Wikiquote:Quote of the day/June 2016

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Today is Friday, March 29, 2024; it is now 05:59 (UTC)


June 1
 
Determination in a single instance is an expression of courage; if it becomes characteristic, a mental habit. But here we are referring not to physical courage but to courage to accept responsibility, courage in the face of a moral danger. This has often been called courage d'esprit, because it is created by the intellect. That, however, does not make it an act of the intellect: it is an act of temperament. Intelligence alone is not courage; we often see that the most intelligent people are irresolute. Since in the rush of events a man is governed by feelings rather than by thought, the intellect needs to arouse the quality of courage, which then supports and sustains it in action.
Looked at in this way, the role of determination is to limit the agonies of doubt and the perils of hesitation when the motives for action are inadequate.
~ Carl von Clausewitz ~
 

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June 2
 
I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great". There's a qualititative difference.
~ Cornel West ~
 

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June 3
 
Americans have been selling this view around the world: that progress comes from perfect protection of intellectual property. Notwithstanding the fact that the most innovative and progressive space we've seen — the Internet — has been the place where intellectual property has been least respected. You know, facts don't get in the way of this ideology.
~ Lawrence Lessig ~
 

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June 4
 
One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.
~ Robert Fulghum ~
 

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June 5
 
Once we realize we are all members of humanity, we will want to compete in the spirit of love.
In a competition of love we would not be running against one another, but with one another. We would be trying to gain victory for all humanity. If I am a faster runner than you, you may feel bad seeing me pass you in the race, but if you know that we are both racing to make our world better, you will feel good knowing that we are racing toward a common goal, a mutual reward.
In a competition of love we'll all share in the victory, no matter who comes first.
~ Muhammad Ali ~
 

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June 6
 
It is a fact that a man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own. Whether he realizes it or not, he illustrates the pertinence of the adage: So long as we are, death is not; and when death is present, we are not. In other words, between death and us there is no rapport; it is something with which we have nothing to do — and only incidentally the world and nature. And that is why all living creatures can contemplate it with composure, with indifference, unconcern, with egoistic irresponsibility.
~ Thomas Mann ~
 

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June 7
 
It is brave to be involved
To be not fearful to be unresolved.
~ Gwendolyn Brooks ~
 

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June 8
 
The world isn't fair, but as long as it's tilting in my direction I find that there's a natural cap to my righteous indignation.
~ Scott Adams ~
 

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June 9
 
They say that spring
Means just one thing
To little lovebirds.
We're not above birds,
Let's misbehave.
~ Cole Porter ~
 

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June 10
 
He who inflicts a vile and unjust harm by using the power and the force with which he is invested, does not conquer; the true victory is to have on one's side Right naked and entire.
~ Luís de Camões ~
 

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June 11
 
They say princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom.
~ Ben Jonson ~
 

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June 12
 
I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.
~ Anne Frank ~
 

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June 13
 
God wills, man dreams, the work is born.
~ Fernando Pessoa ~
 

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June 14
 
In the end, you're measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.
~ Donald Trump ~
 

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June 15
 
We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we'll do it not so much with speeches that sound good as with speeches that are good and sound; not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that will bring people to their senses.
~ Mario Cuomo ~
 

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June 16
 
Secrets, silent, stony
sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their
tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
 

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June 17
 
We live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, as we sometimes seem to.
~ M. C. Escher ~
 

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June 18
 
Quantum theory is now discussing instantaneous connections between two entangled quantum objects such as electrons. This phenomenon has been observed in laboratory experiments and scientists believe they have proven it takes place. They’re not talking about faster than the speed of light. Speed has nothing to do with it. The entangled objects somehow communicate instantaneously at a distance. If that is true, distance has no meaning. Light-years have no meaning. Space has no meaning. In a sense, the entangled objects are not even communicating. They are the same thing. At the “quantum level” (and I don’t know what that means), everything may be actually or theoretically linked. All is one. Sun, moon, stars, rain, you, me, everything. All one.
~ Roger Ebert ~
 

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June 19
 
The unhappy legacies of authoritarianism can be removed only if the concept of absolute power as the basis of government is replaced by the concept of confidence as the mainspring of political authority: the confidence of the people in their right and ability to decide the destiny of their nation, mutual confidence between the people and their leaders and, most important of all, confidence in the principles of justice, liberty and human rights.
~ Aung San Suu Kyi ~
 

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June 20
 
All of us have the privilege of making music that helps and heals — to make music that makes people happier, stronger and kinder. Don't forget: music is God's voice.
~ Brian Wilson ~
 

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June 21
 
Human existence is obviously distinguished from animal life by its qualified participation in creation. Within limits it breaks the forms of nature and creates new configurations of vitality. Its transcendence over natural process offers it the opportunity of interfering with the established forms and unities of vitality as nature knows them.
~ Reinhold Niebuhr ~
 

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June 22
 
The true end of Man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal and immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole.
~ Wilhelm von Humboldt ~
 

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June 23
 
Very occasionally, if you really pay attention, life doesn’t suck.
~ Joss Whedon ~
 

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June 24
 
Humor is … nearer right than any emotion we have. Humor is the atmosphere in which grace most flourishes.
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~
 

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June 25
 
All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.
~ George Orwell ~
 

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June 26
 
Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.
~ Pearl S. Buck ~
 

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June 27
 
Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the world at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.
~ Helen Keller ~
 

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June 28
 
I deny that villany is ever necessary. It is impossible that it should ever be necessary for any reasonable creature to violate all the laws of justice, mercy, and truth. No circumstances can make it necessary for a man to burst in sunder all the ties of humanity. It can never be necessary for a rational being to sink himself below a brute.
~ John Wesley ~
 

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June 29
 
The machine does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them.
~ Antoine de Saint Exupéry ~
 

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June 30
 

There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

~ Czesław Miłosz ~
 

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Today is Friday, March 29, 2024; it is now 05:59 (UTC)