Wikiquote:Quote of the day/February 2016

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February 1

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 ~

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February 2

There is something so familiar about this. Do you ever have déjà vu?

~ Andie MacDowell as "Rita" ~
in
~ Groundhog Day ~

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February 3

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

~ Simone Weil ~

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February 4

I believe we are on an irreversible trend towards more freedom and democracy, but that could change.

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February 5

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

~ Adlai Stevenson ~

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February 6

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery,
None but ourselves can free our minds.

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February 7

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions. Then, in the alleged proof, be alert for inexplicit assumptions. Euclid's notorious oversights drove this lesson home.

~ Eric Temple Bell ~

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February 8

⨀

Of course there is a monkey. There is always a monkey.

~ J. J Abrams & Doug Dorst ~
in
~ S. ~

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February 9

Ain't it good to know that you've got a friend
When people can be so cold
They'll hurt you, yes, and desert you
And take your soul if you let them
Oh, but don't you let them.

~ Carole King ~

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February 10

Courage is poorly housed that dwells in numbers; the lion never counts the herd that are about him, nor weighs how many flocks he has to scatter.

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February 11

Government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens. A man has at least as good a right to choose his wife, as he has to choose his religion. His taste may not suit his neighbors; but so long as his deportment is correct, they have no right to interfere with his concerns.

~ Lydia Maria Child ~

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February 12

Slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty; criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action.

~ Abraham Lincoln ~

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February 13

The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it. It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. We could justify any censorship only when the censors are better shielded against error than the censored.

~ Robert H. Jackson ~

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February 14

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

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February 15

Life is too short to pursue every human act to its most remote consequences; "for want of a nail, a kingdom was lost" is a commentary on fate, not the statement of a major cause of action against a blacksmith.

~ Antonin Scalia ~

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February 16

I know of nothing useful in life except what is beautiful or creates beauty.

~ Henry Adams ~

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February 17

While the broad principles of democracy are universal, the fact remains that their application varies considerably … We are at the beginning of the road, at the very beginning. We still have a long way to go.

~ Boutros Boutros-Ghali ~

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February 18

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

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February 19

When I want something to happen — or not happen — I begin to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.

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February 20

Nature has two voices, the one high, the other low; one is in sweet accord with reason and justice, and the other apparently at war with both. The more men know of the essential nature of things, and of the true relation of mankind, the freer they are from prejudice of every kind. The child is afraid of the giant form of his own shadow. This is natural, but he will part with his fears when he is older and wiser. So ignorance is full of prejudice, but it will disappear with enlightenment.

~ Frederick Douglass ~

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

In youth we are prone to fall in love with love.

~ Umberto Eco ~

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February 21

Loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves. I know many of you have struggled with this. I draw upon your strength and your support, and have, in ways you will never know. I’m here today because I am gay. And because… maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility. I also do it selﬁshly, because I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission. I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships suffered. And I’m standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain.

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February 22

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.

~ George Washington ~

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February 23

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor,— all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

~ W. E. B. Du Bois ~

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February 24

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 ~

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February 25

I look at you all —
See the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps.

~ George Harrison ~

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February 26

Would you realize what Revolution is, call it Progress; and would you realize what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

~ Victor Hugo ~
in
~ Les Misérables ~

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February 27

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 ~

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February 28

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 ~

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February 29

⨀

The Church is indeed, in its real Intent,
An Assembly where Nothing but
Friendship is meant;
And the utter Extinction of Foeship and Wrath
By the Working of Love in the Strength of its Faith.
This gives it its holy and catholic Name,
And truly confirms its apostolic Claim;
Showing what the One Saviour's One Mission had been:
"Go and teach all the World," — every Creature therein.

In the Praise ever due to the Gospel of Grace
Its Universality holds the first Place.

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