Wikiquote:Quote of the day/March

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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 12:31 (UTC)


February << March 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 >> April

This page lists quote of the day proposals specifically for dates in the month of March, 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: March 2008 - March 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.
2004
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. ~ John Stuart Mill
2005
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. ~ Jef Raskin (recent death)
2006
I dreamt the past was never past redeeming:
But whether this was false or honest dreaming
I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead.
~ Richard Wilbur (born 1 March 1921)
2007
We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. ~ Tzvetan Todorov ( born 1 March 1922)
  • proposed by Fys
2008
Try to remember this: what you project
Is what you will perceive; what you perceive
With any passion, be it love or terror,
May take on whims and powers of its own.
~ Richard Wilbur ~
2009
From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. ~ Napoleon I of France
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life. ~ Yitzhak Rabin, born 1 March 1922

  • 3. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 10:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 20:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 03:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul. ~ Diary entry by Bobby Sands, 1 March 1981.

  • 4. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 10:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 20:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 03:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

People who believe themselves to be the incarnation of good have a distorted view of the world. ~ Tzvetan Todorov, born 1 March 1939.

  • 3. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 10:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 20:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 03:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full. ~ Lucius Cornelius Sulla (sacking of Athens occurred on this date)

  • 2 Kalki 20:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 because revenge is sweet and loyalty is that much sweeter. Zarbon 03:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Those who are free from common prejudices acquire others. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte (returned to France from Elba on this date)

  • 3 Kalki 20:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 03:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

A great people may be killed, but they cannot be intimidated. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

  • 3 Kalki 20:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 03:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.
~ Richard Wilbur ~

  • 3 Kalki 20:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 03:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.
~ Richard Wilbur ~

  • 3 Kalki 20:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 03:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

The relation between the artist and reality is an oblique one, and indeed there is no good art which is not consciously oblique. If you respect the reality of the world, you know that you can approach that reality only by indirect means. ~ Richard Wilbur

  • 3 Kalki 20:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC) (but leaning towards a 4)
  • 1 Zarbon 03:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

My social and political interests are part of my career. I cannot separate them. My songs reflect the human condition. The role of art isn't just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be. ~ Harry Belafonte

  • 3 Zarbon 15:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 16:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them. ~ Frédéric Chopin

  • 3 and leaning toward a 4. Zarbon 15:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. ~ Frédéric Chopin

  • 2 Zarbon 15:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 16:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 4 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Her mouth is a honey-blossom,
No doubt, as the poet sings;
But within her lips, the petals,
Lurks a cruel bee that stings.
~ William Dean Howells

  • 3 Zarbon 15:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence. ~ William Dean Howells

  • 4 Zarbon 15:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all. ~ William Dean Howells

  • 3 and leaning toward a 4. Zarbon 15:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. ~ Ralph Ellison

  • 3 Zarbon 15:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? ~ Ralph Ellison

  • 3 Zarbon 15:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not interested in truths, like drawing an accurate picture of the real world. I'm interested in exploring the verities of the human condition. ~ Jim Crace

  • 2 Zarbon 16:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:29, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one. ~ Lytton Strachey

  • 3 Zarbon 16:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:29, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
2004
We may afirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. ~ Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
2005
From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere. ~ Dr. Seuss (born 2 March 1904)
2006
Our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right." ~ Carl Schurz (born 2 March 1829)
2007
Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America. ~ Russ Feingold (born 2 March 1953)
2008
I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends.
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!
... So, on beyond Z!
It's high time you were shown
That you really don't know
All there is to be known.
~ Dr. Seuss ~
2009
In times like these, it's helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. ~ Paul Harvey
2010

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

  • Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~ Dr. Seuss (attributed)
  • Don’t give up! I believe in you all
    A person’s a person, no matter how small!
    And you very small persons will not have to die
    If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!
    ~ Dr. Seuss ~

[edit] Suggestions

I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them Sam I Am.
~ Dr. Seuss ~

Rights may be universal, but their enforcement must be local. ~ Murray Rothbard (born March 2, 1926)

  • 3 Ningauble 19:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. ~ Murray Rothbard

  • 3 Kalki 16:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. ~ Carl Schurz

  • 3 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC) 4 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC) was inclined to rank this 4, but for this year prefer one in honor of Paul Harvey, who has just died. ~ Kalki 02:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right. ~ Carl Schurz

  • 3 and leaning toward a 4. Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

We have come to the point where it is loyalty to resist, and treason to submit. ~ Carl Schurz

  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Congress has lost its way if we don't hold this President accountable for his actions. ~ Russ Feingold

  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? ~ Russ Feingold

  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

If the history of wartime politics teaches us anything, it is that measures that seem just, or at least permissible, in a time of conflict, can have damaging and lasting repercussions. ~ Russ Feingold

  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Dangers await only those who do not react to life. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

For a new type of progress throughout the world to become a reality, everyone must change. Tolerance is the alpha and omega of a new world order. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

We have retreated from the perennial values. I don't think that we need any new values. The most important thing is to try to revive the universally known values from which we have retreated. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. Look at the sun. If there is no sun, then we cannot exist. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

  • 4 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

In our times, good relations benefit all. Any worsening of relations anywhere is a common loss. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Wherever I have gone, wherever I've been and gone, wherever I have gone... The blues are all the same. ~ Jackson C. Frank

  • 2 Zarbon 16:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
It is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true. ~ James Branch Cabell
2005
Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do you will be certain to find something you have never seen before. ~ Alexander Graham Bell (born 3 March 1847)
2006
In mathematics the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems. ~ Georg Cantor (born 3 March 1845)
2007
You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them. ~ Alexander Graham Bell
2008
Consent in virtue knit your hearts so fast,
That still the knot, in spite of death, does last;
For as your tears, and sorrow-wounded soul,
Prove well that on your part this bond is whole,
So all we know of what they do above,
Is that they happy are, and that they love.
Let dark oblivion, and the hollow grave,
Content themselves our frailer thoughts to have;
Well-chosen love is never taught to die,
But with our nobler part invades the sky.
~ Edmund Waller ~ (born 3 March 1606)
2009
If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind. ~ William Godwin
2010

[edit] Suggestions

The following quote is a pick me up, for those that are wealthy, compared with where they started... ie... Rags to riches folk, who are feeling down, for whatever reason. "Never lose sight of how far you've come... then... You'll never cease to appreciate what you have."

Glen Reid

A set is a Many that allows itself to be thought of as a One.. ~ Georg Cantor

Mathematics, in the development of its ideas, has only to take account of the immanent reality of its concepts and has absolutely no obligation to examine their transient reality. ~ Georg Cantor

The fear of infinity is a form of myopia that destroys the possibility of seeing the actual infinite, even though it in its highest form has created and sustains us, and in its secondary transfinite forms occurs all around us and even inhabits our minds.. ~ Georg Cantor

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

  • 3 Kalki 23:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC) but leaning to a 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 04:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with — a man is what he makes of himself. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

  • 3 Kalki 23:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC) but leaning to a 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 04:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,
And every conqueror creates a Muse.
~ Edmund Waller ~

Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what they discreetly blot.
~ Edmund Waller ~

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
~ Edmund Waller ~

Let us embrace, and from this very moment vow an eternal misery together. ~ Thomas Otway

O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee
To temper man: we had been brutes without you.
Angels are painted fair, to look like you:
There’s in you all that we believe of heaven,—
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love.
~ Thomas Otway

To me this question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing. It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance, and a complete answer to the question, "In what cases is liberty good and in what cases is it bad?" would involve not merely a universal history of mankind, but a complete solution of the problems which such a history would offer. ~ James Fitzjames Stephen

Persuasion, indeed, is a kind of force. It consists in showing a person the consequences of his actions. It is, in a word, force applied through the mind. ~ James Fitzjames Stephen

To say that the law of force is abandoned because force is regular, unopposed, and beneficially exercised, is to say that day and night are now such well-established institutions that the sun and moon are mere superfluities. ~ James Fitzjames Stephen

We agree to try strength by counting heads instead of breaking heads, but the principle is exactly the same... The minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it is convinced that it is a minority. ~ James Fitzjames Stephen

  • 3 Zarbon 06:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC) But would prefer to extend this to begin with "Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion."
  • 3 for the extended quote. - InvisibleSun 23:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

To try to regulate the internal affairs of a family, the relations of love or friendship, or many other things of the same sort, by law or by the coercion of public opinion, is like trying to pull an eyelash out of a man's eye with a pair of tongs. They may put out the eye, but they will never get hold of the eyelash. ~ James Fitzjames Stephen

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it's the only one we have. ~ Émile Chartier

It is the human condition to question one god after another, one appearance after another, or better, one apparition after another, always pursuing the truth of the imagination, which is not the same as the truth of appearance. ~ Émile Chartier

Those who try to combat the production of shoddy pictures are enemies of the best art today. Those woodland lakes in a thousand sitting-rooms with gold-tinted wallpaper belong to the profoundest inspirations of art. It always feels tragic to see people labouring to saw off the branch they are sitting on. ~ Asger Jorn

OR

It always feels tragic to see people labouring to saw off the branch they are sitting on. ~ Asger Jorn

  • 3 for both versions. Zarbon 06:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward a 4, but only for the longest version.
  • 3 for the longer version; 2 for the shorter. InvisibleSun 23:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

There can be no question of selecting in any direction, but of penetrating the whole cosmic law of rhythms, forces and material that are the real world, from the ugliest to the most beautiful, everything that has character and expression, from the crudest and most brutal to the gentlest and most delicate. ~ Asger Jorn

What we have, and what constitutes our strength, is our joy in life, in all of its moral and amoral manifestations. ~ Asger Jorn

  • 3 and lean toward a 4. Zarbon 06:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 02:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC) In this form I rank it only a 2, although I would give what is perhaps another translation of this same statement (or at least a similar one), a 3 or even perhaps a 4:
What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life; our interest in life, in all its moral aspects. That is also the basis of our contemporary art.
  • 3 for the first; 2 for the possible alternative translation. InvisibleSun 23:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

If a symbolic language dies, it tortures us like a nightmare, like a thousand piece orchestra grating on our nerves and tearing our mind to pieces. It is a corpse with no symbolic power or strength. ~ Asger Jorn

  • 4 Zarbon 06:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 02:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC) but somewhat inclined toward a 3
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,
Sniff them and think and sniff again and try
Once more to think what it is I am remembering,
Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,
Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,
With no meaning, than this bitter one.
~ Edward Thomas

I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding-sheet and her worms to fill in the grave, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, adding flowers - as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero. ~ Edward Thomas

As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking. ~ William Godwin

The poet...who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the world. ~ William Godwin

  • 2 Zarbon 06:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC) but would prefer to extend this much to include the full statement:
Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings should be uniform and sound, whose sense should be alive to every impression and hardened to none, who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the world, ought never to have been a practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.
  • 2 for the shorter; 3 for the longer. The quote is curiously reminiscent of his son-in-law's remark about poets as the "unacknowledged legislators," etc. InvisibleSun 23:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species. ~ William Godwin

Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility. ~ William Godwin

The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself. ~ William Godwin

  • 3 Zarbon 06:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward a 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be more or less the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious and misery so unsupportable. So far as related to myself I resolved, and this resolution has never been entirely forgotten by me, to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer. ~ William Godwin

Everything is in constant flux, from state to state, from good to bad and back again.., only in transmutation, perpetual motion, lies truth. ~ Asger Jorn

We are sparks that must glow as brightly as possible. ~ Asger Jorn

To break and be able to grow together again in a better way: that is the difficult art. ~ Asger Jorn

To understand the magic way of thinking you have to know non-magic thinking. If you see that clearly, you will see how many magic thoughts are necessary elements even of natural science today. There seems to be just as much magic thinking in modern thought as in older; only it takes place in other areas. ~ Asger Jorn

As opposed to the incoherent spectacle of the world, the real is what is expected, what is obtained and what is discovered by our own movement. It is what is sensed as being within our own power and always responsive to our action. ~ Émile Chartier

We prove what we want to prove, and the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove. ~ Émile Chartier


