February 1
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Quotes of the day from previous years:
- 2005
- There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. ~ American proverb
- selected by Kalki
- 2006
- I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
~ Langston Hughes ~ (born 1 February 1902)- selected by Kalki
- 2007
- I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.
~ Langston Hughes ~- proposed by InvisibleSun
- 2008
- Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason. ~ Edward Coke
- proposed by InvisibleSun
- 2009
- Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
~ Langston Hughes ~- proposed by Kalki
- 2010
- What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
~ Langston Hughes ~- proposed by Kalki
- 2011
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
~ Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ~ (Abraham Lincoln, largely responsible for the passage of this amendment, added his signature of approval to the archival copy of the document on this date, after it had been passed in Congress the day before.)
- proposed by Kalki
- 2012
When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left.~ Langston Hughes ~
- proposed by InvisibleSun
- 2013
| Any concepts or words which have been formed in the past through the interplay between the world and ourselves are not really sharply defined with respect to their meaning: that is to say, we do not know exactly how far they will help us in finding our way in the world. … It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth. |
| ~ Werner Heisenberg ~ |
- proposed by bystander
- 2014
| Dissidents should be paid 13 months' salary for a year, otherwise our mindless unanimity will bring us to an even more hopeless state of stagnation. It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts. |
| ~ Boris Yeltsin ~ |
- proposed by bystander
- 2015
| I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us. I would like an abundance of peace. I would like full vessels of charity. I would like rich treasures of mercy. I would like cheerfulness to preside over all. I would like Jesus to be present. |
| ~ Brigit of Kildare ~ |
- proposed by Kalki
- 2016
| Every today is at the same time both a cradle and a shroud: a shroud for yesterday, a cradle for tomorrow. Today, yesterday, and tomorrow are equally near to one another, and equally far. … Today is doomed to die — because yesterday died, and because tomorrow will be born. Such is the wise and cruel law. Cruel, because it condemns to eternal dissatisfaction those who already today see the distant peaks of tomorrow; wise, because eternal dissatisfaction is the only pledge of eternal movement forward, eternal creation. He who has found his ideal today is, like Lot's wife, already turned to a pillar of salt, has already sunk into the earth and does not move ahead. The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy: tomorrow is an inevitable heresy of today, which has turned into a pillar of salt, and to yesterday, which has scattered to dust. Today denies yesterday, but is a denial of denial tomorrow. This is the constant dialectic path which in a grandiose parabola sweeps the world into infinity. Yesterday, the thesis; today, the antithesis, and tomorrow, the synthesis. |
| ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin ~ |
- proposed by Kalki
- 2017
| Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. … Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed — Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. |
| ~ Langston Hughes ~ |
- proposed by Kalki
- 2018
| Revolution is everywhere, in everything. It is infinite. There is no final revolution, no final number. The social revolution is only one of an infinite number of numbers: the law of revolution is not a social law, but an immeasurably greater one. It is a cosmic, universal law — like the laws of the conservation of energy and of the dissipation of energy (entropy). |
| ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin ~ |
- proposed by Kalki
- 2019
| Liberty sets the mind free, fosters independence and unorthodox thinking and ideas. But it does not offer instant prosperity or happiness and wealth to everyone. This is something that politicians in particular must keep in mind. |
| ~ Boris Yeltsin ~ |
- proposed by bystander
- 2020
| Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain — All, all the stretch of these great green states — And make America again! |
| ~ Langston Hughes ~ |
- proposed by Kalki
- 2021
| A literature that is alive does not live by yesterday's clock, nor by today's but by tomorrow's. |
| ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin ~ |
- proposed by Kalki
- 2022
| O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. |
| ~ Langston Hughes ~ |
- proposed by Kalki
- 2023
| Yesterday, there was a tsar, and there were slaves; today there is no tsar, but the slaves remain; tomorrow there will be only tsars. We march in the name of tomorrow's free man — the royal man. We have lived through the epoch of suppression of the masses; we are living in an epoch of suppression of the individual in the name of the masses; tomorrow will bring the liberation of the individual — in the name of man. Wars, imperialist and civil, have turned man into material for warfare, into a number, a cipher. Man is forgotten, for the sake of the sabbath. We want to recall something else to mind: that the sabbath is for man. The only weapon worthy of man — of tomorrows's man — is the word. |
| ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin ~ |
- proposed by Kalki
- 2024
| We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it. |
| ~ Boris Yeltsin ~ |
- proposed by Kalki
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Suggestions
[edit]The law is the surest sanctuary, that a man should take, and the strongest fortresse to protect the weakest of all. ~ Edward Coke (born February 1, 1552)
- 3 InvisibleSun 06:48, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 21:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 18:09, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
O, let America be America again —
The land that never has been yet —
And yet must be — the land where every man is free.
~ Langston Hughes ~
- 3 Kalki (talk · contributions) 00:47, 24 January 2011 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose —
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
~ Langston Hughes ~
- 3 Kalki (talk · contributions) 00:47, 24 January 2011 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
| Every theory of love, from Plato down, teaches that each individual loves in the other sex what he lacks in himself. |
| ~ G. Stanley Hall ~ |
| War has given applied psychology a tremendous impulse. This will, on the whole, do good, for psychology, which is the largest and last of the sciences, must not try to be too pure. |
| ~ G. Stanley Hall ~ |
| A new form is not intelligible to everyone; many find it difficult. Perhaps. The ordinary, the banal is, of course, simpler, more pleasant, more comfortable. Euclid's world is very simple, and Einstein's world is very difficult — but it is no longer possible to return to Euclid. No revolution, no heresy is comfortable or easy. For it is a leap, it is a break in the smooth evolutionary curve, and a break is a wound, a pain. But the wound is necessary: most of mankind suffers from hereditary sleeping sickness, and victims of this sickness (entropy) must not be allowed to sleep, or it will be their final sleep, death. The same disease often afflicts artists and writers: they sink into satiated slumber in forms once invented and twice perfected. And they lack the strength to wound themselves, to cease loving what they once loved, to leave their old, familiar apartments filled with the scent of laurel leaves and walk away into the open field, to start anew. Of course, to wound oneself is difficult, even dangerous. But for those who are alive, living today as yesterday and yesterday as today is still more difficult. |
| ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin ~ |