Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 2022

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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 11:38 (UTC)

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January 1

I'm not looking forward to death; it's important to live while we are here. But those who have died, my mother said, now they know the secret. And someday we all will.

~ Betty White ~

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January 2

It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever been permanently learned.

~ Isaac Asimov ~

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January 3

While there are two ways of contending, one by discussion, the other by force, the former belonging properly to man, the latter to beasts, recourse must be had to the latter if there be no opportunity for employing the former.

~ Cicero ~

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January 4

Stand in the place where you live
Now face North
Think about direction
Wonder why you haven’t
Now stand in the place where you work
Now face West
Think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven’t before.

~ R.E.M ~

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January 5

A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has a logic, however twisted it might be. The lunatic, on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.

~ Umberto Eco ~
in
~ Foucault's Pendulum ~

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January 6

The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead.
Because January 6th was an unprecedented attack on the seat of our democracy, we understand that there is broad public interest in our investigation. We understand that there are questions about how long the investigation will take, and about what exactly we are doing.
Our answer is, and will continue to be, the same answer we would give with respect to any ongoing investigation: as long as it takes and whatever it takes for justice to be done — consistent with the facts and the law.

~ Merrick Garland ~

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January 7

My fellow Americans, in life, there’s truth and, tragically, there are lies — lies conceived and spread for profit and power.
We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie.
And here is the truth: The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interests and America’s interests, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.
He can’t accept he lost, even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own Attorney General, his own Vice President, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: He lost.
That’s what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward.
He has done what no president in American history — the history of this country — has ever, ever done: He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people.

~ Joe Biden ~

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January 8

Hope is the eternal tool in the survival kit for mankind. We hope for a little luck, we hope for a better tomorrow, we hope — although it is an impossible hope — to somehow get out of this world alive.
And if we can't and don't, then it is enough to rejoice in our short time here and to remember how much we loved the view.

~ Sidney Poitier ~

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January 9

Existentialism does not offer to the reader the consolations of an abstract evasion: existentialism proposes no evasion.

~ Simone de Beauvoir ~

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January 10

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

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January 11

My dad went through a sea of deaths. The oldest of six, he buried his four younger brothers and four of his children. Yes, I was it.
His philosophy after grieving was to laugh. To try to bring some joy to others, because life is just so hard sometimes. Because it ends.
My father also had a huge amount of dignity. This Mark Twain quote sums up the way my father and mother felt about life: “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” … I am very proud of the life I have led so far. I have a lot of love in my life. And a lot of laughs. And I wish that for you all.
I wish that even for the guy in the audience with his arms folded.

~ Bob Saget ~

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January 12

Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being?

~ Swami Vivekananda ~

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January 13

I learned have, not to despise,
Whatever thing seemes small in common eyes.

~ Edmund Spenser ~

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January 14

Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith.

~ Albert Schweitzer ~

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January 15

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. When we look beneath the surface, beneath the impulsive evil deed, we see within our enemy-neighbor a measure of goodness and know that the viciousness and evilness of his acts are not quite representative of all that he is. We see him in a new light. We recognize that his hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God's image is ineffably etched in being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad and that they are not beyond the reach of God's redemptive love.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr ~

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January 16

One of the most dangerous forms of human error is forgetting what one is trying to achieve.

~ Paul Nitze ~

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January 17

When I feel it my duty to speak an unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I will speak it, though it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my readers immediate pleasure as well as my own.

~ Anne Brontë ~

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January 18

I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian. I suppose an anarchist would say, paraphrasing what Marx said about agnostics being "frightened atheists," that libertarians are simply frightened anarchists. Having just stated the case for the opposition, I will go along and agree with them: yes, I am frightened. I'm a libertarian because I don't trust the people as much as anarchists do. I want to see government limited as much as possible; I would like to see it reduced back to where it was in Jefferson's time, or even smaller. But I would not like to see it abolished. I think the average American, if left totally free, would act exactly like Idi Amin. I don't trust the people any more than I trust the government.

~ Robert Anton Wilson ~

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January 19

To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.

~ Auguste Comte ~

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January 20

One change of attitude would change everything. If everyone realized that it could be a beautiful world and said let's not do these things anymore — let's have fun.

~ David Lynch ~

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January 21

An unjust composition never fails to contain error and falsehood. Therefore an unjust connection of ideas is not derived from nature, but from the imperfect composition of man. Misconnection of ideas is the same as misjudging, and has no positive existence, being merely a creature of the imagination; but nature and truth are real and uniform; and the rational mind by reasoning, discerns the uniformity, and is thereby enabled to make a just composition of ideas, which will stand the test of truth. But the fantastical illuminations of the credulous and superstitious part of mankind, proceed from weakness, and as far as they take place in the world subvert the religion of REASON, NATURE and TRUTH.

~ Ethan Allen ~

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January 22

You can decide what you want to eat for dinner, you can decide to go away for the weekend, and you can decide what clothes you’re going to wear in the morning, but when it comes to artistic things, there’s never a rhyme or reason. It’s, like, they just happen. And they happen when they happen.

~ Meat Loaf ~

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January 23

Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.

~ Stendhal ~

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January 24

I turned on the news to the Third World War,
Opened up the paper to World War IV.
Just when I thought it was safe to be bored,
Trouble waiting to happen.

~ Warren Zevon ~

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January 25

Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared. We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one sensation strikes and then another. Children, our lives have been gongs striking; clamour and boasting; cries of despair; blows on the nape of the neck in gardens.

~ Virginia Woolf ~

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January 26

Twenty-five years ago I couldn't walk down the street without being recognized. Now I can put a cap on, walk anywhere and no one pays me any attention. They don't ask me about my movies and they don't ask me about my salad dressing because they don't know who I am. Am I happy about this? You bet.

~ Paul Newman ~

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January 27

I am such a great exponent of stopping this whole nonsense of war. Unfortunately limits — attempts to limit war have always failed. The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available.

~ Hyman G. Rickover ~

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January 28

Peace demands of Nature the recognition of human rights; discrimination is contrary to Nature and the enemy of peace.

~ José Martí ~

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January 29

A life of kindness is the primary meaning of divine worship.

~ Emanuel Swedenborg ~

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January 30

The moral consciousness of the world must recognize the importance of removing injustices and well-founded grievances; but at the same time it must be aroused to the cardinal necessity of honoring sanctity of treaties, of respecting the rightsand liberties of others, and of putting an end to acts of international aggression.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

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January 31

What's my philosophy? In a word, integral. And what on earth — or in heaven — do I mean by "integral"? The dictionary meaning is fairly simple: "comprehensive, balanced, inclusive, essential for completeness." Short definition, tall order.

~ Ken Wilber ~

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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 11:38 (UTC)