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September 2

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Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
Ars longa, vita brevis. (Art is long, life is short.) ~ Horace
2004
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. ~ George Bernard Shaw
2005
Speak softly and carry a big stick. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
  • proposed by MosheZadka: First public use of the phrase by Roosevelt in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair (2 September 1901)
2006
Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process. ~ Salma Hayek (born 2 September 1966)
2007
There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood. ~ Paul Bourget (born 2 September 1852)
2008
The first casualty when war comes is truth. ~ Hiram Johnson (born 2 September 1866)
2009
If thinking men are few, they are for that reason all the more powerful. Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power. ~ Henry George (born 2 September 1839)
2010
To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be. ~ Henry George
2011
The great work of the present for every man, and every organization of men, who would improve social conditions, is the work of education — the propagation of ideas. It is only as it aids this that anything else can avail. ~ Henry George
2012
As man is so constituted that it is utterly impossible for him to attain happiness save by seeking the happiness of others, so does it seem to be of the nature of things that individuals and classes can obtain their own just rights only by struggling for the rights of others.
~ Henry George ~
2013
I care nothing for creeds. I am not concerned with any one's religious belief. But I would have men think for themselves. If we do not, we can only abandon one superstition to take up another, and it may be a worse one. It is as bad for a man to think that he can know nothing as to think he knows all.
~ Henry George ~
2014
Whoever becomes imbued with a noble idea kindles a flame from which other torches are lit, and influences those with whom he comes in contact, be they few or many. How far that influence, thus perpetuated, may extend, it is not given to him here to see.
~ Henry George ~
2015
More is given to us than to any people at any time before; and, therefore, more is required of us. We have made, and still are making, enormous advances on material lines. It is necessary that we commensurately advance on moral lines. Civilization, as it progresses, requires a higher conscience, a keener sense of justice, a warmer brotherhood, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit. Falling these, civilization must pass into destruction. It cannot be maintained on the ethics of savagery.
~ Henry George ~
2016
Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum: it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other. Within the compass of five generations we find the Puritan first an uncompromising believer in demonology and magic, and then a scoffer at everything involving the play of fancy.
~ Eugene Field ~
2017
Social reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting; by complaints and denunciation; by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow. Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
~ Henry George ~
2018
Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same — to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.
~ Henry George ~
2019
What sin is to the moralist and crime to the jurist so to the scientific man is ignorance. On our plane knowledge and ignorance are the immemorial adversaries.
~ Frederick Soddy ~
2020
There are conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity.
~ Paul Bourget ~
2021
Some day you will know for yourself that it is almost as true to say that one recovers from all things as that there is nothing which does not leave its scar.
~ Paul Bourget ~
2022
I wanted to have a voice, and it was okay if I wasn't going to be so famous or so rich. And this the one thing I learned: How do you recognize what's your true dream and what is the dream that you are dreaming for other people to love you? … The difference is very easy to understand. If you enjoy the process, it's your dream. … If you are enduring the process, just desperate for the result, it's somebody else's dream.
~ Salma Hayek ~
2023
At certain moments, words are nothing; it is the tone in which they are uttered.
~ Paul Bourget ~
2024
As scientific men we have all, no doubt, felt that our work has been put often to base uses, which must lead to disaster. But what sin is to the moralist and crime to the jurist so to the scientific man is ignorance. On our plane knowledge and ignorance are the immemorial adversaries.
Scientific men can hardly escape the charge of ignorance with regard to the precise effect of the impact of modern science upon the mode of living of the people and upon their civilisation. For them, such a charge is worse than that of crime.
~ Frederick Soddy ~
2025
There are some surely whom you like and whom you dislike, for whom you entertain esteem and for whom you feel contempt? Have you not thought that you have some duties toward them, that you can aid them in leading better lives?
~ Paul Bourget ~
2026
Rank or add further suggestions…

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Suggestions

[edit]

Vietnam is a country, not a war ~ Le Van Bang, former Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States

  • 3 - for Vietnamese National Day. LordAmeth 18:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 23:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 21:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 21:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

We to a little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire... We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. ~ Samuel Pepys (diary entry, September 2, 1666, the first day of the Great Fire of London)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 19:44, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 22:59, 1 September 2007 (UTC) 2 as it stands, but I would rank it a 3 if it were trimmed to the most essential line: "We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it."
  • 1 Zarbon 21:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The forests have taught man liberty. ~ Paul Bourget

  • 3 Kalki 09:07, 2 September 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 21:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

There is no such thing as an age for love … because the man capable of loving — in the complex and modern sense of love as a sort of ideal exaltation — never ceases to love. ~ Paul Bourget

  • 2 Zarbon 04:57, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

its in rooms like this one with no windows... that we prepare our gestures so that we may best present them frightened in the face of death. -Clarice Starling "Silence of the Lambs"

—This unsigned comment is by 12.109.107.253 (talk • contribs) .

