User:Jeffq/Experiments/QotD: May
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We are still developing procedures for selecting quotes of the day. This page is for quote of the day proposals specifically for dates in the month of May, and quotes proposed should ideally have some relation to the day, or persons born on it, though sometimes exceptions can be made for quotes that relate to notable current events. 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.
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.
2004 : The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May. ~ Sir Thomas Malory
2005 : "DON'T PANIC"
~ Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy ~
- This is a misattribution. "Don't panic" was taken from Mr Jones the butcher in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army! (comment from IP 195.40.196.21) 11:34, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
- It is a simple statement, no doubt used by others even before either case, but now is far more famous as used by Douglas Adams as the phrase on the cover of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. ~ Kalki 23:15, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
2006 : I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, "I'm in favor of privatization," or, "I'm deeply in favor of public ownership." I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith (recent death)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
2005 : You know more than you think you do. ~ Benjamin Spock (date of birth)
2006 : We are near waking when we dream that we dream. ~ Novalis (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : In nature's infinite book of secrecy a little I can read. ~ William Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra
2005 : It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli (date of birth)
2006 : Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. ~ Pete Seeger (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. ~ eden ahbez
2005 : Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. ~ Horace Mann (date of birth)
2006 : Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this. ~ T. H. Huxley (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : Everything in the universe relates to the number 5, one way or another, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter. ~ Principia Discordia, The Law of Fives
2005 : Democracy is the destiny of humanity; freedom its indestructible arm. ~ Benito Juárez (Cinco de Mayo)
2006 : Once you label me you negate me. ~ Søren Kierkegaard (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : That best portion of a good man's life, — His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. ~ William Wordsworth
2005 : If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
2006 : Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action. ~ Sigmund Freud (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. ~ Emily Dickinson
2005 : Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities. ~ David Hume (date of birth)
2006 : The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation. ~ Rabindranath Tagore (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : There are very few human beings who receive the truth , complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. ~ Anaïs Nin
2005 : If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. ~ Thomas Pynchon (date of birth)
2006 : While in the physical sciences the investigator will be able to measure what, on the basis of a prima facie theory, he thinks important, in the social sciences often that is treated as important which happens to be accessible to measurement. This is sometimes carried to the point where it is demanded that our theories must be formulated in such terms that they refer only to measurable magnitudes. ~ Friedrich Hayek (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her. ~ George Washington (Mother's Day 2004)
2005 : Life is a long lesson in humility. ~ J. M. Barrie (date of birth)
2006 : The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us. ~ Nelson Mandela (12th anniversary of his inauguration as President of the Republic of South Africa)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times, all of them true, all of them real, and all of them (as children know) penetrating each other. ~ P. L. Travers
2005 : The world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape. ~ Bono (date of birth)
2006 : The Truth lies not in the Yes and not in the No, but in the knowledge and the beginning from which the Yes and the No arise. ~ Karl Barth (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well. ~ Ken Wilber
2005 : When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is trying to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind. ~ J. Krishnamurti (date of birth)
2006 : Positive vibrations man. That's what makes it work. That's reggae music. You can't look away because it's real. You listen to what I sing because I mean what I sing, there's no secret, no big deal. Just honesty, that's all. ~ Bob Marley (date of death)
- 3 Kalki 22:04, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
- 3 Jeff Q (talk) 23:56, 10 May 2006 (UTC). This is more my mood today.
Suggestions:
"Say you just can't live that negative way
You know what I mean
Make way for the positive day
Cause it's a new day." ~ Bob Marley (died 11 May 1981), "Positive Vibration", Rastaman Vibration (1976)
- 2 Jeff Q (talk) 05:51, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
- 2 ~ I did some quick research, and the writing credits for this are to Vincent Ford, but there are indications that Marley simply gave Ford credit for these and other lyrics. Taking up the suggestion for something by Marley I have found a couple that, while not fully sourced as yet, I find plausible and not likely to become disputed. ~ Kalki 22:04, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
"I don't have prejudice against myself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white." ~ Bob Marley (date of death)
- 3 Kalki 22:04, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
- 1 Jeff Q (talk) 23:56, 10 May 2006 (UTC). I'd prefer a less weighty quote.