2004
The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair. ~ Winston Churchill
2005
One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it. ~ Knute Rockne (born 4 March 1888)
2006
There was a young fellow from Trinity,
Who took the square root of infinity.
But the number of digits, Gave him the fidgets;
He dropped Math and took up Divinity.
~ George Gamow ~ (born 4 March 1904)
2007
In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions. ~ P. D. Ouspensky (born 4 March 1878)
2008
Philosophy is based on speculation, on logic, on thought, on the synthesis of what we know and on the analysis of what we do not know. Philosophy must include within its confines the whole content of science, religion and art. ~ P. D. Ouspensky
2009
When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others. ~ Julia Cameron
2010

[edit] Suggestions

The greatest barrier to consciousness is the belief that one is already conscious. ~ P. D. Ouspensky

I've found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard new things: that is things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new. ~ P. D. Ouspensky

  • 3 Kalki 00:29, 4 March 2008 (UTC) but leaning slightly toward a 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 04:02, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm. ... In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently, the biggest crimes actually escape being called crimes. ~ P. D. Ouspensky

  • 2 Kalki 00:58, 3 March 2009 (UTC) 3 Kalki 15:14, 28 February 2009 (UTC) The above translation seems to be a lesser used one, and I now prefer to use an extended portion of a more common translation, which I might eventually rank a 3 or a 4:
The idea of "crime" in existing criminology is artificial, for what is called crime is really an infringement of "existing laws", whereas "laws" are very often a manifestation of barbarism and violence. Such are the prohibiting laws of different kinds which abound in modern life. The number of these laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm. On the other hand, unquestionable crimes escape the field of vision of criminology, either because they have not recognized the form of crime or because they surpass a certain scale. In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently what is often regarded as "political" activity is in fact a criminal activity.
  • 3 Zarbon 19:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 for both versions. InvisibleSun 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I felt that on a basis of a "search for the miraculous" it would be possible to unite together a very large number of people who were no longer able to swallow the customary forms of lying and living in lying. ~ P. D. Ouspensky

  • 3 Kalki 15:14, 28 February 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward a 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 19:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem of Eternity, of which the face of the Sphinx speaks, takes us into the realm of the impossible. Even the problem of Time is simple in comparison with the problem of Eternity. ~ P. D. Ouspensky

  • 3 Kalki 02:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC) 4 Kalki 15:14, 28 February 2009 (UTC) I had ranked this 4, but now prefer something by Julia Cameron, suggested by Zarbon. I am also considering using the wikimedia script for the heiroglyphic symbol for Eternity here in some way, whenever this is used, perhaps to the left of the quote, or below it:
    V28 N5 H
    and/or possibly the painting of Bonaparte before the Sphinx or simply a photograph of the Sphinx and the Khufu pyramid. ~ Kalki 01:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 19:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

First to dream and then to do— isn't that the way to make a dream come true? ~ Meindert DeJong

Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points. ~ Knute Rockne

  • 3 Zarbon 01:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 02:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Anger is meant to be acted on. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us. ~ Julia Cameron

I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow. ~ Julia Cameron

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough — that we should try again. ~ Julia Cameron

Life is a creative endeavor. It is active, not passive. We are the yeast that leavens our lives into rich, fully baked loaves. When we experience our lives as flat and lackluster, it is our consciousness that is at fault. We hold the inner key that turns our lives from thankless to fruitful. ~ Julia Cameron

Focused on our good, focused on our abundance we naturally attract more of the same. This is spiritual law. Our consciousness is creative. What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of? ~ Julia Cameron

  • 2 Zarbon 01:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC) with strong lean toward a 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything. ~ Julia Cameron

  • 1 Zarbon 01:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC) with strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness. ~ Julia Cameron

  • 3 Zarbon 01:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea. ~ Julia Cameron

  • 3 Zarbon 01:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The growth of one blesses all. I am committed to grow in love. All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively. ~ Julia Cameron

I honor my importance and the importance of others. None of us is dispensable, none of us is replacable. In the chorus of life each of us brings a True Note, a perfect pitch that adds to the harmony of the whole. I act creatively and consciously to actively endorse and encourage the expansion of those whose lives I touch. Believing in the goodness of each, I add to the goodness of all. We bless each other even in passing. ~ Julia Cameron

  • 3 Kalki 02:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC) with strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 06:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth. ~ Dawn of the Dead (1978) by George Romero
2005
The most dangerous phrase in the language is, "We've always done it this way." ~ Grace Hopper
2006
Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. ~ Rosa Luxemburg (born 5 March 1870 or 1871)
2007
I've always wanted to make the world a more rational place. I'm still working on it. ~ Penn Jillette (born 5 March 1955)
2008
Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision. ~ Penn Jillette
2009
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man. ~ William Beveridge
2010

[edit] Suggestions

HOPE

Sees the invisible
Feels the intangible
Achieves the impossible
  • initially proposed on the posting page as "A saying quoted often from memory by my sister (source is unknown)" by Tara 11:40, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 21:24, 4 March 2006 (UTC) (good statement, but I greatly prefer using traceable quotes to anonymous ones for QOTD, as well as ones with some relevance to the date)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:04, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC) - I like the quote, but since it is unsourced, I do not feel it is appropriate for QOTD.

War unleashes — at the same time as the reactionary forces of the capitalist world — the generating forces of social revolution which ferment in its depths. ~ Rosa Luxemburg

I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. ~ Penn Jillette

All the world's most powerful governments pay millions of dollars for seas and deserts, 100's of acres of land bought for ownership, and improvement done for later benefit. Because it's land that is forever stable, money is just paper. ~ Vazgen Sargsyan (born March 5)

  • 3 because land has remained stagnant although many things are not. Zarbon 04:15, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 15:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. ~ Grace Hopper

  • 4 Kalki 15:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 19:16, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 4 UDScott 15:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:48, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Nothing shocks me more than ferocity against the vanquished, especially when victors take poses. Between the dogs and the wolf, I shall always side with the wolf, especially when he is wounded. ~ Jacques Vergès

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. ~ Zhou Enlai

  • 3 Zarbon 02:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC) but leaning toward a 3
  • 3 UDScott 15:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:48, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

China is an attractive piece of meat coveted by all...but very tough, and for years no one has been able to bite into it. ~ Zhou Enlai

I do not own an inch of land,
But all I see is mine. ~ Lucy Larcom

  • 4 Zarbon 02:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC) but leaning to a 3
  • 3 UDScott 15:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:48, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

The beauty of a move lies not in its appearance but in the thought behind it. ~ Siegbert Tarrasch

  • 3 Zarbon 02:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I have always believed that success would be the inevitable result if the two services, the army and the navy, had fair play, and if we sent the right man to fill the right place. ~ Austen Henry Layard


2004
The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. ~ John Milton
2005
Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God: but only he who sees, takes off his shoes, the rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries, and daub their natural faces unaware... ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning (born 6 March 1806)
2006
Give thought to life and liberty. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac (born 6 March 1619)
2007
For all eternity has God not occupied His intellect with the cabbage's birth as well as yours? It also seems that He has necessarily provided more for the birth of the vegetable than for the thinking being... Will anyone say that we are born in the image of the Sovereign Being, while cabbages are not? ~ Cyrano de Bergerac
2008
You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand ... someone blind from birth cannot imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colors of a painting or the shadings of an iris. He will imagine them as something palpable, edible, audible or olfactory. Likewise, if I were to explain to you what I perceive by the senses you do not have, you would interpret it as something that could be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted; but it is not like that. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac
2009
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who watches the Watchmen?
~ Juvenal ~
(release date of the Watchmen film)
2010

[edit] Suggestions

The key to happiness is having dreams; the key to success is making them come true. ~ James Allen

  • initially proposed on the posting page (without author) by Tara who had "read it off a 'Hallmark e-card" 11:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 21:24, 4 March 2006 (UTC) no clear linkage to the date, but the suggestion prompted me to do some research and create a page for James Allen.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I seek no copy now of life's first half:
Leave here the pages with long musing curled,
And write me new my future's epigraph,
New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning (born March 6, 1806)

If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants in the sky, people will probably believe you. ~ Gabriel García Márquez (born March 6, 1927)

A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame. I don't really like to say this because it never sounds sincere, but I would really have liked for my books to have been published after my death, so I wouldn't have to go through all this business of fame and being a great writer. In my case, the only advantage to fame is that I have been able to give it a political use. Otherwise, it is quite uncomfortable. The problem is that you're famous for twenty-four hours a day, and you can't say, "Okay, I won't be famous until tomorrow," or press a button and say, "I won't be famous here or now." ~ Gabriel García Márquez

Some people think that friendliness is a sign of weakness, when in reality it is a sign of strength. ~ Wolfgang Singer

  • I just kike this quote and think someday it should be qotm.--McNoddy 14:24, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 23:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC) This might fare better if placed on his birthdate (29 November), though I am assuming that Wolfgang Singer is Hans Wolfgang Singer.
  • 3, to be used on a more appropriate date. InvisibleSun 23:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3, but on a different date, as suggested above. UDScott 15:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Most men judge only by their senses and let themselves be persuaded by what they see... On top of that, insufferable vanity has convinced humans that nature has been made only for them, as though the sun, a huge body four hundred and thirty-four times as large as the earth, had been lit only to ripen our crab apples and cabbages. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac

A man contains all that is needed to make up a tree; likewise, a tree contains all that is needed to make up a man. Thus, finally, all things meet in all things, but we need a Prometheus to distill it. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac

  • 4 Kalki 17:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC) * 3 Kalki 23:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown!
No mortal grief deserves that crown.
O supreme Love, chief misery,
The sharp regalia are for Thee
Whose days eternally go on!

For us, — whatever's undergone,
Thou knowest, willest what is done,
Grief may be joy misunderstood;
Only the Good discerns the good.
I trust Thee while my days go on.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~

Even if a king defeats his enemy in battle, that still doesn't settle anything. There are other, less numerous armies of philosophers and scientists, and their contests determine the true triumph or defeat of nations. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac

  • 3 Kalki 00:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all. ~ Michelangelo

  • 3 Zarbon 02:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 02:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC) but leaning toward 3.
  • 2 UDScott 15:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

As when, O lady mine!
With chiselled touch
The stone unhewn and cold
Becomes a living mould.
The more the marble wastes,
The more the statue grows.
~ Michelangelo

  • 4 Zarbon 02:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 02:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC) Though I might rank it a 2 or even a 3 some other year.
  • 2 UDScott 15:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Yet I am learning. ~ Michelangelo

A little work, a little play
To keep us going—and so good-day!

A little warmth, a little light
Of love’s bestowing—and so, good-night.

A little fun, to match the sorrow
Of each day’s growing—and so, good-morrow!

A little trust that when we die
We reap our sowing—and so—good-bye!
~ George du Maurier

Ah, brief is Life,
Love’s short sweet way,
With dreamings rife,
And then—Good-day!

