Wikiquote:Quote of the day/August

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QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
Today is Wednesday, February 10, 2010; it is now 08:38 (UTC)


July << August 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 >> September

This page lists quote of the day proposals specifically for dates in the month of August, 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: August 2008 - August 2009

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.
2003
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods. ~ Aristotle
2004
Called or uncalled, God is there. ~ Ancient proverb, said to be Spartan, popularized by Carl Jung
  • selected by Kalki
    This is a translation of the Latin phrase Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit. which Jung used as an inscription on his house, and also on his tomb. It is also commonly translated as " Called or uncalled, God is present." or sometimes "Invoked or not invoked...", "Bidden or unbidden", or "Summoned or not summoned..." God is present.
2005
From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space. ~ Herman Melville (born 1 August 1819)
2006
And now we meet in an abandoned studio
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago
And you remember the jingles used to go
Oh, oh — You were the first one.
Oh, oh — You were the last one.
Video killed the radio star.
~ The Buggles ~
2007
People ask what are my intentions with my films — my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. ~ Ingmar Bergman (recent death)
2008
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. ~ Herman Melville in Moby-Dick (born 1 August 1819)
2009
In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a sacred white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, — even though it be covertly, and by snatches. ~ Herman Melville
2010

[edit] Suggestions

A man to thrive must keep alive.

  • 0 (no source, no anon, no relevance) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:43, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 0 Zarbon 14:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

They took the credit for your second symphony.
Rewritten by machine and new technology,
and now I understand the problems you can see.
~ The Buggles, "Video Killed the Radio Star"

  • first song played on MTV, (1 August 1981)
  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:49, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 3 Jeff Q (talk) 09:47, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 14:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:29, 2 August 2008 (UTC) not as memorable as the chorus of the song, which has already been used.

Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round. ~ Herman Melville (born 1 August 1819)

  • 3 Kalki 23:33, 31 July 2005 (UTC) with a lean toward 4
  • 1 Zarbon 14:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:48, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom? ~ Herman Melville (born 1 August 1819)

  • 3 Kalki 23:33, 31 July 2005 (UTC) with a lean toward 4
  • 1 Zarbon 14:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:48, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ~ Michael Badnarik

  • 3 Zarbon 03:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 0 Kalki 19:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC) because this is apparently a misattribution, at least in terms of authorship. 1 Kalki 11:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC) I would rank this higher, but I don't believe this actually originates with Badnarik.
  • PhR 18:36, 1 June 2009 (UTC)NPOV prevents me from commenting on Badnarik. Check http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rita_Mae_Brown right here.
You seem to assert that this did not originate with Badnarik, which is fairly well evidenced, but you have numerically ranked this high, by our system in which the highest favor is 4, and the lowest is 0. ~ Kalki 19:21, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
I didn't mean to rank the quote at all, Kalki, so I just removed the ranking. Hope it's ok. --PhR 00:11, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Allow me to dispel a myth. People in the Middle East do not hate us for our freedom. They do not hate us for our lifestyle. They hate us because we have spent many years attempting to force them to emulate our lifestyle. ~ Michael Badnarik

The question is: How bad do things have to get before you will do something about it? Where is your line in the sand? If you don't enforce the constitutional limitations on your government very soon, you are likely to find out what World War III will be like. I'm quite sure that I will never experience that war - because dissidents are always the first to be eliminated. ~ Michael Badnarik

I am a very peaceful man. I love people and am known for my gregarious personality. However, if you try to confiscate my guns, I will feel compelled to give them to you, one bullet at a time. ~ Michael Badnarik

I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also.~ Herman Melville, in Moby-Dick

Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature. It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is the only Voice of our God. ~ Herman Melville

There is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is. ~ Herman Melville, in The Confidence-Man

It is — or seems to be — a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally & impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it. ~ Herman Melville

  • 3 Kalki 07:29, 28 July 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:48, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


2004
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts... ~ William Shakespeare in As You Like It
2005
When are you people going to learn? It's not about who's right or wrong. No denomination's nailed it yet, and they never will because they're all too self-righteous to realize that it doesn't matter what you have faith in, just that you have faith. Your hearts are in the right place, but your brains need to wake up. I have issues with anyone who treats faith as a burden instead of a blessing. You people don't celebrate your faith; you mourn it. ~ "Serendipity" in Dogma, by Kevin Smith
2006
Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. ~ James Baldwin (born 2 August 1924)
2007
The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development — whether psychological or material — one must pass on to the actual realization. ~ Michelangelo Antonioni (recent death)
2008
Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace. ~ James Baldwin
2009
Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain. ~ John Tyndall
2010

[edit] Suggestions

There is no toy called easy joy.

  • 0 (no source, no anon, no relevance) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:43, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 0 Zarbon 14:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses. ~ James Baldwin (born 2 August 1924)

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. ~ James Baldwin

  • 3 InvisibleSun 03:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 10:26, 1 August 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 14:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply. ~ James Baldwin

  • 3 InvisibleSun 03:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 10:26, 1 August 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 14:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. ~ James Baldwin

  • 3 InvisibleSun 03:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 10:26, 1 August 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 14:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up. ~ James Baldwin (born 2 August 1924)

The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. ~ Ken MacLeod

Life is a wave, which in no two consecutive moments of its existence is composed of the same particles. ~ John Tyndall

  • 2 Zarbon 03:46, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 11:10, 31 July 2008 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:15, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste. ~ John Tyndall

  • 2 Zarbon 03:46, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 11:10, 31 July 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:15, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

They are not long, the days of wine and roses;
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream. ~ Ernest Dowson

  • 2 Zarbon 03:46, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 11:10, 31 July 2008 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:15, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did. ~ James Baldwin

If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. ~ James Baldwin

It's no credit to this enormously rich country that there are more oppressive, less decent governments elsewhere. We claim superiority of our institutions. We ought to live up to our own standards, not use misery elsewhere as an endless source of self-gratification and justification. ~ James Baldwin

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. ~ James Baldwin

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. ~ James Baldwin

One writes out of one thing only — one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art. ~ James Baldwin


2004
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children. ~ Khalil Gibran
2005
When I talk of the purpose of life, I am thinking not only of human life, but of all life on Earth and of the life which must exist upon other planets throughout the universe. It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose. ~ Clifford D. Simak (born 3 August 1904)
2006
Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries. ~ Clifford D. Simak (born 3 August 1904)
2007
There is a plan, it seems to me, that reaches out of the electron to the rim of the universe and what this plan may be or how it came about is beyond my feeble intellect. But if we are looking for something on which to pin our faith — and, indeed, our hope — the plan might well be it. I think we have thought too small and have been too afraid. ~ Clifford D. Simak (born 3 August 1904)
2008
I have tried at times to place humans in perspective against the vastness of universal time and space. I have been concerned with where we, as a race, may be going and what may be our purpose in the universal scheme — if we have a purpose. In general, I believe we do, and perhaps an important one. ~ Clifford D. Simak
2009
I did not want to move. For I had the feeling that this was a place, once seen, that could not be seen again. If I left and then came back, it would not be the same; no matter how many times I might return to this particular spot the place and feeling would never be the same, something would be lost or something would be added, and there never would exist again, through all eternity, all the integrated factors that made it what it was in this magic moment. ~ Clifford D. Simak
2010

[edit] Suggestions

I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that any one has gone. ~ 3 August 1493 1492 diary entry by Christopher Columbus, starting his journey to what will become known as America.

Time is still the great mystery to us. It is no more than a concept; we don't know if it even exists... ~ Clifford D. Simak

  • 3 because the eternity of time stretches forever and the acceptance of the unknown is what makes it even more of a mystery. Zarbon 15:39, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 12:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:21, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

There was a world of mutants, men and women who were more than normal men and women, persons who had certain human talents and certain human understandings which the normal men and women of the world had never known, or having known, could not utilize in their entirety, unable to use intelligently all the mighty powers which lay dormant in their brains. ~ Clifford D. Simak

  • 3 because this has been scientifically proven true, that human beings use only approximately three percent of their brain. And the "smartest" ones use merely four percent. Zarbon 15:39, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 12:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:21, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean by faith? Is faith enough for Man? Should he be satisfied with faith alone? Is there no way of finding out the truth? Is the attitude of faith, of believing in something for which there can be no more than philosophic proof...? ~ Clifford D. Simak

  • 3 because the devotion to faith for the sake of faith alone doesn't hold enough evidence for mankind to suffer its restrictions. Philosophic proof is beautiful, magnificent, and utterly brilliant, but it has proven not unsatisfactory for the minds that have captured the Earth today. Zarbon 15:39, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 12:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC) (but would complete the last sentence as Simak wrote it: "Is the attitude of faith, of believing in something for which there can be no more than philosophic proof the true mark of a Christian?" — in that form I might someday rank it a 3, or even a 4, but not this year.)
  • 3 for the completed quote. - InvisibleSun 23:21, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

We came into a homeless frontier, a place where we were not welcome, where nothing that lived was welcome, where thought and logic were abhorrent and we were frightened, but we went into this place because the universe lay before us, and if we were to know ourselves, we must know the universe... ~ Clifford D. Simak

  • 3 Kalki 12:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 because all is intertwined. Zarbon 04:14, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:21, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps there was no limit, there might, quite likely, be no such condition as the ultimate; there might be no time when any creature or any group of creatures could stop at any certain point and say, this is as far as we can go, there is no use of trying to go farther. For each new development produced, as side effects, so many other possibilities, so many other roads to travel, that with each step one took down any given road there were more paths to follow. There'd never be an end, he thought — no end to anything. ~ Clifford D. Simak

  • 3 Kalki 12:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4
  • 2 Zarbon 04:14, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:21, 2 August 2009 (UTC)


2003
I can't die. It would ruin my image. ~ Jack La Lanne
2004
We are defined by how we use our power. ~ Gerry Spence
2005
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~ (born 4 August 1792)
2006
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared...
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~
2007
In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man’s estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~
2008
Throughout American history, there have been moments that call on us to meet the challenges of an uncertain world, and pay whatever price is required to secure our freedom. ~ Barack Obama
2009
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Entitle us to the Liberty of proving the Truth of the Papers, which in the Information are called false, malicious, seditious and scandalous. ~ John Peter Zenger, acquitted 4 August 1735 of slander on the grounds that what he published was true.

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number —
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you —
Ye are many — they are few.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • 3 InvisibleSun 15:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 15:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) I might eventually rank this a 3 or 4, but again attempting to gain favor for one of my favorites above.

The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us, — visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower...
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

All love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

  • 3 Kalki 12:35, 1 August 2007 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:31, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And that's what I ask. But they get mad at the straight line. ~ Helen Thomas

  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 eventually

...we seem to be more tolerant now of what I think we should not tolerate. ~ Helen Thomas

  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 eventually

You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun. ~ Helen Thomas

  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 or 4 eventually

When one of you young queens has finished, can you bring this old queen a drink? ~ Queen Elizabeth

  • 2 for comedic value. Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I am almost glad we have been bombed. Now I feel I can look the East End in the face. ~ Queen Elizabeth

  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art. ~ Walter Pater

  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 eventually

Every intellectual product must be judged from the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced. ~ Walter Pater

  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 eventually

Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy. To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. ~ Walter Pater

  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 4 eventually

What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions. ~ Walter Pater

  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 eventually

I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war...That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. ~ Barack Obama

  • 4 because I completely agree with Obama here. I shortened the original verse in order to correspond with the initial message, the main message of the quote. Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) though inclined toward a 3 or even a 4 eventually.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.' ~ Barack Obama

  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Evolution is more grounded in my experience than angels. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

...it bothers me when I hear people say that government is the enemy. They don't understand its fundamental role. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races. ~ Barack Obama

  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 05:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I am a prisoner of my own biography: I can't help but view the American experience through the lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who looked like me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 05:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath. When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 05:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

We will need to understand just how we got to this place, this land of warring factions and tribal hatreds. And we will need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, a bond that will not break. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 05:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

War might be hell and still the right thing to do. Economies could collapse despite the best-laid plans. People could work hard all their lives and still lose everything. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 and leaning toward a 4 for this one. Zarbon 05:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 20:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3 or even 4 eventually.

