
|
| ~ Frederick Douglass ~
|
- 2024
| I spend most of my day screaming — and then over time I get tired and then when I'm tired, I start thinking of the jokes. … That's what I always loved about comedy, it is a way for us to just, you know, to numb the pain, to process what we're going through without feeling every single inkling of it.
|
| ~ Trevor Noah ~
|
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- Careful the things you say, children will listen. Guide them along the way, children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will look to you for which way to turn; to learn what to be! Careful before you say "Listen to Me." Children will listen. ~ Into the Woods (Sondheim/Lapine)
- 2005
- For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
~ W. H. Auden (born 21 February 1907)
- 2006
- When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. ~ Anaïs Nin (born 21 February 1903)
- 2007
- Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
~ W. H. Auden ~
- 2008
- Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. ~ Anaïs Nin
- 2009
- Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods. ~ W. H. Auden
- 2010
- All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
~ W. H. Auden ~
- 2011
- We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon reality and reality upon dream. ~ Anaïs Nin
- 2012
- I remember thinking how often we look, but never see … we listen, but never hear … we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive. ~ Erma Bombeck (born 21 February 1927)
- 2013
- 2014
| This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another. If we took just 5 minutes to recognize each other’s beauty, instead of attacking each other for our differences. That’s not hard. It’s really an easier and better way to live. And ultimately, it saves lives.
|
| ~ Ellen Page ~
|
- 2015
| The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it. He hopes to impose his particular vision and share it with others. And when the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
|
| ~ Anaïs Nin ~
|
Erratum : This QOTD originally was presented with the statement "All writers have concealed more than they revealed" at the start of it. This is also quote of Anaïs Nin, but from a later portion of the same work, and after reviewing my notes, I believe its inclusion at the start of this statement was a transcription error entirely on my part, as I rather hurriedly gathered up ideas to use for QOTD in the brief time I had the day before yesterday. In over 11 years of QOTD work, I believe this is the first time I have made this type of error, and will be on guard against repeating it in the future. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:58, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
| I belong to no nation, no civilization, no society, no race, but to the Divine. I obey no master, no rules, no law, no social convention, but the Divine. To Him I have surrendered all, will, life and self; for Him I am ready to give all my blood, drop by drop, if such is His will, with complete joy, and nothing in his service can be sacrifice, for all is perfect delight.
|
| ~ Mirra Alfassa ~
|
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
Putin thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. As you know, Mr. President, I said to you at the beginning, he’s counting on us not sticking together. He was counting on the inability to keep NATO united. He was counting on us not to be able to bring in others on the side of Ukraine.
He thought he could outlast us. I don’t think he’s thinking that right now.
|
| ~ Joe Biden ~
|
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ~ Isaac Asimov
- 2005
- All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity. ~ George Washington (born 22 February 1732)
- 2006
- I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. ~ George Washington (born 22 February 1732)
- 2007
- Promote... as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. ~ George Washington
- 2008
- Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
- 2009
- The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. ~ George Washington
- 2010
- I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak,
Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store,
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.
~ James Russell Lowell ~ (born 22 February 1819)
- 2011
- The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, —
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat — the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (born 22 February 1892)
- 2012
- Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
| A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of his friends, and that the most liberal professions of good will are very far from being the surest marks of it. I should be happy that my own experience had afforded fewer examples of the little dependence to be placed upon them.
|
| ~ George Washington ~
|
- 2020
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~ Dr. Seuss
- 2005
- If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up. ~ Hunter S. Thompson (recent death)
- 2006
- Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process... ~ Karl Jaspers (born 23 February 1883)
- 2007
- The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience. ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- 2008
- There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know. ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- 2009
- We cannot avoid conflict, conflict with society, other individuals and with oneself. Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them. ~ Karl Jaspers
- 2010
- How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily. ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- 2011
- There can be no rainbow without a cloud and a storm. ~ John Heyl Vincent
- 2012
- Man, if he is to remain man, must advance by way of consciousness. There is no road leading backward. … We can no longer veil reality from ourselves by renouncing self-consciousness without simultaneously excluding ourselves from the historical course of human existence. ~ Karl Jaspers
- 2013
| It is the search for the truth, not possession of the truth which is the way of philosophy. Its questions are more relevant than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.
|
| ~ Karl Jaspers ~
|
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
"What is the greatest surprise you have found about life?” a university student asked me several years ago.