And Life is vain—
Hope’s vague delight,
Grief’s transient pain,
And then—Good-night.
~ George du Maurier

  • 3 Zarbon 02:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 02:53, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • This is not by DuMaurier; as the article shows, it is by Léon Montenaeken. InvisibleSun 23:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Mortality, behold and fear!
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones:
Here they lie had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their hands.
~ Francis Beaumont (birth unknown/date of death)

  • 3 and strong lean toward a 4. Zarbon 02:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 02:53, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC) - I like the quote, but I'm not sure what ties it to this date.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
2005
Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design. ~ John Herschel (born 7 March 1792)
2006
Burn all the statutes and their shelves:
They stir us up against our kind;
And worse, against ourselves.
We have a passion — make a law,
Too false to guide us or control!
And for the law itself we fight
In bitterness of soul.
And, puzzled, blinded thus, we lose
Distinctions that are plain and few:
These find I graven on my heart:
That tells me what to do.
~ William Wordsworth in "Rob Roy's Grave" ~ (Rob Roy born 7 March 1671)
2007
Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement. ~ Aristotle (date of death)
2008
Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game. ~ Gary Gygax (recent death)
2009
Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do. ~ Thomas Aquinas
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue. ~ John Herschel

  • 2 because one who does not respect himself/herself, will not respect others. Zarbon 16:22, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 15:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Ningauble 22:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

To the natural philosopher there is no natural object unimportant or trifling. ~ John Herschel

  • 3 Kalki 15:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 19:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

If ye are seeking Rob Roy, he's ken'd to be better than half a hunder men strong when he's at the fewest. ~ Sir Walter Scott, (Rob Roy's date of birth)

  • 3 Kalki 15:50, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 19:18, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Law: an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community. ~ Thomas Aquinas (date of death; date of birth unknown)

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine. ~ Thomas Aquinas

  • 2 Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The most hopeful people in the world are the young and the drunk. The first because they have little experience of failure, and the second because they have succeeded in drowning theirs. ~ Thomas Aquinas

  • 3 and lean toward a 4. Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Reason in man is rather like God in the world. ~ Thomas Aquinas

  • 3 because both are hard to find. Majestic comparé. Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 16:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sing, my tongue, the Savior's glory,
Of His Flesh the mystery sing;
Of the Blood, all price exceeding,
Shed by our immortal King. ~ Thomas Aquinas

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free. ~ Aristotle (date of death; date of birth unknown)

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs. ~ Aristotle

  • 3 because man has intellect and that is in and of itself grandiose. Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 16:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences. ~ Aristotle

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all. ~ Aristotle

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. ~ Aristotle

The law is reason unaffected by desire. ~ Aristotle

  • 3 Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Ningauble 22:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC) Would that laws were so, but this is too ironic for me.
  • 1 Kalki 16:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC) Frankly, I must agree with Ninguable here, at least with most understandings of the word "Law."
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy. ~ Aristotle

  • 3 Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 16:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC) but leaning to a 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods. ~ Aristotle

  • 3 Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Great quote, but this was already used, on 1 August 2003.

And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace. ~ Aristotle

  • 3 and lean toward a 4. Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Ningauble 22:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC) There are too many other bases for happiness, activity, and war making.
  • 2 Kalki 16:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility. ~ Aristotle

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. ~ Aristotle

Liars when they speak the truth are not believed. ~ Aristotle

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies. ~ Aristotle

  • 4 Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

What comes after is not always progress. ~ Alessandro Manzoni

It is one of the advantages of this world that people can hate and be hated without knowing each other. ~ Alessandro Manzoni

  • 3 Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Ningauble 22:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC) Taken literally or ironically, I find this unappealing.
  • 1 Kalki 16:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

But what is history, Don Ferrante would often say, without politics? A guide who walks on and on with no one following to learn the road, so that his every step is wasted; just as politics without history is like a man who walks along without a guide. ~ Alessandro Manzoni

  • 3 Zarbon 04:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's. ~ J. D. Salinger
2005
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (born 8 March 1841)
2006
The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (born 8 March 1841)
2007
Animals arrived, liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down, spread, and flourished. They didn't bother themselves about the past — they never do; they're too busy. ~ Kenneth Grahame (born March 8, 1859)
2008
We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh enrichment. ~ Johannes Kepler
2009
We no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why. That is, we don't know what information is relevant, and what information is irrelevant to our lives. ~ Neil Postman
2010

[edit] Suggestions

The whole thing's nonsense, and conventionality, and popular thick-headedness. There's absolutely nothing to fight about, from beginning to end. And anyhow I'm not going to, so that settles it! ~ The Dragon in "The Reluctant Dragon" by Kenneth Grahame

As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of imagination that they are so sadly to seek. ~ Kenneth Grahame

Nature uses as little as possible of anything. ~ Johannes Kepler (first discovered his third law of planetary motion on this day)

The greater the emotional intensity, the greater the simplicity. ~ Alan Hovhaness

It's gotten worse and worse, somehow, because physical science has given us more and more terrible deadly weapons, and the human spirit has been destroyed in so many cases, so what's the use of having the most powerful country in the world if we have killed the soul. It's of no use. ~ Alan Hovhaness

A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved. He must of necessity feel all of the affects that he hopes to arouse in his audience, for the revealing of his own humour will stimulate a like humour in the listener. ~ Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

  • 3 Zarbon 05:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 07:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • – (un-sourced) Ningauble 21:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

A page of history is worth a volume of logic. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Eloquence may set fire to reason. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  • 3 and lean toward a 4. Zarbon 05:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 07:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

What causes us the most misery and pain... has nothing to do with the sort of information made accessible by computers. The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane. The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking. It cannot provide a means of understanding why we are here or why we fight each other or why decency eludes us so often, especially when we need it the most. The computer is... a magnificent toy that distracts us from facing what we most need to confront — spiritual emptiness, knowledge of ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and future. ~ Neil Postman

  • 2 but rather long. Zarbon 05:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC) - but I would trim it to the last sentence.
  • 3 Kalki 07:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Of writing that is filled with mechanical and grammatical error, as compared with writing that conforms to the rules of standard edited English. Surely, we do not want to say that there is a necessary correlation between mechanical and editorial accuracy and intellectual substance. There are many books that are mechanically faultless but which contain untrue, unclear, or even nonsensical ideas. Carefully edited writing tells us, not that the writer speaks truly, but that he or she grasps... the manner in which knowledge is usually expressed. The most devastating argument against a paper that is marred by grammatical and rhetorical error is that the writer does not understand the subject. ~ Neil Postman

  • 2 but rather long. Zarbon 05:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 15:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 07:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2. Would start at "There are many..." InvisibleSun 22:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

You cannot avoid making judgements but you can become more conscious of the way in which you make them. This is critically important because once we judge someone or something we tend to stop thinking about them or it. Which means, among other things, that we behave in response to our judgements rather than to that to which is being judged. People and things are processes. Judgements convert them into fixed states. This is one reason that judgements are often self-fulfilling. ~ Neil Postman

A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one. ~ Neil Postman

Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose. ~ Neil Postman

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be — that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.


2004
People often say to me, "I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don't really feel it, I don't realize it," and I am apt to reply, "I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it." ~ Alan Watts
2005
When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it! ~ Yuri Gagarin (born 9 March 1934)
2006
Some choices will choose you. How you face these choices, these turns in the road, with what kind of attitude, more than the choices themselves, is what will define the context of your life. ~ Dana Reeve (recent death)
2007
Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book. ~ Mickey Spillane (born 9 March 1918)
2008
If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes. ~ Mickey Spillane
2009
A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. ~ Shashi Tharoor
2010

[edit] Suggestions

You can figure things out as quickly as I can, but you haven't got the ways and means of doing the dirty work. That's where I come in. You'll be right behind me every inch of the way, but when the pinch comes I'll get shoved aside and you slap the cuffs on. That is, if you can shove me aside. I don't think you can. ~ Mickey Spillane

You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead. ~ Mickey Spillane

Movies are open doors, and at every door, I change character and life... I live for the present always. I accept this risk. I don't deny the past, but it's a page to turn. ~ Juliette Binoche (born 9 March 1964)

  • 3 Kalki 00:35, 9 March 2008 (UTC) I might rank this a 4 if a definite published source can be found for it.
  • 1 Zarbon 04:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:46, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I looked and looked but I didn't see God. ~ Yuri Gagarin

  • 3 because sometimes God need not be found by eyes, even when floating in outer space, through the eyes of an astronaut. Zarbon 15:29, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 15:46, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 07:55, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted. ~ William Cobbett (born 9 March 1763), Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1796)

Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed. ~ William Cobbett, Political Register, XLVI, pp. 513-514 (May 31, 1823)

Any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake. ~ Luis Barragán

The Art of Seeing. It is essential to an architect to know how to see: I mean, to see in such a way that the vision is not overpowered by rational analysis. ~ Luis Barragán

With that she dasht her on the lippes,
So dyed double red:
Hard was the heart that gave the blow,
Soft were those lips that bled. ~ William Warner (birth unknown/date of death)

Gravitation is the only logical factor a sculptor has to contend with. ~ David Smith

I'm not as soft or as generous a person as I would be if the world hadn't changed me. ~ Bobby Fischer

Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it! ~ Yuri Gagarin

The vehicles of human politics seem to run off course, but the site of the accident turns out to have been the intended destination. ~ Shashi Tharoor

  • 3 and lean toward 4. Zarbon 05:27, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 07:55, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Dear Mum, I know you're always there
To help and guide me with all your care,
You nursed and fed me and made me strong
To face the world and all its wrong. ~ Bobby Sands

It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is 'the undauntable thought', my friend,
That thought that says 'I'm right!' ~ Bobby Sands

I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all. ~ Vita Sackville-West

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind. ~ Vita Sackville-West


2004
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. ~ Carl Jung
2005
A loser doesn't know what he'll do if he loses, but talks about what he'll do if he wins, and a winner doesn't talk about what he'll do if he wins, but knows what he'll do if he loses. ~ Eric Berne
2006
All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome. ~ Kate Sheppard (born 10 March 1847)
2007
I'm not aware of too many things.
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
~ Edie Brickell ~
2008
We are tired of having a "sphere" doled out to us, and of being told that anything outside that sphere is "unwomanly". We want to be natural just for a change … we must be ourselves at all risks. ~ Kate Sheppard
2009
In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not.
~ Joaquin Miller ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Sail through the sea of sad faces with love.
Love. Love for everyone.
Drift like a little boat on a wave.
~ Edie Brickell ~

Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep. ~ Edie Brickell

  • 2 Zarbon 16:26, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 08:05, 7 March 2009 (UTC) interesting line, but in some ways not clearly indicative of the full point of the song.
  • 2 UDScott 19:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe in hatred anymore.
I hate to think of how it felt before
When anger overwhelms your very soul
It's hard to realize you'll ever know
Love like we do.
~ Edie Brickell ~

What I am is what I am. Are you what you are — or what?
~ Edie Brickell ~

  • 4 Kalki 08:05, 7 March 2009 (UTC) Major point of her most famous song.
  • 1 Zarbon 19:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 19:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate,
That few but such as cannot write, translate.
~ John Denham (date of birth unknown/date of death)

Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
~ John Denham

Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show,
We may our ends by our beginnings know.
~ John Denham

  • 3 and leaning toward 4 because inside the youth is hidden the man of tomorrow. Zarbon 19:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 19:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 21:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Search not to find what lies too deeply hid,
Nor to know things, whose knowledge is forbid.
~ John Denham

  • 3 or in other words, don't mess with what you shouldn't. Zarbon 19:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 19:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 21:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

But whither am I strayed? I need not raise
Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built;
Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt
Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.
~ John Denham

I saw the lightning's gleaming rod
Reach forth and write upon the sky
The awful autograph of God. ~ Joaquin Miller

  • 3 and leaning toward 4. Zarbon 19:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 19:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 21:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The very clouds have wept and died
And only God is in the sky. ~ Joaquin Miller

  • 2 Zarbon 19:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 19:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 21:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth. ~ Chuck Norris

Let justice be done, though the world perish. ~ Ferdinand I

Oh, Lord! You've been wid me in six troubles, don't desert me in the seventh! ~ Harriet Tubman (date of birth unknown/date of death)


2004
To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed. That can make life a garden. ~ Goethe
2005
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. ~ Douglas Adams (born 11 March 1950)
2006
Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. ~ Douglas Adams (born 11 March 1950)
2007
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries. ~ Vannevar Bush
2008
The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it. ~ Vannevar Bush
2009
All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others. ~ Douglas Adams
2010

[edit] Suggestions

I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. ~ Douglas Adams

  • 3 because to be astonished at something one had yet to learn is fine, but to ignore is a crime to oneself. Zarbon 16:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Lyle 15:26, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 08:08, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Ningauble 22:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying. ~ Douglas Adams

  • 3 because mankind will always try to obliterate itself. Zarbon 16:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Lyle 15:26, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 08:08, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Ningauble 22:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? ~Douglas Adams

  • 3 not every quote needs to be paraphrased Lyle 15:26, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 19:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 08:08, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Ningauble 22:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

You can be in the public eye all the time and still have a private life, but the important thing is to keep in touch with the people who put you there. ~ John Barrowman

  • 2 Zarbon 04:42, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 22:27, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Ningauble 22:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps if only once you did enjoy
The thousandth part of all the happiness
A heart beloved enjoys, returning love,
Repentant, you would surely sighing say,
"All time is truly lost and gone
Which is not spent in serving love." ~ Torquato Tasso