All the money in the world won't boost student achievement if parents make no effort to instill in their children the values of hard work and delayed gratification. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 20:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Identities are scrambling, and then cohering in new ways. Beliefs keep slipping through the noose of predictability. Facile expectations and simple explanations are being constantly upended. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 20:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 3 or even 4.

I was sorry to leave. Not simply because I had made so many new friends, but because in the faces of all the men and women I'd met I had recognized pieces of myself. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 20:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) very little context presented here; would require more information for clarity.

The blood of slaves reminds us that our pragmatism can sometimes be moral cowardice. Lincoln, and those buried at Gettysburg, remind us that we should pursue our own absolute truths only if we acknowledge that there may be a terrible price to pay. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 04:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

But deliberation alone could not provide the slave his freedom or cleanse America of its original sin. In the end, it was the sword that would sever his chains. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 04:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3 or eventual 4, but either trimmed of the inital "But" or extended for more context.

For in the end laws are just words on a page — words that are sometimes malleable, opaque, as dependent on context and trust as they are in a story or poem or promise to someone, words whose meanings are subject to erosion, sometimes collapsing in the blink of an eye. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 04:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3 or eventual 4, but either trimmed of the inital "For in the end" or extended for more context.

The very interconnectivity that increasingly binds the world together has empowered those who would tear that world down. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 01:55, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

No person, in any culture, likes to be bullied. No person likes living in fear because his or her ideas are different. Nobody likes being poor or hungry, and nobody likes to live under an economic system in which the fruits of his or her labor go perpetually unrewarded. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 01:55, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.

I reminded the men in the audience that being a father meant more than fathering a child; that even those of us who were physically present in the home are often emotionally absent; that precisely because many of us didn't have fathers in the house we have to redouble our efforts to break the cycle; and that if we want to pass on high expectations to our children, we have to have higher expectations for ourselves. ~ Barack Obama

  • 3 Zarbon 01:55, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)


2003
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. ~ Edsger Dijkstra
2004
Your strength is but an accident arising from the weakness of others. ~ Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness
2005
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. ~ Mohandas Gandhi
2006
Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread... ~ Conrad Aiken (born 5 August 1889)
2007
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. ~ Guy de Maupassant (born 5 August 1850)
2008
Those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force — they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (recent death)
2009
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
~ Wendell Berry ~
2010

Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:

  • Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. ~ Wendell Berry
  • If I could reach from pole to pole
    or grasp the ocean with a span,
    I would be measured by the soul
    The mind's the standard of the Man.
    ~ Isaac Watts ~
    (poem often used by Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man", who was born this day)

[edit] Suggestions

Blond hair and breasts, that's how I got started. I couldn't act. All I had was blond hair and a body men liked. The reason I got ahead is that I was lucky and met the right men. ~ Marilyn Monroe, found dead in her apartment that day

Separate we come, and separate we go, and this be it known, is all that we know. ~ Conrad Aiken (born 5 August 1889)

  • 3 Kalki 21:22, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 15:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

'Tis true, my form is something odd
but blaming me, is blaming God,
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.
~ Joseph Merrick ~ (born 5 August 1862)

  • 3 Kalki 15:24, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 3 Zarbon 15:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war. ~ Wendell Berry

  • 3 Kalki 14:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4

We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. ~ Wendell Berry

  • 3 Kalki 14:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.


2003
When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the plane will fly. ~ Donald Douglas
2004
Character does count. For too long we have gotten by in a society that says the only thing right is to get by and the only thing wrong is to get caught. Character is doing what's right when nobody is looking... ~ J. C. Watts
2005
The Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
2006
One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underpriviliged. ~ Richard Hofstadter
2007
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower — but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

~ Alfred Tennyson ~

2008
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
~ Alfred Tennyson, "In Memoriam A.H.H." (born this day)
2009
The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open. ~ Charles Fort
2010

[edit] Suggestions

I don't say we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops!...uh, depending on the breaks. ~ General "Buck" Turgidson, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Hiroshima was bombed on 6 August 1945)

The players often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand". - Ben Jonson died this day

The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system. The project started with the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups. ~ Tim Berners-Lee, Usenet article <6487@cernvax.cern.ch> (the first public announcement of CERN's "WorldWideWeb" system, made this day in 1991)

  • 4 121a0012 03:11, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • 3 121a0012 04:11, August 5, 2005 (UTC) (adjusted my vote as next year is the 15th anniversary which would be a better choice)
  • 2 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:37, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:23, 8 August 2007 (UTC) but might someday rank it a 3.
  • 1 Zarbon 15:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 18:09, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.
~ Alfred Tennyson, "Charge of the Light Brigade"

It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of either leads to the same practical result — ruthlessness in political life. ~ Richard Hofstadter (born 6 August 1916)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 01:29, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 15:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 15:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant. ~ Richard Hofstadter

  • 2 InvisibleSun 01:29, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:23, 8 August 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 1 Zarbon 15:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The outrageous is the reasonable, if introduced politely. ~ Charles Fort

  • 2 Zarbon 04:40, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:00, 5 August 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 18:09, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Triviaa 04:14, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I have taken the stand that nobody can be always wrong, but it does seem to me that I have approximated so highly that I am nothing short of a negative genius. ~ Charles Fort

  • 3 Zarbon 04:40, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:00, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 18:09, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Triviaa 04:14, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Here's what I advise any young struggling actress today: The important thing is to develop as a woman first, and a performer second. You wouldn't prostitute yourself to get a part, not if you're in the right mind. You won't be happy, whatever you do, unless you're comfortable with your own conscience. ~ Lucille Ball

  • 3 Zarbon 01:10, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 06:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

My ideal of womanhood has always been the pioneer woman who fought and worked at her husband's side. She bore the children, kept the home fires burning; she was the hub of the family, the planner and the dreamer. ~ Lucille Ball

  • 2 Zarbon 01:10, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 06:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Things said in embarrassment and anger are seldom the truth, but are said to hurt and wound the other person. Once said, they can never be taken back. ~ Lucille Ball

  • 3 with strong lean towards 4. Zarbon 01:10, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 06:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

We're willing to take a lot of punishment, but the minute we hit a little bit of success we are liable to run from it. We're frightened of it and develop all kinds of phobias as a consequence. Outsiders who don't understand think we have a chip on our shoulder, but it's not that at all. We're so used to failure, to being hurt and rebuffed, that we can easily come unhinged by success. ~ Lucille Ball

  • 3 Zarbon 01:10, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 06:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

When you're too mad and too rattled to see straight, you're bound to make mistakes. You can't go on and on for years being miserable about a situation and not have it change you. You get so you can't stand yourself. ~ Lucille Ball

  • 3 Zarbon 01:10, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 06:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Children internalize their parents' unhappiness. Fortunately, they absorb our contentment just as readily. ~ Lucille Ball

  • 4 Zarbon 01:10, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 06:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

The altar of liberty totters when it is cemented only with blood. ~ Daniel O'Connell

  • 3 Ningauble 13:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 06:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

O damsel, be you wise
To call him shamed, who is but overthrown?
Thrown have I been, nor once, but many a time.
Victor from vanquished issues at the last,
And overthrower from being overthrown.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range.
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
~ Alfred Tennyson ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
~ Alfred Tennyson ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.
~ Alfred Tennyson ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are —
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
~ Alfred Tennyson ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

Something is or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams —

"Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare.
~ Alfred Tennyson in The Two Voices ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow through our deeds and make them pure.
That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquered years
To one that with us works, and trust,
With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.
~ Alfred Tennyson in In Memoriam A.H.H. ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

What happiness to reign a lonely king,
Vext — O ye stars that shudder over me,
O earth that soundest hollow under me,
Vext with waste dreams? for saving I be joined
To her that is the fairest under heaven,
I seem as nothing in the mighty world,
And cannot will my will, nor work my work
Wholly, nor make myself in mine own realm
Victor and lord. But were I joined with her,
Then might we live together as one life,
And reigning with one will in everything
Have power on this dark land to lighten it,
And power on this dead world to make it live.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.

The Holy Thing is here again
Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray,
And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray,
That so perchance the vision may be seen
By thee and those, and all the world be healed.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a VERY strong lean toward 4.

Blinder unto holy things
Hope not to make thyself by idle vows,
Being too blind to have desire to see.
But if indeed there came a sign from heaven,
Blessed are Bors, Lancelot and Percivale,
For these have seen according to their sight.
For every fiery prophet in old times,
And all the sacred madness of the bard,
When God made music through them, could but speak
His music by the framework and the chord;
And as ye saw it ye have spoken truth.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

Out of those to whom the vision came
My greatest hardly will believe he saw;
Another hath beheld it afar off,
And leaving human wrongs to right themselves,
Cares but to pass into the silent life.
And one hath had the vision face to face,
And now his chair desires him here in vain,
However they may crown him otherwhere.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Some among you held, that if the King
Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow:
Not easily, seeing that the King must guard
That which he rules, and is but as the hind
To whom a space of land is given to plow.
Who may not wander from the allotted field
Before his work be done; but, being done,
Let visions of the night or of the day
Come, as they will; and many a time they come,
Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,
This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,
This air that smites his forehead is not air
But vision — yea, his very hand and foot —
In moments when he feels he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One
Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

Who are wise in love
Love most, say least
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

Nine tithes of times
Face-flatterer and backbiter are the same.
And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crime
Are pronest to it, and impute themselves,
Wanting the mental range; or low desire
Not to feel lowest makes them level all;
Yea, they would pare the mountain to the plain,
To leave an equal baseness; and in this
Are harlots like the crowd, that if they find
Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
Not grieving that their greatest are so small,
Inflate themselves with some insane delight,
And judge all nature from her feet of clay,
Without the will to lift their eyes, and see
Her godlike head crowned with spiritual fire,
And touching other worlds.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

The fire of Heaven has killed the barren cold,
And kindled all the plain and all the wold.
The new leaf ever pushes off the old.
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true;
Here, through the feeble twilight of this world
Groping, how many, until we pass and reach
That other, where we see as we are seen!
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

Know ye not then the Riddling of the Bards?
Confusion, and illusion, and relation,
Elusion, and occasion, and evasion?
I mock thee not but as thou mockest me,
And all that see thee, for thou art not who
Thou seemest, but I know thee who thou art.
And now thou goest up to mock the King,
Who cannot brook the shadow of any lie.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

There be many rumours on this head:
For there be those who hate him in their hearts,
Call him baseborn, and since his ways are sweet,
And theirs are bestial, hold him less than man:
And there be those who deem him more than man,
And dream he dropt from heaven..
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

Take thou the truth as thou hast told it me.
For truly as thou sayest, a Fairy King
And Fairy Queens have built the city, son…
And, as thou sayest, it is enchanted, son,
For there is nothing in it as it seems
Saving the King; though some there be that hold
The King a shadow, and the city real:
Yet take thou heed of him, for, so thou pass
Beneath this archway, then wilt thou become
A thrall to his enchantments, for the King
Will bind thee by such vows, as is a shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the which
No man can keep; but, so thou dread to swear,
Pass not beneath this gateway, but abide
Without, among the cattle of the field.
For an ye heard a music, like enow
They are building still, seeing the city is built
To music, therefore never built at all,
And therefore built for ever.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunderstorm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.
~ Alfred Tennyson ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
~ Alfred Tennyson ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a VERY strong lean toward 4.

