Wikiquote:Quote of the day/November 2013

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Today is Thursday, November 21, 2024; it is now 08:42 (UTC)


November 1

 


When we survey the whole field of religion, we find a great variety in the thoughts that have prevailed there; but the feelings on the one hand and the conduct on the other are almost always the same, for Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives. The theories which Religion generates, being thus variable, are secondary; and if you wish to grasp her essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct as being the more constant elements.

~ William James ~




 


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November 2
 

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. … Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

~ Lois McMaster Bujold ~


 

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November 3
 


History may clarify our understanding of the supreme work of art, but can never account for it completely; for the Time of art is not the same as the Time of history.

~ André Malraux ~


 

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November 4
 

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee.

~ Augustus Toplady ~


 

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November 5
 

I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

~ Susan B. Anthony ~


 

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November 6
 

The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.

~ Zig Ziglar ~


 

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November 7
 


In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.

~ Albert Camus ~
 

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November 8
 

We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter. A certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life. A family needs work as well as bread. Property is proper to man. We must keep repeating these things. Eternal life begins now. "All the way to heaven is heaven, because He said, "I am the Way." The cross is there, of course, but "in the cross is joy of spirit." And love makes all things easy.

~ Dorothy Day ~


 

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November 9
 

In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature.

~ Carl Sagan ~




 

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November 10

 

Dare to be wise! Energy and spirit is needed to overcome the obstacles which indolence of nature as well as cowardice of heart oppose to our instruction. It is not without significance that the old myth makes the goddess of Wisdom emerge fully armed from the head of Jupiter; for her very first function is warlike. Even in her birth she has to maintain a hard struggle with the senses, which do not want to be dragged from their sweet repose. The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error. Content if they themselves escape the hard labor of thought, men gladly resign to others the guardianship of their ideas, and if it happens that higher needs are stirred in them, they embrace with a eager faith the formulas which State and priesthood hold in readiness for such an occasion.

~ Friedrich Schiller ~


 

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November 11

 



A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends.

~ Kurt Vonnegut ~


 


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November 12
 

Justice and equity are twin Guardians that watch over men. From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations.

~ Bahá'u'lláh ~


 

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November 13
 

All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~


 

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November 14
 

Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

~ Jawaharlal Nehru ~


 

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November 15
 

I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me — so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

~ Georgia O'Keeffe ~


 

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November 16
 

Besides the conversation of women, it is dreams that keep the world in orbit. But dreams also form a diadem of moons, therefore the sky is that splendour inside a man's head, if his head is not, in fact, his own unique sky.

~ José Saramago ~


 

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November 17
 

I would have men invest themselves with the dignity of an aim higher than the chase for wealth; choose a thing to do in life outside of the making of things, and keep it in mind, — not for a day, nor a year, but for a life-time.

~ Voltairine de Cleyre ~



 

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November 18
 

So... all of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will — where do you want to start?

~ Steven Moffat ~


 

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November 19


 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

~ Abraham Lincoln ~


 


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November 20

 

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

~ Robert F. Kennedy ~
  

 


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November 21
 

Wherever we are, God's in that moment, God's speaking to us, and if we've just got our ears open and our antennas up, there's no lack of inspiration. He's not silent. We just have to be listening.

~ Steven Curtis Chapman ~


 

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November 22

 

It should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.

~ John F. Kennedy ~


 

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November 23
 

I've been running all my lives. Through time and space, every second of every minute of every day for over 900 years. I fought for peace in a universe at war. Now the time has come to face the choices I've made in the name of the Doctor. Our future depends upon one single moment of one impossible day — the day I've been running from all my life: The Day of the Doctor.

~ Eleventh incarnation of the Doctor of Doctor Who ~


 

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November 24
 

Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy. From all these considerations it is clearer than the sun at noonday, that the true schismatics are those who condemn other men's writings, and seditiously stir up the quarrelsome masses against their authors, rather than those authors themselves, who generally write only for the learned, and appeal solely to reason. In fact, the real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over.

~ Baruch Spinoza ~



 

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November 25
 

All human history is the struggle between systems that attempt to shackle the human personality in the name of some intangible good on the one hand and systems that enable and expand the scope of human personality in the pursuit of extremely tangible aims. The American system is the most successful in the world because it harmonizes best with the aims and longings of human personality while allowing the best protection to other personalities.

~ Ben Stein ~


 

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November 26
 

Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.

~ Eugène Ionesco ~


 

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November 27
 

Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

~ Bruce Lee ~


 

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November 28

 


If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.

~ David Zindell ~





 


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November 29
 

Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety. It shows itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations.

~ Louisa May Alcott ~


 

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November 30
 

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold, which the owner knows not of.

~ Jonathan Swift ~


 

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Today is Thursday, November 21, 2024; it is now 08:42 (UTC)