There is iconoclasm in the excessively intellectual, and they delight in destroying their dearest moral or sentimental idols, the better to prove their strength. ~ Paul Bourget

Some of the beliefs and legends bequeathed to us by Antiquity are so universally and firmly established that we have become accustomed to consider them as being almost as ancient as humanity itself. Nevertheless we are tempted to inquire how far the fact that some of these beliefs and legends have so many features in common is due to chance, and whether the similarity between them may not point to the existence of an ancient, totally unknown and unsuspected civilization of which all other traces have disappeared. ~ Frederick Soddy

To dream big doesn't necessarily mean to imagine becoming the biggest movie star in the world. Dreaming big is about taking the simplest thing in life and enjoying it — and seeing it as the biggest thing that can possibly exist. … I work in an industry that is the first to kill this ability because everything is so celebrity oriented. I am part of a cancer. In my world, you have to be so beautiful, so skinny, so rich, so famous — and I don't believe you really have to be any of those things. You simply have to be who you are.
~ Salma Hayek ~
There are people into whose heads it never enters to conceive of any better state of society than that which now exists.
~ Henry George ~
The great work of the present for every man, and every organization of men, who would improve social conditions, is the work of education — the propagation of ideas. It is only as it aids this that anything else can avail. And in this work every one who can think may aid — first by forming clear ideas himself, and then by endeavoring to arouse the thought of those with whom he comes in contact.
~ Henry George ~
It is too narrow an understanding of production which confines it merely to the making of things. Production includes not merely the making of things, but the bringing of them to the consumer. The merchant or storekeeper is thus as truly a producer as is the manufacturer, or farmer, and his stock or capital is as much devoted to production as is theirs.
~ Henry George ~
It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has been raised; but these gains are not general. In them the lowest class do not share. I do not mean that the condition of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything been improved; but that there is nowhere any improvement which can be credited to increased productive power. I mean that the tendency of what we call material progress is in nowise to improve the condition of the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy human life. Nay, more, that it is still further to depress the condition of the lowest class.
~ Henry George ~
I propose in this inquiry to take nothing for granted, but to bring even accepted theories to the test of first principles, and should they not stand the test, freshly to interrogate facts in the endeavor to discover their law.
I propose to beg no question, to shrink from no conclusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead.
~ Henry George ~
If the conclusions that we reach run counter to our prejudices, let us not flinch; if they challenge institutions that have long been deemed wise and natural, let us not turn back.
~ Henry George ~
The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air — it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.
~ Henry George ~
There is, and always has been, a widespread belief among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry, frugality, and intelligence. This belief, which at once soothes the sense of responsibility and flatters by its suggestion of superiority, is probably even more prevalent in countries like the United States, where all men are politically equal, and where, owing to the newness of society, the differentiation into classes has been of individuals rather than of families, than it is in older countries, where the lines of separation have been longer, and are more sharply, drawn.
~ Henry George ~
Those classes who in the midst of wealth are condemned to want, suffer all the privations of the savage, without his sense of personal freedom; they are condemned to more than his narrowness and littleness, without opportunity for the growth of his rude virtues; if their horizon is wider, it is but to reveal blessings that they cannot enjoy.
~ Henry George ~
I believe that civilization is not only the natural destiny of man, but the enfranchisement, elevation, and refinement of all his powers, and think that it is only in such moods as may lead him to envy the cud-chewing cattle, that a man who is free to the advantages of civilization could look with regret upon the savage state. But, nevertheless, I think no one who will open his eyes to the facts can resist the conclusion that there are in the heart of our civilization large classes with whom the veriest savage could not afford to exchange.
~ Henry George ~
The intelligence required for the solving of social problems is not a thing of the mere intellect. It must be animated with the religious sentiment and warm with sympathy for human suffering. It must stretch out beyond self-interest, whether it be the self-interest of the few or of the many. It must seek justice. For at the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong.
~ Henry George ~
A great change is going on all over the civilized world similar to that infeudation which, in Europe, during the rise of the feudal system, converted free proprietors into vassals, and brought all society into subordination to a hierarchy of wealth and privilege. Whether the new aristocracy is hereditary or not makes little difference. Chance alone may determine who will get the few prizes of a lottery. But it is not the less certain that the vast majority of all who take part in it must draw blanks.
~ Henry George ~
There is something in the very word "protection" that ought to make workingmen cautious of accepting anything presented to them under it. The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny — the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves.
~ Henry George ~
When we consider that labor is the producer of all wealth, is it not evident that the impoverishment and, dependence of labor are abnormal conditions resulting from restrictions and usurpations, and that instead of accepting protection, what labor should demand is freedom. That those who advocate any extension of freedom choose to go no further than suits their own special purpose is no reason why freedom itself should be distrusted.
~ Henry George ~


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