Wikiquote:Quote of the day/October 2007

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October 1
Creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story — a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin


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October 2

If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the room and on the stair,

Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost

Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.

~ Wallace Stevens ~


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October 3
I'm an optimist. In order to be libertarian, you have to be an optimist. You have to have a benign view of human nature, to believe that human beings left to their own devices are basically good. But I'm not so sure about human institutions, and I think the real point of argument here is whether or not large corporations are human institutions or some other entity we need to be thinking about curtailing. Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government. ~ John Perry Barlow


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October 4
Personally I do not resort to force — not even the force of law — to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example — of fashion. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes


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October 5
The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. ... He does not confuse truth with plausibility; he takes for truth what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. ... The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy. ~ Denis Diderot


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October 6
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life...

~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~


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October 7
We depend on our words ... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character ... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly. ~ Niels Bohr


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October 8
The sequential nature of actual events is not illuminated with lengthy precision by the powers of prescience except under the most extraordinary circumstances. The oracle grasps incidents cut out of the historic chain. Eternity moves. It inflicts itself upon the oracle and the supplicant alike. Let Muad'Dib's subjects doubt his majesty and his oracular visions. Let them deny his powers. Let them never doubt Eternity. ~ Frank Herbert in Dune Messiah


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October 9
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. ~ John Lennon


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October 10
The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world — and the most dangerous. ~ James Clavell


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October 11
At all times, day by day, we have to continue fighting for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom from want — for these are things that must be gained in peace as well as in war. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt


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October 12
Everything abstract is ultimately part of the concrete. Everything inanimate finally serves the living. That is why every activity dealing in abstraction stands in ultimate service to a living whole. ~ Edith Stein


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October 13
I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. If you see it, black and white people, both sides look to see the differences, they don't look at what they have together. Men and women, and old and young, and so on. And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it. ~ Doris Lessing


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October 14
There's an old African proverb that says "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." We have to go far — quickly. And that means we have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing, and why we have to work to solve it. ~ Al Gore


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October 15
Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche


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October 16
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out. ~ Oscar Wilde


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October 17
My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind; and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone. ~ Arthur Miller


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October 18
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith


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October 19
Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it comes out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further development. ~ Lewis Mumford


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October 20
I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings
Coming down is the hardest thing.

~ Tom Petty ~


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October 21
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~


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October 22
Think for yourself and question authority. ~ Timothy Leary


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October 23
Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich. ~ Sarah Bernhardt


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October 24

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. ...

I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings.

~ Denise Levertov ~


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October 25
For out of olde feldes, as men seith,
Cometh al this new corn fro yeer to yere;
And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere.

~ Geoffrey Chaucer ~


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October 26
Contempt loves the silence
it thrives in the dark
with fine winding tendrils
that strangle the heart.

~ Natalie Merchant ~


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October 27
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. ~ Theodore Roosevelt


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October 28
I have dreams, and I have nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams. ~ Jonas Salk


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October 29
This is a terrific outburst. And since it doesn’t have a tail right now, some observers have confused it with a nova. We’ve had at least two reports of a new star. ~ Brian G. Marsden


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October 30
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. ~ John Adams


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October 31
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Love is the law, love under will.
~ Aleister Crowley ~


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QOTD : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

Today is Thursday, March 28, 2024; it is now 12:56 (UTC)