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Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May

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This page lists quote of the day proposals specifically for dates in the month of May, and quotes proposed should ideally have some relation to the day, or persons born on it, though sometimes exceptions can be made, usually for notable quotes that relate to recent events, such as the death of prominent individuals. Developing ideas of people or works to quote on specific days can be explored through the Wikipedia page: List of historical anniversaries. The numeric section heading of each date is also a direct link to the Wikipedia list of births, deaths, and other events which occured on that date.

See also: May 2008 · 2009 · 2010 · 2011 · 2012 · 2013 · 2014 · 2015 · 2016 · 2017

Ranking system:

4 : Excellent - should definitely be used.
3 : Very Good - strong desire to see it used.
2 : Good - some desire to see it used.
1 : Acceptable - but with no particular desire to see it used.
0 : Not acceptable - not appropriate for use as a quote of the day.
2004
The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May. ~ Sir Thomas Malory
2005
"DON'T PANIC"
~ Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
2006
I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, "I'm in favor of privatization," or, "I'm deeply in favor of public ownership." I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith (recent death)
2007
A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles. ~ Joseph Addison (born 1 May 1672)
2008
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul. ~ Joseph Addison
2009
When an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
~ Joseph Addison ~
2010
Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly. ~ Joseph Addison
2011
I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality. ~ Joseph Addison
2012
Since once again, O Lord, in the steppes of Asia, I have no bread, no wine, no altar, I will raise myself above those symbols to the pure majesty of reality, and I will offer to you, I, your priest, upon the altar of the entire earth, the labor and the suffering of the world. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
  • proposed by N6n
2013
Gǣð ā Wyrd swā hīo scel!
Fate goes ever as it must.
~ Beowulf ~
2014
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ~
2015
All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called "guessing what was at the other side of the hill."
~ Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington ~
2016
We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic temperature are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a transformation of the planet as a whole.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ~
2017
Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts — and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?
~ Joseph Heller ~
2018
Under oak, ash and thorn
My soul was born.
Under thorn, oak and ash
My body bent to the lash.
~ Elinor Wylie ~
2019
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
~ Joseph Heller ~
in
~ Catch-22 ~
2020
It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.
~ Joseph Heller ~
in
~ Catch-22 ~
2021
Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ~
2022
We are doing everything to return normal life to the de-occupied part of our Ukraine. … Of course, there is still a lot of work ahead. The occupiers are still on our land and still do not recognize the apparent failure of their so-called operation. We still need to fight and direct all efforts to drive the occupiers out. And we will do it. Ukraine will be free. … The Ukrainian flag will return wherever it should be by right.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
~ Joseph Addison ~
2024
  The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living in a little time much beneath them; or as the Italian proverb runs, "The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger."
~ Joseph Addison ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
2005
You know more than you think you do. ~ Benjamin Spock (born 2 May 1903)
2006
We are near waking when we dream that we dream. ~ Novalis (born 2 May 1772)
2007
Love works magic.
It is the final purpose
Of the world story,
The Amen of the universe.
~ Novalis ~
2008
Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. ~ Novalis
2009
We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the Universe. ~ Jerome K. Jerome (born 2 May 1859)
2010
Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world. ~ Novalis
2011
Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations. ~ Novalis
2012
True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of every positive element she lifts her gloriously radiant countenance as the founder of a new world… ~ Novalis
2013
Moral Action is that great and only Experiment, in which all riddles of the most manifold appearances explain themselves. Whoso understands it, and in rigid sequence of Thought can lay it open, is forever master of Nature.
~ Novalis ~
2014
Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.
~ Novalis ~
2015
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
~ Gospel of John ~
as translated in the
~ King James Version ~
  • proposed by Kalki — a passage from the King James Version of the Christian Bible, the 2nd of May being selected by the 400th anniversary committee as the official anniversary day of celebration in 2011, though the exact date of publication in 1611 is unknown.

2016

No explanation is required for Holy Writing. Whoso speaks truly is full of eternal life, and wonderfully related to genuine mysteries does his Writing appear to us, for it is a Concord from the Symphony of the Universe.
~ Novalis ~
2017
Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child.
~ Novalis ~
2018
The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind. Shakspeare was no calculator, no learned thinker; he was a mighty, many-gifted soul, whose feelings and works, like products of Nature, bear the stamp of the same spirit; and in which the last and deepest of observers will still find new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man. They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word.
~ Novalis ~
2019
There is but one Temple in the World; and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hand on a human body.
~ Novalis ~
2020
Realists are, as a rule, only men in the rut of routine who are incapable of transcending a narrow circle of antiquated notions. But their adverse opinion does carry some weight and can do great harm to a new project — at least until the innovation is strong enough to push the "realists" and their moldy notions aside.
~ Theodor Herzl ~
2021
Philosophy is properly Home-sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home.
~ Novalis ~
2022
Our delegation traveled to Kyiv to send an unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine.
~ Nancy Pelosi ~
2023
I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
And when do you think it will all become clear?
'Cause I'm being taken over by the fear.
~ Lily Allen ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
In nature's infinite book of secrecy a little I can read. ~ William Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra
2005
It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli (born 3 May 1469)
2006
Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. ~ Pete Seeger (born 3 May 1919)
2007
The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be. ~ Pete Seeger
2008
The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
2009
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose under heaven.
~ Pete Seeger ~
2010
No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.
Nothing is of greater importance in time of war than in knowing how to make the best use of a fair opportunity when it is offered. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
2011
It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? . . . Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either. ~ Golda Meir (born 3 May 1898)
2012
Few men are brave by nature, but good discipline and experience make many so.
Good order and discipline in an army are more to be depended upon than ferocity. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
2013
It's up to you whether or not you want to do work with no contract. I think artists do need to do work with no contract, because what we're motivated by is not money. We're motivated by a need to express ourselves and to get our ideas out. That's the motivation. It turns out that when people like it they frequently will support you if you give them a means, but this is not a contract.
~ Nina Paley ~
2014
It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers — not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell.
~ Steven Weinberg ~
2015
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
~ Steven Weinberg ~
2016
Whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it.
~ Niccolò Machiavelli ~
2017
The corporations that hold these copyrights are media companies that also control most of the new media that comes out. Estimates vary, but it's said that 98 percent of all culture is unavailable right now because of copyrights. So the reason they hold the copyrights isn't because they want to get paid, it's because they don't want all the old stuff competing with the media stream that they control now.
~ Nina Paley ~
2018
♡ Copying is an act of love. Please copy & share.
~ Nina Paley ~
2019
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
~ Niccolò Machiavelli ~
2020
A prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice.
~ Niccolò Machiavelli ~
2021
Copying is not theft
Stealing a thing leaves one less left
Copying it makes one thing more
That's what copying's for.
~ Nina Paley ~
2022
Every single one of you, whether you like it or not, is a bastion of democracy. And if you ever begin to doubt your responsibilities. If you ever begin to doubt how meaningful it is, look no further than what's happening in Ukraine. Look at what's happening there. Journalists are risking and even losing their lives to show the world what's really happening.
You realize how amazing it is. Like in America, you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth, even if it makes people in power uncomfortable. Even if it makes your viewers or readers uncomfortable. Do you understand how amazing that is?
I stood here tonight and I made fun of the President of the United States, and I'm going to be fine. — I'm going to be fine, right?
Like, do you really understand what a blessing it is? Maybe it's happened for so long that you — it might slip your mind, it's a blessing.
~ Trevor Noah ~
2023
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. ~ eden ahbez
2005
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. ~ Horace Mann (born 4 May 1796)
2006
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this. ~ T. H. Huxley (born 4 May 1825)
2007
The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. ~ T. H. Huxley
2008
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering cold iron. ~ Horace Mann (born May 4)
2009
Beneficence is godlike, and he who does most good to his fellow-man is the Master of Masters, and has learned the Art of Arts. Enrich and embellish the universe as you will, it is only a fit temple for the heart that loves truth with a supreme love. Inanimate vastness excites wonder; knowledge kindles admiration, but love enraptures the soul. Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light, has found the lost paradise. For him, a new heaven and a new earth have already been created. His home is the sanctuary of God, the Holy of Holies. ~ Horace Mann
2010
If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both. ~ Horace Mann
2011
Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike. ~ Horace Mann
2012
Veracity is the heart of morality. ~ T. H. Huxley
2013
The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.
~ T. H. Huxley ~
2014
For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.
~ T. H. Huxley ~
2015
Virtually all ideologues, of any variety, are fearful and insecure, which is why they are drawn to ideologies that promise prefabricated answers for all circumstances.
~ Jane Jacobs ~
2016
The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.
~ T. H. Huxley ~
2017
I do not agree with the extremists of either the left or the right, but I think they should be allowed to speak and to publish, both because they themselves have, and ought to have, rights, and once their rights are gone, the rights of the rest of us are hardly safe. Extremists typically want to squash not only those who disagree with them diametrically, but those who disagree with them at all. It seems to me that in every country where extremists of the left have gotten sufficiently in the saddle to squash the extremists of the right, they have ridden on to squash the center or terrorize it also. And the same goes for extremists of the right. I do not want that to happen in our country.
~ Jane Jacobs ~
2018
It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.
~ Jane Jacobs ~
2019
Science has taught to me … to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.
~ T. H. Huxley ~
2020
Advanced cultures are usually sophisticated enough, or have been sophisticated enough at some point in their pasts, to realize that foxes shouldn't be relied on to guard henhouses.
~ Jane Jacobs ~
2021
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
~ T. H. Huxley ~
2022
I am pleased that more than 100 civilians have successfully been evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, in an operation successfully coordinated by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
I hope the continued coordination with Kyiv and Moscow will lead to more humanitarian pauses that will allow civilians safe passage away from the fighting and aid to reach people where the needs are greatest.
~ António Guterres ~
2023
I was brought up to believe that there is no virtue in conforming meekly to the dominant opinion of the moment. I was encouraged to believe that simple conformity results in stagnation for a society, and that American progress has been largely owing to the opportunity for experimentation, the leeway given initiative, and to a gusto and a freedom for chewing over odd ideas.
~ Jane Jacobs ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Everything in the universe relates to the number 5, one way or another, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter. ~ Principia Discordia, "The Law of Fives"
2005
Democracy is the destiny of humanity; freedom its indestructible arm. ~ Benito Juárez (Cinco de Mayo, and 05-05-05)
2006
Once you label me you negate me. ~ Søren Kierkegaard (born 5 May 1813)
2007
I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both. ~ Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or
2008
If I have ventured wrongly, very well, life then helps me with its penalty. But if I haven't ventured at all, who helps me then? ~ Søren Kierkegaard (born 5 May 1813)
2009
Is it an excellence in your love that it can love only the extraordinary, the rare? If it were love’s merit to love the extraordinary, then God would be — if I dare say so — perplexed, for to Him the extraordinary does not exist at all. The merit of being able to love only the extraordinary is therefore more like an accusation, not against the extraordinary nor against love, but against the love which can love only the extraordinary. Perfection in the object is not perfection in the love. Erotic love is determined by the object; friendship is determined by the object; only love of one’s neighbor is determined by love. Therefore genuine love is recognizable by this, that its object is without any of the more definite qualifications of difference, which means that this love is recognizable only by love. ~ Søren Kierkegaard
2010
Do not interrupt the flight of your soul; do not distress what is best in you; do not enfeeble your spirit with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it — and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart's indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you — for only the truth that builds up is truth for you. ~ Søren Kierkegaard in Either/Or
2011
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. ~ Karl Marx (born 5 May 1818)
2012
You cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you. ~ Søren Kierkegaard
2013
Sin is in itself separation from the good, but despair over sin is separation a second time.
~ Søren Kierkegaard ~
2014
Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.
~ Christopher Morley ~
2015
Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won’t be made safer by creating barriers between people. Cries of “They’re evil, let’s get ‘em” or “The infidels must die” sound frightening, but they’re desperately empty of argument and understanding. They’re the rallying cries of prejudice, the call to arms of those who find it easier to hate than admit they might be not be right about everything.
Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.
~ Michael Palin ~
2016
It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.
~ Søren Kierkegaard ~
2017
WE ARE GROOT.
~ Guardians of the Galaxy ~
2018
Nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biases to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
~ David Hume ~
2019
To God, world history is the royal stage where he, not accidentally but essentially, is the only spectator, because he is the only one who can be that. Admission to this theater is not open to any existing spirit. If he fancies himself a spectator there, he is simply forgetting that he himself is supposed to be the actor in that little theater and is to leave it to that royal spectator and poet how he wants to use him in that royal drama, The Drama or Dramas. This applies to the living, and only they can be told how they ought to live; and only by understanding for oneself can one be lead to reconstruct a dead person’s life, if it must be done at all and if there is time for it. But it is indeed upsidedown, instead of learning by living one’s own life, to have the dead live again, then to go on wanting to learn from the dead, whom one regards as never having lived, how one ought — indeed, it is unbelievable how upside-down it is — to live — if one is already dead.
~ Søren Kierkegaard ~
in
~ Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments ~
2020
There is within us a moral instinct which forbids us to rejoice at the death of even an enemy.
~ Henryk Sienkiewicz ~
2021
The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.
~ Søren Kierkegaard ~
in
~ Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments ~
2022
Putin wanted to wipe Ukraine from the map. He will clearly not succeed. On the contrary: Ukraine has risen up in unity. And it is his own country, Russia, he is sinking. … We want Ukraine to win this war. But we also want to set the conditions for Ukraine's success in the aftermath of the war. The first step is immediate relief. … But then, in a second phase, there is the wider reconstruction effort. The scale of destruction is staggering. Hospitals and schools, houses, roads, bridges, railroads, theatres and factories — so much has to be rebuilt. … Europe has a very special responsibility towards Ukraine. With our support, Ukrainians can rebuild their country for the next generation. … This will bring the stability and certainty needed to make Ukraine an attractive destination for foreign direct investment. And eventually, it will pave the way for Ukraine's future inside the European Union.
Slava Ukraini and long live Europe.
~ Ursula von der Leyen ~
2023
A man who leaves memoirs, whether well or badly written, provided they be sincere, renders a service to future psychologists and writers, giving them not only a faithful picture, but likewise human documents that may be relied upon.
~ Henryk Sienkiewicz ~
2024
Faith is believing what you know ain't so.
~ Mark Twain ~
in
~ Following the Equator ~