  • 2 Zarbon 04:42, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 4 Kalki 22:27, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Ningauble 22:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. ~ André Gide
2005
I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down. ~ Jack Kerouac (born 12 March 1922)
2006
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite." ~ Edward Albee (born 12 March 1928)
2007
They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" ~ Jack Kerouac (born 12 March 1922)
2008
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. ~ Jack Kerouac
2009
Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth and the bosom of the deep with endless successions of life and happiness. ~ William Buckland
2010

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

  • Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men's souls to joy. ~ Jack Kerouac in On The Road

[edit] Suggestions

But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious. ~ Jack Kerouac

—This unsigned comment is by Japhy (talk • contribs) .
  • 1 for unsigned suggestion. Zarbon 05:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

What difference does it make after all? — anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind. ~ Jack Kerouac

  • 3 InvisibleSun 10:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 23:43, 11 March 2008 (UTC) but trimmed to begin at "Anonymity in the world of men..." though I might rank it a 3 if trimmed to simply state "What's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind."
  • 2 In its entirety Zarbon 04:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future. ~ Jack Kerouac

  • 3 InvisibleSun 10:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:43, 11 March 2008 (UTC) but only if trimmed a bit to start at "I looked at the cracked high ceiling..."
  • 1 Zarbon 04:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives. ~ Jack Kerouac

  • 3 InvisibleSun 10:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:43, 11 March 2008 (UTC) (but I would prefer to include a little more context of this statement by extending it to:
The car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives.
  • 1 Zarbon 04:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Who knows, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty? ~ Jack Kerouac

  • 3 Kalki 23:44, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I am skeptical about preventing wars. I doubt if they can be prevented. There will always be wars. Judging by past experiences, working for peace now would be as ineffective as ever. It's a law of nature. ~ Wilhelm Frick (born March 12)

  • 3 Zarbon 04:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Hitler was undoubtedly a genius but he lacked self-control. He recognized no limits. Otherwise the thousand-year Reich would have lasted more than twelve years. ~ Wilhelm Frick (born March 12)

  • 3 Zarbon 04:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC) I cannot agree that Hitler was a genius — he was simply a very bold person, driven by bigotry and arrogance into very brutal paths, in ways tragic for himself and millions of others.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humour. ~ Edward Albee

  • 2 because one can understand the laughable but does not have to laugh about it. Zarbon 15:36, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

A play is fiction — and fiction is fact distilled into truth. ~ Edward Albee

  • 2 because all fiction is derived from some form of fact. Zarbon 15:36, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. ~ Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face from The Dark Knight.

  • 4 Two-Face is my favorite character in Batman history. He's the enthralling image of dual personalities, both mesmerizing and captivating, in all his esteem. This quotation strongly describes his ascent into a schizophrenic state of mind, a double entendre of truth and chance, corrupted by nothing but chance alone. I truly love Two-Face. Zarbon 19:21, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not about what I want, it's about what's fair! You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time. But you were wrong. The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair. ~ Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face from The Dark Knight.

  • 3 and strong lean toward a 4. Another powerful image depicted by Two-Face. The raw truth of chance in life is magnificently depicted here. I love this character and all that he stands for. Zarbon 19:21, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC) but my lean is toward 1 — because I hold that there are many very dangerous delusions at work in this statement, though I can accept that the character speaking them was in many ways understandably impelled into them.
    • Yes, he was impelled but I really love the quote, it's from one of my alltime favorite scenes in the flick aside from the one I suggested above. I was really hoping that at least one of his quotes would make it this year. Well, there's always next year. - Zarbon 03:08, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Geology has shared the fate of other infant sciences, in being for a while considered hostile to revealed religion; so like them, when fully understood, it will be found a potent and consistent auxiliary to it, exalting our conviction of the Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness of the Creator. ~ William Buckland

  • 3 Fossil 20:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 19:23, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Geology holds the keys of one of the kingdoms of nature; and it cannot be said that a science which extends our Knowledge, and by consequence our Power, over a third part of nature, holds a low place among intellectual employments. ~ William Buckland

  • 3 Fossil 20:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 19:23, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

God is indeed dead.
He died of self-horror
when He saw the creature He had made
in His own image.
~ Irving Layton

  • 2 and lean toward 3. Zarbon 05:18, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC) but my lean is toward 1.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

When you argue with your inferiors,
you convince them of only one thing:
they are as clever as you.
~ Irving Layton

My neighbour
doesn't want to be loved
as much as
he wants to be envied.
~ Irving Layton

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. ~ Richard Steele

Of all the affections which attend human life, the love of glory is the most ardent. ~ Richard Steele

Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery. ~ Richard Steele

A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it. ~ Richard Steele

Old England is our home, and Englishmen are we;
Our tongue is known in every clime, our flag in every sea.
~ Mary Howitt

Yes, in the poor man's garden grow
Far more than herbs and flowers—
Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind,
And joy for weary hours.
~ Mary Howitt

Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
Time's noblest offspring is the last.
~ George Berkeley

Our youth we can have but to-day,
We may always find time to grow old.
~ George Berkeley

Doth the reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind? ~ George Berkeley

What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies. ~ Jack Kerouac in On the Road

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life but that great consciousness of life. ~ Jack Kerouac

All is well, practice kindness, heaven is nigh. ~ Jack Kerouac

  • 3 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward a 4
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 03:08, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad. ~ Jack Kerouac in On the Road

The gods too are fond of a joke. ~ Edward Albee

  • 3 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC) but with a lean toward 4
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 03:08, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand. ~ Edward Albee

  • 3 Kalki 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC) but with a strong lean toward a 4. Many ironies are always at work in the world — most of which people can have but very limited perceptions of...
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 03:08, 12 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
2005
What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others. ~ Joseph Priestley (born 13 March 1733)
2006
Don't play for safety. It's the most dangerous thing in the world. ~ Hugh Walpole (born 13 March 1884)
2007
Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane... something sacred shows itself to us ... something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural "profane" world. ~ Mircea Eliade
2008
Don’t give up! I believe in you all
A person’s a person, no matter how small!
And you very small persons will not have to die
If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!
~ Dr. Seuss ~ (from Horton Hears a Who!, the movie adaptation of which is opening tomorrow)
2009
The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant. ~ Mircea Eliade
2010

[edit] Suggestions

For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality. ~ Mircea Eliade

  • 3 Kalki 00:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4
  • 1 Zarbon 04:18, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:11, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Tisn't life that matters! 'Tis the courage you bring to it. ~ Hugh Walpole

  • 3 because it's what you do that matters...actions speak louder than words, and in this case, actions are remembered, unfettered by the mortal body. Zarbon 00:54, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:40, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:11, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The whole object of science is to synthesize, and so simplify; and did we but know the uttermost of a subject we could make it singularly clear. ~ Percival Lowell

War is a survival among us from savage times and affects now chiefly the the boyish and unthinking element of the nation. ~ Percival Lowell

Some things in life are flexible and friendly. They realise that a brittle nature does nothing for their popularity, and so adopt an admirable willingness to change. Thus our lives are enriched as we coax these considerate allies into wonderful new forms without disturbing their fundamental chemistry. Take for example: The Truth. ~ David Baboulene

Freedom is a noble thing!
Great happiness does freedom bring.
All solace to a man it gives;
He lives at ease that freely lives.
~ John Barbour

For love is of such potent might
That of misfortune it makes light.
~ John Barbour

The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident. ~ Hugh Walpole

The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and a thousand other things well. ~ Hugh Walpole

I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to lie in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not overanxious about your own comic fallibilities; that gives you tranquility without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself. ~ Hugh Walpole

  • 4 Kalki 19:40, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Ningauble 21:59, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 02:20, 13 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace. ~ Helen Keller
2005
Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest. ~ Albert Einstein (born 14 March 1879)
2006
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. ~ Albert Einstein (born 14 March 1879)
2007
Let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.
What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living. ~ Albert Einstein
2008
Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars... The stakes are immense, the task colossal, the time is short. But we may hope — we must hope — that man’s own creation, man’s own genius, will not destroy him. ~ Albert Einstein
2009
Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society — nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.
The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion. ~ Albert Einstein
2010

[edit] Suggestions

One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. ~ Albert Einstein (born March 14, 1879)

  • 4 InvisibleSun 06:46, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 18:16, 13 March 2007 (UTC) I've never actually thought this was one of Einstein's best stated quips, and in Out of My Later Years (1956) this reads : One may say "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility" as if he is quoting or paraphrasing the statement of someone else — perhaps Immanuel Kant. I also tend to prefer the variant translations which previous to today were not sourced at all: "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible." or "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." — this might be the oldest version or translation as quoted in Scripta Mathematica (1932) by Yeshiva University; it also appears in "Physics and Reality" (1936) as quoted in Einstein: A Biography (1954) by Antonina Vallentin, p. 24. — Lately I love using "Google Books" which now permits far easier sourcing of many quotes than was previously available.
  • Note: Of the quote and its variations, I would opt for the one from 1932. - InvisibleSun 20:30, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC) - and I also would prefer the 1932 variant.
  • 3 Ningauble 18:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC) – (1932) Wishing the origin were more certain.

The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. ~ Albert Einstein

  • 3 InvisibleSun 06:46, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 18:16, 13 March 2007 (UTC) (similar to one translation of this already used, on 25 July 2003, but there are many variant translations of this statement and I would not want to totally exclude any of them. I might rank this higher eventually.)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Ningauble 18:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. ~ Albert Einstein

Cupid has offered his arrows for Jesus to try;
He has offered his bow for the game.
But Jesus went weeping away, and left him there wondering why.
~ Harold Monro

I am a mighty Garage,
On the corner of the Square,
And it is all my pleasure,
To provide a quick repair,
Or I can do your service,
In the blinking of an eye,
I wouldn't say it's thorough,
But it'll get you by.
~ Pam Ayres

The lesson is that dying men must groan;
And poets groan in rhymes that please the ear.
~ John Wain

Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking. ~ John Wain

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.
~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy

  • 3 Zarbon 20:36, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 08:50, 13 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 Ningauble 18:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth
Each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy

  • 3 Zarbon 20:36, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 08:50, 13 March 2009 (UTC) with a VERY strong lean toward 4.
  • 3.5 Ningauble 18:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming-
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.
~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy

  • 3 Zarbon 20:36, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 08:50, 13 March 2009 (UTC) with a VERY strong lean toward 4.
  • 2.5 Ningauble 18:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC) Difficult without context for "our inspiration"
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.
~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy

Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.
~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; —
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy ~

  • 4 Kalki 08:50, 13 March 2009 (UTC) This is the first and most famous stanza of his most famous work "Ode", though I also have long liked many others within it as well.
  • 3.5 Ningauble 18:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 I had originally studied this page and didn't find that part as compelling as the rest. Zarbon 02:37, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against. ~ Malcolm X
2005
Beware the ides of March. ~ William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar (The Ides of March)
  • proposed by IP 84.56.18.77
2006
Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces." ~ Julius Caesar (died 15 March 44 BC)
2007
There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. ~ Andrew Jackson
2008
As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of person and property, liberty of conscience, and of the press, it will be worth defending. ~ Andrew Jackson
2009

[edit] Suggestions

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government. ~ Andrew Jackson (born March 15, 1767)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:03, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 02:32, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:21, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in. ~ Andrew Jackson

  • 4 Kalki 09:04, 13 March 2009 (UTC) * 3 Kalki 02:32, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 06:10, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:21, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd rather betray others, than have others betray me. ~ Cao Cao (date of death/date of birth unknown)

Alone he rides, alone,
The fair and fatal king:
Dark night is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing.
~ Lionel Johnson

Vanquished in life, his death
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.
~ Lionel Johnson

Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering place of fears:
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears.
~ Lionel Johnson


2004
Do not say, "I follow the one true path of the Spirit", but rather, "I have found the Spirit walking on my path", for the Spirit walks on all paths. ~ Khalil Gibran
2005
If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead try to help deal with the world's larger problems. Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it. ~ Richard Stallman (born 16 March 1953)
2006
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. ~ Raymond Chandler
  • proposed by IP 220.233.188.149
2007
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. ~ James Madison (born 16 March 1751)
2008
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents. ~ James Madison
2009
Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (from The Scarlet Letter first published on this date in 1850)
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Of all the enemies to public liberty war, is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. ~ James Madison (born 16 March 1751)

