Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 2018

QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
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Today is Thursday, November 14, 2024; it is now 17:41 (UTC)

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January 1

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. ~ Barry Goldwater ~

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January 2

To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well. ~ Isaac Asimov ~

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January 3

The news today about "Atomic bombs" is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope "this will ensure peace". ... Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~

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January 4

I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people. ~ Isaac Newton ~

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January 5

How should we deal with intrusions of fiction into life, now that we have seen the historical impact that this phenomenon can have? … Reflecting on these complex relationships between reader and story, fiction and life, can constitute a form of therapy against the sleep of reason, which generates monsters. ~ Umberto Eco ~

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January 6

There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence. Hence I cannot accept either nihilists or anar­chists who choose violence as a means of action. ~ Jacques Ellul ~

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January 7

Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free institutions were not the offspring of our Revolution. They existed before. ~ Millard Fillmore ~

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January 8

To bargain freedom for security is the devil's bargain. Having made the bargain, one enjoys neither freedom nor security. ~ Gerry Spence ~

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January 9

I know that it can be very easy, under the intensive pressures of a campaign, for even well-intentioned people to fall into shady tactics — to rationalize this on the grounds that what is at stake is of such importance to the Nation that the end justifies the means. And both of our great parties have been guilty of such tactics in the past. In recent years, however, the campaign excesses that have occurred on all sides have provided a sobering demonstration of how far this false doctrine can take us. The lesson is clear: America, in its political campaigns, must not again fall into the trap of letting the end, however great that end is, justify the means. I urge the leaders of both political parties, I urge citizens, all of you, everywhere, to join in working toward a new set of standards, new rules and procedures to ensure that future elections will be as nearly free of such abuses as they possibly can be made. This is my goal. I ask you to join in making it America's goal. ~ Richard Nixon ~

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January 10

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion. ~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

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January 11

There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty. The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel ~

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January 12

All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls. ~ Swami Vivekananda ~

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January 13

The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne. For a man by nothing is so well bewrayd, As by his manners. ~ Edmund Spenser ~

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January 14

The thinking man must … oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. True manhood is too precious a spiritual good for us to surrender any part of it to thoughtlessness. ~ Albert Schweitzer ~

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January 15

If everyone were clothed with integrity, If every heart were just, frank, kindly, The other virtues would be well-nigh useless, Since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience The injustice of our fellows. ~ Molière ~

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January 16

Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens — and real diseases are useful material. Epidemic diseases usually elicit a call to ban the entry of foreigners, immigrants. And xenophobic propaganda has always depicted immigrants as bearers of disease… Such is the extraordinary potency and efficacy of the plague metaphor: it allows a disease to be regarded both as something incurred by vulnerable "others" and as (potentially) everyone's disease. ~ Susan Sontag ~

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January 17

I want our young people to know that they matter, that they belong. So don't be afraid — you hear me, young people? Don't be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered. Empower yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise. Lead by example with hope, never fear. And know that I will be with you, rooting for you and working to support you for the rest of my life. ~ Michelle Obama ~

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January 18

I can't find a word to say to you I can't comprehend, I can't relate to you. Plain to see your faith for me Take me higher angel fire Take me where I want to go Teach me things I need to know. ~ Dolores O'Riordan ~

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January 19

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters. What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always is to be, absolute and irresponsible. ~ Lysander Spooner ~

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January 20

There are so many clues and feelings in the world that it makes a mystery and a mystery means there's a puzzle to be solved. Once you think like that you're hooked on probably finding a meaning, and there're many avenues in life where we're given little indications that the mystery can one day be solved. We get little proofs, — not the big proof — but the little proofs that keep us searching. ~ David Lynch ~

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January 21

Though "none by searching can find out God, or the Almighty to perfection," yet I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make better members of society, and acquire, manly powerful incentives to the practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that human nature is capable of. ~ Ethan Allen ~

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January 22

The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good. ~ Francis Bacon ~

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January 23

He had never seen a "Fallout," and he hoped he'd never see one. A consistent description of the monster had not survived, but Francis had heard the legends. … Brother Francis visualized a Fallout as half-salamander, because, according to tradition, the thing was born in the Flame Deluge, and as half-incubus who despoiled virgins in their sleep, for, were not the monsters of the world still called "children of the Fallout"? That the demon was capable of inflicting all the woes which descended upon Job was recorded fact, if not an article of creed. ~ Walter M. Miller, Jr. ~

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January 24

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin ~

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January 25

It is notorious that illusions are shattered by conflict with reality, so no real happiness, no real wit, no real profundity are tolerated where the illusion prevails. ~ Virginia Woolf ~ in ~ Orlando: A Biography ~

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January 26

Men since the beginning of time have sought peace. Various methods through the ages have been attempted to devise an international process to prevent or settle disputes between nations. From the very start workable methods were found in so far as individual citizens were concerned, but the mechanics of an instrumentality of larger international scope have never been successful. Military alliances, balances of power, Leagues of Nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war now blocks out this alternative. We have had our last chance. If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. ~ Douglas MacArthur ~

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January 27

To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger — and its immediacy. … Beyond the nuclear and climate domains, technological change is disrupting democracies around the world as states seek and exploit opportunities to use information technologies as weapons, among them internet-based deception campaigns aimed at undermining elections and popular confidence in institutions essential to free thought and global security. … International diplomacy has been reduced to name-calling, giving it a surreal sense of unreality that makes the world security situation ever more threatening. Because of the extraordinary danger of the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes to midnight — the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War. ~ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ~

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January 28

One must have faith in the best in men and distrust the worst. One must allow the best to be shown so that it reveals and prevails over the worst. Nations should have a pillory for whoever stirs up useless hate, and another for whoever fails to tell them the truth in time. ~ José Martí ~

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January 29

We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view. ~ Edward Abbey ~

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January 30

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

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January 31

We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd ... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste...? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding? ~ Norman Mailer ~

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QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
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Today is Thursday, November 14, 2024; it is now 17:41 (UTC)

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