2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
That best portion of a good man's life, — His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. ~ William Wordsworth
2005
If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
2006
Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action. ~ Sigmund Freud (born 6 May 1856)
2007
Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society … may unexpectedly come forth … to enjoy its perfect summer life at last! … such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. … Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. ~ Henry David Thoreau in Walden (died 6 May 1862)
2008
Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. ~ Sigmund Freud
2009
When true simplicity is gain'd
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight
'Till by turning, turning we come round right.
~ Joseph Brackett ~
2010
The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which it may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little. ~ Sigmund Freud (born 6 May 1856), The Future of an Illusion (1928)
2011
One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the perogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go. ~ Sigmund Freud
2012
Man found that he was faced with the acceptance of "spiritual" forces, that is to say such forces as cannot be comprehended by the senses, particularly not by sight, and yet having undoubted, even extremely strong, effects. If we may trust to language, it was the movement of the air that provided the image of spirituality, since the spirit borrows its name from the breath of wind (animus, spiritus, Hebrew: ruach = smoke). The idea of the soul was thus born as the spiritual principle in the individual. Observation found the breath of air again in the human breath, which ceases with death; even today we talk of a dying man breathing his last. Now the realm of spirits had opened for man, and he was ready to endow everything in nature with the soul he had discovered in himself. ~ Sigmund Freud
2013
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.
~ Nathaniel Lee ~
2014
Faith is more basic than language or theology. Faith is the response to something which is calling us from the timeless part of our reality. Faith may be encouraged by what has happened in the past, or what is thought to have happened in the past, but the only proof of it is in the future. Scriptures and creeds may come to seem incredible, but faith will still go dancing on. Even though (because it rejects a doctrine) it is now described as "doubt". This, I believe, is the kind of faith that Christ commended.
~ Sydney Carter ~
2015
I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. By Christ I mean not only Jesus; in other times and places, other planets, there may be other Lords of the Dance. But Jesus is the one I know of first and best. I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.
~ Sydney Carter ~
2016
All shall be well, I'm telling you, let the winter come and go
All shall be well again, I know.
~ Sydney Carter ~
2017

They buried my body
And they thought I'd gone,
But I am the Dance,
And I still go on.

They cut me down
And I leapt up high;
I am the life
That'll never, never die;
I'll live in you
If you'll live in me —
I am the Lord
Of the Dance, said he.

~ Sydney Carter ~
2018
There's an ocean of darkness and I drown in the night
till I come through the darkness to the ocean of light,
for the light is forever and the light it is free,
"And I walk in the glory of the light," said he.
~ Sydney Carter ~
2019
The secret of liberty is to enlighten men, as that of tyranny is to keep them in ignorance.
~ Maximilien Robespierre ~
2020
If we judge by wealth and power, our times are the best of times; if the times have made us willing to judge by wealth and power, they are the worst of times.
~ Randall Jarrell ~
2021
Come holy harlequin!
Shake the world and shock the hypocrite
Rock, love, carry it away, turn it upside down.
Let the feast of love begin,
Let the hungry all come in,
Rock, love, carry it away, turn it upside down.
~ Sydney Carter ~
2022
Dreams are windows into the lives our multiversal selves.
~ Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ~
  • proposed by Kalki; official release date of the film.
2023
Coming and going by the dance, I see
That what I am not is a part of me.
Dancing is all that I can ever trust,
The dance is all I am, the rest is dust.
I will believe my bones and live by what
Will go on dancing when my bones are not.
~ Sydney Carter ~
2024
The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.
~ Maximilien Robespierre ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. ~ Emily Dickinson
2005
Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities. ~ David Hume (born 7 May 1711 (26 April O.S.)
2006
The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation. ~ Rabindranath Tagore (born 7 May 1861)
2007
Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. ~ David Hume
2008
If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons. ~ David Hume
2009
The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be. But I submit to you that when in each man the dream of personal greatness dies, democracy loses the real source of its future strength. ~ Edwin H. Land (born 7 May 1909 )
2010
Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand
With a grip that kills it. ~ Rabindranath Tagore (born May 7)
2011
You cannot rely upon what you have been taught. All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do. ~ Edwin H. Land
2012
The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress. ~ Joseph Joubert
2013
We live in a world changing so rapidly that what we mean frequently by common sense is doing the thing that would have been right last year.
~ Edwin H. Land ~
2014
All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit — the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth of life in history.
~ Rabindranath Tagore ~
2015
We never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity.
~ Rabindranath Tagore ~
2016
The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
~ Rabindranath Tagore ~
2017

In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the same time.
Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart ever changes its place till it finds love, and then it has its rest. But this rest itself is an intense form of activity where utter quiescence and unceasing energy meet at the same point in love.

~ Rabindranath Tagore ~
2018
There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically — we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first!
~ Edwin H. Land ~
2019
The more exquisite any good is, of which a small specimen is afforded us, the sharper is the evil, allied to it; and few exceptions are found to this uniform law of nature. The most sprightly wit borders on madness; the highest effusions of joy produce the deepest melancholy; the most ravishing pleasures are attended with the most cruel lassitude and disgust; the most flattering hopes make way for the severest disappointments.
~ David Hume ~
2020
Men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries.
~ David Hume ~
2021
The human soul is on its journey from the law to love, from discipline to liberation, from the moral plane to the spiritual.
~ Rabindranath Tagore ~
2022
Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love is the perfection of consciousness. We do not love because we do not comprehend, or rather we do not comprehend because we do not love. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation.
~ Rabindranath Tagore ~
2023
We comprehend the earth only when we have known heaven. Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.
~ Joseph Joubert ~
2024
Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them.
~ David Hume ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…


2004
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. ~ Anaïs Nin
2005
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. ~ Thomas Pynchon (born 8 May 1937)
2006
While in the physical sciences the investigator will be able to measure what, on the basis of a prima facie theory, he thinks important, in the social sciences often that is treated as important which happens to be accessible to measurement. This is sometimes carried to the point where it is demanded that our theories must be formulated in such terms that they refer only to measurable magnitudes. ~ Friedrich Hayek (born 8 May 1899)
2007

And, oh! what beautiful years were these
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.


~ Langdon Smith ~
(In honor of our reaching a myriad of articles at Wikiquote, a selection from the official "10,000th article".)

2008
Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom. ~ Friedrich Hayek (born 8 May 1899)
2009
I want to break out — to leave this cycle of infection and death. I want to be taken in love: so taken that you and I, and death, and life, will be gathered inseparable, into the radiance of what we would become... ~ Thomas Pynchon
2010
It is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. ~ Friedrich Hayek
2011
Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for? ~ Friedrich Hayek
2012
He had decided long ago that no Situation had any objective reality: it only existed in the minds of those who happened to be in on it at any specific moment. … The only consolation he drew from the present chaos was that his theory managed to explain it. ~ Thomas Pynchon
2013
If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.
~ Friedrich Hayek ~
2014
The growth of the human mind is part of the growth of civilization; it is the state of civilization at any given moment that determines the scope and possibilities of human ends and values. The mind can never foresee its own advance.
~ Friedrich Hayek ~
2015
Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. … Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.
~ Friedrich Hayek ~
2016
I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
~ E. M. Forster ~
2017
The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.
~ Friedrich Hayek ~
2018
Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.
~ Friedrich Hayek ~
2019
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
~ Friedrich Hayek ~
2020
As is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself.
~ Friedrich Hayek ~
2021
Why should things be easy to understand?
~ Thomas Pynchon ~
2022
The knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple. Everything is where it is, no clearer than usual, but certainly more present. So much has to be left behind now, so quickly.
~ Thomas Pynchon ~
2023
There is really no way of considering a book independently of one's special sensations in reading it on a particular occasion. In this as in everything else one must allow a certain relativity. In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can never read the same book twice.
~ Edmund Wilson ~
2024
It used to be said, that in places like this, nature eventually failed to support man, the truth is exactly the reverse, here man failed to support nature. Ten thousand years ago man regarded the natural world as divine, but as he domesticated animals and plants so nature lost some of its mystery and appeared to be little more than a larder that could be raided with impunity.
~ David Attenborough ~
2025
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2004
All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her. ~ George Washington (Mother's Day 2004)
2005
Life is a long lesson in humility. ~ J. M. Barrie (born 9 May 1860)
2006
The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us. ~ Nelson Mandela (inaugurated as President of the Republic of South Africa, 9 May 1994)
2007
Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did. ~ Sophie Scholl of the White Rose
2008
Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves. ~ J. M. Barrie (born 9 May 1860)
2009
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. ~ J. M. Barrie
2010
It is not enough that we have a guilty defendant. We must have an innocent system as well. - John Ashcroft
2011
It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children. ~ J. M. Barrie
2012
Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove.
All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world. ~ José Ortega y Gasset
2013
When a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies.
~ J. M. Barrie ~
2014
Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2015
Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us — by obligations, not by rights.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2016
We can know America through our flag which is its symbol … In our flag the barriers of time and space vanish. All America that ever was and ever will be lives every moment in our flag. Wherever in the world two or three of us stand together under our flag, all America is there. When we stand proudly and salute our flag, that is what we know wordlessly in the passing moment. … Understand that our flag is not the cloth but the pattern of form and color manifested in the cloth … It could have been any pattern once, but our fathers chose that one. History has made it sacred. The honor paid it in uncounted acts of individual reverence has made it live. Every morning in American schoolrooms children present their hearts to our flag. Every morning and evening we render it our military salutes. And so the pattern lives and it can manifest itself in any number of bits of perishable cloth, but the pattern is indestructible.
~ Richard McKenna ~
2017
It is said there will be no more war. We must pretend to believe that. But when war comes, it is we who will take the first shock and buy time with our lives. It is we who keep the faith.
~ Richard McKenna ~
2018
Nationalism is always an effort in a direction opposite to that of the principle which creates nations. The former is exclusive in tendency, the latter inclusive. In periods of consolidation, nationalism has a positive value, and is a lofty standard. But in Europe everything is more than consolidated, and nationalism is nothing but a mania, a pretext to escape from the necessity of inventing something new, some great enterprise.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2019
Life today is the fruit of an interregnum, of an empty space between two organizations of historical rule — that which was, that which is to be. For this reason it is essentially provisional.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2020
No one knows toward what center human things are going to gravitate in the near future, and hence the life of the world has become scandalously provisional. Everything that today is done in public and in private — even in one's inner conscience — is provisional, the only exception being certain portions of certain sciences. He will be a wise man who puts no trust in all that is proclaimed, upheld, essayed, and lauded at the present day. All that will disappear as quickly as it came. All of it, from the mania for physical sports (the mania, not the sports themselves) to political violence; from "new art" to sun-baths at idiotic fashionable watering-places. Nothing of all that has any roots; it is all pure invention, in the bad sense of the word, which makes it equivalent to fickle caprice. It is not a creation based on the solid substratum of life; it is not a genuine impulse or need. In a word, from the point of view of life it is false.
We are in presence of the contradiction of a style of living which cultivates sincerity and is at the same time a fraud. There is truth only in an existence which feels its acts as irrevocably necessary.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2021
The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2022
Russia has forgotten everything that was important to the victors of World War II. But Ukraine and the whole free world will remind it.
So that then no one will forget. So that really important words — "never again" — which are repeated all over the free world every year on the days of remembrance of the victims of World War II regain their weight again.
I am grateful to all our defenders who are defending and saving Ukraine from the modern descendants of that old evil.
Eternal glory to all our heroes! Eternal glory to all our warriors!
I am grateful to all the friends of Ukraine and freedom!
Glory to Ukraine!
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.
~ J. M. Barrie ~
2024
The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.
~ Alan Bennett ~
in
~ The History Boys ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times, all of them true, all of them real, and all of them (as children know) penetrating each other. ~ P. L. Travers
2005
The world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape. ~ Bono (born 10 May 1960)
2006
The Truth lies not in the Yes and not in the No, but in the knowledge and the beginning from which the Yes and the No arise. ~ Karl Barth (born 10 May 1886)
2007
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. ~ Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères, (d. 10 May 1696)
2008
We're one, but we're not the same
We get to carry each other, carry each other... one.
~ Bono ~ (Born 10 May 1960)
2009
Seeing a woman's child is like seeing a woman naked, in the way it changes how her face looks to you, how her face becomes less the whole story. ~ John Crowley
2010

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Reach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case
What you don't have you don't need it
What you don't know you can feel it somehow