Like an Aeolian harp that wakes
No certain air, but overtakes
Far thought with music that it makes:

Such seem'd the whisper at my side:
"What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?" I cried.
"A hidden hope," the voice replied:

So heavenly-toned, that in that hour
From out my sullen heart a power
Broke, like the rainbow from the shower,

To feel, altho' no tongue can prove
That every cloud, that spreads above
And veileth love, itself is love.
~ Alfred Tennyson in The Two Voices ~

  • 3 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow in the sky!
A young man will be wiser by and by;
An old man's wit may wander ere he die.
Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow on the lea!
And truth is this to me, and that to thee;
And truth or clothed or naked let it be.
Rain, sun, and rain! and the free blossom blows:
Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows?
From the great deep to the great deep he goes.
~ Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

  • 4 Kalki 08:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


2003
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word. ~ Andrew Jackson
2004
A man should be upright, not kept upright. ~ Marcus Aurelius
2005
Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places. ~ Garrison Keillor (born 7 August 1942)
2006
We help the internet not suck. ~ Jimmy Wales (born 7 August 1966)
2007
Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal. ~ Jimmy Wales
2008
The question isn't whether you have a good master or a bad master. It's to be your own master. That is the dignity of humanity. ~ Alan Keyes
2009
Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car. ~ Garrison Keillor
2010

[edit] Suggestions

When someone just writes 'fuck, fuck, fuck', we just fix it, laugh and move on. But the difficult social issues are the borderline cases - people who do some good work, but who are also a pain in the neck. ~ Jimmy Wales (born that day) "Who knows?", The Guardian, October 26, 2004

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. ~ Jimmy Wales

  • 0 3 Kalki 22:34, 5 August 2005 This quote has now already been used, on 15 January 2006
  • 0 Zarbon 15:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

It turns out a lot of people don’t get it. Wikipedia is like rock’n’roll; it’s a cultural shift. ~ Jimmy Wales

When a feeling dissolves, it ceases to be your enemy and begins to be one of your allies. ~ Ed Seykota

  • 2 Zarbon 04:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Freedom does not mean doing what you can get away with, doing what you please. It means, instead, having the opportunity to do what you ought to do--for family and for community and for humanity as a whole. ~ Alan Keyes

  • 2 Zarbon 04:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There can be no self-government without self-discipline. There can be no self-government without self-control. There can be no liberty unless it is grounded in moral discipline and the ability to do what is right. ~ Alan Keyes

  • 2 Zarbon 04:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 17:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The travesty of slavery wasn't physical abuse. It was the moral abuse of looking at a human being as if they are an animal. ~ Alan Keyes

  • 2 Zarbon 04:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There's not a single thing on offer in this all-too-temporary world for which you should ever sell your soul. ~ Alan Keyes

  • 3 for the soul should never be sold. Zarbon 04:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Our success or failure is not in the hands of our leaders. It is in our hands. ~ Alan Keyes

  • 2 Zarbon 04:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 17:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Every leader, and every regime, and every movement, and every organization that steps across the line to terrorism must be banished from the discourse of civilized human life. ~ Alan Keyes

  • 2 Zarbon 04:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 17:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The answer to crime is not gun control, it is law enforcement and self-control. ~ Alan Keyes

  • 3 Zarbon 04:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


2003
A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation." ~ Stephen Crane
2004
It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion. ~ Tertullian
2005
It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. ~ Paul Dirac (born 8 August 8 1902)
2006
Better to die on your feet than live on your knees! ~ Emiliano Zapata (born 8 August 1879)
2007
There is a quiet at the heart of love,
And I have pierced the pain and come to peace.
~ Sara Teasdale ~ (born 8 August 1884)
2008
If I am peaceful, I shall see
Beauty's face continually;
Feeding on her wine and bread
I shall be wholly comforted,
For she can make one day for me
Rich as my lost eternity.
~ Sara Teasdale ~
2009
If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,
If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,
Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,
A lamp in darkness.
~ Sara Teasdale ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as President I must put the interests of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad. ~ Richard Nixon, Resignation Speech, August 8, 1974

The ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one's acting in a certain manner has this tendency he has a right thus to act. ~ Francis Hutcheson (date of birth)

  • 3 Kalki 11:18, 7 August 2005 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:06, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

That Action is best which procures the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions misery. ~ Francis Hutcheson (date of birth)

  • 3 Kalki 11:18, 7 August 2005 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:06, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in the case of poetry, it's the exact opposite! ~ Paul Dirac, born 8 August 1902

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. ~ The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, died 8 August 1965

  • 3 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:06, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 - Would prefer that this quote be moved to December 14, Jackson's date of birth. - InvisibleSun 10:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:46, 7 August 2007 (UTC) (but would prefer it on the date of birth)
  • 2 Zarbon 15:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Make songs for Death as you would sing to Love —
But you will not assuage him. He alone
Of all the gods will take no gifts from men.
~ Sara Teasdale

I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies,—
You are my deepening skies,
Give me your stars to hold.
~ Sara Teasdale

O lovely chance, what can I do
To give my gratefulness to you?
You rise between myself and me
With a wise persistency;
I would have broken body and soul,
But by your grace, still I am whole.
~ Sara Teasdale

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
~ Sara Teasdale ~

  • 3 Kalki 23:46, 7 August 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 15:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Two thousand years — much has gone by forever,
Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men —
But here on the beaches that time passes over
The heart aches now as then.
~ Sara Teasdale ~

  • 3 Kalki 23:46, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 15:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Military occupation causes terrorism. ~ Chris Eubank

  • 2 Zarbon 05:06, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 17:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Democracy cannot be exported with a gun. ~ Chris Eubank

  • 2 Zarbon 05:06, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Sleep peacefully people, there will not be a war. ~ Alija Izetbegović

  • 2 Zarbon 05:06, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 17:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

But the voice of anatomy, like the voice of all nature, never reaches the mental ear of the Great Commoner. It is the novel province of anatomy to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the structure, the origin and the history of man. ~ Henry Fairfield Osborn

  • 4 Fossil 21:34, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 22:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

This chain of human ancestors was totally unknown to Darwin. He could not have even dreamed of such a flood of proof and truth. ~ Henry Fairfield Osborn

  • 3 Fossil 21:34, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 22:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Care for the race, even if the individual must suffer -- this must be the keynote of our future. ~ Henry Fairfield Osborn

  • 3 Fossil 21:34, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 22:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

We have to be reminded over and over again that Nature is full of paradoxes. ~ Henry Fairfield Osborn

  • 3 Fossil 21:34, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 22:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.


2003
The battle of the sexes will never be won as long as we keep sleeping with the enemy. ~ Emo Phillips
2004
Long live freedom and damn the ideologies. ~ Robinson Jeffers
2005
TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. ~ Jonathan B. Postel, RFC 793, entire text of section 2.10
2006
Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society... But for me, education means making creators... You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists. ~ Jean Piaget
2007
You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for — if you are honest — you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one. ~ P. L. Travers (born 9 August 1899)
2008
The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered. ~ Jean Piaget
2009
For me there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on. I don't look for an answer, because I don't think there is one. I'm very glad to be the bearer of a question.
~ P. L. Travers
2010

[edit] Suggestions

I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots, so I ask you to confirm me with your prayers. ~ Gerald Ford, became president on 9 August after Nixon's resignation.

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:31, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 don't want to use this if we use Nixon on 8th AllanHainey 12:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 17:32, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:12, 7 August 2007 (UTC); ditto on "not after Nixon"
  • 1 InvisibleSun 23:15, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:18, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. - Thomas Edison got telegraph patent today

If you are not ready, and did not know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways. It could knock you down, hard, or throw you against a tree or a wall. It is such a big explosion, it can smash in buildings and knock signboards over, and break windows all over town, but if you duck and cover, like Bert [the Turtle], you will be much safer. ~ Duck and Cover (1951), about protecting yourself from an atomic explosion; the last-ever nuclear attack (so far) occurred on this date

Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality... Knowledge, then, is a system of transformations that become progressively adequate. ~ Jean Piaget

What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle. ~ Marvin Minsky

No man can lose what he never had. ~ Izaak Walton

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy. ~ Izaak Walton

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. ~ Izaak Walton

We rarely recognize how wonderful it is that a person can traverse an entire lifetime without making a single really serious mistake — like putting a fork in one's eye or using a window instead of a door. ~ Marvin Minsky


2004
Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a thousand sincere people have denounced him for blasphemy. ~ Anthony de Mello
2005
There's a whole industry of conservatives saying, "Ah, it's those damn liberals," and a whole group of liberals saying, "It's all those damn conservatives." ~ Peter Jennings (recent death)
2006
Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. ~ Herbert Hoover (date of birth)
2007
It has occasionally been remarked upon that it is as easy to overlook something large and obvious as it is to overlook something small and niggling, and that the large things one overlooks can often cause problems. ~ Neil Gaiman in Stardust (movie adaptation released 10 August 2007)
2008
We are living in a time of trouble and bewilderment, in a time when none of us can foresee or foretell the future. But surely it is in times like these, when so much that we cherish is threatened or in jeopardy, that we are impelled all the more to strengthen our inner resources, to turn to the things that have no news value because they will be the same to-morrow that they were to-day and yesterday — the things that last, the things that the wisest, the most farseeing of our race and kind have been inspired to utter in forms that can inspire ourselves in turn. ~ Laurence Binyon (born 10 August 1869)
2009
Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.
And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value. ~ Andrew Sullivan
2010

[edit] Suggestions

To program is to understand. ~ Kristen Nygaard, computer scientist, died that day.

Being a politician is a poor profession. Being a public servant is a noble one. ~ Herbert Hoover (date of birth)

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism. ~ Herbert Hoover (date of birth)

Oh father high in heaven -- smile down upon your son
Who's busy with his money games -- his women and his gun. ~ Ian Anderson

  • 3 Zarbon 05:21, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 19:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 23:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC) Many of the Jethro Tull lyrics are interesting, and I might eventually suggest a few myself, but I don't count these as among the best.

