Wikiquote:Quote of the day/April 2016

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April 1

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

~ Douglas Adams ~
in
~ Mostly Harmless ~

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April 2

No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.

~ Kenneth Tynan ~

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April 3

The most important thing is to actually think about what you do. To become aware and actually think about the effect of what you do on the environment and on society. That's key, and that underlies everything else.

~ Jane Goodall ~

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April 4

Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful.

~ Andrei Tarkovsky ~

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April 5

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

~ Booker T. Washington ~

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April 6

Sleep and death of the senses; tears and the death of the heart. Do you understand the progression?
Sleep, though sad, is gentler than tears which, though painful, are gentler than death. Ecstasy is more delightful than song, which is gentler than work. Prayer is superior to dreaming which is more elevated than manual work.

~ Gustave Moreau ~

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April 7

War is to be ranked among the most dreadful calamities which fall on a guilty world; and, what deserves consideration, it tends to multiply and perpetuate itself without end. It feeds and grows on the blood which it sheds. The passions, from which it springs, gain strength and fury from indulgence.

~ William Ellery Channing ~

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April 8

One of these days when the air clears up
And the sun comes shining through
We'll all be drinking free bubble up
And eating some rainbow stew.

~ Merle Haggard ~

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April 9

Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.

~ Tom Lehrer ~

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April 10

We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.

~ Æ ~

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April 11

We still proclaim the old ideals of liberty but we cannot voice them without anxiety in our hearts. The question is no longer one of establishing democratic institutions but of preserving them. … The arch enemies of society are those who know better but by indirection, misstatement, understatement, and slander, seek to accomplish their concealed purposes or to gain profit of some sort by misleading the public. The antidote for these poisons must be found in the sincere and courageous efforts of those who would preserve their cherished freedom by a wise and responsible use of it. Freedom of expression gives the essential democratic opportunity, but self-restraint is the essential civic discipline.

~ Charles Evans Hughes ~

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April 12

Life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die.

~ Tom Clancy ~

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April 13

I've learned some things from having lived:
If you're alive, experience largely, merge with rivers, heavens, cosmos
For what we call living is a gift given to life
And life is a gift bestowed upon us

~ Ataol Behramoğlu ~

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April 14

I quite fixedly believe the Wardens of Earth sometimes unbar strange windows, that face on other worlds than ours. And some of us, I think, once in a while get a peep through these windows. But we are not permitted to get a long peep, or an unobstructed peep, nor very certainly, are we permitted to see all there is — out yonder. The fatal fault, sir, of your theorizing is that it is too complete. It aims to throw light upon the universe, and therefore is self-evidently moonshine. The Wardens of Earth do not desire that we should understand the universe, Mr. Kennaston; it is part of Their appointed task to insure that we never do; and because of Their efficiency every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong.

~ James Branch Cabell ~

File:Chromology The Net.jpg

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April 15

To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.

~ Leonardo da Vinci ~

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April 16

The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

~ Leonardo da Vinci ~

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April 17

Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.

~ Thornton Wilder ~

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April 18

Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.

~ Kathy Acker ~

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April 19

Of justice yet must God in fine restore,
This noble crowne unto the lawful heire
For right will alwayes live, and rise at length,
But wrong can never take deepe roote to last.

~ Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset ~

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April 20

I have forgotten that men cannot see Unicorns. If men no longer know what they're looking at, there may well be other unicorns in the world yet — unknown — and glad of it.

~ Peter S. Beagle ~
in
~ The Last Unicorn ~

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April 21

The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that He might illuminate the world by His wisdom and excite it to the love of Himself.

~ Peter Abelard ~

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April 22

How can U just leave me standing?
Alone in a world that's so cold? (So cold)
Maybe I'm just 2 demanding
Maybe I'm just like my father, 2 bold
Maybe you're just like my mother
She's never satisfied (She's never satisfied)
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like
When doves cry.

~ Prince ~

I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small but precious measure of the freedom from the accidents of incarnation, and charity, and that detachment which preserves the world which it renounces.

~ Robert Oppenheimer ~

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April 23

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
When mercy seasons justice.

~ William Shakespeare ~
in
~ The Merchant of Venice ~

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April 24

things explain each other,
Not themselves.

~ George Oppen ~

File:Chromology The Wall.jpg

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April 25

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

~ Edward R. Murrow ~

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April 26

If God be God and man a creature made in image of the divine intelligence, his noblest function is the search for truth.

~ Morris West ~

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April 27

Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation. And the belief in human perfectibility merely amounts to the belief that, in virtue of this process, man will eventually become completely suited to his mode of life. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower.

~ Herbert Spencer ~

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April 28

I have never disliked religion. I think it has some purpose in our evolution.
I don't have much truck with the "religion is the cause of most of our wars" school of thought because that is manifestly done by mad, manipulative and power-hungry men who cloak their ambition in God.
I number believers of all sorts among my friends. Some of them are praying for me. I'm happy they wish to do this, I really am, but I think science may be a better bet.

~ Terry Pratchett ~

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April 29

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

~ Henri Poincaré ~

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April 30

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

~ Carl Friedrich Gauss ~

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Today is Thursday, November 21, 2024; it is now 13:24 (UTC)