~ Bono ~

2011
I do not preach universal salvation, what I say is that I cannot exclude the possibility that God would save all men at the Judgment. ~ Karl Barth
2012
The most important of my achievements, if you want to call them that, was that I successfully introduced mystical ideas into pop culture, … I wanted to save our culture from the stupidity and the bigotry and the ignorance that threatened it.
~ Donovan ~
2013
It seemed — in 1968 — the possibilities of peace and brotherhood could be realised that very year. We're still working on it.
~ Donovan ~
2014
Our Yes towards life from the very beginning carries within it the Divine No which breaks forth from the antithesis and points away from what now was the thesis to the original and final synthesis. The No is not the last and highest truth, but the call from home which comes in answer to our asking for God in the world.
~ Karl Barth ~
2015
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
~ Abraham Lincoln ~
2016
We are magic. It is magic that we're walking around. It's fantastic magic. Some people would call it miracles; I like to call it magic. … I'm very aware of this. Yes, the more aware I get, the more I can understand how big it is, how big it will get. It'll be harder to comprehend; that's why I have to go along with it, 'cause its so vast. To say to somebody that God is everything that lives and ever has lived and ever will live, and you're never going to touch and see, smell and be everything that is God. Magic is very hard to comprehend.
~ Donovan ~
2017
The productions of the earth require long and difficult preparations, before they are rendered fit to supply the wants of men.
~ Turgot ~
2018
I know idealism is not playing on the radio right now, you don't see it on TV, irony is on heavy rotation, the knowingness, the smirk, the tired joke. I've tried them all out but I'll tell you this, outside this campus — and even inside it — idealism is under siege — beset by materialism, narcissism and all the other isms of indifference. Baggism, Shaggism. Raggism. Notism, graduationism, chismism, I don't know. Where's John Lennon when you need him?
~ Bono ~
2019
Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will. Slavery was one of them and the people who best served that age were the ones who called it as it was — which was ungodly and inhuman. … Segregation. There was another one. America sees this now but it took a civil rights movement to betray their age. … What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now? What are the blind spots of our age?
~ Bono ~
2020
In choosing a theory, one should pay attention to simplicity in hypotheses only. Simplicity in computation can be of no weight in the balance of probabilities. Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis. She avoids complication only in means. Nature seems to have proposed to do much with little: it is a principle that the development of physics constantly supports by new evidence.
~ Augustin-Jean Fresnel ~
2021
If nature has offered to produce the maximum effect with minimum causes, it is in all of its laws that it had to solve this major problem. It is without doubt difficult to discover the foundations of this wonderful economy, i.e. the simplest causes of phenomena considered from such a wide point of view. But if this general principle of the philosophy of physics does not lead immediately to the knowledge of truth, it can direct the efforts of the human spirit, by leading it away from theories which relate the phenomena to too many different causes, and by adopting preferably those based on the smallest number of assumptions, which show to be more fruitful in consequences.
~ Augustin-Jean Fresnel ~
2022
Your president leads the world in the cause of freedom right now. ... The people in Ukraine are not just fighting for your own freedom, you are fighting for all of us who love freedom.
~ Bono ~
2023
You know I used to think the future was solid or fixed, something you inherited like an old building that you move into when the previous generation moves out or gets chased out. But it's not. The future is not fixed, it's fluid. … The world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape.
~ Bono ~
2024
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2004
The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well. ~ Ken Wilber
2005
When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is trying to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind. ~ J. Krishnamurti (born 11 May 1895)
2006
Positive vibrations man. That's what makes it work. That's reggae music. You can't look away because it's real. You listen to what I sing because I mean what I sing, there's no secret, no big deal. Just honesty, that's all. ~ Bob Marley (died 11 May 1981)
2007
The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
~ Alfred Tennyson ~
2008
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere'. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. ~ Richard Feynman (born 11 May 1918)
2009
There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts. ~ Richard Feynman
2010
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. ~ Richard Feynman
2011
Silence is difficult and arduous, it is not to be played with. It isn't something that you can experience by reading a book, or by listening to a talk, or by sitting together, or by retiring into a wood or a monastery. I am afraid none of these things will bring about this silence. This silence demands intense psychological work. You have to be burningly aware of your snobbishness, aware of your fears, your anxieties, your sense of guilt. And when you die to all that, then out of that dying comes the beauty of silence. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
2012
Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.
~ Richard Feynman ~
2013
The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. … No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
~ Richard Feynman ~
2014
Conquering evil, not the opponent is the essence of swordsmanship.
~ Yagyū Munenori ~
2015
It is easy to kill someone with a slash of a sword. It is hard to be impossible for others to cut down.
~ Yagyū Munenori ~
2016
I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~
2017
It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~
2018
As we are — the world is. That is, if we are greedy, envious, competitive, our society will be competitive, envious, greedy, which brings misery and war. The State is what we are. To bring about order and peace, we must begin with ourselves and not with society, not with the State, for the world is ourselves … If we would bring about a sane and happy society we must begin with ourselves and not with another, not outside of ourselves, but with ourselves.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~
2019
We human beings are what we have been for millions of years — colossally greedy, envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious and despairing, with occasional flashes of joy and affection. We are a strange mixture of hate, fear and gentleness; we are both violence and peace. There has been outward progress from the bullock cart to the jet plane but psychologically the individual has not changed at all, and the structure of society throughout the world has been created by individuals. The outward social structure is the result of the inward psychological structure of our human relationships, for the individual is the result of the total experience, knowledge and conduct of man. Each one of us is the storehouse of all the past. The individual is the human who is all mankind. The whole history of man is written in ourselves.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~
2020
Wop-bop-a-loo-mop alop-bom-bom!
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, woo!
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
Awop-bop-a-loo-mop alop-bom-bom!
~ Little Richard ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
2021
Learning in the true sense of the word is possible only in that state of attention, in which there is no outer or inner compulsion. Right thinking can come about only when the mind is not enslaved by tradition and memory. It is attention that allows silence to come upon the mind, which is the opening of the door to creation. That is why attention is of the highest importance. Knowledge is necessary at the functional level as a means of cultivating the mind, and not as an end in itself. We are concerned, not with the development of just one capacity, such as that of a mathematician, or a scientist, or a musician, but with the total development of the student as a human being.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~
2022
What brings understanding is love. When your heart is full, then you will listen to the teacher, to the beggar, to the laughter of children, to the rainbow, and to the sorrow of man. Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists. But we do not know how to look for it. Our minds and hearts are filled with other things than understanding of "what is". Love and mercy, kindliness and generosity do not cause enmity. When you love, you are very near truth. For, love makes for sensitivity, for vulnerability. That which is sensitive is capable of renewal. Then truth will come into being. It cannot come if your mind and heart are burdened, heavy with ignorance and animosity.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~
2023
Those who really desire to understand, who are looking to find that which is eternal, without beginning and without an end, will walk together with a greater intensity, will be a danger to everything that is unessential, to unrealities, to shadows. And they will concentrate, they will become the flame, because they understand. Such a body we must create, and that is my purpose. Because of that real understanding there will be true friendship. Because of that true friendship — which you do not seem to know — there will be real cooperation on the part of each one. And this not because of authority, not because of salvation, not because of immolation for a cause, but because you really understand, and hence are capable of living in the eternal.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people. ~ Good Omens (by Gaiman & Pratchett)
2005
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better. ~ Florence Nightingale (born 12 May 1820)
2006
Duty, Honor, Country — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. ~ Douglas MacArthur, "Duty, Honor, Country" valedictory address to West Point on 12 May 1962.
2007
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti ~ (born 12 May 1828)
2008
I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself. ~ Florence Nightingale
2009
I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results. ~ Florence Nightingale
2010
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
~ John Dryden, based on "Ode XXIX" of Horace ~
2011
People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned. ~ Florence Nightingale
2012
A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.
~ L. Neil Smith ~
  • proposed by bystander (L Neil Smith born 12 May 1946)
2013
Ignorance is not bliss — it is oblivion. Determined ignorance is the hastiest kind of oblivion.
~ Philip Wylie ~
2014
Education is not a function of any church — or even of a city — or a state; it is a function of all mankind.
~ Philip Wylie ~
2015
Mysticism: to dwell on the unseen, to withdraw ourselves from the things of sense into communion with God — to endeavour to partake of the Divine nature; that is, of Holiness. When we ask ourselves only what is right, or what is the will of God (the same question), then we may truly be said to live in His light.
~ Florence Nightingale ~
2016
What is Mysticism? Is it not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for " The Kingdom of Heaven is within"? Heaven is neither a place nor a time. There might be a Heaven not only here but now. It is true that sometimes we must sacrifice not only health of body, but health of mind (or, peace) in the interest of God; that is, we must sacrifice Heaven. But "thou shalt be like God for thou shalt see Him as He is": this may be here and now, as well as there and then.
~ Florence Nightingale ~
2017
It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance.
~ L. Neil Smith ~
2018
Perhaps it is not true to speak of God as a judge at all, or of his judgements. There does not seem to be really any evidence that His worlds are places of trial but rather schools, places of training, or that He is a judge but rather a Teacher, a Trainer, not in the imperfect sense in which men are teachers, but in the sense of His contriving and adapting His whole universe for one purpose of training every intelligent being to be perfect. … I think God would not be the Almighty, the All-Wise, the All-Good, if he were the judge, in the sense that the evangelical and Roman Catholic Christians impute judgement to him. … Our business is, I think, to understand, not to judge. What He does is, as far as we know, to rule by law down to the most infinitesimally small portion of His universe, not to judge.
~ Florence Nightingale ~
2019
For a while, I thought of myself as an atheist until I realized it was a belief, too. It's a shame everything has to have a label. I feel that if I was figuratively dropped on the Earth and there was a political line, I would be just left of center. The difference for me is that conservatives are more interested in property values and rights and free markets, and liberals are more interested in human rights. In the end, there are people who don't fit into the marketplace and are not equipped. I believe the government should step in where the free market fails.
~ George Carlin ~
2020
It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm.
~ Florence Nightingale ~
2021
When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind — with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?
~ Florence Nightingale ~
2022
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
~ Florence Nightingale ~
2023
The way to live with God is to live with Ideals — not merely to think about ideals, but to do and suffer for them. Those who have to work on men and women must above all things have their Spiritual Ideal, their purpose, ever present. The "mystical" state is the essence of common sense.
~ Florence Nightingale ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. ~ William Faulkner
2005
It behoved that there should be sin — but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. ~ Julian of Norwich (her famous visions occurred on 13 May 1373)
2006
"Fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water'" do not matter. "I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. ~ Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light (born 13 May 1937)
2007
A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. ~ Washington Irving (Mother's Day U.S., Canada)
2008
Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsaara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty. ~ Roger Zelazny in Lord of Light
2009
Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time — of anything. If you're laughing, I defy you to be afraid. ~ Stephen Colbert (born May 13, 1964)
2010
Always dying, never dead;
Ever ending, never ended;
Loathed in darkness,
Clothed in light,
He comes, to end a world,
As morning ends the night.
~ Roger Zelazny in Lord of Light
2011
If any such lover be in earth which is continually kept from falling, I know it not: for it was not shewed me. But this was shewed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love. ~ Julian of Norwich
2012
The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle.
~ Roger Zelazny ~
in
~ Lord of Light ~
2013
Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream. Essence dreams it a dream of form. Forms pass, but the essence remains, dreaming new dreams. Man names these dreams and thinks to have captured the essence, not knowing that he invokes the unreal. These stones, these walls, these bodies you see seated about you are poppies and water and the sun. They are the dreams of the Nameless.
~ Roger Zelazny ~
in
~ Lord of Light ~
2014
Charity keepeth us in Faith and Hope, and Hope leadeth us in Charity. And in the end all shall be Charity.
~ Julian of Norwich ~
2015
He that made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them, and shall keep them without end.
~ Julian of Norwich ~
2016
Occasionally, there may come a dreamer who is aware that he is dreaming. He may control something of the dream-stuff, bending it to his will, or he may awaken into greater self-knowledge. If he chooses the path of self-knowledge, his glory is great and he shall be for all ages like unto a star. If he chooses instead the way of the Tantras, combining Samsara and Nirvana, comprehending the world and continuing to live in it, this one is mighty among dreamers.
~ Roger Zelazny ~
in
~ Lord of Light ~
2017
To struggle against the dreamers who dream ugliness, be they men or gods, cannot but be the will of the Nameless. This struggle will also bear suffering, and so one's karmic burden will be lightened thereby, just as it would be by enduring the ugliness; but this suffering is productive of a higher end in the light of the eternal values of which the sages so often speak.
~ Roger Zelazny ~
in
~ Lord of Light ~
2018
The higher order edition of the Pattern I encountered in the Jewel … There were aspects of it I simply could not understand. This led to considerations of chaos theory, then to Menninger and all the others for its manifestations in consciousness. … Either it possesses a certain element of irrationality itself, like living things, or it is an intelligence of such an order that some of its processes only seem irrational to lesser beings. Either explanation amounts to the same thing from a practical standpoint.
~ Roger Zelazny ~
in
~ Prince of Chaos ~
2019
God willeth that we endlessly hate the sin and endlessly love the soul, as God loveth it.
~ Julian of Norwich ~
2020
I charge you — forget the names you bear, forget the words I speak as soon as they are uttered. Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves, which arises as I address it. It hearkens not to my words, but to the reality within me, of which it is part. This is the atman, which hears me rather than my words. All else is unreal. To define is to lose. The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma. Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream. Essence dreams it a dream of form. Forms pass, but the essence remains, dreaming new dreams. Man names these dreams and thinks to have captured the essence, not knowing that he invokes the unreal. These stones, these walls, these bodies you see seated about you are poppies and water and the sun. They are the dreams of the Nameless. They are fire, if you like.
~ Roger Zelazny ~
in
~ Lord of Light ~
2021
I felt that I had done my duty. Nothing drove me now. I had run out of causes and was as close as I might ever be to peace. With all this behind me, I felt that if I had to die now, it was all right. I would not protest quite so loudly as I would have at any other time.
~ Roger Zelazny ~
in
~ The Courts of Chaos ~
2022
Our Soul may never have rest in things that are beneath itself.
~ Julian of Norwich ~
2023
Each brotherly compassion that man hath on his fellow Christians, with charity, it is Christ in him.
~ Julian of Norwich ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad. ~ Freeman Dyson
2005
If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life — that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment — that would be the perfect state. ~ Cate Blanchett (born 14 May 1969)
2006
It is confidently expected that the period is at hand, when man, through ignorance, shall not much longer inflict unnecessary misery on man; because the mass of mankind will become enlightened, and will clearly discern that by so acting they will inevitably create misery to themselves. ~ Robert Owen (born 14 May 1771)
2007
I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living life, a man who had good friends, fine family — and I don't think I could ask for anything more than that, actually. ~ Frank Sinatra (died on 15 May 1998)
2008
Errors now almost universally exist, and must be overcome solely by the force of reason; and as reason, to effect the most beneficial purposes, makes her advance by slow degrees, and progressively substantiates one truth of high import after another, it will be evident, to minds of comprehensive and accurate thought, that by these and similar compromises alone can success be rationally expected in practice. For such compromises bring truth and error before the public; and whenever they are fairly exhibited together, truth must ultimately prevail. ~ Robert Owen
  • initially proposed by Aphaia, extended form proposed by Kalki
2009
Union and co-operation in war obviously increase the power of the individual a thousand fold. Is there the shadow of a reason why they should not produce equal effects in peace; why the principle of co-operation should not give to men the same superior powers, and advantages, (and much greater) in the creation, preservation, distribution and enjoyment of wealth? ~ Robert Owen
2010
Is it not the interest of the human race, that every one should be so taught and placed, that he would find his highest enjoyment to arise from the continued practice of doing all in his power to promote the well-being, and happiness, of every man, woman, and child, without regard to their class, sect, party, country or colour? ~ Robert Owen
2011
What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal. ~ Robert Owen
2012
What we're striving for is total freedom, where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, release them where we want them released and be completely free to express ourselves. That's very hard to do in the world of business. In this country, the only thing that speaks is money and you have to have the money in order to have the power to be free. So the danger is — in being as oppressive as the next guy to the people below you. We're going to do everything possible to avoid that pitfall.
~ George Lucas ~
2013
The great wheel of Fate rolls on like a Juggernaut, and crushes us all in turn, some soon, some late.
~ H. Rider Haggard ~
2014
Remember, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware: Anger, fear, aggression — the dark side, are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.
~ George Lucas ~
in
~ Star Wars Episode VI : Return of the Jedi ~
2015
It is the interest of the individual and of all society, that he should be made, at the earliest period, to understand his own construction, the proper use of its parts, and how to keep them at all times in a state of health.
~ Robert Owen ~
2016
Remember... the Force will be with you, always.
~ George Lucas ~
in
~ Star Wars ~
2017
Don't give in to hate. That leads to the Dark Side.
~ George Lucas ~
in
~ The Empire Strikes Back ~
2018
Pleasure's fun. It's great, but you can't keep it going forever; just accept the fact that it's here and it's gone, and maybe then again, it will come back, and you'll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It's all about your pleasure: it's about you. It's a selfish, self-centered emotion, that is created by a self-centered motive of greed. Joy is compassion. Joy is giving yourself to somebody else, or something else. And it's a kind of thing that is, in its subtlety and lowness, much more powerful than pleasure. You get hung up on pleasure; you're doomed. If you pursue joy; you will find everlasting happiness.
~ George Lucas ~
2019
Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere.
~ H. Rider Haggard ~
2020
Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.
~ Carl Schurz ~
2021
Don't avoid the clichés — they are clichés because they work!
~ George Lucas ~
2022
Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives … and you can either help somebody, you can be compassionate toward people, you can treat some people with dignity — or not. And … one way you become a hero, and the other way … you’re part of the problem. And … it’s not a grand thing, you know; you don’t have to get into a giant laser-sword fight and blow up three spaceships to become a hero. I mean — it’s a very small thing that happens every day of your life.
~ George Lucas ~
2023
All the measures now proposed are only a compromise with the errors of the present systems; but as these errors now almost universally exist, and must be overcome solely by the force of reason; and as reason, to effect the most beneficial purposes, makes her advance by slow degrees, and progressively substantiates one truth of high import after another, it will be evident, to minds of comprehensive and accurate thought, that by these and similar compromises alone can success be rationally expected in practice. For such compromises bring truth and error before the public; and whenever they are fairly exhibited together, truth must ultimately prevail.
~ Robert Owen ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. ~ Louis Pasteur
2005
Things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. ~ L. Frank Baum (born 15 May 1856)
2006
The voice of the individual artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of a cricket in the grass, but the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away. ~ Katherine Anne Porter (born 15 May 1890)
2007
Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist — the only thing he's good for — is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning. Even if it's only his view of a meaning. That's what he's for — to give his view of life. ~ Katherine Anne Porter
2008
Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory. ~ Irena Sendler (recent death)
2009
The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own — even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being. ~ Katherine Anne Porter
2010
I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward. ~ L. Frank Baum
2011
There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own. ~ Katherine Anne Porter
2012
To be individual, my friends, to be different from others, is the only way to become distinguished from the common herd. Let us be glad, therefore, that we differ from one another in form and in disposition. Variety is the spice of life, and we are various enough to enjoy one another's society; so let us be content. ~ L. Frank Baum
2013
I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts.
~ L. Frank Baum ~
2014
Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.
~ L. Frank Baum ~
2015
One might think you knew all about witches, to hear you chatter. But your words prove you to be very ignorant of the subject. You may find good people and bad people in the world; and so, I suppose, you may find good witches and bad witches. But I must confess most of the witches I have known were very respectable, indeed, and famous for their kind actions.
~ L. Frank Baum ~
2016
To destroy an offender cannot benefit society so much as to redeem him.
~ L. Frank Baum ~
2017