2004 : It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people. ~ Good Omens (by Gaiman & Pratchett)
2005 : Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better. ~ Florence Nightingale (date of birth)
2006 : Duty, Honor, Country — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. ~ Douglas MacArthur (this famous speech delivered this day in 1962 at the West Point U.S. Military Academy)
- suggested by UDScott
- 2 Kalki 22:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC) I prefer the Rossetti fragment below, but will use this, as I only at the last minute posted it. I ended up not having contact with the internet most of the day today, and only had a short time in the last hour to check up on things. ~ Kalki 22:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Suggestions:
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti ~ (date of birth)
- 3 Kalki 22:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
2004 : I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. ~ William Faulkner
2005 : It behoved that there should be sin — but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. ~ Julian of Norwich (date of her famous visions)
2006 : "Fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water'" do not matter. "I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. ~ Roger Zelazny in Lord of Light (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad. ~ Freeman Dyson
2005 : If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life — that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment — that would be the perfect state. ~ Cate Blanchett (date of birth)
2006 : It is confidently expected that the period is at hand, when man, through ignorance, shall not much longer inflict unnecessary misery on man; because the mass of mankind will become enlightened, and will clearly discern that by so acting they will inevitably create misery to themselves. ~ Robert Owen (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. ~ Louis Pasteur
2005 : Things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. ~ L. Frank Baum (date of birth)
2006 : The voice of the individual artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of a cricket in the grass, but the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away. ~ Katherine Anne Porter (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; if we begin with doubts, and are patient, we shall end in certainties. ~ Marcus Aurelius
2005 : You say that you are my judge. I don't know if you are — but take care not to judge wrongly, lest you place yourself in great danger. ~ Jehanne Darc (Jeanne d'Arc; Joan of Arc) (date of canonization)
2006 : I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you. ~ Studs Terkel (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : Explanations exist; they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every human problems — neat, plausible, and wrong. ~ H. L. Mencken
2005 : I had a stick of Carefree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality. ~ Mitch Hedberg (date of birth)
2006 : There is no formula to it because writing every song, for me, is a little journey... It's everything. It's the walk you take in the morning, it's the night before, the meeting with people, landscapes, the chats, all of that evolves in some way into melody, but I'm not sure how it's going to happen. I'm dealing with the unknown all the time and that is exciting. ~ Enya (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : Love me for love's sake, that evermore thou may'st love on, through love's eternity. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
2005 : To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. ~ Bertrand Russell (date of birth)
2006 : A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
~ Omar Khayyám ~ (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : It is love alone that gives worth to all things. ~ St. Teresa of Avila (Teresa de Jesús)
2005 : Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else. ~ Malcolm X (date of birth)
2006 : Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious — that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment. ~ Dan Brown (author of The Da Vinci Code, the film adaptation of which is being released worldwide on this date.)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker. ~ Mikhail Bakunin
2005 : If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. ~ John Stuart Mill (date of birth)
2006 : Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation. ~ Honoré de Balzac (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : The road to wisdom? — Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less. ~ Piet Hein (date of birth)
2005 : May the Force be with you. ~ Jedi saying; used in all Star Wars episodes.
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : The way I see it, if you want the rainbow you gotta be willing to put up with the rain. ~ Dolly Parton
2005 : The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal. ~ Bill Watterson
2005 : It seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive and a slave, than always to walk in armor. ~ Margaret Fuller (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. ~ Carl Jung
2005 : I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. ~ Bob Dylan (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : I got some new underwear the other day. Well, new to me. ~ Emo Philips
2005 : If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed. ~ Joseph Addison
2005 : It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility. ~ Rachel Carson
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
2005 : The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness. ~ Julia Ward Howe (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures — in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
2005 : We have gotten some terrible reviews at times but if we depended on the judgment of the studios or critics, we never would have made more than one movie. ~ Ismail Merchant (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. ~ Steven Wright
2005 : Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn. ~ T. H. White (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
2005 : The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual. ~ Mikhail Bakunin (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
2004 : There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing. ~ Maya Angelou
2005 : When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs, And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth, Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth, And the infidel come into full possession. ~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass (date of birth)
Suggestions:
"Sample quote." ~ Quoted Person/Work; why quoted for this day
- 3 ~~~~ Optional justification. [sample vote]
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.