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September 17

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Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens. ~ Woody Allen
2004
A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world. ~ Tony Benn
2005
I've never seen anybody really find the answer — they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. ~ Ken Kesey (born 17 September 1935)
2006
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
~ William Carlos Williams ~ (born September 17, 1883)
2007
You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. ~ Ken Kesey
2008
The real crazies who are looking for a messiah... after an hour or so they realise I'm not it and go off and look somewhere else. ~ Ken Kesey
2009
Many questions haven't been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past. ~ William Carlos Williams
2010
What we hoped was that we could stop the coming end of the world. ~ Ken Kesey
2011

It's a strange courage
you give me, ancient star:

Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!
~ William Carlos Williams ~

2012
You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.
~ Ken Kesey ~
2013
What I always wanted to be was a magician… Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it.
~ Ken Kesey ~
2014
You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
~ Ken Kesey ~
2015
Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus. If you're on the bus, and you get left behind, then you'll find it again. If you're off the bus in the first place — then it won't make a damn.
~ Ken Kesey ~
2016
I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.
~ Ken Kesey ~
2017
What is the use of reading the common news of the day, the tragic deaths and abuses of daily living, when for over half a lifetime we have known that they must have occurred just as they have occurred given the conditions that cause them? There is no light in it. It is trivial fill-gap. We know the plane will crash, the train be derailed. And we know why. No one cares, no one can care. We get the news and discount it, we are quite right in doing so. It is trivial. But the hunted news I get from some obscure patients' eyes is not trivial. It is profound.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
2018
One thing I am convinced more and more is true and that is this: the only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
2019
Well you're looking for another end
Doing time
But you still can't turn away
Well you're looking for a real friend
Any kind
That wants to play the games you play
On this side of paradise
Where you're never going to go through twice
Stay tuned at any price
To this side of paradise.
~ Ric Ocasek ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2020
I'm so crazy I plan to vote for Eisenhower again this November.
~ Ken Kesey ~
2021
My dad died, and my grandfather died, and my great-grandfather died. And the guy before him, I don't know. Probably died.
~ Norm Macdonald ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2022
Man will not always stay on earth; the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first, but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space.
~ Konstantin Tsiolkovsky ~
2023
To tell the truth, I myself never quite feel that I know what I am talking about — if I did, and when I do, the thing written seems nothing to me. However, what I do write and allow to survive I always feel is worth while and that nobody else has ever come as near as I have to the thing I have intimated if not expressed. To me it's a matter of first understanding that which may not be put to words. I might add more but to no purpose. In a sense, I must express myself, you're right, but always completely incomplete if that means anything.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
2024
The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.
~ Ken Kesey ~
2023
Rank or add further suggestions…

The Quote of the Day (QOTD) is a prominent feature of the Wikiquote Main Page. Thank you for submitting, reviewing, and ranking suggestions!

Ranking system
4 : Excellent – should definitely be used. (This is the utmost ranking and should be used by any editor for only one quote at a time for each date.)
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.
An averaging of the rankings provided to each suggestion produces it’s general ranking in considerations for selection of Quote of the Day. The selections made are usually chosen from the top ranked options existing on the page, but the provision of highly ranked late additions, especially in regard to special events (most commonly in regard to the deaths of famous people, or other major social or physical occurrences), always remain an option for final selections.
Thank you for participating!

Suggestions

[edit]

Me actor. Them fashion. No compute. (Actress Martha Plimpton)

  • 5 (short, concise, but extremely effective commentary on the state of Hollywood.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.167.242.65 (talk • contribs) 05:04, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 17:55, 16 September 2009 (UTC) 2 Kalki 21:31, 16 September 2005 (UTC) No clear correlation with the date (and 4 is the highest ranking available, not 5)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 08:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 23:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I love being married, I do. It's so great to find that one special person that you want to annoy for the rest of your life. ~ Rita Rudner

  • 2 for comedic value Zarbon 04:14, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:15, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 23:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 N6n 11:21, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, the old theory was "marry a older man because they're more mature". But the new theory is "men don't mature — marry a young one". ~ Rita Rudner

  • 2 for comedic value. Zarbon 04:14, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:15, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 23:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.

Nobody is really happy with what's on their head. People with straight hair want curly, people with curly want straight, and bald people want everyone to be blind. ~ Rita Rudner

  • 2 for comedic value. Zarbon 04:14, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:15, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 23:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I been away a long time. ~ Ken Kesey

We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past. ~ Ken Kesey

You can't bomb for a humane reason. What we should do is just Mother Teresa them to death with love. It's that old hippie nonsense but it's still the best stuff there is. ~ Ken Kesey

It is my conviction and shraddha (faith) that even on economic issues, Gandhi is relevant even today... So in every aspect of my social reform efforts, you will see the imprint of Gandhi... I bring every little aspect of Gandhi ji’s life into my work... This is part of putting our traditions and Gandhian values to creative use. ~ Narendra Modi

Mahatma Buddha has also left a deep imprint on my life... In Buddhism, I see dharma entrenched in karuna (compassion). I believe compassion is the most valuable essence of life. When I formed the government, these values got ingrained even deeper. What attracts me about Buddha is his inclusive philosophy; secondly, his modernity; and thirdly, his belief in the importance of Sangathan—the idea of Sangha. ~ Narendra Modi

My first poem was a bolt from the blue … it broke a spell of disillusion and suicidal despondence. … it filled me with soul satisfying joy.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
~ William Carlos Williams ~


It was the love of love,
the love that swallows up all else,
a grateful love,
a love of nature, of people,
of animals,
a love engendering
gentleness and goodness
that moved me
and that I saw in you.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
Why do we live? Most of us need the very thing we never ask for. We talk about revolution as if it was peanuts. What we need is some frank thinking and a few revolutions in our own guts; to hell with what most of the sons of bitches that I know and myself along with them if I don't take hold of myself and turn about when I need to — or go ahead further if that's the game.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
Being an art form, verse cannot be "free" in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principle.
~ William Carlos Williams ~

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

~ William Carlos Williams ~
A man isn’t a block that remains stationary though the psychologists treat him so — and most take an insane pride in believing it. Consistency! He varies; Hamlet today, Caesar tomorrow; here, there, somewhere — if he is to retain his sanity, and why not?
The arts have a complex relation to society. The poet isn’t a fixed phenomenon, no more is his work.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matters like a ship. But poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
When a man makes a poem, makes it, mind you, he takes words as he finds them interrelated about him and composes them — without distortion which would mar their exact significances — into an intense expression of his perceptions and ardors that they may constitute a revelation in the speech that he uses. It isn’t what he says that counts as a work of art, it’s what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity.
~ William Carlos Williams ~
There is no poetry of distinction without formal invention, for it is in the intimate form that works of art achieve their exact meaning, in which they most resemble the machine, to give language its highest dignity, its illumination in the environment to which it is native. Such war, as the arts live and breathe by, is continuous.
It may be that my interests as expressed here are pre-art. If so I look for a development along these lines and will be satisfied with nothing else.
~ William Carlos Williams ~


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