Se um dia alguém, perguntar por mim
Diz que vivi para te amar.
Antes de ti, só existi
Cansado e sem nada para dar.

If one day someone asks about me
Tell them I lived to love you.
Before you, I only existed
Tired and with nothing to give.

~ Luísa Sobral ~
2018
It is a callous age; we have seen so many marvels that we are ashamed to marvel more; the seven wonders of the world have become seven thousand wonders.
~ L. Frank Baum ~
2019
The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything.
"You people with hearts," he said, "have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful. When Oz gives me a heart of course I needn't mind so much."
~ L. Frank Baum ~
2020
The Scarecrow was now the ruler of the Emerald City, and although he was not a Wizard the people were proud of him. "For," they said, "there is not another city in all the world that is ruled by a stuffed man." And, so far as they knew, they were quite right.
~ L. Frank Baum ~
2021
Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process.
~ Brian Eno ~
2022
It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings.
~ L. Frank Baum ~
2023
I have no patience with this dreadful idea that whatever you have in you has to come out, that you can’t suppress true talent. People can be destroyed; they can be bent, distorted and completely crippled. To say that you can’t destroy yourself is just as foolish as to say of a young man killed in war at twenty-one or twenty-two that that was his fate, that he wasn’t going to have anything anyhow.
I have a very firm belief that the life of no man can be explained in terms of his experiences, of what has happened to him, because in spite of all the poetry, all the philosophy to the contrary, we are not really masters of our fate. We don’t really direct our lives unaided and unobstructed. Our being is subject to all the chances of life. There are so many things we are capable of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are so great that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth fulfilled.
~ Katherine Anne Porter ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; if we begin with doubts, and are patient, we shall end in certainties. ~ Marcus Aurelius
2005
You say that you are my judge. I don't know if you are — but take care not to judge wrongly, lest you place yourself in great danger. ~ Jehanne Darc (Jeanne d'Arc; Joan of Arc) (canonized 16 May 1920)
2006
I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you. ~ Studs Terkel (born 16 May 1912)
2007
The universe is flux, life is opinion. ~ Marcus Aurelius
2008
Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear. ~ Marcus Aurelius
2009
The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defence, to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastes energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and aggrandizement. The free-labor system educates all alike, and by opening all the fields of industrial employment and all the departments of authority, to the unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, at once secures universal contentment, and brings into the highest possible activity all the physical, moral, and social energies of the whole state. ~ William H. Seward
2010
I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue. ~ William H. Seward (born May 16, 1801)
2011
Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised. ~ Marcus Aurelius
2012
Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?
~ George Bernard Shaw ~
2013
Religion is a great force — the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours. Instead of facing that fact, you persist in trying to convert all men to your own little sect, so that you can use it against them afterwards. You are all missionaries and proselytizers trying to uproot the native religion from your neighbor's flowerbeds and plant your own in its place. You would rather let a child perish in ignorance than have it taught by a rival sectary.
~ George Bernard Shaw ~
2014
What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.
~ George Bernard Shaw ~
in
~ Man and Superman ~
2015
Acceptance is right. Kindness is right. Love is right. I pray, right now, that we're moving into a kinder time when prejudice is overcome by understanding; when narrow-mindedness, and narrow-minded bigotry is overwhelmed by open-hearted empathy; when the pain of judgmentalism is replaced by the purity of love.
~ Janet Jackson ~
2016
If I were in a wood, I could easily hear the Voice which came to me. It seemed to me to come from lips I should reverence. I believe it was sent me from God. When I heard it for the third time, I recognized that it was the Voice of an Angel. This Voice has always guarded me well, and I have always understood it; it instructed me to be good and to go often to Church; it told me it was necessary for me to come into France.
~ Joan of Arc ~
2017
The light comes at the same time as the Voice. … I will not tell you all; I have not leave; my oath does not touch on that. My Voice is good and to be honored. I am not bound to answer you about it. I request that the points on which I do not now answer may be given me in writing. … You shall not know yet. There is a saying among children, that "Sometimes one is hanged for speaking the truth."
~ Joan of Arc ~
2018
At this weak, pale, tabescent moment in the history of American literature, we need a battalion, a brigade, of Zolas to head out into this wild, bizarre, unpredictable, Hog-stomping, Baroque country of ours and reclaim it as literary property.
~ Tom Wolfe ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2019
The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you'll grow out of it.
~ Doris Day ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to her recent death.
2020
If ever I do escape, no one shall reproach me with having broken or violated my faith, not having given my word to any one, whosoever it may be.
~ Joan of Arc ~
2021
Remember always that the cause of the United States is the cause of human nature.
~ William H. Seward ~
2022
What counts is what you do with your money, not where it came from.
~ Merton Miller ~
2023
The Voice had promised me that, as soon I came to the King, he would receive me. Those of my party knew well that the Voice had been sent me from God; they have seen and known this Voice, I am sure of it. My King and many others have also heard and seen the Voices which came to me: there were there Charles de Bourbon and two or three others. There is not a day when I do not hear this Voice; and I have much need of it. But never have I asked of it any recompense but the salvation of my soul.
~ Joan of Arc ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Explanations exist; they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every human problems — neat, plausible, and wrong. ~ H. L. Mencken
2005
I had a stick of Carefree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality. ~ Mitch Hedberg
2006
There is no formula to it because writing every song, for me, is a little journey... It's everything. It's the walk you take in the morning, it's the night before, the meeting with people, landscapes, the chats, all of that evolves in some way into melody, but I'm not sure how it's going to happen. I'm dealing with the unknown all the time and that is exciting. ~ Enya (born 17 May 1961)
2007
We are all, always, the desire not to die. This desire is as immeasurable and varied as life's complexity, but at bottom this is what it is: To continue to be, to be more and more, to develop and to endure. All the force we have, all our energy and clearness of mind serve to intensify themselves in one way or another. We intensify ourselves with new impressions, new sensations, new ideas. We endeavour to take what we do not have and to add it to ourselves. Humanity is the desire for novelty founded upon the fear of death. That is what it is. ~ Henri Barbusse
  • selected by Kalki (born 17 May 1873)
2008
I believe, in spite of all, in truth's victory. I believe in the momentous value, hereafter inviolable, of those few truly fraternal men in all the countries of the world, who, in the oscillation of national egoisms let loose, stand up and stand out, steadfast as the glorious statues of Right and Duty. ~ Henri Barbusse
2009
Yes, there is a Divinity, one from which we must never turn aside for the guidance of our huge inward life and of the share we have as well in the life of all men. It is called the truth. ~ Henri Barbusse
2010
There are cloudy moments when one asks himself if men do not deserve all the disasters into which they rush! No — I recover myself — they do not deserve them. But we, instead of saying "I wish" must say "I will." And what we will, we must will to build it, with order, with method, beginning at the beginning, when once we have been as far as that beginning. We must not only open our eyes, but our arms, our wings. ~ Henri Barbusse
2011
While all brutal forces clash with themselves, all moral forces make mighty harmony together. ~ Henri Barbusse
2012
Affection is the greatest of human feelings because it is made of respect, of lucidity, and light. To understand the truth and make one's self equal to it is everything; and to love is the same thing as to know and to understand. Affection, which I call also compassion, because I see no difference between them, dominates everything by reason of its clear sight. It is a sentiment as immense as if it were mad, and yet it is wise, and of human things it is the only perfect one. There is no great sentiment which is not completely held on the arms of compassion.
~ Henri Barbusse ~
2013
Music is like a mirror in front of you. You're exposing everything, but surely that's better than suppressing. … You have to dig deep and that can be hard for anybody, no matter what profession. I feel that I need to actually push myself to the limit to feel happy with the end result.
~ Enya ~
2014
Is there not glory enough in living the days given to us? You should know there is adventure in simply being among those we love and the things we love, and beauty, too.
~ Lloyd Alexander ~
2015
My view is this: We teach nothing. We do not teach physics nor do we teach students. (I take physics merely as an example.) What is the same thing: No one is taught anything! Here lies the folly of this business. We try to teach somebody nothing. This is a sorry endeavour for no one can be taught a thing.
What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosity, kindle a feeling, fire up the imagination. To my own teachers who handled me in this way, I owe a great and lasting debt.
~ Julius Sumner Miller ~
2016
Who shall compose the Bible of human desire, the terrible and simple Bible of that which drives us from life to life, the Bible of our doings, our goings, our original fall? Who will dare to tell everything, who will have the genius to see everything?
I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs. The more incapable of it I feel myself, the more I believe it to be possible. The sad splendour with which certain memories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible. Sometimes I myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so strong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like a forest, and there have been moments, in truth, when the silence cried out.
~ Henri Barbusse ~
2017
The understanding of things must be based, not on sentiment, but on reason. There must be justice, not charity. Kindness is solitary. Compassion becomes one with him whom we pity; it allows us to fathom him, to understand him alone amongst the rest; but it blurs and befogs the laws of the whole. I must set off with a clear idea, like the beam of a lighthouse through the deformities and temptations of night.
~ Henri Barbusse ~
2018
The noblest and most fruitful work of the human intelligence is to make a clean sweep of every enforced idea — of advantages or meanings — and to go right through appearances in search of the eternal bases. Thus you will clearly see the moral law at the beginning of all things, and the conception of justice and equality will appear to you beautiful as daylight.
~ Henri Barbusse ~
2019
People have often asked me, "If you weren’t in show business, what would you be doing?" The truth is, I don’t think there’s anything else I could be doing, so the answer would have to be, nothing. Then again, there's nothing I love more than making people laugh, so I guess you could say I’m in the only business I could be in. I was born to enjoy life and I've always wanted everyone to enjoy it along with me.
~ Tim Conway ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2020
The idea of motherland is not a false idea, but it is a little idea, and one which must remain little.
There is only one common good. There is only one moral duty, only one truth, and every man is the shining recipient and guardian of it. The present understanding of the idea of motherland divides all these great ideas, cuts them into pieces, specializes them within impenetrable circles. We meet as many national truths as we do nations, and as many national duties, and as many national interests and rights — and they are antagonistic to each other.
~ Henri Barbusse ~
2021
All those people who cannot or will not make peace on earth; all those who for one reason or another cling to the ancient state of things and find or invent excuses for it — they are your enemies!
They are your enemies as much as those German soldiers are to-day who are prostrate here between you in the mud, who are only poor dupes hatefully deceived and brutalized, domestic beasts. They are your enemies, wherever they were born, however they pronounce their names, whatever the language in which they lie. Look at them, in the heaven and on the earth. Look at them, everywhere! Identify them once for all, and be mindful for ever!
~ Henri Barbusse ~
2022
They who say, "There will always be war," do not know what they are saying. They are preyed upon by the common internal malady of shortsight. They think themselves full of common-sense as they think themselves full of honesty. In reality, they are revealing the clumsy and limited mentality of the assassins themselves.
The shapeless struggle of the elements will begin again on the seared earth when men have slain themselves because they were slaves, because they believed the same things, because they were alike.
~ Henri Barbusse ~
2023
That society is badly arranged which forces nearly all women to be servants.
~ Henri Barbusse ~
2024
  The infirmity of human intelligence is short sight. In too many cases, the wiseacres are dunces of a sort, who lose sight of the simplicity of things, and stifle and obscure it with formulae and trivialities. It is the small things that one learns from books, not the great ones.
And even while they are saying that they do not wish for war they are doing all they can to perpetuate it. They nourish national vanity and the love of supremacy by force. "We alone," they say, each behind his shelter, "we alone are the guardians of courage and loyalty, of ability and good taste!" Out of the greatness and richness of a country they make something like a consuming disease. Out of patriotism — which can be respected as long as it remains in the domain of sentiment and art on exactly the same footing as the sense of family and local pride, all equally sacred — out of patriotism they make a Utopian and impracticable idea, unbalancing the world, a sort of cancer which drains all the living force, spreads everywhere and crushes life, a contagious cancer which culminates either in the crash of war or in the exhaustion and suffocation of armed peace.
They pervert the most admirable of moral principles. How many are the crimes of which they have made virtues merely by dowering them with the word "national"? They distort even truth itself. For the truth which is eternally the same they substitute each their national truth. So many nations, so many truths; and thus they falsify and twist the truth.
~ Henri Barbusse ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Love me for love's sake, that evermore thou may'st love on, through love's eternity. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
2005
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. ~ Bertrand Russell (born 18 May 1872)
2006
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
~ Omar Khayyám (born 18 May 1048)
2007
The opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new. ~ Bertrand Russell
2008
To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true. ~ Bertrand Russell
2009
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
~ Omar Khayyám ~
2010
The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus contemplation not only enlarges the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the thralldom of narrow hopes and fears. ~ Bertrand Russell
2011
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance. ~ Bertrand Russell
2012
Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
2013
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
2014
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
2015
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
2016
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
2107
In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
in
~ Unpopular Essays ~
2018
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. The State and Property are the great embodiments of possessiveness; it is for this reason that they are against life, and that they issue in war. Possession means taking or keeping some good thing which another is prevented from enjoying; creation means putting into the world a good thing which otherwise no one would be able to enjoy. Since the material goods of the world must be divided among the population, and since some men are by nature brigands, there must be defensive possession, which will be regulated, in a good community, by some principle of impersonal justice. But all this is only the preface to a good life or good political institutions, in which creation will altogether outweigh possession, and distributive justice will exist as an uninteresting matter of course.
The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
2019
Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
2020
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell,
And by and by my Soul returned to me,
And answered, I Myself am Heav'n and Hell:

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill's Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire.
~ Omar Khayyám ~
2021
There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
2022
Jill and I bring you this message from deep in our nation’s soul: In America, evil will not win — I promise you. Hate will not prevail. And white supremacy will not have the last word.
For the evil did come to Buffalo, and it’s come to all too many places, manifested in gunmen who massacred innocent people in the name of hateful and perverse ideology rooted in fear and racism. … What happened here is simple and straightforward: terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism. Violence inflicted in the service of hate and a vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group.
~ Joe Biden ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on recent tragedies.
2023
Conventional people are roused to fury by departures from convention, largely because they regard such departures as a criticism of themselves. They will pardon much unconventionality in a man who has enough jollity and friendliness to make clear, even to the stupidest, that he is not engaged in criticizing them.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
in
~ The Conquest of Happiness ~
2024
  It is better to do nothing than to do harm. Half the useful work in the world consists of combating the harmful work. A little time spent in learning to appreciate facts is not time wasted, and the work that will be done afterwards is far less likely to be harmful than the work done by those who need a continual inflation of their ego as a stimulant to their energy.
~ Bertrand Russell ~
in
~ The Conquest of Happiness ~
2025
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2004
It is love alone that gives worth to all things. ~ St. Teresa of Avila (Teresa de Jesús)
2005
Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else. ~ Malcolm X (born 19 May 1925)
2006
Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious — that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment. ~ Dan Brown (author of The Da Vinci Code; film adaptation released worldwide on 19 May 2006)
2007
With all reverence, I would say, let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles. ~ Abraham Davenport (Statement on 19 May 1780, "New England's Dark Day" which many feared might be the coming of the Last Judgment; as quoted by John Greenleaf Whittier.
2008
Mankind is a single body and each nation a part of that body. We must never say "What does it matter to me if some part of the world is ailing?" If there is such an illness, we must concern ourselves with it as though we were having that illness. ~ Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (precise birthdate unknown, but celebrated on May 19)
2009
Humankind consists of two sexes, woman and man. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies? ~ Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (born May 19)
2010
I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and — I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations. ~ Lorraine Hansberry (born 19 May 1930)
2011
To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery. ~ Abraham Pais (born 19 May 1918)
2012
I have found out that the real essentials of greatness in men are not written in books, nor can they be found in the schools, They are written into the inner consciousness of everyone who intensely searches for perfection in creative achievement and are understandable to such men only.
~ Walter Russell ~
2013
Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.
~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte ~
2014
Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your — your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action.
~ Malcolm X ~
2015
Progress leads to confusion leads to progress and on and on without respite. Every one of the many major advances … created sooner or later, more often sooner, new problems. These confusions, never twice the same, are not to be deplored. Rather, those who participate experience them as a privilege.
~ Abraham Pais ~
2016
Of course, relative citation frequencies are no measure of relative importance. Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that very soon it is known to everyone and cited by no one?
~ Abraham Pais ~
2017
Today we live in the midst of upheaval and crisis. We do not know where we are going, nor even where we ought to be going. Awareness is spreading that our future cannot be a straight extension of the past or the present … The century now approaching its end has been one of indiscriminate violence, it has been perhaps the most murderous one in Western history of which we have record. Yet I would think that what will strike people most when, hundreds of years from now, they will look back on our days is that this was the age when the exploration of space began, the microchip was invented, revolutions in transport and communication virtually annihilated time and distance, transforming the world into a "global village," and relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and the structure of the atom were discovered, in brief that this has been the century of science and technology.
~ Abraham Pais ~
2018
Humanity may endure the loss of everything: all its possessions may be torn away without infringing its true dignity; — all but the possibility of improvement.
~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte ~
2019
For me the important distinction is between a stylistic approach to the design; and an analytical approach giving the process of due consideration to time, place, and purpose ... My analytical approach requires a full understanding of the three essential elements ... to arrive at an ideal balance among them.
~ I. M. Pei ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2020
Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
~ Edward de Bono ~
2021
Design is really a special case of problem solving. One wants to bring about a desired state of affairs. Occasionally one wants to remedy some fault but more usually one wants to bring about something new. For that reason design is more open ended than problem solving. It requires more creativity. It is not so much a matter of linking up a clearly defined objective with a clearly defined starting position (as in problem solving) but more a matter of starting out from a general position in the direction of a general objective.
~ Edward de Bono ~
2022
There isn't just one point; it takes time to learn. You don't have to be intelligent, but I think you have to be open to possibilities and willing to explore. The only stupid people are those who are arrogant and closed off.
~ Edward de Bono ~
2023
Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
~ Edward de Bono ~
2024
  Usually in an argument, I can see the other person's point of view. It comes down to three basic things: different information, different perception and different values. Once you can see where people come from you can consider if the other person has better information and compare their values and perceptions to yours. I am willing to listen.
~ Edward de Bono ~
2025
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2004
No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker. ~ Mikhail Bakunin
2005
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. ~ John Stuart Mill (born 20 May 1806)
2006
Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation. ~ Honoré de Balzac (born 20 May 1799)
2007
The prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. ~ John Stuart Mill
2008
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~ John Stuart Mill
2009
However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth. ~ John Stuart Mill
2010
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. ~ John Stuart Mill
2011
Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from. ~ Honoré de Balzac
2012
To saunter is to enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions.
~ Honoré de Balzac ~
2013
Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.
~ Honoré de Balzac ~
2014
There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure only as its final act. It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully resisted by violence. It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions and social structure are changing in consequence. It promises a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. Its ultimate creation will be a new and enduring wholeness and beauty — a renewed relationship of man to himself, to other men, to society, to nature, and to the land.
This is the revolution of the new generation.
~ Charles A. Reich ~
2015
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.
~ John Stuart Mill ~
2016
When an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
~ John Stuart Mill ~
2017
Many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made. … I am now convinced, that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
~ John Stuart Mill ~
2018
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.
Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable.
~ John Stuart Mill ~
in
~ On Liberty ~
2019
A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.
~ Honoré de Balzac ~
2020
Lies run sprints but the truth runs marathons.
~ Michael Jackson ~
2021
Ages are no more infallible than individuals; every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is as certain that many opinions now general will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.
~ John Stuart Mill ~
2022
Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt. We show no more mercy to the affection that reveals its utmost extent than we do to another kind of prodigal who has not a penny left.
~ Honoré de Balzac ~
2023
The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.
~ John Stuart Mill ~
2024
The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. … Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
~ John Stuart Mill ~
2025
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2004
The road to wisdom? — Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less. ~ Piet Hein
2005
May the Force be with you. ~ Jedi saying; used in all Star Wars episodes.
2006
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. ~ Alexander Pope (born 21 May 1688)
2007
Life — a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter. ~ Charles Lindbergh (80th anniversary of his solo flight across the Atlantic.)
2008
The flying Rumours gather'd as they roll'd,
Scarce any Tale was sooner heard than told;
And all who told it, added something new,
And all who heard it, made Enlargements too,
In ev'ry Ear it spread, on ev'ry Tongue it grew.
~ Alexander Pope ~
2009
Some Figures monstrous and mis-shap'd appear,
Consider'd singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportion'd to their Light, or Place,
Due Distance reconciles to Form and Grace.
A prudent Chief not always must display
His Pow'rs in equal Ranks, and fair Array,
But with th' Occasion and the Place comply,
Conceal his Force, nay seem sometimes to Fly.
Those oft are Stratagems which Errors seem,
Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream.
~ Alexander Pope ~
2010
All seems Infected that th' Infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the Jaundic'd Eye.
~ Alexander Pope ~
2011
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. ~ Alexander Pope
2012
Trust not your self; but your Defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry Friend — and ev'ry Foe.
~ Alexander Pope ~
2013
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
~ Alexander Pope ~
2014
The environment of human life has changed more rapidly and more extensively in recent years than it has ever changed before. When environment changes, there must be a corresponding change in life. That change must be so great that it is not likely to be completed in a decade or in a generation.
~ Charles Lindbergh ~
2015
I have come to believe … that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy, will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.
~ Jane Addams ~
2016
Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
~ Alexander Pope ~
2017
In the United States of America, satire is protected speech, even if the object of the satire doesn’t get it.
~ Al Franken ~
2018
He who tells a lie, is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.
~ Alexander Pope ~
2019
Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples.
~ Alexander Pope ~
2020
Teach me to feel another's woe,
To right the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
~ Alexander Pope ~
2021
What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them.
~ Jane Addams ~
2022
In his own way each man must struggle, lest the moral law become a far-off abstraction utterly separated from his active life.
~ Jane Addams ~
2023
We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing, that we might extract from life’s very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them.
~ Jane Addams ~
2024
What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. ... It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.
~ Learned Hand ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow you gotta be willing to put up with the rain. ~ Dolly Parton
2005
The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle (born 22 May 1859)
2006
A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
~ Alexander Pope (The date of Pope's birth was not definite when this was proposed for QOTD; he is said to have been born 22 May 1688, in The Life of Pope (1781) by Samuel Johnson, but apparently this was an error, for 21 May seems to have become the most widely accepted date.)
2007
I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
2008
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
2009
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle in "A Case of Identity"
2010
The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
2011

