Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 2021

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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 12:10 (UTC)

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January 1

I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.

~ T. S. Eliot ~
in
~ Four Quartets, "Little Gidding" ~

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January 2

In memory yet green, in joy still felt,
The scenes of life rise sharply into view.
We triumph; Life’s disasters are undealt,
And while all else is old, the world is new.

~ Isaac Asimov ~

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January 3

Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they no more look awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.

~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~

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January 4

All you hear is time stand still in travel
And feel such peace and absolute
The stillness still that doesn't end
But slowly drifts into sleep
The stars are the greatest thing you've ever seen
And they're there for you
For you alone you are the everything.

~ R.E.M. ~

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January 5

Philosophies can be judged, at most, on the grounds of the perspicacity with which they decide that something is worthy of becoming the starting point for a global explanatory hypothesis. Thus I do not think that the sign (or any other suitable object for a general semiotics) is a mere figment.

~ Umberto Eco ~

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January 6

I believe that life has meaning. We are not on earth by chance; we do not come from nowhere to go to nowhere. This is a statement; it cannot be proved. Meaning implies both orientation and significance. Not every event or act or word has meaning, but everything is set in that orientation and signification.

~ Jacques Ellul ~

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January 7

We're debating a step that has never been taken in American history. Whether Congress should overrule the voters and overturn a Presidential election. … President Trump claims the election was stolen. The assertions range from specific local allegations to Constitutional arguments to sweeping conspiracy theories. I supported the President's right to use the legal system, dozens of lawsuits received hearings in courtrooms all across our country, but over and over, the courts rejected these claims, including all-star judges whom the President himself has nominated. … The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. They've all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever. … If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. Self-government, my colleagues, requires a shared commitment to the truth and a shared respect for the ground rules of our system. We cannot keep drifting apart into two separate tribes with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share. Congress will either override the voters, overrule them, the voters, the states, and the courts for the first time ever, or honor the people's decision. I will not pretend such a vote would be a harmless protest gesture while relying on others to do the right thing. I will vote to respect the people’s decision and defend our system of government as we know it.

~ Mitch McConnell ~

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January 8

It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.

~ Mike Pence ~

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January 9

We gather due to a selfish man's injured pride, and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning. What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. … For any who remain insistent on an audit in order to satisfy the many people who believe that the election was stolen, I'd offer this perspective — no Congressional audit is ever going to convince these voters, particularly when the President will continue to say that the election was stolen. The best way we could show respect for the voters who were upset is by telling them the truth.
That's the burden, that's the duty of leadership.
The truth is that President-elect Biden won the election, President Trump lost.

~ Mitt Romney ~

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January 10

Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump. His use of the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice.
Our Constitution and our Republic will overcome this stain and We the People will come together again in our never-ending effort to form a more perfect Union, while Mr. Trump will deservedly be left a man without a country.

~ Jim Mattis ~

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January 11

I am appalled by the reckless behavior of some political leaders since the election and by the lack of respect shown today for our institutions, our traditions, and our law enforcement. The violent assault on the Capitol — and disruption of a Constitutionally-mandated meeting of Congress — was undertaken by people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes.

~ George W. Bush ~

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January 12

We faced an unprecedented assault on our Capitol, our Constitution, and our country.
The assault was fueled by more than four years of poison politics spreading deliberate misinformation, sowing distrust in our system, and pitting Americans against one another. The match was lit by Donald Trump and his most ardent enablers, including many in Congress, to overturn the results of an election he lost.
The election was free, the count was fair, the result is final. We must complete the peaceful transfer of power our Constitution mandates.

~ Bill Clinton ~

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January 13

Rosalynn and I are troubled by the violence at the U.S. Capitol today. This is a national tragedy and is not who we are as a nation. Having observed elections in troubled democracies worldwide, I know that we the people can unite to walk back from this precipice to peacefully uphold the laws of our nation, and we must. We join our fellow citizens in praying for a peaceful resolution so our nation can heal and complete the transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries.

~ Jimmy Carter ~

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January 14

President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.… Donald John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

~ The United States House of Representatives ~

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January 15

An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality. … These are the people who cannot face disappointments. These are the people who cannot face being defeated. These are the people who cannot face being criticized. These are the people who cannot face these many experiences of life which inevitably come because they are too centered in themselves.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~

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January 16

It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.

~ Susan Sontag ~

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January 17

When people ask me whether being in the White House has changed my husband, I can honestly say that when it comes to his character, and his convictions, and his heart, Barack Obama is still the same man I fell in love with all those years ago.
He's the same man who started his career by turning down high paying jobs and instead working in struggling neighborhoods where a steel plant had shut down, fighting to rebuild those communities and get folks back to work … because for Barack, success isn't about how much money you make, it's about the difference you make in people's lives.

~ Michelle Obama ~

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January 18

History will rightly remember today's violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation. … I've been heartened to see many members of the President's party speak up forcefully today. Their voices add to the examples of Republican state and local election officials in states like Georgia who've refused to be intimidated and have discharged their duties honorably. We need more leaders like these — right now and in the days, weeks, and months ahead as President-Elect Biden works to restore a common purpose to our politics. It's up to all of us as Americans, regardless of party, to support him in that goal.

~ Barack Obama ~

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January 19

We are here knowing that we are at an inflection point in the history of our world. We are at an inflection point in the history of our nation. We are here because the American Dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before.
We are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question: Who are we? Who are we as Americans?
So, let’s answer that question. To the world. And each other. Right here. And, right now. … We can heal our nation. We can give our children the future they deserve. We can reclaim the American Dream for every single person in our country. We can restore America’s moral leadership on this planet.
So let’s do this.
And let’s do it together.
And let's start now.

~ Kamala Harris ~

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January 20

We must restore the soul of America.
Our nation is shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses.
It is time for our better angels to prevail.
Tonight, the whole world is watching America. I believe at our best America is a beacon for the globe.
And we lead not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. … Now, together — on eagle's wings — we embark on the work that God and history have called upon us to do.
With full hearts and steady hands, with faith in America and in each other, with a love of country — and a thirst for justice — let us be the nation that we know we can be.
A nation united.
A nation strengthened.
A nation healed.
The United States of America.

~ Joe Biden ~

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January 21

The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light.
If only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it.

~ Amanda Gorman ~

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January 22

Let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to discover truth.

~ Francis Bacon ~

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January 23

The way I see it, it's a great thing to be the man who hit the most home runs, but it's a greater thing to be the man who did the most with the home runs he hit. So as long as there's a chance that maybe I can hammer out a little justice now and then, or a little opportunity here and there, I intend to do as I always have — keep swinging.

~ Hank Aaron ~

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January 24

If you have passion, a chip on the shoulder, a sense of humor, and you can explain what you do very well, it doesn't matter if you're a plumber or a singer or a politician. If you have those four things, you are interesting.

~ Larry King ~

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January 25

Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.

~ Virginia Woolf ~

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January 26

Today, freedom is on the offensive, democracy is on the march.

~ Douglas MacArthur ~

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January 27

Responsibility is a unique concept … You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you … If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.

~ Hyman G. Rickover ~

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January 28

Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together. You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all.

~ José Martí ~

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January 29

He who doesn’t know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others' successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.

~ Anton Chekhov ~

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January 30

I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there's nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.

~ Cicely Tyson ~

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January 31

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

~ Norman Mailer ~

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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 12:10 (UTC)