First silence. Then denial. Then support of the insupportable. Then vilification of the dissenters. The pattern is as old as time. ~ Andrew Sullivan

  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 23:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC) The context of the quote isn't sufficiently clear as it stands.
  • 2 Zarbon 00:57, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

A constitutional republic dedicated before everything to the protection of liberty cannot legalize torture and remain a constitutional republic. It imports into itself a tumor of pure tyranny. ~ Andrew Sullivan

  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 00:57, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy. ~ Andrew Sullivan

  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Zarbon 00:57, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy. ~ Andrew Sullivan

  • 3 Kalki 22:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:25, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


2003
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. ~ Adlai Stevenson
2004
The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others. ~ Dag Hammarskjöld
2005
I do not believe that the tendency is to make men and women brave and glorious when you tell them that there are certain ideas upon certain subjects that they must never express; that they must go through life with a pretence as a shield; that their neighbors will think much more of them if they will only keep still; and that above all is a God who despises one who honestly expresses what he believes. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll (born 11 August 1833)
2006
Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
2007
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
2008
There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
2009
If the world ever advances beyond what it is today, it must be led by men who express their real opinions. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
2010

Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:

  • Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
  • You cannot choose your battlefield,
    God does that for you;
    But you can plant a standard
    Where a standard never flew.
    ~ Nathalia Crane ~

[edit] Suggestions

The only real game — I think — in the world is baseball. ~ Babe Ruth, in honour of his 500th homerun, scored that day

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:58, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 significant for USA but not really for anyone else AllanHainey 12:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
    • For the record, the first voter is not from the US (unless you count Israel as the 51st state). ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:04, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 3 121a0012 00:29, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 20:44, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 TomPhil 11:53, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC); for 2007 only, given Barry Bonds likely imminent new record
  • 0 Zarbon 15:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community. - Andrew Carnegie, died this day

  • 3 AllanHainey 12:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 20:44, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 - Should be transferred to November 25, Carnegie's birthdate. - InvisibleSun 21:14, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful. Upon that rock I stand. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll (date of birth)

  • 2 Kalki 12:05, 7 August 2005 (UTC) with a lean toward 3 or 4.
  • 2 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 21:14, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 15:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

An enemy forgiven is more dangerous than a thousand foes. ~ Rodolfo Graziani

  • 4 and I love this quote because of the magnificently climactic idea behind it...an enemy left alive can evolve into a dangerous man of vengeance. I love the imagery depicted by this quote, pertaining to say that the only incapable foe is the dead foe. Hence, forgiving a foe may create a deadlier one in turn. Zarbon 04:49, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

If one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects, not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi. If you wish to become a complete and wise leader, you must embrace a larger view of the Force. ~ from Star Wars as Darth Sidious Ian McDiarmid (born August 11)

  • 3 because this is what I strongly believe. This is most likely the most meaningful, most moral quotation in the history of Star Wars. Do not be dogmatic, dogma is the death of learning. This quote should seriously be taken into consideration. Zarbon 14:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Wipe them out, all of them. ~ from Star Wars as Darth Sidious Ian McDiarmid (born August 11)

  • 3 Zarbon 05:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I can feel your anger. It gives you focus. It makes you stronger. ~ from Star Wars as Darth Sidious Ian McDiarmid (born August 11)

  • 3 Zarbon 05:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Remember back to your early teachings. All who gain power are afraid to lose it. Even the Jedi. ~ from Star Wars as Darth Sidious Ian McDiarmid (born August 11)

  • 3 Zarbon 05:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Good is a point of view, Anakin. The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power. ~ from Star Wars as Darth Sidious Ian McDiarmid (born August 11)

  • 3 because this quote pretty much defines what I believe, especially "Good is a point of view" this quote is brilliance defined. Zarbon 05:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

We must reverse this psychology (of needing guns for home defense). We can do it by passing a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail- period! ~ Carl Rowan

  • 2 Zarbon 14:22, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Outside his own ever-narrowing field of specialization, a scientist is a layman. What members of an academy of science have in common is a certain form of semiparasitic living. ~ Erwin Chargaff

  • 2 Zarbon 14:22, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Standing in the presence of the Unknown, all have the same right to think, and all are equally interested in the great questions of origin and destiny. All I claim, all I plead for, is liberty of thought and expression. That is all. I do not pretend to tell what is absolutely true, but what I think is true. I do not pretend to tell all the truth.
I do not claim that I have floated level with the heights of thought, or that I have descended to the very depths of things. I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber. That is all. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

  • 3 Kalki 00:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, — never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

  • 3 Kalki 00:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

While utterly discarding all creeds, and denying the truth of all religions, there is neither in my heart nor upon my lips a sneer for the hopeful, loving and tender souls who believe that from all this discord will result a perfect harmony; that every evil will in some mysterious way become a good, and that above and over all there is a being who, in some way, will reclaim and glorify every one of the children of men; but for those who heartlessly try to prove that salvation is almost impossible; that damnation is almost certain; that the highway of the universe leads to hell; who fill life with fear and death with horror; who curse the cradle and mock the tomb, it is impossible to entertain other than feelings of pity, contempt and scorn. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

  • 3 Kalki 00:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The rights of all are equal: justice, poised and balanced in eternal calm, will shake from the golden scales in which are weighed the acts of men, the very dust of prejudice and caste: No race, no color, no previous condition, can change the rights of men. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

  • 3 Kalki 00:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.

Wait until the world is free before you write a creed. In this creed there will be but one word — Liberty. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

  • 4 Kalki 00:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


2003
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. ~ Adlai Stevenson
2004
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble. ~ Washington Irving
2005
Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes. ~ George Soros (born 12 August 1930)
2006
The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. ~ Erwin Schrödinger
2007
Faith plays an important role in an open society. Exactly because our understanding is imperfect, we cannot base our decisions on knowledge alone. We need to rely on beliefs, religious or otherwise, to help us make decisions. But we must remain open to the possibility that we may be wrong so that we can correct our mistakes. Otherwise, we are bound to be wrong. ~ George Soros
2008
It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated. ~ Edith Hamilton
2009
There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers. ~ Edith Hamilton
2010

[edit] Suggestions

H(t) \left| \psi (t) \right\rangle = i \hbar {\partial\over\partial t} \left| \psi (t) \right\rangle ~ Erwin Schrödinger, born that day.

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:08, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 121a0012 02:51, July 21, 2005 (UTC) (much too obscure)
  • 1 likewise too obscure
    • Unsigned vote! Also: too obscure? Schrödinger's equation is how the world works :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:06, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Sorry unsigned was mine, it might well be how the world works but, like all equations, without a definition of notation & terms it is essentially a meaningless arrangement of letters & symbols AllanHainey 07:27, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 4 - Amar 15:43, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 0 Kalki 17:33, 10 August 2005 (UTC) Great equation, but totally indecipherable for most people.
  • 0 Zarbon 15:28, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

People can have the Model T in any color - so long as it's black. - Henry Ford. Model T built this day.

If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. ~ Erwin Schrödinger

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:53, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: hopefully this is less scary. Yay cats :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:53, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 3 AllanHainey 07:50, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 acceptable, but still a bit obscure for most. Psi-functions and the context of the "dead cat" are not very plain.
  • 1 InvisibleSun 23:34, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:28, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

How can we escape from the trap that the terrorists have set us. Only by recognizing that the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war. We must, of course, protect our security; but we must also correct the grievances on which terrorism feeds. Crime requires police work, not military action. ~ George Soros (date of birth)

Markets reduce everything, including human beings and nature, to commodities. ~ George Soros (date of birth)

Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind. ~ Erwin Schrödinger (date of birth)

If you ask a stupid question,you will get a stupid answer. ~ Anon

  • 0 Kalki 13:18, 11 August 2007 (UTC) No clear relation to the date, and not a standard rendering of the English proverb "Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer."
  • 0 Zarbon 15:28, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth and that which enables him to die for the truth. ~ Edith Hamilton

Great literature, past or present, is the expression of great knowledge of the human heart; great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within. ~ Edith Hamilton

None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry. ~ Edith Hamilton

  • 2 Zarbon 14:52, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:29, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 21:03, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 19:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC) I'm sure it's not the case, but this sounds ("nothing less than pain transmuted into exultation by the alchemy of poetry") like a poor writer trying to make a sentence "intense" by dedicated use of a thesaurus.

But, if the knowledge of the occult powers of nature opens the spiritual sight of man, enlarges his intellectual faculties, and leads him unerringly to a profounder veneration for the Creator, on the other hand ignorance, dogmatic narrow-mindedness, and a childish fear of looking to the bottom of things, invariably leads to fetish-worship and superstition. ~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

  • 2 Zarbon 14:52, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:29, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 21:03, 11 August 2008 (UTC) But might prefer to trim it or extend it slightly
  • ~ Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 19:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC) I don't much like the way this stand-alone quote begins with "but," it distracts my attention from the quote wondering what came before (I know the quote does stand well on its own, but perhaps trim as Kalki says?).

Man is not dead when he is cold, stiff, pulseless, breathless, and even showing signs of decomposition; he is not dead when buried, nor afterward, until a certain point is reached. That point is, when the vital organs have become so decomposed, that if reanimated, they could not perform their customary functions; when the mainspring and cogs of the machine, so to speak, are so eaten away by rust, that they would snap upon the turning of the key. Until that point is reached, the astral body may be caused, without miracle, to reenter its former tabernacle, either by an effort of its own will, or under the resistless impulse of the will of one who knows the potencies of nature and how to direct them. The spark is not extinguished, but only latent -- latent as the fire in the flint, or the heat in the cold iron. ~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Science tells us that heat may be shown to develop electricity, electricity produce heat; and magnetism to evolve electricity, and vice versa. Motion, they tell us, results from motion itself, and so on, ad infinitum. This is the A B C of occultism and of the earliest alchemists. The indestructibility of matter and force being discovered and proved, the great problem of eternity is solved. ~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman. ~ George Soros

No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire. ~ George Soros

My peculiarity is that I don't have a particular style of investing or, more exactly, I try to change my style to fit the conditions. ~ George Soros


2003
As long as I am mayor of this city the great industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, 'That man is a Red, that man is a Communist.' You never hear a real American talk like that. ~ Frank Hague
2004
Humour is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him. ~ Romain Gary
2005
I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned. ~ Lucy Stone (born 13 August 1818)
2006
Make the world better. ~ Lucy Stone (born 13 August 1818)
2007
The Supreme Ethical Rule: Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thy self. ~ Felix Adler (born 13 August 1851)
2008
It is our hope, that men in proportion as they grow more enlightened, will learn to hold their theories and their creeds more loosely, and will none the less, nay, rather all the more be devoted to the supreme end of practical righteousness to which all theories and creeds must be kept subservient. ~ Felix Adler
2009
The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. ~ Felix Adler
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Kick the baby! ~ Kyle Broflovski, South Park, debuted that day.

Too much has already been said and written about "women's sphere". Leave women, then, to find their sphere. ~ Lucy Stone (date of birth)

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it. ~ Alfred Hitchcock (born 13 August 1899)

It is the nature of the noble and the good and the wise that they impart to us of their nobility and their goodness and their wisdom while they live, making it natural for us to breathe the air they breathe and giving us confidence in our own untested powers. And the same influence in more ethereal fashion they continue to exert after they are gone. ~ Felix Adler

I believe in the supreme excellence of righteousness; I believe that the law of righteousness will triumph in the universe over all evil; I believe that in the attempt to fulfil the law of righteousness, however imperfect it must remain, are to be found the inspiration, the consolation, and the sanctification of human existence. ~ Felix Adler


2003
I never met a man so stupid I could not learn something from him. ~ Galileo Galilei
2004
Life itself is the proper binge. ~ Julia Child
2005
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. ~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton
2006
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things. ~ Russell Baker (born August 14, 1925)
2007
It's always worth while before you do anything to consider whether it's going to hurt another person more than is absolutely necessary. ~ John Galsworthy
2008
Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong. ~ Russell Baker
2009

[edit] Suggestions

All of a sudden I had to remember some words that Marlowe had told me over fifteen years ago: 'Dead men don't wear plaid.' Hmm... Dead men don't wear plaid. I still don't know what it means. ~ Steve Martin as "Rigby Reardon" in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (date of birth)

The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need. My name in print. That really makes somebody. Things are going to start happening to me now! ~ Steve Martin as "Navin R. Johnson" in The Jerk (date of birth)

You kill me and I'll see that you never work in this town again. ~ Steve Martin as "Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr" in The Man with Two Brains (date of birth)

It's so hard to believe in anything anymore. If it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch, I wouldn't believe in anything.. ~ Steve Martin (date of birth)

You talk a great deal about building a better world for your children, but when you are young you can no more envision a world inherited by your children than you can conceive of dying. The society you mold, you mold for yourself. ~ Russell Baker

All politicians are humble, and seldom let you forget it. They go around the country boasting about their humility. They are proud of their humility. Many are downright arrogant about their humility and insist that it qualifies them to be President. ~ Russell Baker

A solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems than you have to. ~ Russell Baker

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.
The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately to defeat him, and the three major classifications are based on the method each object uses to achieve its purpose. As a general rule, any object capable of breaking down at the moment when it is most needed will do so. ~ Russell Baker

Art is the one form of human energy in the whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. ~ John Galsworthy

Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblest
That dare not tilt at something ere he die;
Rather than, screened by safe majority,
Preserve his little life to little end,
And never raise a rebel cry!
~ John Galsworthy ~

  • 3 Kalki 20:51, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:33, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Time will rust the sharpest sword,
Time will consume the strongest cord;
That which molders hemp and steel,
Mortal arm and nerve must feel. ~ Walter Scott

Revenge is the sweetest morsel to the mouth, that ever was cooked in hell. ~ Walter Scott

Vacant heart, and hand, and eye,
Easy live and quiet die. ~ Walter Scott

  • 3 because those who live without struggle, die a quiet death. Zarbon 05:27, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC) Intriguing kind of corollary to "An unexamined life is not worth living...."