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

Arthur Conan Doyle in The Sign of the Four

2012
I will make my meaning more clear when I say that I think right and wrong are both tools which are being wielded by those great hands which are shaping the destinies of the universe, that both are making for improvement; but that the action of the one is immediate, and that of the other more slow, but none the less certain. Our own distinction of right and wrong is founded too much upon the immediate convenience of the community, and does not inquire sufficiently deeply into the ultimate effect.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle ~
2013
I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle ~
in
~The Adventure of the Three Gables ~
2014
My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle ~
2015
It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle ~
in
~ A Study in Scarlet ~
2016
The ancient intuition that all matter, all “reality,” is energy, that all phenomena, including time and space, are mere crystallizations of mind, is an idea with which few physicists have quarreled since the theory of relativity first called into question the separate identities of energy and matter. Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form; that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of the pervasive energy that animates the electron. … The cosmic radiation that is thought to come from the explosion of creation strikes the earth with equal intensity from all directions, which suggests either that the earth is at the center of the universe, as in our innocence we once supposed, or that the known universe has no center. Such an idea holds no terror for mystics; in the mystical vision, the universe, its center, and its origins are simultaneous, all around us, all within us, and all One.
~ Peter Matthiessen ~
2017
When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions — such as merit, such as past, present, and future — our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment. We identify, label, and interpret our surroundings as abstract concepts, quite separate from another concept, which is our own separate identity and ego.
~ Peter Matthiessen ~
2018
The progress of the sciences toward theories of fundamental unity, cosmic symmetry (as in the unified field theory) — how do such theories differ, in the end, from that unity which Plato called “unspeakable” and “indiscribable,” the holistic knowledge shared by so many peoples of the earth, Christians included, before the advent of the industrial revolution made new barbarians of the peoples of the West? In the United States, before spiritualist foolishness at the end of the last century confused mysticism with “the occult” and tarnished both, William James wrote a master work of metaphysics; Emerson spoke of “the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal One . . .”; Melville referred to “that profound silence, that only voice of God”; Walt Whitman celebrated the most ancient secret, that no God could be found “more divine than yourself.” And then, almost everywhere, a clear and subtle illumination that lent magnificence to life and peace to death was overwhelmed in the hard glare of technology. Yet that light is always present, like the stars of noon. Man must perceive it if he is to transcend his fear of meaningless, for no amount of “progress” can take its place.
~ Peter Matthiessen ~
2019
Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. And this debasement of our vision, the retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came.
~ Peter Matthiessen ~
2020
To glimpse one’s own true nature is a kind of homegoing, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon — the homegoing that needs no home, like that waterfall on the upper Suli Gad that turns to mist before touching the earth and rises once again into the sky.
~ Peter Matthiessen ~
2021
There’s a creation, a creating force. But whatever it is is in everything we see. It’s in that log, in that stone. It’s just the power. And I’ve had many experiences with it. Certain circumstances bring it out, which all the mystics know. That is part of our Zen training too. It’s called an "opening." … For a second, you see what the world is. It is a whole other way of seeing, which is horrible, terrifying, and extraordinary and a great blessing to have.
~ Peter Matthiessen ~
2022
I have often tried to isolate that quality of "Zen" which attracted me so powerfully to its literature and later to the practice of zazen. But since the essence of Zen might well be what one teacher called "the moment-by-moment awakening of mind," there is little that may sensibly be said about it without succumbing to that breathless, mystery-ridden prose that drives so many sincere aspirants in the other direction. In zazen, one may hope to penetrate the ringing stillness of universal mind, and this "intimation of immortality," as Wordsworth called it, also shines forth from the brief, cryptic Zen texts, which refer obliquely to that absolute reality beyond the grasp of our linear vocabulary, yet right here in this moment, in this ink and paper, in the sound of this hand turning the page.
~ Peter Matthiessen ~
2023
We need to unite and make Russia the last aggressor. So that only peace reigns after the defeat of its invasion of Ukraine.
We, people, have different cultures, different views, different national flags. But we equally want security for ourselves, our children and grandchildren. And our lives are equally burned to ashes if, God forbid, war comes.
Everyone in the world must do everything possible to ensure that wars leave only shadows on the stones of history and that this can only be seen in museums.
Everyone in the world must respect other nations.
Everyone in the world must recognize state borders.
Everyone in the world must defend justice.
Everyone in the world must care about life.
Everyone in the world must take peace as their duty.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks at G7 summit in Hiroshima.
2024
  A Mahayana teaching with a strong Taoist infusion, Ch'an or Zen cast off the dead weight of priestly ritual and mindless chanting of the sutras or scriptures — the records of the Buddha's teachings — and returned to the simple zazen way of Shakyamuni. In a statement attributed to the First Chinese Patriarch, Bodhidharma, an old monk from India who is loosely associated with the birth of Zen, the new teaching was described as "a special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded upon words or letters. By pointing directly to man's own mind, it lets him see into his own true nature and thus attain Buddhahood."
~ Peter Matthiessen ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal. ~ Bill Watterson
2005
It seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive and a slave, than always to walk in armor. ~ Margaret Fuller (born 23 May 1810)
2006
Cynicism isn't smarter, it's only safer. There's nothing fluffy about optimism. ~ Jewel (born 23 May 1974)
2007
What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophecy or as poesy. … should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth. ~ Margaret Fuller
2008
Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering–pot and pruning–knife. ~ Margaret Fuller (born May 23)
2009
Let no one dare to call another mad who is not himself willing to rank in the same class for every perversion and fault of judgment. Let no one dare aid in punishing another as criminal who is not willing to suffer the penalty due to his own offenses. ~ Margaret Fuller
2010
Might the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy be laid to heart! Might a sense of the true aims of life elevate the tone of politics and trade, till public and private honor become identical! ~ Margaret Fuller
2011
Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for symbols of human destiny have been broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is left, even by experience, to point distinctly to the glories of that destiny; faint, but not to be mistaken streaks of the future day. I can say with the bard,
"Though many have suffered shipwreck, still beat noble hearts."
Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual fervent means to their fulfilment. ~ Margaret Fuller
2012
The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart.
~ Margaret Fuller ~
2013
the greatest
Grace
we can aspire to
is the strength
to see the wounded
walk with the forgotten
and pull ourselves
from the screaming
blood of our losses
to fight on
undaunted
all the more
~ Jewel ~
2014
Mercury has cast aside
The signs of intellectual pride,
Freely offers thee the soul:
Art thou noble to receive?
Canst thou give or take the whole,
Nobly promise and believe?
Then thou wholly human art,
A spotless, radiant, ruby heart,
And the golden chain of love
Has bound thee to the realm above.
~ Margaret Fuller ~
2015
Plants of great vigor will almost always struggle into blossom, despite impediments. But there should be encouragement, and a free genial atmosphere for those of more timid sort, fair play for each in its own kind.
~ Margaret Fuller ~
2016
We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue.
Yet, then and only then will mankind be ripe for this, when inward and outward freedom for Woman as much as for Man shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession.
~ Margaret Fuller ~
2017
To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it, seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph, mere stops.
~ Margaret Fuller ~
2018
Every relation, every gradation of nature is incalculably precious, but only to the soul which is poised upon itself, and to whom no loss, no change, can bring dull discord, for it is in harmony with the central soul.
~ Margaret Fuller ~
2019
Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though, in truth, his dreaming must not be out of proportion to his waking!
~ Margaret Fuller ~
2020
Act in such a way that your heart may be free from hatred. Let not your heart be offended with anyone. If someone commits an error and wrong toward you, you must instantly forgive him. Do not complain of others. Refrain from reprimanding them, and if you wish to give admonition or advice, let it be offered in such a way that it will not burden the bearer. Turn all your thoughts toward bringing joy to hearts. Beware! Beware! Lest ye offend any heart. Assist the world of humanity as much as possible. Be the source of consolation to every sad one, assist every weak one, be helpful to every indigent one, care for every sick one, be the cause of glorification to every lowly one, and shelter those who are overshadowed by fear.
~ `Abdu'l-Bahá ~
2021
Dogmatic imitations of ancestral beliefs are passing. They have been the axis around which religion revolved but now are no longer fruitful; on the contrary, in this day they have become the cause of human degradation and hindrance. Bigotry and dogmatic adherence to ancient beliefs have become the central and fundamental source of animosity among men, the obstacle to human progress, the cause of warfare and strife, the destroyer of peace, composure and welfare in the world.
~ `Abdu'l-Bahá ~
2022
From every standpoint the world of humanity is undergoing a re-formation. The laws of former governments and civilizations are in process of revision, scientific ideas and theories are developing and advancing to meet a new range of phenomena, invention and discovery are penetrating hitherto unknown fields revealing new wonders and hidden secrets of the material universe; industries have vastly wider scope and production; everywhere the world of mankind is in the throes of evolutionary activity indicating the passing of the old conditions and advent of the new age of re-formation. Old trees yield no fruitage; old ideas and methods are obsolete and worthless now. Old standards of ethics, moral codes and methods of living in the past will not suffice for the present age of advancement and progress.
~ `Abdu'l-Bahá ~
2023
I'd like to be remembered as someone who kept the comic novel going for another generation or so. I fear the comic novel is in retreat. A joke is by definition politically incorrect — it assumes a butt, and a certain superiority in the teller. The culture won't put up with that for much longer.
~ Martin Amis ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. ~ Carl Jung
2005
I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. ~ Bob Dylan (born 24 May 1941)
2006
Every failure is a step to success. ~ William Whewell (born 24 May 1794)
2007
Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. ~ Benjamin N. Cardozo (born 24 May 1870)
2008
Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. ~ William Whewell
  • proposed by Kalki (proposed and chosen without recognition that part of it had been used in 2006)
2009
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
~ Bob Dylan ~
2010
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
~ Bob Dylan ~
2011
Magic words and incantations are as fatal to our science as they are to any other. Methods, when classified and separated, acquire their true bearing and perspective as a means to an end, not as ends in themselves. We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion. ~ Benjamin N. Cardozo
2012
Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~
2013
Peace is an awareness of reserves from beyond ourselves, so that our power is not so much in us as through us. Peace is the gift, not of volitional struggle, but of spiritual hospitality.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~
2014
The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~
2015
God of grace and God of glory,
On Thy people pour Thy power.
Crown Thine ancient church’s story,
Bring her bud to glorious flower.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the facing of this hour,
For the facing of this hour.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~
2016
Our course of advance ... is neither a straight line nor a curve. It is a series of dots and dashes. Progress comes per saltum, by successive compromises between extremes, compromises often … between "positivism and idealism". The notion that a jurist can dispense with any consideration as to what the law ought to be arises from the fiction that the law is a complete and closed system, and that judges and jurists are mere automata to record its will or phonographs to pronounce its provisions.
~ Benjamin N. Cardozo ~
2017
No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined. One of the widest gaps in human experience is the gap between what we say we want to be and our willingness to discipline ourselves to get there.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~
2018
There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.
~ Philip Roth ~
2019
Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world — making the most of one's best.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~
2020
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown.
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
~ Bob Dylan ~
2021
I'm going to spare the defeated, I'm going to speak to the crowd
I'm going to spare the defeated, I'm going to speak to the crowd
I'm going to teach peace to the conquered, I'm going to tame the proud.
~ Bob Dylan ~
2022
Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so; but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of Error is without some latent charm derived from Truth.
~ William Whewell ~
2023
I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~
2024
We may try to see things as objectively as we please. None the less, we can never see them with any eyes except our own.
~ Benjamin N. Cardozo ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I got some new underwear the other day. Well, new to me. ~ Emo Philips
2005
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (born 25 May 1803)
2006
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (born 25 May 1803)
2007

Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain,
And found out what I could of all desire;
I weep for what I'm like when I'm alone
In the deep center of the voice and fire.