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ~ James Madison (born 16 March 1751)

I am currently assuming the above mark was meant to be a 3 (this message can be removed if a correction is made). ~ Kalki 09:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
I'd assume the same exact thing, as the numerical number sign is on the 3, probably a caps lock error or shift key hold. - Zarbon 02:41, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan gave us the Taliban. The American occupation of Saudi Arabia gave us bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The Israeli occupation of Lebanon gave us Hezbollah. Let us see what the American occupation of Iraq is going to give us. ~ As'ad AbuKhalil

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth. ~ René Daumal

It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content ... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion. ~ René Daumal

Thy spirit, Independence, let me share,
Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye.
Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare,
Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky.
~ Tobias Smollett

Death is the price paid to have trees, and clams and birds and grasshoppers, and death is the price paid to have human consciousness, to be aware of all that shimmering awareness and all that love. ~ Ursula Goodenough

The Big Bang, the formation of stars and planets, the origin and evolution of life on this planet, the advent of human consciousness and the resultant evolution of cultures— this is the story, the one story, that has the potential to unite us, because it happens to be true. ~ Ursula Goodenough

One can start from the perspective of a religious naturalist or from the perspective of the world religions and arrive at the same place: a moral imperative that this Earth and its creatures be respected and cherished. ~ Ursula Goodenough

  • 3 Zarbon 02:37, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 09:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:38, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
Try to have a good day today, wherever you are, whatever you do, whoever is near, if no one is near. Try to be happy, because you may not see tomorrow. There is someone this morning, who didn't wake up, who will never see this day. Try to feel lucky that this is not you. ~ Margaret Cho
  • proposed by IP 172.169.22.135
2005
I am imperfect in many things, nevertheless I want my brethren and kinsfolk to know my nature so that they may be able to perceive my soul's desire. ~ Saint Patrick (died 17 March 1493; St. Patrick's Day)
2006
Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. There is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof. ~ "V" in V for Vendetta (opened 17 March 2006)
2007
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.
~ Nat King Cole ~ (born 17 March 1919)
2008
Let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, who knew everything, even before the beginning of time. ~ Saint Patrick
2009
Man dwells apart, though not alone,
He walks among his peers unread;
The best of thoughts which he hath known
For lack of listeners are not said.
~ Jean Ingelow ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Reign, and keep life in this our deep desire
Our only greatness is that we aspire.
~ Jean Ingelow

  • 2 Zarbon 20:16, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 09:26, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

How short our happy days appear!
How long the sorrowful!
~ Jean Ingelow

  • 2 Zarbon 20:16, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:26, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

The good needs fear no law,
It is his safety and the bad man's awe.
~ Philip Massinger (date of death/birth unknown)

  • 3 Zarbon 20:16, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:26, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Some undone widow sits upon mine arm,
And takes away the use of it; and my sword,
Glued to my scabbard with wronged orphans' tears,
Will not be drawn.
~ Philip Massinger

  • 2 Zarbon 20:16, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 09:26, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!
Translation: O Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name! ~ Madame Roland

  • 3 Zarbon 20:16, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 23:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC) * 3 Kalki 09:26, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Ningauble 16:28, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I am Patrick, yes a sinner and indeed untaught; yet I am established here in Ireland where I profess myself bishop. I am certain in my heart that "all that I am," I have received from God. So I live among barbarous tribes, a stranger and exile for the love of God. ~ Saint Patrick

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity
Through belief in the threeness
Through confession of the Oneness
Towards the creator.
~ Saint Patrick ~

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
~ Saint Patrick ~

If I have any worth, it is to live my life for God so as to teach these peoples; even though some of them still look down on me. ~ Saint Patrick

That truth-is-stranger-than-fiction factor keeps getting jacked up on us on a fairly regular, maybe even exponential, basis. I think that's something peculiar to our time. I don't think our grandparents had to live with that. ~ William Gibson (DoB)

  • 3 Ningauble 12:50, 8 April 2009 (UTC) 2.5 Ningauble 16:28, 16 March 2009 (UTC) I would like to rate this higher, really, but the prose seems clunky to me.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 23:54, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 4 Kalki 23:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. ~ Booker T. Washington
2005
We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. ~ John Updike (born 18 March 1932)
2006
The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party. ~ John C. Calhoun (born 18 March 1782)
2007
I mistake the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation and another for a weak one, and that even by indirection a strong power may with impunity despoil a weak one of its territory. ~ Grover Cleveland (born 18 March 1837)
2008
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. ~ Wilhelm Stekel
2009
Candor is always a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate. ~ Wilhelm Stekel
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings. ~ John Updike

  • 3 because this is a very nice personification of "moments". The idea that a thief exists, taking more than giving, in the form of time...is but a chiefly grand understanding, for one grows older and physically gains nothing from it. Zarbon 01:09, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few. ~ John Updike

  • 2 because this is somewhat true. What Updike is trying to dictate here is the bitterness of life. Although the attribution of being a spy is admirable to some degree, the fact that life holds few surprises and secrets is what is being stressed. This image is well illustrated with this statement. Zarbon 01:09, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Truth is not always the best basis for happiness. There are certain lies which may constitute a far better and more secure foundation of happiness. There are people who perish when their eyes are opened. ~ Wilhelm Stekel

  • 3 because sometimes is is better to live a lie than to open eyes to see the truth. The truth may make things more difficult than they are, hence maintaining a camouflage of one's foundation of happiness will furthermore create happiness for that person. I love this quote. Zarbon 01:14, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority. ~ John C. Calhoun

  • 3 because death is nowhere near as terrible as comparative to being lesser...being pathetic...or best described, unaccomplished. Zarbon 01:18, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty. ~ John C. Calhoun

  • 3 because obtaining is easier than maintaining, sustaining, and in the long run, preserving. Zarbon 01:18, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers. ~ Neville Chamberlain

As you know I have always been more afraid of a peace offer than of an air raid. ~ Neville Chamberlain

  • 3 because hidden under a peace offer is an even deadlier strike. - Zarbon 03:04, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I am inventing a language which must necessarily burst forth from a very new poetics, that could be defined in a couple of words: Paint, not the thing, but the effect it produces. ~ Stéphane Mallarmé

The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised. ~ John C. Calhoun

The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book. ~ Stéphane Mallarmé

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
~ Wilfred Owen ~ (born 18 March 1893)

  • 3 Kalki 06:11, 4 November 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.


2004
Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. ~ Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary
2005
The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior. ~ Earl Warren (born 19 March 1891)
2006
Who save the madman dares to cry: "'Tis I am right, you all are wrong"?
"You all are right, you all are wrong," we hear the careless Soofi say,
"For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day."
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~ (born 19 March 1821)
2007
All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~
2008
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~
2009
"Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!

~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~

2010

[edit] Suggestions

"He who wants to protect everything, protects nothing," is one of the fundamental rules of defense. ~ Adolf Galland (born March 19)

  • 3 because it is very true. Basically, he who tries to do everything all at once, fails miserably. Time and patience are virtues. And protection works well as a perfect example to this fundamental military practice. Zarbon 04:30, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: The First and the Last: The Rise and Fall of the German Fighter Forces - Page 165 by Adolf Galland - World War, 1939-1945 - 1954
  • 1 Kalki 16:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. ~ Richard Francis Burton

  • 3 because man truly has shamelessly used religion as an excuse to further man's own purposes. Zarbon 05:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?
~ Richard Francis Burton

  • 4 because regardless of the fact that death awaits, the time in between isn't spent waiting for death. The fact that the end comes is never a detrimental factor to people's actual enjoyment while they are alive. Zarbon 05:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 16:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC) with strong lean toward 4
  • 3 UDScott 20:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Listen: if there is war down there— and if you think me worthy of it, and capable —you ought to grant me the honor of conducting the campaign. Surely, you don't think me too old? ~ Emilio De Bono

  • 2 Zarbon 04:40, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 16:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Forgive me, that was the soldier speaking. Now this is the man speaking again. And the man is more than the soldier. I can bear anything. Death is a more solemn thing than all the earthly trash. ~ Emilio De Bono

  • 3 Zarbon 04:40, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 16:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

We look on seriously, but serenely. ~ Emilio De Bono

  • 3 Zarbon 04:40, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

How shall the Shown pretend to ken aught of the Showman or the Show?
Why meanly bargain to believe, which only means thou ne'er canst know?
How may the passing Now contain the standing Now — Eternity? —
An endless is without a was , the be and never the to-be?
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~

  • 3 Kalki 16:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC) with strong lean toward 4
  • 1 Zarbon 19:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~

  • 3 Kalki 16:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC) with strong lean toward 4
  • 2 Zarbon 19:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it. ~ Philip Roth

Scarcely a tear to shed;
Hardly a word to say;
The end of a Summer's day;
Sweet Love is dead.
~ William Allingham

Winds and waters keep
A hush more dead than any sleep.
~ William Allingham

You can't undo the past but you can certainly not repeat it. ~ Bruce Willis

The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. ~ William Jennings Bryan

  • 3 and lean toward 4. Zarbon 03:30, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 09:55, 13 March 2009 (UTC) with strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane — the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future. ~ William Jennings Bryan

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you — it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists. ~ Philip Roth

I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t. ~ Philip Roth

All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self.... What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself — a troupe of players that I have internalised, a permanent company of actors that I can call upon when a self is required.... I am a theater and nothing more than a theater. ~ Philip Roth


2004
Where there is great love there are always miracles. ~ Willa Cather
2005
Everything comes gradually and at its appointed hour. ~ Ovid (born 20 March 43 BC)
2006
The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom — these are the pillars of society. ~ Henrik Ibsen (born 20 March 1828)
2007
It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us. ~ Henrik Ibsen (born 20 March 1828)
2008
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative. ~ Arthur C. Clarke (recent death)
2009
What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go. ~ Friedrich Hölderlin
2010

[edit] Suggestions

You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone. ~ Henrik Ibsen

  • 3 because strength is heightened ten-fold by serenity, devoid of human obsessions and needs. Zarbon 05:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 10:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. ~ Henrik Ibsen

  • 4 because unlike the dictatorship where one person steers the ship, the community steers the ship. This, in some cases, is both damaging and positive...a mixture of thought and deduction, never solid, and moreso governed by the changing of times, parallel to how hard the wind blows the ship in a comparative image. Zarbon 05:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 10:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

We can learn even from our enemies. ~ Ovid

  • 3 because learning from friends and allies alone will never be enough. In order to understand one's enemies, one must study them and learn from them. Very militaristic strategist persona taken here. Zarbon 05:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 10:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Nothing is stronger than habit. ~ Ovid

  • 3 because those governed by habit will become accustomed to it and the harder it will become to separate oneself from it. Zarbon 05:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 10:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are. ~ Ovid

  • 3 because convenience is a very powerful ally. To decipher motives based on convenience and to conceive of opportunities solely based on belief when needed, is how people become successful...it takes more than being at the right place at the right time. Zarbon 05:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 UDScott 20:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 10:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Time, the devourer of all things. ~ Ovid

  • 3 because the description of time here is solid, a personification of the very word, characterizing time as a learner of man's history, and a devourer who has never subsided or been subdued. Zarbon 05:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 UDScott 20:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 10:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC), but I would prefer to include the original Latin as well: Tempus edax rerum
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

You need a reason to be sad. You don't need a reason to be happy. ~ Louis Sachar

Yet still are you holy to me, as the might of the earth
That bore you away, audaciously perishing!
And I would follow the hero into the depths
Did love not hold me.
~ Friedrich Hölderlin

What is the wisdom of a book compared with the wisdom of an angel? ~ Friedrich Hölderlin

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man. ~ B. F. Skinner

  • 3 Zarbon 14:58, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 10:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC) (but part of this quote was already used, and there are others I prefer to use).
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. ~ B. F. Skinner

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. ~ B. F. Skinner

  • 2 Zarbon 14:58, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 10:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