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum. ~ Walter Scott

And come he slow, or come he fast,
It is but Death who comes at last. ~ Walter Scott

  • 3 because sooner or later, we all die. Zarbon 05:27, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC) One of the most common "concepts" in literature — The same sentiment has been stated much more "pleasingly" (for grievous lack of a better word).

O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive! ~ Walter Scott

For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears. ~ Walter Scott


2003
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
2004
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
~ T. S. Eliot ~
2005
To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs. ~ Sri Aurobindo (born 15 August 1872), also Independence Day of India (15 August 1947)
2006
Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments, what is that? It is that man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep. ~ Thomas De Quincey (born 15 August 1785)
2007
The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality. ~ Sri Aurobindo (date of birth, and the 60th Independence day of India)
2008
A form of government that is not the result of a long sequence of shared experiences, efforts, and endeavors can never take root. ~ Napoleon I of France
2009
The supreme truths are neither the rigid conclusions of logical reasoning nor the affirmations of credal statement, but fruits of the soul's inner experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo
2010

[edit] Suggestions

India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only. ~ Mark Twain in honour of the India independence day

This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake. ~ Robert Bolt (born August 15, 1924)

—This unsigned comment is by BD2412 (talk • contribs) .
  • 3 Kalki 16:31, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:28, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 15:35, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo

Since one must take sides, one might as well choose the side that is victorious, the side which devastates, loots, and burns. Considering the alternative, it is better to eat than to be eaten. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)

  • 3 because it is always the victor who smiles and the vanquished who remains guilty. Truly, enigmatically, it is better to eat than be eaten, complete ideology of darwinism defined and a very militant persona to embody, which I myself believe holds powerful enthralling magnetism and high moral standards. Zarbon 06:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 17:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC) As I said for a quote on the 14th, "The same sentiment has been stated much more "pleasingly" (for grievous lack of a better word)."

A king is sometimes obliged to commit crimes; but they are the crimes of his position. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)

  • 3 because the rank of king in itself is characterized as a crime. Very magnificent explanation of blame toward the highest rank. Zarbon 06:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 17:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

A picture is worth a thousand words. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)

  • 3 because actions are always speak louder than words, and as such, similarly, an image speaks a thousand words in a thousand ways. Zarbon 06:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 17:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • ~ Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC) Is this, in fact, originally Napoleon's quote? It's unsourced in his article, and I think it's slightly inappropriate and POV as QOTD to ascribe an ancient / anonymous quote to a particular historical figure.

Better to have a known enemy than a hidden ally. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)

  • 4 because this is very true and holds high moral value...the hidden is always more dangerous than that which we can see. Zarbon 06:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 17:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC) I definitely don't think this is "very true." I could give some examples, but this isn't the place for discourse. There's definitely a problem with quotes that seem to have "lyrical validity" and are thus accepted, when in fact, in the real world it is rather obvious that the opposite is true. There may be some "wisdom" gained in looking at the world in such a way for a moment, but often upon realistic observation, they prove absurd. I choose the guardian angel....

Cruelty can only be justified by necessity. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)

  • 3 because this is very true, where cruelty has become a standardized rationale for human behavior and necessity has been entangled as one of its most dominating excuses. Zarbon 06:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 17:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC) This would be a really good quote if Napoleon then said something about the epistemological uncertainty and dubious nature of necessity.

I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)

  • 3 because in the end, fate and destiny has always been a major part of mythological and mysterious analogies, and more importantly, in Greek teachings, has given the basis that no one can escape from their fate. This works especially well in the case of Napoleon, who overestimated his chances and ended up with failure against Russia and in the long run, in complete exile, brilliantly maneuvered to the very fate which had sealed him historic.Zarbon 06:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC) though leaning toward a 3 or even a 4, but would extend this to begin with "If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds. ..."
  • 2 InvisibleSun 17:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC) As an interesting side-note, this relates strongly to a lot of Arabic / Islamic philosophy. It really is a healthy / pragmatic way to look at life in a lot of situations, but the association with Napoleon may tint this particular quote too strongly.

In victory, you deserve Champagne; in defeat, you need it. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)

  • 3 because sometimes a drink can truly calm one in a moment of defeat. Zarbon 06:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 17:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • ~ Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC) Perfect (text-book) addictive mindset! I'm not sure what to give this one, it's important for a much different reason that Zarbon posits.

Speeches pass away, but acts remain. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)

  • 3 because actions truly speak louder than words. Zarbon 06:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 17:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC) There are quite a few ancient figures that we have fragments extant of what they said, but know little, if anything, of what they did. That doesn't, in any way, defeat the idea "actions speak louder than words," but it is related.

The bullet that will kill me is not yet cast. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)

  • 3 because perseverence and dominating are very admirable qualities, and believing that nothing will topple you is key to determination. Zarbon 06:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 17:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

If all the world must see the world
As the world the world hath seen,
Then it were better for the world
That the world had never been. ~ Charles Godfrey Leland

More glorious to merit a sceptre than to possess one. ~ Napoleon I of France


2004
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
2005
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. ~ T. E. Lawrence (born 16 August 1888)
2006
The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is some one outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action. ~ Winston Churchill (said about T. E. Lawrence, born 16 August 1888)
2007
The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander. ~ T. E. Lawrence
2008
It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not. ~ Jean de La Bruyère
2009
Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. It can only be ensured by instinct, sharpened by thought practising the stroke so often that at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex. ~ T. E. Lawrence
2010

[edit] Suggestions

America: It's like Britain, only with buttons. ~ Ringo Starr, joined The Beatles that day.

Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well timed. ~ Jean de La Bruyère (born 16 August 1645)

We come too late to say anything which has not been said already. ~ Jean de La Bruyère

It is always darkest just before the day dawneth. ~ Thomas Fuller (date of death, birth unknown)

Anger is one of the sinews of the soul; he that wants it hath a maimed mind. ~ Thomas Fuller (date of death)

Some men, like a tiled house, are long before they take fire, but once on flame there is no coming near to quench them. ~ Thomas Fuller (date of death)

Only a fool has no regrets and I'm not a fool. ~ George Galloway


2003
I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one. ~ Marilyn Monroe
2004
Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. ~ Søren Kierkegaard
2005
Be sure that you are right, and then go ahead. ~ Davy Crockett (born 17 August 1786)
2006
One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas — and you have to work through it all. ~ V. S. Naipaul
2007
I have always supported measures and principles and not men. I have acted fearless and independent and I never will regret my course. I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized. ~ Davy Crockett
2008
Everything of value about me is in my books. Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will — with luck — come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise. That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. ~ V. S. Naipaul
2009
To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up. ~ V. S. Naipaul (born August 17, 1932)
2010

[edit] Suggestions

I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that the margin of this page is too small to contain. ~ Pierre de Fermat (b. August 17, 1601)

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria. ~ V. S. Naipaul

With the emergence of nuclear-missile weaponry, cybernetics, electronics, and computer equipment, any subjective approach to military problems, hare-brained plans, and superficiality can cause irreparable damage. ~ Matvei Zakharov

Dark to me is the earth. Dark to me are the heavens.
Where is she that I loved, the woman with eyes like stars?
Desolate are the streets. Desolate is the city.
A city taken by storm, where none are left but the slain.
~ Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness. ~ Ted Hughes (born 17 August 1930)

I knew the Spring was come. I knew it even
Better than all by this, that through my chase
In bush and stone and hill and sea and heaven
I seem'd to see and follow still your face.
Your face my quarry was. For it I rode,
My horse a thing of wings, myself a god.
~ Wilfrid Scawen Blunt ~

  • 3 Kalki 23:49, 15 August 2009 (UTC) - with a strong lean toward 4, though I might prefer to use this in the Spring or on St. Valentine's Day.

I have never knew what is was to sacrifice my own judgment to gratify any party and I have no doubt of the time being close at hand when I will be rewarded for letting my tongue speak what my heart thinks. I have suffered myself to be politically sacrificed to save my country from ruin and disgrace and if I am never again elected I will have the gratification to know that I have done my duty. ~ Davy Crockett

  • 3 Kalki 23:55, 15 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.


2003
It's a thingy! A fiendish thingy! ~ George Harrison in Help!
2004
The best mind-altering drug is the truth. ~ Lily Tomlin
2005
If you continue to hate, you are entering into the same philosophy that began the war. You have to look forward at people and new times. ~ Roman Polański (born 18 August 1933)
2006
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay. ~ Brian Aldiss (born 18 August 1925)
2007
What we say is the truth is what everybody accepts ... Psychiatry: it's the latest religion. We decide what's right and wrong. We decide who's crazy or not. I'm in trouble here. I'm losing my faith. ~ Madeleine Stowe as "Dr. Kathryn Railly" in Twelve Monkeys (born 18 August 1958)
2008
Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with! ~ Vladimir Nabokov in Lolita (50th anniversary of its publication in the United States on 18 August 1958)
2009
Tho' the world could turn from you,
This, at least, I learn from you:
Beauty and Truth, tho' never found, are worthy to be sought,
The singer, upward-springing,
Is grander than his singing,
And tranquil self-sufficing joy illumes the dark of thought.
~ Robert Williams Buchanan ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

The pleasure and joy of man lies in treading down the rebel and conquering the enemy, in tearing him up by the root, in taking from him all that he has. - Genghis Khan, died this day.

  • 3 AllanHainey 12:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:32, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 12:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 because the desire to completely dominate exists in mankind and this quote says it perfectly, Khan had the tendency to say it as it was. Zarbon 15:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 05:55, 12 August 2009 (UTC) Not for the content / meaning, but I think it fits well as QOTD.

