Wikiquote:Quote of the day/March 2013

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March 1

A =POPE= is someone who is not under the authority of the authorities.

~ Principia Discordia ~

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March 2

Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It's more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.

~ Dr. Seuss ~

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March 3

Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion. We agree to try strength by counting heads instead of breaking heads, but the principle is exactly the same. … The minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it is convinced that it is a minority.

~ James Fitzjames Stephen ~

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March 4

We know that with the very first awakening of knowledge, man is confronted with two obvious facts:
The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself.
Neither of these can he prove or disprove, but they are facts: they constitute reality for him.

~ P. D. Ouspensky ~

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March 5

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.

~ William Beveridge ~

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March 6

A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame. I don't really like to say this because it never sounds sincere, but I would really have liked for my books to have been published after my death, so I wouldn't have to go through all this business of fame and being a great writer. In my case, the only advantage to fame is that I have been able to give it a political use. Otherwise, it is quite uncomfortable. The problem is that you're famous for twenty-four hours a day, and you can't say, "Okay, I won't be famous until tomorrow," or press a button and say, "I won't be famous here or now."

~ Gabriel García Márquez ~

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March 7

Reason in man is rather like God in the world.

~ Thomas Aquinas ~

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March 8

Eloquence may set fire to reason.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ~

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March 9

I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.

~ Vita Sackville-West ~

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March 10

Let justice be done, though the world perish.

~ Ferdinand I ~

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March 11

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

~ Douglas Adams ~
in
~ The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ~

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March 12

At one point the driver said, "For God's sakes, you're rocking the boat back there." Actually we were; the car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives.

~ Jack Kerouac ~

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March 13

The history of religions reaches down and makes contact with that which is essentially human: the relation of man to the sacred. The history of religions can play an extremely important role in the crisis we are living through. The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning.

~ Mircea Eliade ~

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March 14

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. ~

~ Albert Einstein ~

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March 15

Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.

~ Lionel Johnson ~

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March 16

Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.

~ René Daumal ~

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March 17

I am Patrick, yes a sinner and indeed untaught; yet I am established here in Ireland where I profess myself bishop. I am certain in my heart that "all that I am," I have received from God. So I live among barbarous tribes, a stranger and exile for the love of God.

~ Saint Patrick ~

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March 18

The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.

~ John C. Calhoun ~

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March 19

The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error.

~ William Jennings Bryan ~

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March 20

Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the mania
Which insists there is only the One, one country, one truth, and one way.

~ Friedrich Hölderlin ~

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March 21

The community as a whole doesn't listen patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints. Although the great lesson of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints. If you simply have a consensus, it generally stultifies. It fails to see the problems of that consensus and it depends on the existence of critics to break up that iceberg and permit knowledge to develop. This is in fact one of the underpinnings of democratic theory. It is one of the reasons why we believe in notions of free speech and its one of the great forces in terms of intellectual development.

~ Walter Gilbert ~

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March 22

If you please to give me leave I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true.

~ Anne Hutchinson ~

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March 23

I believe that if an individual is not on the path to transcending his society and seeing in what way it furthers or impedes the development of human potential, he cannot enter into intimate contact with his humanity.

~ Erich Fromm ~

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March 24

Freedom is a mystical truth — Its expressed best in The Brothers Karamazov, the chapter when the Grand Inquisitor confronted the returned Christ. The freedom that Christ gave the world was the freedom of being an individual, in a collectivity, of basing ones life on love, as distinct from power, of seeking the good of others rather than nourishing ones own ego. That was liberation. And the Chief Inquisitor, who speaks for every dictator, every millionaire, every ideologue that's ever been, says we can't have it. Go away. Stay away.

~ Malcolm Muggeridge ~

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March 25

Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development.

~ Rudolf Rocker ~

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March 26

The very scientist who, in the service of the sinful king, was the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom. But the hero-heart must be at hand. … Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn. Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

~ Joseph Campbell ~

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March 27

It has become extremely questionable whether, in the flux of life, it is a genuinely worthwhile intellectual problem to seek to discover fixed and immutable ideas or absolutes. It is a more worthy intellectual task perhaps to learn to think dynamically and relationally rather than statically. ... When the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline, be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions.

~ Karl Mannheim ~

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March 28

We become obsessed with "truth" when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with "freedom" when discussing conduct … Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.

~ J. L. Austin ~

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March 29

The power of the imagination is a unifying power, hence the force of metaphor; and the poet is the supreme manipulator of metaphor... the world needs the unifying power of the imagination. The two things that give it best are poetry and religion. 

~ R. S. Thomas ~

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March 30

Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance.

~ Eric Clapton ~

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March 31

I tell you this, that you will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf — kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now.

~ "Sunday" ~

in
The Man Who Was Thursday
by
~ G. K. Chesterton ~

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Today is Wednesday, November 6, 2024; it is now 00:12 (UTC)