"It's brevity" I replied without hesitation. … Time moves so quickly, and no matter who we are or what we have done, the time will come when our lives will be over. As Jesus said, "As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work". … Life is short, and every day is a gift from God.
|
| ~ Billy Graham ~
|
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
- 2022
| There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for.
|
| ~ W. E. B. Du Bois ~
|
- 2023
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- Ethics and Aesthetics are one. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 2005
- We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on. ~ Steve Jobs (born 24 February 1955)
- 2006
- Our armament must be adequate to the needs, but our faith is not primarily in these machines of defense but in ourselves. ~ Chester W. Nimitz (born 24 February 1885)
- 2007
- Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so irreparably his. ~ George A. Moore
- 2008
- When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth. ~ Steve Jobs (born 24 February 1955)
- 2009
- The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand. ~ George A. Moore
- 2010
- A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. ~ George A. Moore
- 2011
- God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless. ~ Chester W. Nimitz
- 2012
- Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ~ Steve Jobs
- 2013
| Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
|
| ~ Steve Jobs ~
|
- 2014
- 2015
| You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
|
| ~ Steve Jobs ~
|
- 2016
| The United States was made by men of all races and colors, not for white men, but for the refuge and defense of man. If it does not rest upon the natural rights of man, it rests nowhere. If it does not exist by the consent of governed then any exclusion is possible, and it is a shorter step from an exclusive white man's government to an exclusively rich white man's government, than it is from a system for mankind to one for white men. The spirit which excludes some men today because they are of a certain color, may exclude others tomorrow because they are of a certain poverty or a certain church or a certain birthplace. There is no safety, no guarantee, no security in a prejudice. If we build strong and long, we must build upon moral principle.
|
| ~ George William Curtis ~
|
- 2017
| It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
|
| ~ Steve Jobs ~
|
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
| I am a white man, I believe. Will anybody undertake to teach me what are the antipathies and loathings of white men? What mean whites may or may not like is of small importance. But the generous soul of my race, which has led the van in the great march of liberty and civilization, and whose lofty path is marked by the broken chains of every form of slavery, has an instinctive hatred of injustice, of exclusive privilege, of arrogance, ignorance, and baseness, and an instinctive love of honor, magnanimity and justice. The white soul of my race naturally loves the man, of whatever race or color, who bravely fights and gloriously dies for equal rights, and instinctively loathes every man who, saved by the blood of such heroes, deems himself made of choicer clay.
|
| ~ George William Curtis ~
|
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
Ще не вмерла України і слава, і воля,
Ще нам, браття молодії, усміхнеться доля.
Згинуть наші воріженьки, як роса на сонці.
Запануєм і ми, браття, у своїй сторонці.
The glory of Ukraine has not yet perished, nor the will.
Still upon us, young brothers, fate shall smile.
Our enemies shall vanish, like dew in the sun.
We too shall rule, brothers, our country.
|
| ~ State Anthem of Ukraine ~
|
- 2024
| Sir Walter Raleigh declared in the early 17th century that "whoever commands the sea, commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself." This principle is as true today as when uttered, and its effect will continue as long as ships traverse the seas.
|
| ~ Chester W. Nimitz ~
|
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- An amicable divorce is like a ventilated condom; it just doesn't work. ~ Rita Rudner
- 2005
- Little darling,
I feel that ice is slowly melting.
Little darling,
It seems like years since it's been clear.
Here comes the sun...
Here comes the sun,
And I say
It's alright.
~ George Harrison ~
(born 25 February 1943, according to death certificate)
- 2006
- That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters. ~ Anthony Burgess (born 25 February 1917)
- 2007
- I look at the world and I notice it’s turning.
While my guitar gently weeps.
With every mistake we must surely be learning,
Still my guitar gently weeps.
~ George Harrison ~
- 2008
- Every intelligent child is an amateur anthropologist. The first thing such a child notices is that adults don't make sense. ~ John Leonard (born 25 February 1939)
- 2009
- Do what you want to do
And go where you're going to
Think for yourself
'Cause I won't be there with you.
~ George Harrison ~
- 2010
- When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final things. ~ John Leonard
- 2011
- If there is victory in overcoming the enemy, there is a greater victory when a man overcomes himself. ~ José de San Martín
- 2012
- The scientist, like the magician, possesses secrets. A secret — expertise — is somehow perceived as antidemocratic, and therefore ought to be unnatural. We have come a long way from Prometheus to Faust to Frankenstein. And even Frankenstein's monster is now a joke. ~ John Leonard
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
| From the Hindu perspective, each soul is divine. All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusion. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One's values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture and that not in, but beyond, lies his own ultimate reality.
|
| ~ George Harrison ~
|
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
- 2021
| Military people have a heavy investment in rules against torture, not only because we want to protect our own POWs from reciprocal brutalities… but also because war is so terrible that it desperately requires any limits anyone can agree on, any gesture toward dignity, any mitigation suggesting civilized scruple. There isn’t even persuasive evidence that torture makes its victims tell their secrets, instead of saying whatever we want to hear.
|
| ~ John Leonard ~
|
- 2022
I want to address today the people of Russia. I am addressing you not as a president, I am addressing you as a citizen of Ukraine. More than 2,000 km of the common border is dividing us. Along this border your troops are stationed, almost 200,000 soldiers, thousands of military vehicles. Your leaders approved them to make a step forward, to the territory of another country. And this step can be the beginning of a big war on European continent.