You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity. ~ Roman Polański (date of birth)

I can't help believing that these things that come from the subconscious mind have a sort of truth to them. It may not be a scientific truth, but it's psychological truth. ~ Brian Aldiss (born 18 August 1925)

Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem. ~ Brian Aldiss (born 18 August 1925)

  • 3 Kalki 12:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC) I would rank this as one of the best as yet suggested here, but feel a certain inclination to use the Madeleine Stowe quote on Psychiatry this year in expectation of using the Nabokov one next year.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 05:55, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Ach! I know. If I were to play the Pathetique or the Moonlight Sonata for the high judges, they would let me off. But my defense unfortunately will not be musical. ~ Walther Funk (born August 18)

  • 3 because the sheer thought of a musical defense would be interesting. Zarbon 04:29, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: The Nuremberg Interviews by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 82
  • 1 Kalki 08:13, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 21:46, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 05:55, 12 August 2009 (UTC) I usually do not agree with Zarbon's votes here (and never his reasonings), but there is "something" to this quote.

I can spot a musical type. I can tell by looking at a woman whether she is a contralto or a soprano. ~ Walther Funk (born August 18)

  • 4 because I like both contralto's and soprano's. And I'm sure both types of women would sing well. This is a very nice musical dynamic personification. Zarbon 04:29, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: The Nuremberg Interviews by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 83
  • 1 Kalki 08:13, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 21:46, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 05:55, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

A race that binds
Its body in chains and calls them Liberty,
And calls each fresh link Progress.
~ Robert Williams Buchanan

All that is beautiful shall abide,
All that is base shall die.
~ Robert Williams Buchanan

I saw the starry Tree
Eternity
Put forth the blossom Time.
~ Robert Williams Buchanan ~

I say the world is lovely
And that loveliness is enough.
~ Robert Williams Buchanan ~


2003
There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience. ~ Hartley Shawcross
2004
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. ~ Peter Ustinov
2005
Truth has such a face and such a mien As to be lov'd needs only to be seen. ~ John Dryden
2006
How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves. ~ Ogden Nash
2007
Vast is the field of Science ... the more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know. ~ Samuel Richardson
2008
Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.
~ John Dryden ~
2009
Let those find fault whose wit's so very small,
They've need to show that they can think at all;
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls, must dive below.
~ John Dryden ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

At last I've found the secret,
that guarantees success.
To err, and err, and err again,
but less, and less, and less." ~ Ogden Nash (b. August 19, 1902)

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:59, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 0 Kalki 20:18, 18 August 2005 (UTC) This seems very likely to be a very recent misattribution, and perhaps a variant translation or alteration of lines by Piet Hein. There appears to be only about a half dozen sites on the internet that attribute this to Ogden Nash, perhaps the earliest appearing in "Heuristics for Iterative Software Development" by Drasko Sotirovski, IEEE Software, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 66-73, (May/June 2001) where the author states "...as Bob Glass has said, quoting Ogden Nash, "At last I've found the secret that guarantees success: to err, and err, and err again...". If it were truly an Ogden Nash poem it's citations would likely be far more prominent.
  • 0 Zarbon 15:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I cannot help mentioning that the door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly. ~ Ogden Nash (date of birth)

  • 3 Kalki 20:18, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:42, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Those who doubt most, always erred least. ~ Samuel Richardson (born August 19, 1689)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:23, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 21:53, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The person who will bear much shall have much to bear, all the world through. ~ Samuel Richardson

  • 4 InvisibleSun 21:23, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 21:53, 18 August 2007 (UTC) Good, but much prefer the quote on Science, and Dryden's famous "Beware the fury of a patient man."
  • 2 Zarbon 15:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not smart. I try to observe. Millions saw the apple fall but Newton was the one who asked why. ~ Bernard Baruch (born 19 August 1870)

  • 3 Kalki 22:05, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 21:22, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter. ~ Bernard Baruch (born 19 August 1870)

  • 3 Kalki 22:05, 20 April 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 because this says a lot about civilization. Zarbon 15:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:22, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

We are always just one successful terrorist attack away from a nuclear disaster. ~ Fred Thompson

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 ~

  • 3 Kalki 01:32, 12 May 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.

O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! — I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else! ~ Samuel Richardson

  • 3 Kalki 22:10, 18 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.

I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry: for one or other I must do. ~ Samuel Richardson

  • 3 Kalki 22:10, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Nothing can be more wounding to a spirit not ungenerous, than a generous forgiveness. ~ Samuel Richardson

  • 3 Kalki 22:10, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The mind can be but full. It will be as much filled with a small disagreeable occurrence, having no other, as with a large one. ~ Samuel Richardson

  • 3 Kalki 22:10, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Vast is the field of Science ... the more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know. ~ Samuel Richardson

  • 3 Kalki 22:10, 18 August 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.


2004
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent. ~ H. L. Mencken
2005
The Government of the State of Israel and the Palestinian team representing the Palestinian people agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security to achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process. ~ Oslo Accords, finalized in Oslo, Norway on 20 August 1993.
2006
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
~ H. P. Lovecraft ~
2007
The world we live in is driven not solely by mindless physical forces but, more crucially, by subjective human values. Human values become the underlying key to world change. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry
2008
There probably is no more important quest in all science than the attempt to understand those very particular events in evolution by which brains worked out that special trick that has enabled them to add to the cosmic scheme of things: color, sound, pain, pleasure, and all the other facets of mental experience. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry
2009
Science traditionally takes the reductionist approach, saying that the collective properties of molecules, or the fundamental units of whatever system you're talking about, are enough to account for all of the system's activity. But this standard approach leaves out one very important additional factor, and that's the spacing and timing of activity — its pattern or form. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry
2009

[edit] Suggestions

Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities. ~ H. P. Lovecraft

  • 3 because imminent dangers and difficulties strike some fear, but the lingering pain of something that has been long gone never subsides, it merely festers within, a neverending scar of reminiscing with the past. Zarbon 15:48, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:03, 19 August 2009 (UTC) 2 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Something terrible came to the hills and valleys on that meteor, and something terrible — though I know not in what proportion — still remains. ~ H. P. Lovecraft

  • 2 because this can be interpreted in many ways. A moral interpretation would recount to the inner-most lurkings of human evil, which has remained stagnant for years and years to come. Zarbon 15:48, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Prior to the advent of brain, there was no color and no sound in the universe, nor was there any flavor or aroma and probably rather little sense and no feeling or emotion. Before brains the universe was also free of pain and anxiety. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

  • 2 Zarbon 15:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC) though I might rank it at 3 with just the first sentence.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

To see a promising solution to a dilemma and then just leave it to questionable development at its own pace without trying to aid its implementation would seem a dereliction. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

The grand design of nature perceived broadly in four dimensions, including the forces that move the universe and created man, with special focus on evolution in our own biosphere, is something intrinsically good that it is right to preserve and enhance, and wrong to destroy and degrade. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

  • 3 Zarbon 15:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC) Though I am leaning toward a 4 on this, another one by Sperry gets that rank from me for this year.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

We're beginning to learn the hard way that today's global ills are not cured by more and more science and technology. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

Although the theoretic changes make little difference in physics, chemistry, molecular biology, and so on, they are crucial for the behavioral, social, and human sciences. They don't change the analytic, reductive methodology, just the interpretations and conclusions. There seems little to lose, and much to gain. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

  • 2 Zarbon 15:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC) though I would rank it 3 if it were extended slightly for context to start with "The behavioral and cognitive disciplines are leading the way to a more valid framework for all science."
  • 2 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. ~ H. P. Lovecraft

  • 3 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 02:53, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. ~ H. P. Lovecraft

  • 3 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 02:53, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Man's respect for the imponderables varies according to his mental constitution and environment. Through certain modes of thought and training it can be elevated tremendously, yet there is always a limit. ~ H. P. Lovecraft

  • 3 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC) Almost gave this one a 4, but preferred one by Roger Wolcott Sperry for this year.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 02:53, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy. ~ H. P. Lovecraft

  • 3 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 02:53, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

The centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension that no one I know of has been able to imagine their nature. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

  • 3 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 02:53, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Futurists and common sense concur that a substantial change, worldwide, in life style and moral guidelines will soon become an absolute necessity. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

  • 3 Kalki 23:09, 19 August 2009 (UTC) * 4 Kalki 19:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC) but only tenuously a 4
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 02:53, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


2003
The barge she sat in, like a burnishd throne, burnd on the water; the poop was beaten gold, purple the sails, and so perfumed, that the winds were love-sick with them, the oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes. For her own person, it beggard all description ~ "Enobarbus" on Cleapatra, in Antony and Cleopatra Act II sc. ii by William Shakespeare
2004
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. ~ Thomas Carlyle
2005
If you want the world to know
We won't let hatred grow
Put a little love in your heart.
~ Jackie DeShannon ~ (born 21 August 1944)
2006
Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and vileness, and enjoy it to the full. ~ Leon Trotsky (died 21 August 1940)
2007
Another day goes by
Still the children cry
Put a little love in your heart.
~ Jackie DeShannon ~
2008
A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified. ~ Leon Trotsky
2009
People ask me... "What do you still bring from Hawaii? How does it affect your character, how does it affect your politics?" I try to explain to them something about the Aloha Spirit. I try to explain to them this basic idea that we all have obligations to each other, that we're not alone, that if we see somebody who's in need we should help... that we look out for one another, that we deal with each other with courtesy and respect, and most importantly, that when you come from Hawaii, you start understanding that what's on the surface, what people look like — that doesn't determine who they are.
And that the power and strength of diversity, the ability of people from everywhere ... whether they're black or white, whether they're Japanese-Americans or Korean-Americans or Filipino-Americans or whatever they are, they are just Americans, that all of us can work together and all of us can join together to create a better country.
And it's that spirit, that I'm absolutely convinced, is what America is looking for right now. ~ Barack Obama (A quote of a statement about Hawaii, using one of the most famous of Hawaiian words, made by the first US president to be born in Hawaii, for the 50th anniversary of the Statehood of the 50th US State, "The Aloha State.")
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Until the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, until then Israel didn't have a chance but to fight for her life. We were attacked five times, outgunned, outnumbered, on a small piece of land, and our main challenge was to remain alive. ~ Shimon Peres (b. August 21, 1923)

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:04, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: It's not my fault Peres's birthday is one day after the finalization of the Oslo Accords! :) ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:04, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 3, but I'd say use 1 or the other but not both, we shouldn't have 2 days relating to Israel v Palestine.
  • 1 Zarbon 15:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Socialism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen. ~ Leon Trotsky, died this day.

