Wikiquote:Quote of the day/October 2018

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October 1

Ultimately, the basic issue is whether America will provide global leadership that springs from the unity and the integrity of the American people, or whether extremist doctrines, the manipulation of the truth, will define America's role in the world.
At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul. …
But I am not discouraged. I really am not. I do not despair for our country. I never do. I believe, as I always have, the essential decency and compassion and common sense of the American people will prevail.

~ Jimmy Carter ~

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October 2

In childhood we live under the brightness of immortality — heaven is as near and actual as seaside. Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities: God is good, the grown-up man or woman knows the answer to every question, there is such a thing as truth, and justice is as measured and faultless as a clock. Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood — for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories…

~ Graham Greene ~

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October 3

Christ himself, who preached the life of love, was yet as lonely as any man that ever lived. Yet I could not say that he was mistaken because he preached the life of love and fellowship, and lived and died in loneliness; nor would I dare assert his way was wrong because a billion men have since professed his way and never followed it.

~ Thomas Wolfe ~

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October 4

One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.

~ Rutherford B. Hayes ~

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October 5

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clearsighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.

~ Václav Havel ~

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October 6

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

~ David Brin ~

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October 7

Do not seek to find hope among your leaders. They are the repositories of poison. Their interest in you extends only so far as their ability to control you. For you, they seek duty and obedience, and they will ply you with the language of stirring faith. They seek followers, and woe to those who question, or voice challenge.
Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin. And people die.

~ Steven Erikson ~

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October 8

Man is the animal who weeps and laughs – and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back – in a book.

~ John Cowper Powys ~

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October 9

History moves in contradictions. The skeleton of historic existence, the economic structure of society, also develops in contradictions. Forms eternally follow forms. Everything has only a passing being. The dynamic force of life creates the new over and over again — such is the law inherent in reality.

~ Nikolai Bukharin ~

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October 10

The good die young — but not always. The wicked prevail — but not consistently. I am confused by life, and I feel safe within the confines of the theatre. O'Neil's dramas are slapstick farces, Albee's riddles are simple explanations, Pinter's threatening and threatened anti-heroes are innocent babes — next to life and the living.
I cry out for order and find it only in art.

~ Helen Hayes ~

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October 11

I have been one of those who have carried the fight for complete freedom of information in the United Nations. And while accepting the fact that some of our press, our radio commentators, our prominent citizens and our movies may at times be blamed legitimately for things they have said and done, still I feel that the fundamental right of freedom of thought and expression is essential. If you curtail what the other fellow says and does, you curtail what you yourself may say and do.
In our country we must trust the people to hear and see both the good and the bad and to choose the good.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~

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October 12

The imperturbability of the Church resides in her ability to harmonize the unconditional preservation of eternal truths with an unmatchable elasticity of adjustment to the circumstances and challenges of changing times.

~ Edith Stein ~

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October 13

When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?

~ Jamal Khashoggi ~

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October 14

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

~ Hannah Arendt ~

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October 15

Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.

~ John Kenneth Galbraith ~

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October 16

One may not give one's soul to a devil of hate — and remain forever scatheless.

~ Eugene O'Neill ~

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October 17

A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance — you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke.

~ Arthur Miller ~

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October 18

The attainment of a just society is the cherished hope of civilized men.

~ Pierre Trudeau ~

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October 19

In my experience, each failure contains the seeds of your next success — if you are willing to learn from it.

~ Paul Allen ~

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October 20

I know so well the look on your face
And there's somethin' lucky about this place
There's somethin' good comin'
Just over the hill
Somethin' good comin'
I know it will

And I'm in for the long run
Wherever it goes
Ridin' the river
Wherever it goes.

~ Tom Petty ~

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October 21

It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass, It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin ~

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October 22

Perfection is a costly flower and is cultured only by an uncompromising, strict husbandry.

~ Burton Rascoe ~

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October 23

The purpose of the I Ching or the tarot … is to help you get access to yourself, by providing ambiguity for you to interpret. And this quality of ambiguity is shared with nearly all forms of divination — cast artifacts, or entrails, or weather formations, or events such as the flight of birds, that one could choose either to see as "omens" or to ignore.
The very thing that makes these divination techniques seem so unscientific is what makes it possible for them to work.

~ Michael Crichton ~
in
~ Travels ~

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October 24

The power to distinguish between person and performance and to communicate intrinsic worth flows naturally out of our own sense of intrinsic worth.

~ Stephen Covey ~

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October 25

If government, or those in positions of power and authority, can silence criticism by the argument that such criticism might be misunderstood somewhere, there is an end to all criticism, and perhaps an end to our kind of political system. For men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

~ Henry Steele Commager ~

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October 26

America needs every one of us to lend our energy, our talents, our ambition to making our nation better and stronger. I believe that with all my heart. That's why “Stronger Together” is not just a lesson from our history. It's not just a slogan for our campaign. It's a guiding principle for the country we've always been and the future we're going to build. A country where the economy works for everyone, not just those at the top. Where you can get a good job and send your kids to a good school, no matter what zip code you live in. A country where all our children can dream, and those dreams are within reach. Where families are strong… communities are safe… And yes, love trumps hate. That's the country we're fighting for. That's the future we're working toward.

~ Hillary Clinton ~

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October 27

All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small.

~ Theodore Roosevelt ~

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October 28

Some people might look at something and let it go by, because they don't recognize the pattern and the significance. It's the sensitivity to pattern recognition that seems to me to be of great importance. It's a matter of being able to find meaning, whether it's positive or negative, in whatever you encounter. It's like a journey. It's like finding the paths that will allow you to go forward, or that path that has a block that tells you to start over again or do something else.

~ Jonas Salk ~

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October 29

Take care that thou be not made a fool by flatterers, for even the wisest men are abused by these. Know, therefore, that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing; but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies, as thou shalt never, by their will, discern evil from good, or vice from virtue. And, because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the additions of other men's praises is most perilous. Do not therefore praise thyself, except thou wilt be counted a vain-glorious fool; neither take delight in the praises of other men, except thou deserve it, and receive it from such as are worthy and honest, and will withal warn thee of thy faults; for flatterers have never any virtue — they are ever base, creeping, cowardly persons. … But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend.

~ Walter Raleigh ~

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October 30

Virtue is not always amiable. Integrity is sometimes ruined by prejudices and by passions.

~ John Adams ~

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October 31

I am beginning to have a healthy dread of possessions, be it of a country, a house, a being or even an idea. If we are bothered by possessions we cannot really live either from without or from within; we are the possession of our possessions. All wars and most loves come from the possessive instinct. Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men: that you may belong to everything and everything be yours inclusive of yourself.
Could we, and we can, have the vital necessities for all, we should do away with this cry of class and begin to differentiate between individuals.

~ Natalie Clifford Barney ~

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Today is Monday, December 30, 2024; it is now 14:44 (UTC)