I know the motion of the deepest stone.
Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone.
~ Theodore Roethke ~

2008
Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with. ~ Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. May 25th is Towel Day
2009
You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear, that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. "What is this Truth you seek? What is this Beauty?" men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, "As others do, so will I. I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season." — then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history; and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. … Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in Nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
2010
Be an artist superior to tricks of art. Show frankly, as a saint would do, all your experience, your methods, tools, and means. Welcome all comers to the freest use of the same. And out of this superior frankness and charity, you shall learn higher secrets of your nature, which gods will bend and aid you to communicate. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
2011
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
~ Theodore Roethke ~
2012
The less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
2013
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
2014
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
2015
I've always believed in numbers. In the equations and logics that lead to reason. But after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask, what truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back — and I have made the most important discovery of my career — the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found.
~ John Forbes Nash, Jr. ~
as portrayed in
~ A Beautiful Mind ~
  • proposed by DanielTom, in response to the recent death of Nash and his wife in a traffic accident.
2016
I have been writing & speaking what were once called novelties, for twenty five or thirty year, & have not now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers but because it did not go from any wish in me to bring men to me, but to themselves.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
2017
This must be Thursday... I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
~ Douglas Adams ~
in
~ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ~
2018
It will never make any difference to a hero what the laws are. His greatness will shine and accomplish itself unto the end, whether they second him or not. If he have earned his bread by drudgery, and in the narrow and crooked ways which were all an evil law had left him, he will make it at least honorable by his expenditure. Of the past he will take no heed; for its wrongs he will not hold himself responsible: he will say, All the meanness of my progenitors shall not bereave me of the power to make this hour and company fair and fortunate. Whatsoever streams of power and commodity flow to me, shall of me acquire healing virtue, and become fountains of safety. Cannot I too descend a Redeemer into nature? Whosoever hereafter shall name my name, shall not record a malefactor, but a benefactor in the earth. If there be power in good intention, in fidelity, and in toil, the north wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven shall glow with a kindlier beam, that I have lived. I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence and good will at the heart of things, and ever higher and yet higher leadings. These are my engagements; how can your law further or hinder me in what I shall do to men? On the other hand, these dispositions establish their relations to me. Wherever there is worth, I shall be greeted. Wherever there are men, are the objects of my study and love. Sooner of later all men will be my friends, and will testify in all methods the energy of their regard. I cannot thank your law for my protection. I protect it. It is not in its power to protect me. It is my business to make myself revered. I depend on my honor, my labor, and my dispositions for my place in the affections of mankind, and not on any conventions or parchments of yours.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
2019
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations — explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon — if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2020
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion: to he worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to have an oratory in my own heart, and present spotless sacrifices of dignified kindness in the temple of humanity; to spread no opinions glaringly out like show-plants, and yet leave the garden gate ever open for the chosen friend and the chance acquaintance: to make no pretenses to greatness; to seek no notoriety; to attempt no wide influence; to have no ambitious projects; to let my writings be the daily bubbling spring flowing through constancy, swelled by experiences, into the full, deep river of wisdom; to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; … in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
~ William Henry Channing ~
2021
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
2022
Voice, come out of the silence.
Say something.
Appear in the form of a spider
Or a moth beating the curtain.

Tell me:
Which is the way I take;
Out of what door` do I go,
Where and to whom?

Dark hollows said, lee to the wind,
The moon said, back of an eel,
The salt said, look by the sea,
Your tears are not enough praise,
You will find no comfort here,
In the kingdom of bang and blab.
~ Theodore Roethke ~
2023
We are all born with a mission, a purpose, that only we can fulfill.
When you live with a joyful sense of purpose, when you infuse your life with a greater purpose beyond your individual self, every aspect of your karma can become a brilliant facet of your mission. You can transform sorrow and adversity of any sort into joy, stability, health, and prosperity. By changing poison into medicine and accomplishing your inner revolution, you can use every experience of karma to encourage others who suffer from the same problems that you overcame.
You can become an ambassador of hope, an essential and radiant treasure of humanity, in which you recognize that all who have ever lived are members of your extended family.
As you continue to spread light in this way, actively doing good in the world, that energy will come back to you in abundant positivity. When you refuse to perpetuate any bad that has been done to you, you can free yourself from the chains of negativity.
~ Tina Turner ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed. ~ Joseph Addison
2005
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility. ~ Rachel Carson
2006
When you get in situations where you cannot afford to make a mistake, it's very hard to do the right thing. So if you're trying to do the right thing, the right thing might be to eliminate the cost of making a mistake rather than try to guess what's right. ~ Ward Cunningham (born 26 May 1949)
2007
I'm not a fan of classification. It's very difficult to come up with a classification scheme that's useful when what you're most interested in is things that don't fit in, things that you didn't expect. ~ Ward Cunningham
2008
Thunder only happens when it's raining.
Players only love you when they're playing.
Say... Women... they will come and they will go.
When the rain washes you clean... you'll know.
~ Stevie Nicks ~
2009
You have so many things in the background that you're supposed to do, there's no room left to think. I say, forget all that and ask yourself, "What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?" ~ Ward Cunningham
2010
If there must be resolution and explanation, it must be something worth its weight in mystery. Most times, I'd be content with the mystery. ~ Caitlín R. Kiernan (born 26 May 1964)
2011
Over and over, people try to design systems that make tomorrow's work easy. But when tomorrow comes it turns out they didn't quite understand tomorrow's work, and they actually made it harder. ~ Ward Cunningham
2012
Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they're defending us against the Mongols?
~ Edward Whittemore ~
2013
I was frustrated that computer hardware was being improved faster than computer software. I wanted to invent some software that was completely different, that would grow and change as it was used. That’s how wiki came about.
~ Ward Cunningham ~
2014
A wiki works best where you're trying to answer a question that you can't easily pose, where there's not a natural structure that's known in advance to what you need to know.
~ Ward Cunningham ~
2015
We erased a problem by not trying to erase the problem, by saying, "This is in the nature of what we do." It's really weird that it could be that simple.
~ Ward Cunningham ~
2016
I can't tell you how much time is spent worrying about decisions that don't matter. To just be able to make a decision and see what happens is tremendously empowering, but that means you have to set up the situation such that when something does go wrong, you can fix it.
~ Ward Cunningham ~
2017
Wikis work best in environments where you're comfortable delegating control to the users of the system.
~ Ward Cunningham ~
2018
I actually enjoy complexity that's empowering. If it challenges me, the complexity is very pleasant.
~ Ward Cunningham ~
2019
A wiki is always in the process of being organized. But for every hour spent organizing, two more hours are spent adding new material. So the status quo for a wiki is always partially organized.
~ Ward Cunningham ~
2020
The world wants oatmeal. It is not my job to give the world oatmeal. It is my job not to be a hack. It is my job to try to make the world chew, lest its lazy jaw muscles atrophy and its collective mandible withers and all its teeth fall out. It is my job, as a writer, to give the world toffee and peanut brittle and tough steak and celery. I write peanut butter sandwiches, not oatmeal. And every time some dolt whines, "I'm confused" or "I don't understand" or "This doesn't make any sense," I should smile and know that I'm doing my job. Not because it is my job to be opaque, but because it is not my job to be transparent.
~ Caitlín R. Kiernan ~
2021
All I have to do is make you see this. This one particular thing here. That's all. And sometimes it's impossible. Sometimes, I know the best odds I can hope for are a thousand to one. You'll see what you see, what your life has conditioned you to see upon encountering that combination of words, not what I want or need you to see. Fiction writing is like making films for the blind.
~ Caitlín R. Kiernan ~
2022
Most Americans support commonsense laws — commonsense gun laws.
I just got off my trip from Asia, meeting with Asian leaders, and I learned of this while I was on the aircraft. And what struck me on that 17-hour flight — what struck me was these kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world.
Why? They have mental health problems. They have domestic disputes in other countries. They have people who are lost. But these kinds of mass shootings never happen with the kind of frequency that they happen in America. Why?
Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God's name is our backbone — to have the courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies?
It's time to turn this pain into action.
For every parent, for every citizen in this country, we have to make it clear to every elected official in this country: It's time to act.
It's time — for those who obstruct or delay or block the commonsense gun laws, we need to let you know that we will not forget.
We can do so much more. We have to do more.
~ Joe Biden ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on recent tragedies.
2023
The clouds never expect it
When it rains
But the sea changes color
But the sea does not change
And so with the slow graceful flow of age
I went forth with an age old desire to please
On the edge of seventeen.
~ Stevie Nicks ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
2005
The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness. ~ Julia Ward Howe (born 27 May 1819)
2006
Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver. ~ Harlan Ellison (born 27 May 27 1934)
2007
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
~ Julia Ward Howe ~
2008
Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment. ~ Harlan Ellison
2009
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction. ~ Rachel Carson
2010
I am confirmed in my division of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build. ~ Julia Ward Howe
2011
This is a test. Take notes. This will count as 3/4 of your final grade. Hints: remember, in chess, kings cancel each other out and cannot occupy adjacent squares, are therefore all-powerful and totally powerless, cannot affect each other, produce stalemate. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion; the sect of Atman worships the divine spark of life within Man; in effect saying, "Thou art God." Provisos of equal time are not served by one viewpoint having media access to two hundred million people in prime time while opposing viewpoints are provided with a soapbox on the corner. Not everyone tells the truth. ~ Harlan Ellison ~
2012
My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration and ignoble deaths; that there is security in personal strength; that you can fight City Hall and win; that any action is better than no action, even if it's the wrong action; that you never reach glory or self-fulfillment unless you're willing to risk everything, dare anything, put yourself dead on the line every time; and that once one becomes strong or rich or potent or powerful it is the responsibility of the strong to help the weak become strong.
~ Harlan Ellison ~
2013
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
~ Henry Kissinger ~
2014
I am anti-entropy. My work is foursquare for chaos. I spend my life personally, and my work professionally, keeping the soup boiling. Gadfly is what they call you when you are no longer dangerous; I much prefer troublemaker, malcontent, desperado. I see myself as a combination of Zorro and Jiminy Cricket. My stories go out from here and raise hell. From time to time some denigrator or critic with umbrage will say of my work, "He only wrote that to shock." I smile and nod. Precisely.
~ Harlan Ellison ~
2015
The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work. … It is a love/hate relationship I have with the human race. I am an elitist, and I feel that my responsibility is to drag the human race along with me — that I will never pander to, or speak down to, or play the safe game. Because my immortal soul will be lost.
~ Harlan Ellison ~
2016
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
~ Henry Kissinger ~
2017
Heaven is what you mix all the days of your life, but you call it dreams. You have one chance to buy your Heaven with all the intents and ethics of your life. That is why everyone considers Heaven such a lovely place. Because it is dreams, special dreams, in which you exist. What you have to do is live up to them.
~ Harlan Ellison ~
2018
Everyone is trying to reach for their own stars, and all of those stars aren’t light-years away. They are as close as our job, our family, our children, our next-door neighbors and our good friends.
~ Alan Bean ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2019
It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.
~ Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of the US Memorial Day, 2019.
2020
There are certain injustices in this life you’ve got to do something about. You can’t just say that you can’t fight it, or it’s too much trouble, or that you don’t have the time or the effort, or that you can’t win. Forget all that. Fight them all!
~ Harlan Ellison ~
2021
We are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it’s nothing. It’s just bibble-babble. It’s like a fart in a wind tunnel, folks.
~ Harlan Ellison ~
2022
In light of the recent events in Texas, I have decided it would be disrespectful and hurtful for me to perform for the NRA at their convention in Houston this week. I’m sure all the folks planning to attend this event are shocked and sickened by these events as well. After all, we are all Americans. I share the sorrow for this terrible, cruel loss with the rest of the nation.
~ Don McLean ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on recent tragedies.
2023
The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas.
~ Georges Rouault ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures — in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
2005
We have gotten some terrible reviews at times but if we depended on the judgment of the studios or critics, we never would have made more than one movie. ~ Ismail Merchant (recent death)
2006
What I do know for certain is that what is regarded as success in a rational materialistic society only impresses superficial minds. It amounts to nothing and will not help us rout the destructive forces threatening us today. What may be our salvation is the discovery of the identity hidden deep in any one of us, and which may be found in even the most desperate individual, if he cares to search the spiritual womb which contains the embryo of what can be one's personal contribution to truth and life. ~ Patrick White (born 28 May 1912)
2007
I have the same idea with all my books: an attempt to come close to the core of reality, the structure of reality, as opposed to the merely superficial. The realistic novel is remote from art. A novel should heighten life, should give one an illuminating experience; it shouldn't set out what you know already. I just muddle away at it. One gets flashes here and there, which help. I am not a philosopher or an intellectual. Practically anything I have done of any worth I feel I have done through my intuition, not my mind... ~ Patrick White
2008
In my books I have lifted bits from various religions in trying to come to a better understanding; I've made use of religious themes and symbols. Now, as the world becomes more pagan, one has to lead people in the same direction in a different way... ~ Patrick White
2009
The time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world. ~ Louis Agassiz (born 28 May 1807)
2010
War of any kind is abhorrent. Remember that since the end of World War II, over 40 million people have been killed by conventional weapons. So, if we should succeed in averting nuclear war, we must not let ourselves be sold the alternative of conventional weapons for killing our fellow men. We must cure ourselves of the habit of war. ~ Patrick White
2011
What I am interested in is the relationship between the blundering human being and God. I belong to no church, but I have a religious faith; it's an attempt to express that, among other things, that I try to do. Whether he confesses to being religious or not, everyone has a religious faith of a kind. I myself am a blundering human being with a belief in God who made us and we got out of hand, a kind of Frankenstein monster. Everyone can make mistakes, including God. I believe God does intervene; I think there is a Divine Power, a Creator, who has an influence on human beings if they are willing to be open to him. ~ Patrick White
2012
Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone’s finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?
~ Walker Percy ~
2013
I feel that in my own life anything I have done of possible worth has happened in spite of my gross, worldly self. I have been no more than the vessel used to convey ideas above my intellectual capacities. When people praise passages I have written, more often than not I can genuinely say, "Did I write that?" I don't think this is due to my having a bad memory, because I have almost total recall of trivialities. I see it as evidence of the part the supernatural plays in lives which would otherwise remain earthbound.
~ Patrick White ~
2014
I enjoy decoration. By accumulating this mass of detail you throw light on things in a longer sense: in the long run it all adds up. It creates a texture — how shall I put it — a background, a period, which makes everything you write that much more convincing. Of course, all artists are terrible egoists. Unconsciously you are largely writing about yourself. I could never write anything factual; I only have confidence in myself when I am another character. All the characters in my books are myself, but they are a kind of disguise.
~ Patrick White ~
2015
Possibly all art flowers more readily in silence. Certainly the state of simplicity and humility is the only desirable one for artist or for man. While to reach it may be impossible, to attempt to do so is imperative.
~ Patrick White ~
2016
The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal.
~ Louis Agassiz ~
2017
You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face.
~ Ian Fleming ~
2018

The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
⁠Of men-at-arms who come to pray.