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain—at least in a poor country like Russia—and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect. ~ Leon Trotsky, died this day

Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here. ~ Vice President Dan Quayle; Hawaii became the 50th U.S. state on 21 August 1959

  • 3 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:18, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 4 Sveden 13:22, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 16:58, 20 August 2006 (UTC) If we do honor Hawaii, perhaps on the 50th anniversary of its statehood in 2009, I would hope it would be with something more than Quayle's fumblings.
  • 1 Zarbon 15:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 22:14, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other. ~ Leon Trotsky

  • 3 Kalki 16:58, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 15:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:14, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I can feel a something pounding in my brain
Just any time that someone speaks your name
Trumpets sound and I hear thunder boom
Every time that you walk in the room.
~ Jackie DeShannon ~

  • 3 Kalki 23:44, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:14, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Friend, I haven't a dollar in the world, but if thee knows a fugitive who needs a breakfast, send him to me. ~ Thomas Garrett

Strategic missiles are precisely the weapons which can deliver a decisive blow against the enemy's primary targets — his armed forces, and first of all, his strategic nuclear attack weapons. As a result of such a strike, the political objectives of a war can be attained in the first days of the conflict. ~ Sergei Biriuzov


2003
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. ~ Elvis Presley
2004
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
2005
By a free country, I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like. ~ Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (died 22 August 1903)
2006
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense. ~ Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury (died 22 August 1903)
2007
I wish to write down my musical dreams in a spirit of utter self-detachment. I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naïve candour of a child. No doubt, this simple musical grammar will jar on some people. It is bound to offend the partisans of deceit and artifice. I foresee that and rejoice at it. ~ Claude Debussy (born 22 August 1862)
2008
Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. ~ Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.
2009
Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art. ~ Claude Debussy
2010

[edit] Suggestions

I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more. ~ Dorothy Parker

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:08, 20 July 2005 (UTC) (just for the extreme case of irony)
  • 3 I hadn't heard of her anyway but assume she's well known. AllanHainey 12:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 04:31, 21 August 2007 (UTC) I'd prefer something else by her.
  • 1 Zarbon 15:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 18:18, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Parliament is a potent engine, and its enactments must always do something, but they very seldom do what the originators of these enactments meant. - Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks. ~ Dorothy Parker

  • 3 Kalki 22:48, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 because I strongly dislike dogmatism. Zarbon 15:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

A gram of experience is worth a ton of theory. ~ Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury (died 22 August 1903)

  • 3 Kalki 22:48, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 because one who has some experience can actually understand better than one who thinks of theories and has no experience whatsoever...this is actually something I've been trying to stress for a very long time but most people don't seem to understand. Zarbon 15:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. ~ Claude Debussy (born 22 August 1862)

  • 3 Kalki 15:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 15:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

For the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

  • 3 Zarbon 05:16, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:27, 20 August 2008 (UTC) But would prefer to either trim off the "For" at the start of the quote, or extend it for more context.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 18:18, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it. ~ Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.


2003
The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up every bird watcher in the country. ~ John Mitchell
2004
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. ~ Oscar Wilde
2005
I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject. ~ William Wallace at his trial (executed 23 August 1305)
2006
I have brought you to the ring, now see if you can dance. ~ William Wallace
2007
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
~ William Ernest Henley ~
2008
A few Cobras in your home will soon clear it of Rats and Mice. Of course, you will still have the Cobras. ~ Will Cuppy (born 23 August 1884)
2009
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.
~ William Ernest Henley ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. ~ Abraham Lincoln, in honor of the abolition of slavery in the British colonies.

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 11:34, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 If we're going to have something about abolition of slavery then something by William Wilberforce might be more suited.AllanHainey 10:43, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
  • COMMENT - There is some uncertainty as to whether slavery in British Empire/colonies was repealed today or on 1 Aug see relevant dates talk pages. AllanHainey 12:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:00, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 21:42, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Ningauble 15:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Sons of Scotland! I am William Wallace...

  • 0 121a0012 02:55, July 21, 2005 (UTC) (too long, misformatted dialogue, inadequate attribution)
  • 0 User:Warrior-Poet Fair enough, I could put the Scots Gaelic line in there 21 July, 2005 8:06 (CST)
  • 0 AllanHainey 10:43, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 0 Zarbon 16:00, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 0 InvisibleSun 21:42, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

The Age of Reptiles ended because it had gone on long enough and it was all a mistake in the first place. A better day was dawning at the close of the Mesozoic Era. There were some little warm-blooded animals around which had been stealing and eating the eggs of the Dinosaurs, and they were gradually learning to steal other things, too. Civilization was just around the corner. ~ Will Cuppy

The moral of the story of the Pilgrims is that if you work hard all your life and behave yourself every minute and take no time out for fun you will break practically even, if you can borrow enough money to pay your taxes. ~ Will Cuppy

At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last we will have revenge. ~ from Star Wars as Darth Maul Ray Park (born August 23)

  • 3 Maul is my alltime favorite Star Wars character, along with Sidious, Dooku, and Tarkin closely followed up. Zarbon 05:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 23:37, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 21:42, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 0 Ningauble 15:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Fear. Fear attracts the fearful. The strong. The weak. The innocent. The corrupt. Fear. Fear is my ally. ~ from the Star Wars main trailer sequence, said by Darth Maul Ray Park (born August 23)

  • 4 his best description of power through spreading fear in the hearts of his enemies, my favorite Maul saying. Zarbon 05:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 23:37, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 21:42, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 0 Ningauble 15:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

It is evident that one cannot say anything demonstrable about the problem before having resolved these preliminary questions, and yet we hardly possess the necessary information to solve some of them. ~ Georges Cuvier

  • 4 Fossil 20:04, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 16:22, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 15:26, 22 August 2009 (UTC) context is not clearly provided by the quote.
  • 0 Ningauble 15:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe. ~ Georges Cuvier

  • 3 Fossil 20:04, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:22, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 15:26, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 0 Ningauble 15:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die,
While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?
~ William Ernest Henley ~

  • 3 Kalki 13:54, 21 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 17:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 2.5 Ningauble 15:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Think on the shame of dreams for deeds,
The scandal of unnatural strife,
The slur upon immortal needs,
The treason done to life:
Arise! no more a living lie,
And with me quicken and control
Some memory that shall magnify
The universal Soul.
~ William Ernest Henley ~

  • 3 Kalki 13:54, 21 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 17:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 2.5 Ningauble 15:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

The strife of Love's the abysmal strife,
And the word of Love is the Word of Life.
And they that go with the Word unsaid,
Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead.
~ William Ernest Henley ~

  • 3 Kalki 13:54, 21 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 Zarbon 17:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 2.5 Ningauble 15:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word
That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;
Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw,
And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.
~ William Ernest Henley ~

  • 3 Kalki 13:54, 21 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 17:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 2.5 Ningauble 15:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

The passion for wealth is certainly in some senses new. It grew up very rapidly at the beginning of the present century [19th]; it was not so strong in the last century, when men were much more content to lead a quiet easy life of leisure. The change has really influenced the relations between men; but in the future it is quite possible that the scramble for wealth may grow less intense, and a change in the opposite direction take place. ~ Arnold Toynbee (DoB)

  • 2.5 Ningauble 19:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 15:26, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it. ~ Arnold Toynbee (DoB)

  • 3 Ningauble 19:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 15:26, 22 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

You may think, passer-by, that Fate
Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,
Around which you may walk by the use of foresight
And wisdom.
~ Edgar Lee Masters (DoB)

  • 3 Ningauble 19:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 15:26, 22 August 2009 (UTC) but would prefer to extend this with the ending of the poem:
...
In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your own image in the mirror;
Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,
And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,
And you shall know that guest,
And read the authentic message of his eyes.

I ended up with forty acres
I ended up with a broken fiddle
A broken laugh, a thousand memories
And not a single regret.
~ Edgar Lee Masters (DoB)

  • 3.5 Ningauble 19:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC) as corrected and extended
  • 3 Kalki 15:26, 22 August 2009 (UTC) but this was originally misquoted slightly in the article: I would correct and extend this to read:
I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle —
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
~ Edgar Lee Masters

  • 3 Kalki 15:26, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 2.5 Ningauble 15:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


2004
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. ~ Friedrich Schiller
2005
Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. ~ Jorge Luis Borges (born 24 August 1899)
2006
If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves. ~ Howard Zinn (born August 24, 1922)
2007
It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is. ~ Jorge Luis Borges (date of birth)
2008
A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
2009
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
~ Robert Herrick (DoB)
2010

[edit] Suggestions

I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. ~ Yasser Arafat (b. August 24. 1929 according to Egyptian birth certificate)

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:17, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 23:44, 20 August 2008 (UTC) * 2 Kalki 02:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 4 because it's very brilliant. A hint at the "you won't like me when I'm angry" bit as well as the levels of rage which are best kept intact. I knew Arafat said something brilliant like this, it's a good thing it was located. It's also reminiscent of the "carry a big stick" bit which I adore. Zarbon 16:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 20:56, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Ningauble 17:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you. ~ Orson Scott Card (born August 24, 1951)

—This unsigned comment is by None (talk • contribs) .
  • 2 Kalki 02:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:56, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Ningauble 17:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC) Card has done much better. I may work on his article.

Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world. ~ Jorge Luis Borges (date of birth)

  • 3 Kalki 16:09, 23 August 2005 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 03:53, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3.5 Ningauble 17:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. ~ Jorge Luis Borges (date of birth)

  • 3 Kalki 16:09, 23 August 2005 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 03:53, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2.5 Ningauble 17:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The term 'just war' contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people. ~ Howard Zinn

The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end. ~ Max Beerbohm (born August 24, 1872)

I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased — short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed. ~ Max Beerbohm

  • 3 InvisibleSun 06:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:16, 27 August 2007 (UTC) 2 Kalki 02:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2.5 Ningauble 17:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter. ~ Max Beerbohm

  • 3 InvisibleSun 06:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 02:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 2 Zarbon 16:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2.5 Ningauble 17:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Man never falls so low that he can see nothing higher than himself. ~ Theodore Parker

Truth stood on one side and Ease on the other; it has often been so. ~ Theodore Parker

  • 3 because although the easy way may not be the way of truth, it is the course which many have taken. Zarbon 05:43, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:44, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:56, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2.5 Ningauble 17:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world? ~ Stephen Fry

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

  • 3 Kalki 23:44, 20 August 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 04:35, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:56, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3.5 Ningauble 17:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things. ~ Jorge Luis Borges (DoB)

  • 2.5 Ningauble 17:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:55, 23 August 2009 (UTC)


2003
What can be said at all can be said clearly. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
2004
It’s no use crying over spilt evils. It’s better to mop them up laughing. ~ Eleanor Farjeon
2005
We have met the enemy and he is us. ~ Walt Kelly in Pogo (Kelly born 25 August 1913)
2006
Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture. ~ Martin Amis
2007
The humourless as a bunch don't just not know what's funny, they don't know what's serious. They have no common sense, either, and shouldn't be trusted with anything. ~ Martin Amis
2008
Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche (date of death)
2009
My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant, someone who disrupts the daily drag of life just enough to leave the victim thinking there's maybe more to it all than the mere hum-drum quality of existence. ~ Elvis Costello
2010

[edit] Suggestions

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. ~ Linus Torvalds announcing Linux in a post dated 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT

Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. ~ Walt Kelly (date of birth)

  • 3 Kalki 14:21, 24 August 2005 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 18:49, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 16:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening the use of nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves. ~ Martin Amis (born 25 August 1949)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 03:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:33, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture — it's a really stupid thing to want to do. ~ Elvis Costello

  • 3 Kalki 18:34, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 18:49, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Saying the Bible is not a book about science is like saying a cookbook is not a book about chemistry. ~ Robert J. Marks II

Virtue always meets reward,
But quicker when it wears a sword.
~ Bret Harte

The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself. ~ Johann Gottfried Herder (DoB)

  • 3 Ningauble 17:19, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Brave the tamer of the lion;
Brave whom conquered kingdoms praise;
Bravest he who rules his passions.
~ Johann Gottfried Herder (DoB)

  • 3 Ningauble 17:19, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough. ~ Martin Amis (DoB)

  • 3 Ningauble 17:19, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Militant fundamentalism is convulsed in a late-medieval phase of its evolution. We would have to sit through a renaissance and a reformation, and then await an enlightenment. And we're not going to do that. ~ Martin Amis (DoB)

  • 2.5 Ningauble 17:19, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC) but with a lean toward 3 if extended for more context.