We know for sure that we don't need the war. Not a Cold War, not a hot war. Not a hybrid one. But if we'll be attacked by the troops, if they try to take our country away from us, our freedom, our lives, the lives of our children, we will defend ourselves. Not attack, but defend ourselves. And when you will be attacking us, you will see our faces, not our backs, but our faces.
The war is a big disaster, and this disaster has a high price. With every meaning of this word. People lose money, reputation, quality of life, they lose freedom. But the main thing is that people lose their loved ones, they lose themselves.
They told you that Ukraine is posing a threat to Russia. It was not the case in the past, not in the present, it's not going to be in the future. You are demanding security guarantees from NATO, but we also demand security guarantees. Security for Ukraine from you, from Russia and other guarantees of the Budapest memorandum.
But our main goal is peace in Ukraine and the safety of our people, Ukrainians. For that we are ready to have talks with anybody, including you, in any format, on any platform. The war will deprive guarantees from everybody — nobody will have guarantees of security anymore. Who will suffer the most from it? The people. Who doesn't want it the most? The people! Who can stop it? The people.
|
| ~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
|
- proposed by Kalki; recent remark’s on the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine.
- 2023
I am grateful to our people, grateful to our multi-million army of volunteers and citizens who do care, who can collect and get everything necessary.
We have become one. Our journalists and media are a united front fighting against lies and panic.
We have become one family. There are no more strangers among us. Ukrainians today are all fellows. Ukrainians have sheltered Ukrainians, opened their homes and hearts to those who were forced to flee the war.
We withstand all threats, shelling, cluster bombs, cruise missiles, kamikaze drones, blackouts, and cold. We are stronger than that.
It was a year of resilience. A year of care. A year of bravery. A year of pain. A year of hope. A year of endurance. A year of unity.
The year of invincibility. The furious year of invincibility.
Its main result is that we endured. We were not defeated. And we will do everything to gain victory this year!
|
| ~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
|
- proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on current events.
- 2024
Give me love, give me peace on earth,
Give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth,
Give me hope, help me cope, with this heavy load,
Trying to, touch and reach you with, heart and soul.
|
| ~ George Harrison ~
|
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- An interesting thing has happened since San Francisco started granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples: my marriage is just fine! Even though there are thousands of gay and lesbian couples affirming their love for and commitment to each other, my marriage — my affirmation of love and commitment to (my wife) — isn't threatened at all. As a matter of fact, the only people who can really "threaten" my marriage are the two of us. ~ Wil Wheaton
- 2005
- The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge. ~ Victor Hugo (born 26 February 1802)
- 2006
- Sure, ninety percent of science fiction is crud. That's because ninety percent of everything is crud. ~ Theodore Sturgeon (born 26 February 1918)
- 2007
- To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better. ~ Victor Hugo
- 2008
- A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour. ~ Victor Hugo in Les Misérables
- 2009
- The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal. ~ Victor Hugo
- 2010
- A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.
A day will come when a cannon will be a museum-piece, as instruments of torture are today. And we will be amazed to think that these things once existed!
~ Victor Hugo
- 2011
- God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art. ~ Victor Hugo
- 2012
- You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do no bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear. ~ Victor Hugo
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
Love is a burnin' thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire I fell into a burnin' ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire
|
| ~ June Carter Cash ~
|
- proposed by Kalki, from her song Ring of Fire which was one of the top hits of her and her husband Johnny Cash, who was born on this day, and "Ring of Fire" also being a popular name for an annular eclipse, one of which is occurring across the southern hemisphere on this date in 2017.
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
The mind's eye can nowhere find anything more dazzling nor more dark than in man; it can fix itself upon nothing which is more awful, more complex, more mysterious, or more infinite. There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.
To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and final epic.
|
~ Victor Hugo ~
in
~ Les Misérables ~
|
- 2021
- 2022
- proposed by Kalki; remarks on the current Russian military invasion of Ukraine.
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- It must be so humiliating to have such a public break-up. ~ Ellen DeGeneres to Justin Timberlake
- 2005
- The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit — for gallantry in defeat — for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature. ~ John Steinbeck (born 27 February 1902)
- 2006
- Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (born 27 February 1807)
- 2007
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing.
