Wikiquote:Quote of the day/October 2012

QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

Today is Thursday, November 21, 2024; it is now 08:54 (UTC)

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October 1

Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.

~ Jimmy Carter ~

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October 2

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

~ Wallace Stevens ~

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October 3

Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.

~ Gore Vidal ~

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October 4

For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.

~ Rutherford B. Hayes ~

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October 5

Periods of history when values undergo a fundamental shift are certainly not unprecedented. … The distinguishing features of such transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. They are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority or integrate. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements. … an amalgamation of cultures is taking place. I see it as proof that something is happening, something is being born, that we are in a phase when one age is succeeding another, when everything is possible.

~ Václav Havel ~

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October 6

Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.

~ David Brin ~

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October 7

Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?

~ Steven Erikson ~

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October 8

The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such demands. "I already know the important things!" we say. Then Changer comes and throws our old ideas away.

~ Frank Herbert ~
in
~ Chapterhouse : Dune ~

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October 9

Christ said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." And the Indians say that and the Zen people say that. We're all God. I'm not a god or the God, but we're all God and we're all potentially divine — and potentially evil. We all have everything within us and the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh and within us, and if you look hard enough you'll see it.

~ John Lennon ~

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October 10

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

~ Lin Yutang ~

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October 11

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~

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October 12

The true Christian is not obliged to renounce the things of this world or to lessen his natural abilities. On the contrary, inasmuch as he incorporates them into his normal life in a disciplined manner, he develops and perfects them; he thereby ennobles the natural life itself, supplying efficacious values to it not only of the spiritual and eternal world but also of the material and earthly world.

~ Edith Stein ~

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October 13

I write from instinct, from inexplicable sparkle. I don't know why I'm writing what I'm writing. Usually, I sit and I let my hands wander on my guitar. And I sing anything. I play anything. And I wait till I come across a pleasing accident. Then I start to develop it. Once you take a piece of musical information, there are certain implications that it automatically contains — the implication of that phrase elongated, contracted, or inverted or in another time signature. So you start with an impulse and go to what your ear likes.

~ Paul Simon ~

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October 14

seeming's enough for slaves of space and time

— ours is the now and here of freedom. Come

~ E. E. Cummings ~

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October 15

There are no facts, only interpretations.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~

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October 16

The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.

~ Hugh Latimer ~

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October 17

By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.

~ Arthur Miller ~

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October 18

Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is Jove appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of his great allegory — the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended.

~ Herman Melville ~
in
~ Moby-Dick ~

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October 19

Man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the Grave. Solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre. Nor ommiting Ceremonies of Bravery in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible Sun within us.

~ Thomas Browne ~

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October 20

A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance or connections they do not perceive.

~ John Dewey ~

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October 21

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.

~ Alphonse de Lamartine ~

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October 22

To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist. The old distinction between artists and scientists must vanish. Every time we teach a child correct usage of an external symbol, we must spend as much time teaching him how to fission and reassemble external grammar to communicate the internal.

~ Timothy Leary ~

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October 23

In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better.

~ Michael Crichton ~

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October 24

Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow.

~ Denise Levertov ~

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October 25

Of studie took he most cure and most hede.
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

~ Geoffrey Chaucer ~

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October 26

Have I been blind, have I been lost,
inside myself and my own mind;
hypnotized, mesmerized,
by what my eyes have seen?

~ Natalie Merchant ~

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October 27

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

~ Dylan Thomas ~

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October 28

Neither wisdom nor good will is now dominant. Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.

~ Jonas Salk ~

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October 29

There is a certain nobility and dignity in combat soldiers and medical aid men with dirt in their ears. They are rough and their language gets coarse because they live a life stripped of convention and niceties. Their nobility and dignity come from the way they live unselfishly and risk their lives to help each other.

~ Bill Mauldin ~

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October 30

That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.

~ Paul Valéry ~

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October 31

There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.

~ Charles M. Schulz ~
in
~ It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown ~

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QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

Today is Thursday, November 21, 2024; it is now 08:54 (UTC)