When we dead awaken. ... We see that we have never lived. ~ Henrik Ibsen

  • 3 Kalki 15:26, 19 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Tho' Doubt's beleaguering forces hem us in,
Yet Truth upon the Serpent's head shall trample.
The cause of Love shall win —
Yes, Love shall win!
~ Henrik Ibsen ~

  • 3 Kalki 15:26, 19 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you. ~ Samuel Johnson
2005
Between individuals, as between nations, respect for the rights of others is peace. ~ Benito Juárez (born 21 March 1806)
2006
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. ~ Jean Cocteau
2007
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly — and Lo! The Bird is on the Wing.
~ Omar Khayyám ~ (Quote relating to Spring, on the date of the Vernal equinox for most of the world this year.)
2008
If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
2009

[edit] Suggestions

"Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war. Let the efforts of us all, prove that he was not a mere dreamer when he spoke of the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace being more precious than diamonds or silver or gold." - Nelson Mandela, acceptance and Nobel lecture, 1993-12-10

  • proposed by Jeandré
  • 3 Kalki 21:51, 20 March 2007 (UTC) but without the hyperlink to war within the quote: I generally have avoided hyperlinks in QOTDs, and generally commend them for quotes on any page only for use of persons (as they are here with MLK) and on relatively obscure words or concepts, vs common ones (such as "war"). Despite the merits of the quote, I am inclined to seek to use it another day, and focus on "Spring" quotes for this date.
  • 3, to be used on a day associated with King or Mandela. - InvisibleSun 23:23, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

In the scenery of spring,
nothing is better, nothing worse;
The flowering branches are
of themselves, some short, some long.
~ Ryōkan ~

  • 3 Kalki 21:51, 20 March 2007 (UTC) This too is short and simple, but for this year I am slightly inclined to favor the Omar Khayyam verse.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:23, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I regard the people as a great being, inspired by a single idea. This is my problem. I strove to solve it in this opera. ~ Modest Mussorgsky

Sounds and ideas are hanging in the air; I am devouring them and stuffing myself. ~ Modest Mussorgsky

  • 2 Zarbon 05:32, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 22:55, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I continue to feel that if you're going to go on being this stupid, you should try to be more polite; or alternately, if you're going to go on being this rude, you should try not to say such dumb things. ~ Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. ~ Samuel Ullman (date of death/date of birth unknown)

  • 3 Zarbon 03:13, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 22:55, 20 March 2009 (UTC) date of birth is 13 April, according to Wikipedia.

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is a matter of the will, quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. ~ Samuel Ullman

  • 2 Zarbon 03:13, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 22:55, 20 March 2009 (UTC) date of birth is 13 April, according to Wikipedia.

Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace. ~ Benito Juárez

  • 3 Zarbon 03:13, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:08, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
  • This was already used on this date in 2005. Kalki 22:55, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Democracy is the destiny of humanity; freedom its indestructible arm. ~ Benito Juárez

Politics is the art of human happiness. ~ Herbert Fisher

All political decisions are taken under great pressure, and if a treaty serves its turn for ten or twenty years, the wisdom of its framers is sufficiently confirmed. ~ Herbert Fisher

The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature — translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive. ~ Hans Hofmann

Art is something absolute, something positive, which gives power just as food gives power. While creative science is a mental food, art is the satisfaction of the soul. ~ Hans Hofmann

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward. ~ Jean Paul

  • 2 Zarbon 03:13, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 22:55, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. ~ Martin Luther King
2005
Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words? ~ Marcel Marceau (born 22 March 1923)
2006
As I understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway. ~ Anne Hutchinson (banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 22 March 1638)
2007
Man’s destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth... I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish. ~ Marcel Marceau
2008
Music and silence... combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music. ~ Marcel Marceau
2009
I buoyed me on the wings of dream,
Above the world of sense;
I set my thought to sound the scheme,
And fathom the Immense;
I tuned my spirit as a lute
To catch wind-music wandering mute.

Yet came there never voice nor sign;
But through my being stole
Sense of a Universe divine,
And knowledge of a soul
Perfected in the joy of things,
The star, the flower, the bird that sings.

Nor I am more, nor less, than these;
All are one brotherhood;
I and all creatures, plants, and trees,
The living limbs of God;
And in an hour, as this, divine,
I feel the vast pulse throb in mine.
~ Francis William Bourdillon ~

2010

[edit] Suggestions

If you please to give me leave I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true. ~ Anne Hutchinson

  • 3 Kalki 12:33, 22 March 2008 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 04:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment. ~ Marcel Marceau

  • 2 because tragedy isn't easily explained. The expression of "sad clown", hence crying inside, laughing outside, best signifies this persona, beautifully painted. Zarbon 05:24, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man. ~ Marcel Marceau

  • 3 because anyone can hold a conversation, but to understand through movement is grandiose. Personally, the way in which dolphins are able to communicate, similarly, and moreso amazingly through a telepathic manner, if you will, has always been interesting to me. Zarbon 05:24, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I find nothing more depressing than optimism. ~ Paul Fussell

  • 3 and lean toward 4. Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 the crucial distinction to be made always involves the question "Optimism about what?"

Exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment. ... The explorer seeks the undiscovered, the traveler that which has been discovered by the mind working in history, the tourist that which has been discovered by entrepreneurship and prepared for him by the arts of mass publicity. ... If the explorer moves toward the risks of the formless and the unknown, the tourist moves toward the security of pure cliché. It is between these two poles that the traveler mediates. ~ Paul Fussell

  • 2 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

And the ideal travel writer is consumed not just with a will to know. He is also moved by a powerful will to teach. Inside every good travel writer there is a pedagogue — often a highly moral pedagogue — struggling to get out. ~ Paul Fussell

  • 2 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Anyone telling about his travels must be a liar, ... for if a traveler doesn't visit his narrative with the spirit and techniques of fiction, no one will want to hear it. ~ Paul Fussell

  • 2 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it. ~ Paul Fussell

  • 2 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. ~ Paul Fussell

  • 3 and lean toward 4. Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Time has not cropt the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them. ~ Edward Moore

  • 4 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC) but only if expanded for more context:
'Tis now the summer of your youth; time has not cropt the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them. Then use your beauty wisely; and, freed by injuries, fly from the cruellest of men, for shelter with the kindest.
  • 3 for the expanded version. InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Time still, as he flies, brings increase to her truth,
And gives to her mind what he steals from her youth.
~ Edward Moore

  • 3 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC) but perhaps a 3 with more context:
What tho' on her cheeks the rose loses its hue,

Her wit and her humour bloom all the year thro';
Time still, as he flies, adds increase to her truth,
And gives to her mind what he steals from her youth.

The Night has a thousand eyes,
And the Day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
~ Francis William Bourdillon

  • 3 and lean toward 4. Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 17:47, 21 March 2009 (UTC) 4 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4, but prefer lines from "The Chantry of the Cherubim" below.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

He that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires,—
As old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.
~ Thomas Carew


2004
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. ~ Albert Einstein
2005
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. ~ Erich Fromm (born 23 March 1900)
2006
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! ~ Patrick Henry, in a speech to the House of Burgesses (23 March 1775)
2007
No work which is destined to become a classic can look like the classics which have preceded it. In art, as in biology, there is heredity but no identity with the ascendants. Painters inherit characteristics acquired by their forerunners; that is why no important work of art can belong to any period but its own, to the very moment of its creation. It is necessarily dated by its own appearance. The conscious will of the painter cannot intervene. ~ Juan Gris (born 23 March 1887)
2008
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) ~ (For Easter Sunday 2008)
2009
I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for "life" instead of for "death." ~ Erich Fromm
2010

[edit] Suggestions

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. ~ Erich Fromm

  • 3 Kalki 16:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4, but this has often been quoted alone, and thus I believe it preferable to extend this to:
Society must be organized in such a way that man's social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. ~ Erich Fromm

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. ~ Erich Fromm

  • 2 because this is rather comical...regardless of the apparent situation. It holds true that people have digressed to disbelief not only from God, but many have found peace in doing nothing and serving absolutely no cause. Zarbon 05:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Ningauble 22:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC) — Difficult without context for what is meant by "man is dead."
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others. ~ Erich Fromm

  • 3 because in order for one to spread faith, one must believe in it. Zarbon 05:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3.5 Ningauble 22:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable. ~ Erich Fromm

  • 3 because it is one thing to die...but to die wasted, unaccomplished and senseless is another. Zarbon 05:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Ningauble 22:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either. ~ Erich Fromm

  • 3 because selfishness hounds the soul, creating bitterness within. By damaging others, a selfish person damages oneself. Zarbon 05:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Ningauble 22:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Some shall reap that never sow
And some shall toil and not attain. ~ Madison Cawein

Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go — and he'll do plenty well when he gets there. ~ Wernher von Braun

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. ~ Wernher von Braun

For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. ~ Wernher von Braun

My experiences with science led me to God. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun? ~ Wernher von Braun

It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance. ~ Wernher von Braun

  • 2 Zarbon 00:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1.5 Ningauble 22:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC) — I consider treating these as "alternatives" a false dichotomy.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

One test result is worth one thousand expert opinions. ~ Wernher von Braun

  • 2 Zarbon 00:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Ningauble 22:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently. ~ Wernher von Braun

The universe is hostile only when you do not know its laws. To those who know and obey, the universe is friendly. ~ Wernher von Braun

  • 2 Zarbon 00:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Ningauble 22:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC) — Obedience is not in question, one may choose to embrace them or to suffer them.

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. ~ Erich Fromm

I believe that if an individual is not on the path to transcending his society and seeing in what way it furthers or impedes the development of human potential, he cannot enter into intimate contact with his humanity. ~ Erich Fromm

  • 3 Kalki 14:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3.5 Ningauble 22:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 03:30, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the "growth" of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. ~ Erich Fromm

  • 3 Kalki 14:29, 22 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 Ningauble 22:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 03:30, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. ~ Thomas Paine
2005
Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it. ~ Wilhelm Reich (born 24 March 1897)
2006
With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on. ~ William Morris (born 24 March 1834)
2007
What is humility but truthfulness? There is no real difference. ~ Walter Hilton (died March 24, 1396; date of birth unknown)
2008
I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few. ~ William Morris
2009
Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily... ~ Wilhelm Reich
2010

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

  • Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan. ~ Wilhelm Reich

[edit] Suggestions

I desire the love of God not because I am worthy, but because I am unworthy. ~ Walter Hilton

There are many who are hypocrites although they think they are not, and there are many who are afraid of being hypocrites although they certainly are not. Which is the one and which is the other God knows, and none but He. ~ Walter Hilton

We therefore need to know the gifts given us by God, so that we may use them, for by these we shall be saved. ~ Walter Hilton

Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.
~ William Morris (born March 24, 1934)

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary. ~ Wilhelm Reich

  • 3 Kalki 18:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:29, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Love is enough: though the World be a-waning
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.
~ William Morris ~

  • 3 Kalki 23:18, 23 March 2009 (UTC) * 4 Kalki 19:09, 23 March 2008 (UTC) but still with a very strong lean toward a 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:21, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:29, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

“Give,” said the little stream,
“Give, oh give, give, oh give,”
As it hurried down the hill.
“I am small, I know, but wherever I go
The fields grow greener still.”
~ Fanny Crosby

Almighty Freedom! give my venturous song
The force, the charm that to thy voice belong;
Tis thine to shape my course, to light my way,
To nerve my country with the patriot lay,
To teach all men where all their interest lies,
How rulers may be just and nations wise:
Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant knee,
Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee.
~ Joel Barlow

  • 3 Zarbon 03:12, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:01, 23 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:34, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

He open'd calm the universal cause,
To give each realm its limit and its laws,
Bid the last breath of tired contention cease,
And bind all regions in the leagues of peace;
Till one confederate, condependent sway
Spread with the sun and bound the walks of day,
One centred system, one all-ruling soul
Live thro the parts and regulate the whole.
~ Joel Barlow

