Wikiquote:Quote of the day/February 2024

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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 11:58 (UTC)

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February 1

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 ~

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February 2

When you find yourself needing the phrase "This is like Groundhog Day" to explain how you feel, a movie has accomplished something.

~ Roger Ebert ~

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February 3

The human soul has need of truth and of freedom of expression.
The need for truth requires that intellectual culture should be universally accessible, and that it should be able to be acquired in an environment neither physically remote nor psychologically alien.

~ Simone Weil ~

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February 4

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 ~

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February 5

We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.

~ Adlai Stevenson II ~

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February 6

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 ~

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February 7

Are pistols with revolving barrels, sword-sticks, bowie-knives, and such things, Institutions on which you pride yourselves? Are bloody duels, brutal combats, savage assaults, shooting down and stabbing in the streets, your Institutions! Why, I shall hear next that Dishonour and Fraud are among the Institutions of the great republic!

~ Charles Dickens ~
in
~ The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit ~

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February 8

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

~ John Ruskin ~

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February 9

All is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.

~ Fyodor Dostoevsky ~
in
~ Crime and Punishment ~

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February 10

Politics is developing more comedians than radio ever did.

~ Jimmy Durante ~

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February 11

Luck dragons 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 ~

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February 12

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 ~

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February 13

We must not forget that in our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds — that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.

~ Robert H. Jackson ~

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February 14

If there is any thing that keeps the mind open to angel visits, and repels the ministry of ill, it is human love.

~ Nathaniel Parker Willis ~

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February 15

So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century. Yet the chief impetus to the foundation of universities came after that date, and in more recent times has even increased. The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.

~ Alfred North Whitehead ~

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February 16

Religious art is the measure of human depth and sincerity; any triviality, any weakness, cries aloud.

~ Henry Adams ~

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February 17

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 ~

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February 18

The star dies, but the light never dies; such also is the cry of freedom.
Out of the transient encounter of contrary forces which constitute your existence, strive to create whatever immortal thing a mortal may create in this world — a Cry.
And this Cry, abandoning to the earth the body which gave it birth, proceeds and labors eternally.

~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~

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February 19

Then the rainstorm came over me
And I felt my spirit break
I had lost all of my belief, you see
And realized my mistake
But time threw a prayer to me
And all around me became still

I need love, love's divine
Please forgive me, now I see that I've been blind
Give me love, love is what I need to help me know my name.

~ Seal ~

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February 20

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 ~

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February 21

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

~ W. H. Auden ~

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February 22

For the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished, that the manly employment of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce, would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; that the swords might be turned into plough-shares, the spears into pruning hooks, and, as the Scripture expresses it, "the nations learn war no more."

~ George Washington ~

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February 23

Today for the first time in more than a half century, the US has returned to the moon. Today, for the first time in the history of humanity, a commercial company — an American company — launched and led the voyage up there. And today is a day that shows the power and promise of NASA's commercial partnerships. … What a triumph! Odysseus has taken the moon. This feat is a giant leap forward for all of humanity.

~ Bill Nelson ~

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February 24

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 ~

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February 25

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 ~

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February 26

Poetry will take a great step, a decisive step, a step which, like the upheaval of an earthquake, will change the whole face of the intellectual world. It will set about doing as nature does, mingling in its creations — but without confounding them — darkness and light, the grotesque and the sublime; in other words, the body and the soul, the beast and the intellect; for the starting-point of religion is always the starting-point of poetry. All things are connected.

~ Victor Hugo ~

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February 27

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

~ John Steinbeck ~

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February 28

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

~ Stephen Spender ~

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February 29

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 ~

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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 11:58 (UTC)