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~
- 2008
- The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~
- 2009
- Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
To something new, to something strange;
Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
To-morrow be to-day.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~
- 2010
- If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- 2011
- Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, — but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- 2012
- Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. ~ John Steinbeck in East of Eden
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
| Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man — when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.
|
~ John Steinbeck ~
in
~ The Grapes of Wrath ~
|
- 2016
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
|
~ John Steinbeck ~
in
~ East of Eden ~
|
- 2017
| There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success.
|
| ~ John Steinbeck ~
|
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
| I believe the great ones, Plato, Lao Tze, Buddha, Christ, Paul and the great Hebrew prophets are not remembered for negation or denial. Not that it is necessary to be remembered but there is one purpose in writing I can see, beyond simply doing it interestingly. It is the duty of the writer to lift up, to extend, to encourage. If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice. And how any negative or despairing approach can pretend to be literature I do not know. It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would milleniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth, and a few remnants of fossilized jaw bones, a few teeth in strata of limestone would be the only mark our species would have left on the earth.
|
| ~ John Steinbeck ~
|
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:
- 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
- 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, from "...like captured fireflies" (1955)
- 2004
- Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. ~ Oscar Wilde
- 2005
- Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being. ~ Michel de Montaigne (born 28 February 1533)
- 2006
- If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away. ~ Linus Pauling (born 28 February 1901)
- 2007
- Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are feted in the waving grass
And by the streamers of the white cloud
And whispers of the wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
~ Stephen Spender ~
(born 28 February 1909)
- 2008
- The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr. (recent death)
- 2009
- I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old. ~ Michel de Montaigne
- 2010
- Virtue refuses facility for her companion … the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road. ~ Michel de Montaigne
- 2011
- Science cannot be stopped. Man will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences — and we cannot predict what they will be. Science will go on — whether we are pessimistic, or are optimistic, as I am. I know that great, interesting, and valuable discoveries can be made and will be made… But I know also that still more interesting discoveries will be made that I have not the imagination to describe — and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm. ~ Linus Pauling
- "Man will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences — and we cannot predict what they will be" proposed by Zarbon, extension proposed by Kalki
- 2012
- The world progresses, year by year, century by century, as the members of the younger generation find out what was wrong among the things that their elders said. So you must always be skeptical — always think for yourself. ~ Linus Pauling
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- proposed by DanielTom, in relation to Nimoy's recent death.
- 2016
| Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.
|
| ~ Michel de Montaigne ~
|
- 2017
| Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we are not able to refute: we speak of all things by precepts and decisions. The style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to having seen with his own eyes, and what a judge determined with his most certain knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking: “it seems to me.” They make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me as infallible.
|
| ~ Michel de Montaigne ~
|
- 2018
- 2019
I want to first of all, thank you. I know that this has been hard. I know that you face a lot. I know that you are worried about your family — but this is part of your destiny. And, hopefully, this portion of your destiny will lead to a better — a better, a better Michael Cohen, a better Donald Trump, a better United States of America and a better world.
And I mean that from the depths of my heart.
When we’re dancing with the angels, the question will be asked: "In 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?" Did we stand on the sidelines and say nothing? … Come on, now — we can do more than one thing. And we have got to get back to normal.
|
| ~ Elijah Cummings ~
|
- 2020
- 2021
| Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life. Is it possible you can imagine never to arrive at the place towards which you are continually going? and yet there is no journey but hath its end. And, if company will make it more pleasant or more easy to you, does not all the world go the self-same way?
|
| ~ Michel de Montaigne ~
|
- 2022
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- 2004
- Just because it's old doesn't mean you have to read it. ~ "Jolene Sugarbaker, the Trailer Park Queen" as portrayed by Jayson Saffer.
- 2008
- God bless the King! (I mean our faith's defender!)
God bless! (No harm in blessing) the Pretender.
But who Pretender is, and who is King,
God bless us all! That's quite another thing!
~ John Byrom ~ (born 29 February 1692)
- proposed and selected by Kalki
- 2012
- You are now at a crossroads. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don't think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully. Then act upon it. ~ Anthony Robbins
- proposed and selected by Kalki
- 2016
- proposed and selected by Kalki
- 2020
- proposed and selected by Kalki
- 2024
Religion's Meaning when I would recall,
Love is to me the plainest Word of all.
Plainest, — because that what I love, or hate,
Shews me directly my internal State;
By its own Consciousness is best defin'd
Which way the Heart within me stands inclin'd. On what it lets its Inclination rest,
To that its real Worship is address'd;
Whatever Forms or Ceremonies spring
From Custom's Force, there lies the real Thing;
Jew, Turk or Christian be the Lover's Name,
If same the Love, Religion is the same.
|
| ~ John Byrom ~
|
- 2028
- Rank or add further suggestions…
Ranking system:
- 4 : Excellent - should definitely be used. (Perhaps, at most, only one quote per day should be ranked thus by any user, as to avoid confusions.)
- 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.