If "freedom" means, first of all, the responsibility of every individual for the rational determination of his own personal, professional and social existence, then there is no greater fear than that of the establishment of general freedom. Without a thoroughgoing solution of this problem there never will be a peace lasting longer than one or two generations. To solve this problem on a social scale, it will take more thinking, more honesty and decency, more conscientiousness, more economic, social and educational changes in social mass living than all the efforts made in previous and future wars and post-war reconstruction programs taken together. ~ Wilhelm Reich

  • 3 Kalki 00:01, 23 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 03:31, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:34, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
2005
If those who lead you say, "See, the Kingdom is in the sky", then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, "It is in the sea", then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) (Good Friday for Western Christianity, 25 March 2005)
2006
A wiki works best where you're trying to answer a question that you can't easily pose, where there's not a natural structure that's known in advance to what you need to know. ~ Ward Cunningham (Cunningham started the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, on 25 March 1995.)
2007
I am an Anarchist not because I believe Anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal. ~ Rudolf Rocker
2008
Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution. One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being. ~ Rudolf Rocker
2009
Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity. ~ Rudolf Rocker
2010

[edit] Suggestions

All social phenomena are the result of a series of various causes, in most cases so inwardly related that it is quite impossible clearly to separate one from the other. We are always dealing with the interplay of various causes which, as a rule, can be clearly recognised but cannot be calculated according to scientific methods. ~ Rudolf Rocker

  • 3 Kalki 06:29, 27 March 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

We have come more and more under the dominance of mechanics and sacrificed living humanity to the dead rhythm of the machine without most of us even being conscious of the monstrosity of the procedure. Hence we frequently deal with such matters with indifference and in cold blood as if we handled dead things and not the destinies of men. ~ Rudolf Rocker

Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development. ~ Rudolf Rocker

  • 3 Kalki 00:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC) 4 Kalki 23:32, 24 March 2008 (UTC) but still with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 04:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

This planet is haunted by us; the other occupants just evade boredom by filling our skies and seas with monsters. ~ John Keel

In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution. ~ Béla Bartók

I have lived in the United States and I know the might of their industrial complex. The United States is a sleeping giant and I am afraid that our attack has awakened it. ~ Chuichi Nagumo

  • 3 Zarbon 04:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • – Attribution may be apocryphal. Does the cited secondary source cite the original? If so, it might solve the attribution of a similar statement Isoroku Yamamoto ~ Ningauble 23:11, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance. ~ Robert Quillen

  • 3 Zarbon 04:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery. ~ Norman Borlaug

The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long. ~ A. J. P. Taylor

In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men’s behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction. ~ A. J. P. Taylor

  • 4 Zarbon 04:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 23:59, 24 March 2009 (UTC) * 2 Kalki 00:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC) though I lean toward a 2.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

The growth of technology at the expense of human personality, and especially the fatalistic submission with which the great majority surrender to this condition, is the reason why the desire for freedom is less alive among men today and has with many of them given place completely to a desire for economic security. This phenomenon need not appear so strange, for our whole evolution has reached a stage where nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of dependence has been greatly strengthened, for a truly free man does not like to play the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action. ~ Rudolf Rocker

OR shortened to
Our whole evolution has reached a stage where nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of dependence has been greatly strengthened, for a truly free man does not like to play the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action. ~ Rudolf Rocker
  • 3 Kalki 03:04, 24 March 2009 (UTC) 4 Kalki 00:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC) (but now with a lean toward a 4 only for the shortened version — the longer version is a bit too diffuse, and I now rank that only at a 2).
  • 1 Zarbon 03:32, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 for the shorter version. - InvisibleSun 23:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. ~ Aldous Huxley
2005
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down. ~ Robert Frost (born 26 March 1874)
2006
He acts without contact,
instructs without meeting,
guides without pointing.
Desires do not conflict with Him,
thoughts do not mingle with Him:
His essence is without qualification,
His action without effort.
~ Mansur al-Hallaj (died 26 March 922)
2007
The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realise that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand. ~ Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941)
2008
People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about. ~ Joseph Campbell (born 26 March 1904)
2009
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~ Robert Frost ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

If Man exalt himself, I humble him,
If he humble himself, I exalt him;
And I always contradict him,
Until he understands
That he is an incomprehensible monster.
Blaise Pascal (Born June 19, 1623) proposed by Pluke 00:01, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

  • 2 due to lack of connection to this particular day. - InvisibleSun 08:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 03:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

But men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Their hands upon their hearts.
~ A. E. Housman (born March 26, 1859)

And how am I to face the odds
Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
~ A. E. Housman

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 ~ Kalki 03:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out ... and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. ~ A. E. Housman

Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
~ Robert Frost (born March 26, 1874)

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
~ Robert Frost

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 03:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 because this is one of my favorite ones by Frost. Basically, nothing lasts forever is a key principle to understand. Zarbon 04:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

And were an epitaph to be my story
I'd have a short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me on my stone:
I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
~ Robert Frost

Wind goes from farm to farm in wave on wave,
But carries no cry of what is hoped to be.
There may be little or much beyond the grave,
But the strong are saying nothing until they see.
~ Robert Frost

We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. ~ Joseph Campbell

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. ~ Tennessee Williams (born March 26, 1911)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 03:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 04:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

A lion wants to eat an antelope's body, but the antelope has very different plans for its body. This is not normally regarded as competition for a resource, but logically it is hard to see why not. ~ Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 01:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 because it makes a lot of sense. Zarbon 04:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy. ~ Richard Dawkins

If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place. Epidemiology, not evidence. ~ Richard Dawkins

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 01:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC) * 3 Kalki 03:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC) This is true even if one's "faith" is in atheistic assumptions based on materialistic ideas about reality and the life processes, and "moving stories and parables" that equate all religious faiths with mere ignorance and superstition, fraud and delusion, and all modern scientific faiths with clear "common sense" materialistic observations. I am speaking as someone who has examined the worth and absurdities of many religious and scientific traditions and am appalled at the fallacious presumptions inherent in most. There is certainly need for far greater humility and compassion among nearly all people, whatever traditions they embrace or reject, whether they be defined as scientific, religious, or political.
  • 1 Zarbon 04:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. ~ Richard Dawkins

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 01:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC) * 3 Kalki 03:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not. ~ Richard Dawkins (date of birth)

  • 4 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:02, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  • 4 because this is strong. It holds truth to destroying myth and faith which has falsely captivated many. Zarbon 04:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 01:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC) This is hardly historically accurate. Scientific beliefs become supported by evidence, and they do get results, if they are in sufficient accord with underlying and all-encompassing aspects of Reality. But so do many myths and faiths, even when they have been deeply flawed and deficient, and the dichotomies between scientific theories and faith in myths are not so absolute as they are made here to falsely seem. Even in the realms of the modern sciences we advance in our ideas from faith to faith and myth to myth, such as the myth of the material atom with orbiting electron particles rather than electron "clouds" determined by the resonance of waveform potentials ... from 4 dimensional physics to perhaps 11 dimensional physics... and the ends of all our explorations and ideas of what ultimate "Reality" is in terms of significant forces, dimensions and fundamental substances or energy patterns are hardly in sight. ~ Kalki 01:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 21:42, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

In the Name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate, Who manifests Himself through everything, the revelation of a clear knowing to whomsoever He wishes, peace be upon you, my son. This praise belongs to Allah Who manifests Himself on the head of a pin to whom He wishes, so that one testifies that He is not, and another testifies that there is none other than He. But the witnessing in the denying of Him is not rejected, and the witnessing in the affirming of Him is not praised. ~ Mansur Al-Hallaj

I saw my Lord with the eye of the heart. I asked: Who art Thou?
He answered: Thou.
~ Mansur Al-Hallaj ~

I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
~ Robert Frost ~

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
~ Robert Frost ~

I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
~ Robert Frost ~

The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. ~ Sterling Hayden

Slaying the dragon of delay is no sport for the short-winded. ~ Sandra Day O'Connor

  • 3 Zarbon 04:02, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 05:35, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

The stately ship is seen no more,
The fragile skiff attains the shore;
And while the great and wise decay,
And all their trophies pass away,
Some sudden thought, some careless rhyme,
Still floats above the wrecks of Time. ~ William Edward Hartpole Lecky


2004
In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest. ~ Aesop
2005
Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) (Easter in Western Christianity, 27 March 2005)
2006
All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower. ~ Karl Mannheim (born 27 March 1893)
2007
History is a novel written by the people. ~ Alfred de Vigny (born 27 March 1797)
2008
At this point in history when all things which concern man and the structure and elements of history itself are suddenly revealed to us in a new light, it behooves us in our scientific thinking to become masters of the situation, for it is not inconceivable that sooner than we suspect, as has often been the case before in history, this vision may disappear, the opportunity may be lost, and the world will once again present a static, uniform, and inflexible countenance. ~ Karl Mannheim
2009
There’s a good time coming, boys!
A good time coming.
We may not live to see the day,
But earth shall glisten in the ray
Of the good time coming.
Cannon-balls may aid the truth
But thought’s a weapon stronger;
We’ll win our battles by its aid,
Wait a little longer.
~ Charles Mackay ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

One can suppress an outcry, but how does one act against silence? ~ Alfred de Vigny

  • 3 InvisibleSun 09:16, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 11:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 because this is amazingly true. Those who are silent are even deadlier. I love this quote. Zarbon 04:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

A book is a bottle thrown into the sea on which this label should be attached: catch as catch can. ~ Alfred de Vigny

What is intelligible in history can be formulated only with reference to problems and conceptual constructions which themselves arise in the flux of historical experience. ~ Karl Mannheim (born 27 March 1893)

  • 2 Kalki 18:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC) 3 Kalki 11:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC) though still true, I now feel this is a rather weak statement, compared with others of Mannheim which I've suggested below.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:28, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Today, there are too many points of view of equal value and prestige, each showing the relativity of the other, to permit us to take any one position and to regard it as impregnable and absolute. Only this socially disorganized intellectual situation makes possible the insight, hidden until now by a generally stable social structure and the practicability of certain traditional norms, that every point of view is particular to a social situation. ~ Karl Mannheim

  • 3 Kalki 11:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:28, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

As long as one does not call his own position into question but regards it as absolute, while interpreting his opponents' ideas as a mere function of the social positions they occupy, the decisive step forward has not yet been taken... the general form of the total conception of ideology is being used by the analyst when he has the courage to subject not just the adversary's point of view but all points of view, including his own, to the ideological analysis. ~ Karl Mannheim

  • 3 Kalki 11:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:28, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 04:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

It has become extremely questionable whether, in the flux of life, it is a genuinely worthwhile intellectual problem to seek to discover fixed and immutable ideas or absolutes. It is a more worthy intellectual task perhaps to learn to think dynamically and relationally rather than statically. ... When the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline, be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions. ~ Karl Mannheim

  • 3 Kalki 18:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 20:42, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Non-evaluative insight into history does not inevitably lead to relativism, but rather to relationism. Knowledge, as seen in the light of the total conception of ideology, is by no means an illusory experience, for ideology in its relational concept is not at all identical with illusion. Knowledge arising out of our experience in actual life situations, though not absolute, is knowledge none the less. ~ Karl Mannheim

  • 3 Kalki 18:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 although there is a systematic difference between practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge, both are existent. Zarbon 20:42, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run;
And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.
~ Charles Mackay

The smallest effort is not lost,
Each wavelet on the ocean tost
Aids in the ebb-tide or the flow;
Each rain-drop makes some floweret blow;
Each struggle lessens human woe.
~ Charles Mackay

  • 2 Zarbon 20:42, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 19:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:27, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

The king can drink the best of wine—
So can I;
And has enough when he would dine—
So have I;
And can not order rain or shine—
Nor can I.
Then where’s the difference—let me see—
Betwixt my lord the king and me?
~ Charles Mackay

A lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on. ~ James Callaghan

  • 4 Zarbon 20:42, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 19:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC) but leaning toward 0 because Callaghan was certainly not the originator of this expression, even in this wording, though he famously did say it.