2003
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ~ Emma by Jane Austen
2004
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
2005
You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn. ~ John Buchan (born 26 August 1875)
2006
We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves. ~ John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir
2007
Our sufferings have taught us that no nation is sufficient unto itself, and that our prosperity depends in the long run, not upon the failure of our neighbors but their successes. ~ John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir
2008
I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it. ~ Christopher Isherwood
2009
If you can't see God in All, You can't see God at All. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi
2010

[edit] Suggestions

If those lessons are truly learned, then Columbia's crew will have made an indelible contribution to the endeavor each one valued so greatly. ~ CAIB report volume I, released 26 August 2003

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:37, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 ~ lacking context as presented. I might rank an extended version of it higher, but am not really inclined toward it.
  • 1 Zarbon 16:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 22:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I must honor those who fight of their own free will, he said to himself. And I must try to imitate their courage by following my path as a pacifist, wherever it takes me. ~ Christopher Isherwood

  • 3 InvisibleSun 04:56, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:18, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right. ~ John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir

  • 3 Kalki 19:18, 25 August 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:45, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 16:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there. ~ John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir

  • 3 Kalki 19:18, 25 August 2007 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:45, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Once again the crust of civilization has worn thin, and beneath can be heard the muttering of primeval fires. Once again many accepted principles of government have been overthrown, and the world has become a laboratory where immature and feverish minds experiment with unknown forces. Once again problems cannot be comfortably limited, for science has brought the nations into an uneasy bondage to each other. ~ John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir

  • 3 Kalki 19:18, 25 August 2007 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:45, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon

Tomorrow always becomes today and yesterday is always gone. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  • 3 because nothing stays forever. Zarbon 06:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 23:58, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 22:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Happiness comes out of contentment, and contentment always comes out of service. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  • 3 and a step further, service comes from loyalty. Zarbon 06:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:58, 20 August 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. ~ Mother Teresa

  • 2 Zarbon 06:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:58, 20 August 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. ~ Mother Teresa

I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience? ~ Mother Teresa

  • 2 Zarbon 06:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:58, 20 August 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. ~ Mother Teresa

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come.We have only today. ~ Mother Teresa

The snail lives the way I like to live; he carries his own home with him. ~ Julio Cortázar


2003
He caught glimpses of everything, but saw nothing. ~Victor Hugo in Les Miserables
2004
Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. ~ Elie Wiesel
2005
The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved. ~ Confucius
2006
Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (born 27 August 1770)
2007
The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions — none more so than the most capable. ~ Theodore Dreiser (born August 27, 1871)
2008
In every science, after having analysed the ideas, expressing the more complicated by means of the more simple, one finds a certain number that cannot be reduced among them, and that one can define no further. These are the primitive ideas of the science; it is necessary to acquire them through experience, or through induction; it is impossible to explain them by deduction. ~ Giuseppe Peano
2009
For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. ~ Ted Kennedy (recent death)
2010

[edit] Suggestions

A young man should serve his parents at home and be respectful to elders outside his home. He should be earnest and truthful, loving all, but become intimate with humaneness. After doing this, if he has energy to spare, he can study literature and the arts. ~ Confucius (b. August 27, 551 BC)

The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (born 27 August 1770)

  • 3 Kalki 00:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:37, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their real import or value. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (born 27 August 1770)

  • 3 Kalki 00:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:37, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 because it's easy to critisize others and their opinions but to search for their positive values takes effort. So true. Zarbon 16:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Opportunities multiply as they are seized. ~ Sun Tzu

—This unsigned comment is by 71.252.139.117 (talk • contribs) .
  • 2 Kalki 07:23, 26 August 2007 (UTC) no clear relation to the date
  • 2 Zarbon 16:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 21:35, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Our civilization is still in a middle stage — scarcely beast in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. ~ Theodore Dreiser

  • 3 Kalki 21:47, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 16:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:35, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  • 3 Kalki 21:47, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:35, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Ambiguity of language is philosophy's main source of problems. That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use. ~ Giuseppe Peano

  • 3 Kalki 21:47, 26 August 2007 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 16:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:35, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

And I just want to tell you this — we're in favor of a lot of things and we're against mighty few. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

If two men agree on everything, you can be sure one of them is doing the thinking. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

If you have had your foot on the neck of a man for three hundred years, and then take it off, do you expect him to get up and thank you? ~ Lyndon B. Johnson


2003
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it. ~ The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
2004
It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing. ~ Muhammad
2005
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today... ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • proposed by MosheZadka, expanded from the first Wikiquote Quote of the Day, selected by Nanobug.
2006
Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2007
Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity: rather it is an elaborate balancing-act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites. ~ Robertson Davies
2008
To which of the warring serpents should I turn with the problem that now faces me?
It is easy, and tempting, to choose the god of Science. Now I would not for a moment have you suppose that I am one of those idiots who scorns Science, merely because it is always twisting and turning, and sometimes shedding its skin, like the serpent that is its symbol. It is a powerful god indeed but it is what the students of ancient gods called a shape-shifter, and sometimes a trickster. ~ Robertson Davies
2009
What is the use of being wise if we are not sometimes merry? The merriment of wise men is not the uninformed, gross fun of ignorant men, but it has more kinship with that than the pinched, frightened fun of those who are neither learned nor ignorant, gentle nor simple, bound nor free. The idea that a wise man must be solemn is bred and preserved among people who have no idea what wisdom is, and can only respect whatever makes them feel inferior. ~ Robertson Davies
2010 
Rank or add further suggestions…
2003
I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it. ~ Clarence Darrow
2004
God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. ~ William Cowper
2005
I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it — but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (born 29 August 1809)
2006
Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts. ~ John Locke (born 29 August 1632)
2007
The truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck
2008
Mankind has advanced. Human progress is ceaseless. We can ... conclude that building just societies is a fool's errand. We are always, despite our advances, only one sin away from slipping into the abyss of terror and ignorance. But that is not so. Generations upon generations have driven the human race farther and farther from darkness. ~ John McCain
2009
Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the Creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing and then, it is the eternal dance of creation. The Creator and the creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing — until there is only ... the dance.
~ Michael Jackson ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

On August 29th, 1997, it's gonna feel pretty fucking real to you too. Anybody not wearing 2 million sunblock is gonna have a real bad day. Get it? ~ Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:25, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 0 121a0012 00:13, August 25, 2005 (UTC) (best to avoid profanity on main page)
  • 0 Kalki 23:48, 28 August 2005 (UTC) agree with above statement.
  • 0 because too much profanity. Zarbon 16:25, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

There is reason to think, that, if men were better instructed themselves, they would be less imposing on others. ~ John Locke

  • 3 Kalki 23:48, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 16:25, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:45, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. ~ John Locke

  • 3 Kalki 23:48, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 16:25, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:45, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (born 29 August 1809)

  • 3 Kalki 22:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 but I'd preferably give it a 3 if it were trimmed to just "A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience." Zarbon 16:25, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:45, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck (born 29 August 1862)

  • 3 Kalki 22:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:25, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:45, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Happiness is good health and a bad memory. ~ Ingrid Bergman

As people are not eaten, butchering them is of no use. ~ Arndt Pekurinen

War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality. ~ John McCain

  • 2 although I don't agree with this, and I'm neither a fool nor a fraud. Zarbon 06:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 13:44, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:45, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated. ~ John McCain

There's going to be other wars. I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars. ~ John McCain

Your character is not tested on occasions of public scrutiny or acclaim. It is not tested in moments when the object of your actions is the regard of another. Your character is what you are to yourself, not what you pretend to be to yourself or others. ~ John McCain

  • 3 Kalki 13:44, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:38, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:45, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Beat me, hate me
You can never break me
Will me, thrill me
You can never kill me.
~ Michael Jackson - They Don't Care About Us

  • 3 and lean toward 4. Zarbon 15:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

You know I do really hate to say it
The government don't wanna see
But if Roosevelt was livin'
He wouldn't let this be.
~ Michael Jackson - They Don't Care About Us

  • 4 Zarbon 15:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 14:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Some things in life they just don't wanna see
But if Martin Luther was livin'
He wouldn't let this be.
~ Michael Jackson - They Don't Care About Us

  • 3 and lean toward 4. Zarbon 15:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 14:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Lies run sprints but the truth runs marathons.~ Michael Jackson

  • 3 Kalki 14:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 seems like a logical comparison. Zarbon 17:45, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change.
~ Michael Jackson ~

  • 3 Kalki 14:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 17:45, 21 August 2009 (UTC)


2004
There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson
2005
No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. ~ Mary Shelley (born 30 August 1797, and also relating to the recent landfall of Hurricane Katrina
2006
We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves — such a friend ought to be — do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.. ~ Mary Shelley (date of birth)
2007
Live, and be happy, and make others so. ~ Mary Shelley
2008
Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. ~ Warren Buffett
2009
The animals of the Burgess Shale are holy objects — in the unconventional sense that this word conveys in some cultures. We do not place them on pedestals and worship from afar. We climb mountains and dynamite hillsides to find them. We quarry them, split them, carve them, draw them, and dissect them, struggling to wrest their secrets. We vilify and curse them for their damnable intransigence. They are grubby little creatures of a sea floor 530 million years old, but we greet them with awe because they are the Old Ones, and they are trying to tell us something. ~ Stephen Jay Gould
2010

[edit] Suggestions

My mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein — more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. ~ Mary Shelley (date of birth)

  • 3 Kalki 23:58, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. ~ Warren Buffett

If you're in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent. ~ Warren Buffett

  • 2 Zarbon 22:33, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:12, 21 August 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. ~ Warren Buffett

Can you really explain to a fish what it's like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value. ~ Warren Buffett

Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner. ~ Warren Buffett

  • 3 Zarbon 02:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:22, 21 August 2009 (UTC) but either trimmed of the first sentence to eliminate unspecified declarations, or extended to include them.


2003
Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians. ~ Chester Bowles
2004
Know Thyself ~ Ancient proverb that was inscribed upon the temple of the Oracle of Delphi.
2005
Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. ~ William Saroyan
2006
Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. ~ William Saroyan
2007
Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it. ~ William Saroyan
2008
The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy— the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops. ~ William Saroyan
2009
There’s not a war between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between extremists and moderates of all the religions. ... What is important is not to live in fear. The most dangerous thing to do is to give up and lose hope. The main enemy is not terrorism or extremism, but ignorance. ~ Queen Rania of Jordan
2010

[edit] Suggestions

And that is the story of Alma,//Who knew how to receive and to give.//The body that reached her embalma'//Was one that had known how to live. ~ Alma, Tom Lehrer, dedicated to Alma Mahler (b. August 31, 1879)

Honorable people, do not become a tool in the hands of irresponsible political people. That is not your game. You will not win that game. You will only lose and the country will lose. ~ Robert Kocharyan (born August 31)

  • 3 Zarbon 05:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 19:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Stability is not furniture, and cannot be inherited. ~ Robert Kocharyan (born August 31)

  • 3 because it takes a lot to maintain stability. Zarbon 05:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: BBC Archive - NewsBank - Jul 26, 2001
  • 2 Kalki 00:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

It is apparent that any tool that is used for ten years will eventually rust, will luckily break, and already used tools are no longer in demand. ~ Robert Kocharyan (born August 31)

  • 4 because there is a strong comparison here, that of a tool to humans. And humans have always been tools in the hands of politicians and this quote says a lot. Zarbon 05:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 19:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

You educate a woman, you educate a family. You educate a girl, you educate the future. ~ Queen Rania of Jordan

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less. ~ Eldridge Cleaver

All the gods are dead except the god of war. ~ Eldridge Cleaver


Ranking system:

4 : Excellent - should definitely be used. (Perhaps, at most, only one quote per day should be ranked thus by any user, as to avoid confusions.)
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.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/August"
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