The roses blossom white and red
⁠On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
⁠And martial music cleaves the sky.

Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
⁠They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
⁠They plunged for Freedom and the Right.

May we, their grateful children, learn
⁠Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
⁠At last the accolade of God.

~ Joyce Kilmer ~
2019
This country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date. Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I’d been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.
~ Ian Fleming ~
2020
Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.
~ George Washington ~
2021
Never say "no" to adventures. Always say "yes", otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.
~ Ian Fleming ~
2022
As you all are aware there was another mass shooting today, this time in my home town of Uvalde, Texas. Once again, we have tragically proven that we are failing to be responsible for the rights our freedoms grant us. … As Americans, Texans, mothers and fathers, it's time we re-evaluate, and renegotiate our wants from our needs. We have to rearrange our values and find a common ground above this devastating American reality that has tragically become our children’s issue.
This is an epidemic we can control, and whichever side of the aisle we may stand on, we all know we can do better. We must do better. Action must be taken so that no parent has to experience what the parents in Uvalde and the others before them have endured.
~ Matthew McConaughey ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on recent tragedies.
2023
Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored.
~ Ian Fleming ~
2024
I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.
~ Walker Percy ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. ~ Steven Wright
2005
Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn. ~ T. H. White (born 29 May 1906)
2006
It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. ~ G. K. Chesterton (born 29 May 1874)
2007
The pessimist is commonly spoken of as the man in revolt. He is not. Firstly, because it requires some cheerfulness to continue in revolt, and secondly, because pessimism appeals to the weaker side of everybody, and the pessimist, therefore, drives as roaring a trade as the publican. The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons of God. ~ G. K. Chesterton
2008
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ~ John F. Kennedy
2009
Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. ~ John F. Kennedy
2010
The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. ~ G. K. Chesterton
2011
Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion. ~ G. K. Chesterton
2012
I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.
~ G. K. Chesterton ~
2013
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2014
The one thing that can never be told is the last notion of the President, for his notions grow like a tropical forest. So in case you don't know, I'd better tell you that he is carrying out his notion of concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the most extraordinary lengths just now. … He said that if you didn't seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out. Well, he is the only man on earth, I know; but sometimes I really think that his huge brain is going a little mad in its old age. For now we flaunt ourselves before the public. … They say we are a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they are anarchists.
~ G. K. Chesterton ~
in
~ The Man Who Was Thursday ~
2015
It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. No one sees anything funny in a tree falling down. No one sees a delicate absurdity in a stone falling down. No man stops in the road and roars with laughter at the sight of the snow coming down. The fall of thunderbolts is treated with some gravity. The fall of roofs and high buildings is taken seriously. It is only when a man tumbles down that we laugh. Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
~ G. K. Chesterton ~
2016
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2017
The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2018
The basis of self-government and freedom requires the development of character and self-restraint and perseverance and the long view. And these are qualities which require many years of training and education.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2019
Across the gulfs and barriers that now divide us, we must remember that there are no permanent enemies. Hostility today is a fact, but it is not a ruling law. The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2020
I believe in an America with a government of men devoted solely to the public interests — men of ability and dedication, free from conflict or corruption or other commitment — a responsible government that is efficient and economical, with a balanced budget over the years of the cycle, reducing its debt in prosperous times — a government willing to entrust the people with the facts that they have — not a businessman's government, with business in the saddle … not a labor government, not a farmer's government, not a government of one section of the country or another, but a government of, for and by the people.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2021
I believe in an America that is on the march — an America respected by all nations, friends and foes alike — an America that is moving, doing, working, trying — a strong America in a world of peace. That peace must be based on world law and world order, on the mutual respect of all nations for the rights and powers of others and on a world economy in which no nation lacks the ability to provide a decent standard of living for all of its people.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2022
We meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2023
We are neither "warmongers" nor "appeasers," neither "hard" nor "soft." We are Americans, determined to defend the frontiers of freedom, by an honorable peace if peace is possible, but by arms if arms are used against us. And if we are to move forward in that spirit, we shall need all the calm and thoughtful citizens that this great University can produce, all the light they can shed, all the wisdom they can bring to bear. It is customary, both here and around the world, to regard life in the United States as easy. Our advantages are many. But more than any other people on earth, we bear burdens and accept risks unprecedented in their size and their duration, not for ourselves alone but for all who wish to be free.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2024
  Diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either alone would fail. A willingness to resist force, unaccompanied by a willingness to talk, could provoke belligerence — while a willingness to talk, unaccompanied by a willingness to resist force, could invite disaster.
~ John F. Kennedy ~
2025
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2004
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
2005
The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual. ~ Mikhail Bakunin (born 30 May 1814)
2006
I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed on me by my own reason. I am conscious of my own inability to grasp, in all its detail, and positive development, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole... I receive and I give — such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination. ~ Mikhail Bakunin (born 30 May 1814)
2007
I myself am human and free only to the extent that I acknowledge the humanity and liberty of all my fellows... I am properly free when all the men and women about me are equally free. Far from being a limitation or a denial of my liberty, the liberty of another is its necessary condition and confirmation. ~ Mikhail Bakunin
2008
By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. ~ Mikhail Bakunin (born 30 May 1814)
2009
When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick." ~ Mikhail Bakunin
2010
If I am not in the state of grace, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me. ~ Joan of Arc (died 30 May 1431, birthdate unknown)
2011
No one can want to destroy without having some idea, true or false, of the order of things that should, according to him or her, replace what presently exists. ~ Mikhail Bakunin
2012
Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations. Thus the individual, his freedom and reason, are the products of society, and not vice versa: society is not the product of individuals comprising it; and the higher, the more fully the individual is developed, the greater his freedom — and the more he is the product of society, the more does he receive from society and the greater his debt to it.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2013
What all other men are is of the greatest importance to me. However independent I may imagine myself to be, however far removed I may appear from mundane considerations by my social status, I am enslaved to the misery of the meanest member of society.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2014
A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well — in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2015
You say that you are my judge. I do not know if you are! But I tell you that you must take good care not to judge me wrongly, because you will put yourself in great danger. I warn you, so that if God punishes you for it, I would have done my duty by telling you!
~ Joan of Arc ~
2016
The liberty of every individual is only the reflection of his own humanity, or his human right through the conscience of all free men, his brothers and his equals.
I can feel free only in the presence of and in relationship with other men. In the presence of an inferior species of animal I am neither free nor a man, because this animal is incapable of conceiving and consequently recognizing my humanity. I am not myself free or human until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my fellowmen.
 Only in respecting their human character do I respect my own.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2017
Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the well-being of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed without regard to liberty, either by violent means or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea. That patriotism which tends toward unity without regard to liberty is an evil patriotism, always disastrous to the popular and real interests of the country it claims to exalt and serve.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2018
The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2019
We must make a very precise distinction between the official and consequently dictatorial prerogatives of society organized as a state, and of the natural influence and action of the members of a non-official, non-artificial society.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2020
It is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2021
I speak of that justice which is based solely upon human conscience, the justice which you will rediscover deep in the conscience of every man, even in the conscience of the child, and which translates itself into simple equality.
This justice, which is so universal but which nevertheless, owing to the encroachments of force and to the influence of religion, has never as yet prevailed in the world of politics, of law, or of economics, should serve as a basis for the new world. Without it there is no liberty, no republic, no prosperity, no peace! It should therefore preside at all our resolutions in order that we may effectively cooperate in establishing peace.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2022
The people should never be deceived, under any pretext or for any purpose. It would not only be criminal but detrimental to the revolutionary cause, for deception of any kind, by its very nature, is shortsighted, petty, narrow, always sewn with rotten threads, so that it inevitably tears and is exposed.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2023
There is but one way to bring about the triumph of liberty, of justice, and of peace in Europe's international relations, to make civil war impossible between the different peoples who make up the European family; and that is the formation of the United States of Europe.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2024
As we are convinced that the real attainment of liberty, of justice, and of peace in the world will be impossible so long as the immense majority of the populations are dispossessed of property, deprived of education and condemned to political and social nonbeing and a de facto if not a de jure slavery, through their state of misery as well as their need to labor without rest or leisure, in producing all the wealth in which the world is glorying today, and receiving in return but a small portion hardly sufficient for their daily bread;
As we are convinced that for all these populations, hitherto so terribly maltreated through the centuries, the question of bread is the question of intellectual emancipation, of liberty, and of humanity;
As we are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality;
Now therefore, the League highly proclaims the need for a radical social and economic reform, whose aim shall be the deliverance of the people's labor from the yoke of capital and property, upon a foundation of the strictest justice — not juridical, not theological, not metaphysical, but simply human justice, of positive science and the most absolute liberty.
~ Mikhail Bakunin ~
2025
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2004
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing. ~ Maya Angelou
2005
When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs, And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth, Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth, And the infidel come into full possession. ~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass (born 31 May 1819)
2006
I am for those that have never been master'd,
For men and women whose tempers have never been master'd,
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass (born 31 May 1819)
2007
Who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles ...
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle...
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass ~
2008
Be composed — be at ease with me — I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature,
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass ~
2009
Talk not so much … of the great old masters, who but painted and chisell’d. Study not only their productions. There is a still higher school for him who would kindle his fire with coal from the altar of the loftiest and purest art. It is the school of all grand actions and grand virtues, of heroism, of the death of patriots and martyrs — of all the mighty deeds written in the pages of history — deeds of daring, and enthusiasm, devotion, and fortitude. ~ Walt Whitman
2010
It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess. … I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty. ~ Walt Whitman
2011
It is time to explain myself — let us stand up.
What is known I strip away,
I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.
The clock indicates the moment — but what does eternity indicate?
~Walt Whitman ~ in Song of Myself
2012

Magnifying and applying come I,
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved,
With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image,
Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more,
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days,
(They bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,)
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see…
~ Walt Whitman ~ in Song of Myself

2013
Our problem is to become acquainted with our own selves, letting our personalities loose upon the world for the sheer adventure of their full development and in the positive hope that they may in their own way lift the level of humanity.
~ Norman Vincent Peale ~
2014
All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
The words of true poems do not merely please,
The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters of beauty;
The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers,
The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
~ Walt Whitman ~
in
~ Song of the Answerer ~
2015

The words of the true poems give you more than poems,
They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and every thing else,
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,
They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.

They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,
They bring none to his or her terminus or to be content and full,
Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings,
To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again.

~ Walt Whitman ~
in
~ Song of the Answerer ~
2016
I answer for him that answers for all, and send these signs.

Him all wait for, him all yield up to, his word is decisive and final,
Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves as amid light,
Him they immerse and he immerses them.

Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people, animals,
The profound earth and its attributes and the unquiet ocean, (so tell I my morning's romanza,)
All enjoyments and properties and money, and whatever money will buy,
The best farms, others toiling and planting and he unavoidably reaps,
The noblest and costliest cities, others grading and building and he domiciles there,
Nothing for any one but what is for him, near and far are for him, the ships in the offing,
The perpetual shows and marches on land are for him if they are for anybody.

He puts things in their attitudes,
He puts to-day out of himself with plasticity and love,
He places his own times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.

He is the Answerer,
What can be answer'd he answers, and what cannot be answer'd he shows how it cannot be answer'd.

A man is a summons and challenge,
(It is vain to skulk — do you hear that mocking and laughter? do you hear the ironical echoes?)

~ Walt Whitman ~
in
~ Song of the Answerer ~
2017
Time, always without break, indicates itself in parts,
What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their words,
The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark, but the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark,
The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
His insight and power encircle things and the human race,
He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human race.

The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems, the Answerer,
(Not every century nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day, for all its names.)

~ Walt Whitman ~
in
~ Song of the Answerer ~
2018
Happiness will never come if it's a goal in itself; happiness is a by-product of a commitment to worthy causes.
~ Norman Vincent Peale ~
2019
A theory is only as good as its assumptions. If the premises are false, the theory has no real scientific value. The only scientific criterion for judging the validity of a scientific theory is a confrontation with the data of experience.
~ Maurice Allais ~
2020
Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality,
And the vast that is evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.
~ Walt Whitman ~
in
~ Leaves of Grass ~
2021
Weave lasting sure, weave day and night the weft, the warp, incessant weave, tire not,
(We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the end, nor really aught we know,
But know the work, the need goes on and shall go on, the death-envelop'd march of peace as well as war goes on,)
For great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to weave,
We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave.
~ Walt Whitman ~
in
~ Leaves of Grass ~
2022
Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than evil — but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce the good. I've got great faith in the essential fairness and decency — you may say goodness — of the human being.
~ Norman Vincent Peale ~


2023
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