A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice. ~ James Callaghan

A leader has to appear consistent. That doesn't mean he has to be consistent. ~ James Callaghan

Age, if nothing else, entitles me to set the record straight before I dissolve. I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book. ~ Gloria Swanson

  • 3 Zarbon 20:42, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation. ~ Charles Mackay

I did not think; I investigated. ... It seemed at first a new kind of invisible light. It was clearly something new, something unrecorded. ~ Wilhelm Röntgen

  • 3 Kalki 21:11, 31 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
If a man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows. ~ Epictetus
2005
A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice. ~ James Callaghan (recent death)
2006
I'd like just to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs, and had a hell of a time. ~ Buck Owens (recent death)
2007
We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. Be sure that, in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing your love of God... ~ Teresa of Ávila
2008
Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly united with Him in the Mansions very near His presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild and venomous creatures and from this suffering winning merit. So this must not upset us, and we must not abandon the struggle, as the devil tries to make us do. Most of these trials and times of unrest come from the fact that we do not understand ourselves. ~ Teresa of Ávila
2009
I do not understand those terrors which make us cry out, Satan, Satan! when we may say, God, God! and make Satan tremble. Do we not know that he cannot stir without the permission of God? ... I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors. ~ Teresa of Ávila
2010

[edit] Suggestions

I saw an angel close by me, on my left side, in bodily form. This I am not accustomed to see, unless very rarely. Though I have visions of angels frequently, yet I see them only by an intellectual vision, such as I have spoken of before. It was our Lord's will that in this vision I should see the angel in this wise. He was not large, but small of stature, and most beautiful — his face burning, as if he were one of the highest angels, who seem to be all of fire: they must be those whom we call cherubim. ~ Teresa of Ávila

  • 3 Kalki 03:15, 23 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 1 I like the concept of angels but this is moreso too descriptive rather than thought-provoking. Zarbon 21:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Somehow in painting I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos. ~ Grace Hartigan

  • 3 Zarbon 21:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 21:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3. The quote has now been sourced and expanded. Suggestion for a longer quote: "I perceive the world in fragments. It is somewhat like being on a very fast train and getting glimpses of things in strange scales as you pass by. A person can be very, very tiny. And a billboard can make a person very large. You see the corner of a house or you see a bird fly by, and it's all fragmented. Somehow, in painting I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos. I have a very pretentious idea that I want to make life, I want to make sense out of it. The fact that I am doomed to failure that doesnt deter me in the least." - InvisibleSun 23:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:29, 27 March 2009 (UTC) for the extended version, with a lean toward 4.

Whoever embarks with a woman embarks with a storm; but they are themselves the safety boats. ~ Arsène Houssaye

  • 2 Zarbon 21:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 21:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Friendship lives on its income, love devours its capital. ~ Arsène Houssaye

  • 2 Zarbon 21:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 21:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

We become obsessed with 'truth' when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with 'freedom' when discussing conduct...Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal. ~ J. L. Austin

Words are not (except in their own little corner) facts or things: we need therefore to prise them off the world, to hold them apart from and against it, so that we can realize their inadequacies and arbitrariness, and can relook at the world without blinkers. ~ J. L. Austin

  • 2 Kalki 21:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3
  • 1 Zarbon 22:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

However well equipped our language, it can never be forearmed against all possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact is richer than diction. ~ J. L. Austin

  • 3 Kalki 21:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 22:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Why should it not be the whole function of a word to denote many things? ~ J. L. Austin

Ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and superseded. Only remember, it is the first word. ~ J. L. Austin

  • 3 Kalki 21:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 22:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit. ~ Peter Ustinov (recent death)
2005
If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted. ~ Eric Idle (born 29 March 1943)
2006
Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way. ~ Stanisław Lem (recent death)
2007
I have been all men known to history,
Wondering at the world and at time passing;
I have seen evil, and the light blessing
Innocent love under a spring sky.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2008
I have known exile and a wild passion
Of longing changing to a cold ache.
King, beggar and fool, I have been all by turns,
Knowing the body’s sweetness, the mind’s treason;
Taliesin still, I show you a new world, risen,
Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart’s need.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2009

[edit] Suggestions

Perhaps, the 29th being the day on which the last American troops withdrew from South Vietnam, this quote by William Westmoreland, the threatre commander, could be considered:

"It's not that we lost the war militarily. The fact is that we as a nation did not make good our commitment to the South Vietnamese."

—This unsigned comment is by Jb17kx (talk • contribs) . [Suggestion made at 2007-03-29 03:32:07 (UTC) — the selection for 2007 had already been made at that time.]

I am like a tree,
From my top boughs I can see
The footprints that led up to me.
~ R. S. Thomas

  • 3 because the imagery of comparison here is comfortable...the ideology of growth and experience to that of the tree and the struggle to get to the top, from the roots to the branches, so to speak. A sustainable foundation in the train of thought. Zarbon 05:04, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Ningauble 17:13, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 19:07, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette - the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace. ~ John Tyler

We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who speak for it and support it. ~ Eugene McCarthy

I'm kind of an accidental instrument, really, through which I hope that the judgment and the will of this nation can be expressed. ~ Eugene McCarthy

The glove has been thrown to the ground,
The last choice of weapons made.
A book for one thought.
A poem for one line.
A line for one word.
~ Eugene McCarthy (DoB)

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty. ~ Eugene McCarthy (DoB)

Oh, Lord, if I must die today,
Please make it after Close of Play.
For this, I know, if nothing more,
I will not go, without the score.
~ John Major (DoB)

It is not love I offer
Your quick limbs, your eyes;
Only the barren homage
Of an old man whom time
Crucifies.
~ R. S. Thomas ~

  • 3 Kalki 19:07, 28 March 2009 (UTC) for either this, or, possibly extended slightly:
She is young. Have I the right
Even to name her? Child,
It is not love I offer
Your quick limbs, your eyes;
Only the barren homage
Of an old man whom time
Crucifies.
  • 3, with a preference for the extended version. - InvisibleSun 21:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Zarbon 02:06, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

He arose, pacing the floor
Strewn with books, his mind big with the poem
Soon to be born, his nerves tense to endure
The long torture of delayed birth.
~ R. S. Thomas ~

  • 3 Kalki 19:07, 28 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 21:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 02:06, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


Sometimes a strange light
shines, purer than the moon,
casting no shadow, that is
the halo upon the bones
of the pioneers who died for truth.
~ R. S. Thomas ~

  • 3 Kalki 19:07, 28 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 02:06, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one."
But a no-one with a crown of light about his head.
~ R. S. Thomas ~

  • 4 Kalki 19:07, 28 March 2009 (UTC) for either this, or extended to include another quote:
On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one."
But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet."
~ R. S. Thomas ~
  • 3, with a preference for the extended version. - InvisibleSun 21:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 02:06, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


2004
There's no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day ~ Alexander Woolcott
2005
Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well. ~ Vincent van Gogh (born 30 March 1853)
2006
Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and . . . fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. ~ Archilochus
2007
Accept the truth from whatever source it comes. ~ Maimonides
2008
Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives. ~ Vincent van Gogh (born 30 March 1853)
2009
The best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. ~ Vincent van Gogh
2010

[edit] Suggestions

We are obligated to be more scrupulous in fulfilling the commandment of charity than any other positive commandment because charity is the sign of a righteous man. ~ Maimonides

The enemy knows that he must wipe out our fighters. Once he has done that, he will be able to play football with the German people. ~ Erhard Milch (born March 30)

  • 3 because it is a great comical gesture. Very well formulated. Zarbon 04:43, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 0 Ningauble 22:16, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Laughter is wine for the soul – laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness. Comedy and tragedy step through life together, arm in arm, all along, out along, down along lea. A laugh is a great natural stimulator, a pushful entry into life; and once we can laugh, we can live. It is the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living. ~ Seán O'Casey

Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich man to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life. ~ Seán O'Casey

Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance. ~ Eric Clapton (DoB)

  • 2.5 Ningauble 22:16, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 22:34, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:48, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 0 I don't find the usage of the word "bullshit" as proper for a qotd even though I love Clapton's music. - Zarbon 04:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

But my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live. ~ Vincent van Gogh (DoB)


2004
The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder. ~ Æschylus
2005
Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks he is so well supplied with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters never desire more of it than they already possess. ~ René Descartes (born 31 March 1596)
2006
When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So, it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. ~ Cesar Chavez (born 31 March 1927)
2007
So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there. ... I do not deny that sometimes in these wanderings they are lucky enough to find something true. But I do not allow that this argues greater industry on their part, but only better luck. ~ René Descartes
2008
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
~ Andrew Marvell ~
2009
Cogito ergo sum
I think, therefore I am.
~ René Descartes ~
2010

[edit] Suggestions

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
~ Andrew Marvell (born March 31, 1621)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 21:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4, but would prefer to extend it at least thus:
At my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
OR, perhaps, even earlier,
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Or even from the start of the poem to the final line quoted above. ~ Kalki 00:33, 29 March 2009 (UTC) or even the whole thing, and be done with it... ~ Kalki 00:35, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: Favoring the shorter extension. - InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
~Andrew Marvell

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 21:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC) I had been hoping to use this soon, but would opt for the Descartes line at this time. Strong lean toward a 4, but would prefer to extend this to at least include the preceding stanza:
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.

AND, perhaps extended even further to include:
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
And opposition of the stars.
  • 1 Zarbon 04:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: Favoring the shorter extension. - InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility. ~ Andrew Marvell

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 21:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 04:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

We have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women, and children have suffered not only the basic brutality of stoop labor, and the most obvious injustices of the system; they have also suffered the desperation of knowing that the system caters to the greed of callous men and not to our needs. Now we will suffer for the purpose of ending the poverty, the misery, and the injustice, with the hope that our children will not be exploited as we have been. They have imposed hunger on us, and now we hunger for justice. We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure. ~ Cesar Chavez (born March 31, 1927)

Love's whole world on us doth wheel. ~ Andrew Marvell

  • 3 Kalki 21:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4, but now would prefer to extend this to more of the poem:
Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrranic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant Poles have placed
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.

As lines (so loves) oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:04, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: Favoring the extension. - InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

History will judge societies and governments — and their institutions — not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless. ~ Cesar Chavez

  • 3 Kalki 00:55, 29 March 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4, but edged out slightly by Cogito ergo sum below.
  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Die before the one whom you love; to live after he dies is to live a worthless life in this world. ~ Guru Angad Dev

  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC) I have some sympathies with the sentiment, but not the conclusion.
  • 1 InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Doubt is the origin of wisdom. ~ René Descartes

  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Nothing comes out of nothing. ~ René Descartes

Staying as I am, one foot in one country and the other in another, I find my condition very happy, in that it is free. ~ René Descartes

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. ~ René Descartes

  • 2 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. ~ René Descartes

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues. ~ René Descartes

  • 4 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC) though I can agree with the intentions of this statement, I always am inclined to object to mere intelligence being equated with greatness — without other virtues it is never that at all.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt. ~ René Descartes

  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC) (and even then be cautious.)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power. ~ René Descartes

  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake. ~ René Descartes

  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow. ~ René Descartes

  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare. ~ René Descartes

  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts. ~ René Descartes

  • 2 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

When it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable. ~ René Descartes

  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I am all for the short and merry life. ~ Edward FitzGerald

Whether we wake or we sleep,
Whether we carol or weep,
The Sun with his Planets in chime,
Marketh the going of Time. ~ Edward FitzGerald

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. ~ Edward FitzGerald

  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward a 4, but prefer to credit it to Omar Khayyám, as translated by FitzGerald, and thus use it on 18 May for Khayyám.
  • 3 for use on May 18. - InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

To fight evil is to fight ourselves. ~ Octavio Paz

  • 3 Zarbon 03:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 00:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC) truth, but not entirely well expressed in this form.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.

~ Octavio Paz

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. ~ Octavio Paz

The windy lights of Autumn flare;
I watch the moonlit sails go by;
I marvel how men toil and fare,
The weary business that they play!
Their voyaging is vanity,
And fairy gold is all their gain,
And all the winds of winter cry,
“My Love returns no more again.” ~ Andrew Lang

There are only two races on this planet—the intelligent and the stupid. ~ John Fowles

One does not fall "in" or "out" of love. One grows in love. ~ Leo Buscaglia

  • 3 Kalki 23:41, 22 April 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life. ~ Leo Buscaglia

  • 3 Kalki 23:41, 22 April 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.


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.
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