Wikiquote:Quote of the day/April 2020

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Today is Tuesday, December 3, 2024; it is now 18:01 (UTC)

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April 1

When bad fortune occurs, the unresourceful, unimaginative man looks about him to attach the blame to someone else; the resolute accepts misfortune and endeavors to survive, mature, and improve because of it.

~ Anne McCaffrey ~

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April 2

We shall be judged by what we do, not by how we felt while we were doing it.

~ Kenneth Tynan ~

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April 3

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.

~ Jane Goodall ~

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April 4

⨀

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

~ Baruch Spinoza ~

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April 5

I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power; but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. And from hence it is that kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavours to the assuring it at home by laws or abroad by wars; and, when that is done, there succeedeth a new desire, in some of fame from new conquest, in others of ease and sensual pleasure, in others of admiration or being flattered for excellence in some art or other ability of the mind.

~ Thomas Hobbes ~

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April 6

Sometimes in our lives we all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's always tomorrow.

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on.

~ Bill Withers ~

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April 7

Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science …
In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, — in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time … Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge — it is as immortal as the heart of man.

~ William Wordsworth ~

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April 8

Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?

~ Yip Harburg ~

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April 9

When I get to heaven, I'm gonna shake God's hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I'm gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel, ain't the afterlife grand?

~ John Prine ~

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April 10

The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

~ William Hazlitt ~

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April 11

We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.

~ Primo Levi ~

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April 12

Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

~ Gospel of Luke ~

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April 13

If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

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April 14

I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to die valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man has but one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from you, my pigs, to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to discharge my geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall not come back to you, my pigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and into the last limits of earth, so that I may see the ends of this world and may judge them while my life endures. For after that, they say, I judge not, but am judged: and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even good bacon.

~ James Branch Cabell ~

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April 15

Doubt comes in at the window, when Inquiry is denied at the door.

~ Benjamin Jowett ~

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April 16

We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,
And pass both tropics and behold the poles,
When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,
And unacquainted still with our own souls.

~ John Davies ~

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April 17

As a general rule, the better people are, the more Anarchists and Socialists will be found among them.

~ Benjamin Tucker ~

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April 18

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever. The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.

~ Clarence Darrow ~

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April 19

Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language cannot be avoided. We cannot choose to distance ourselves from it. We can only choose to employ it in one way rather than another.

~ Stanley Fish ~

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April 20

There never was night that had no morn.

~ Dinah Craik ~

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April 21

Beneath our feet and o'er our head
Is equal warning given:
Beneath us lie the countless dead,
Above us is the heaven!

Death rides on every passing breeze,
And lurks in every flower;
Each season has its own disease,
Its peril every hour.

~ Reginald Heber ~

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April 22

It is impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth.
This … becomes obvious enough when it is considered that the earth is what we all have in common, that it is what we are made of and what we live from, and that we therefore cannot damage it without damaging those with whom we share it. But I believe it goes farther and deeper than that. There is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each other and our behavior toward the earth. … By some connection we do not recognize, the willingness to exploit one becomes the willingness to exploit the other.

~ Wendell Berry ~

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April 23

A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain:
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.

~ William Shakespeare ~
in
~ Twelfth Night ~

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April 24

From all evil against which the law bars you, you should be barred, at an infinite distance, by honour, by conscience, and nobility. Does the law require patriotism, philanthropy, self-abnegation, public service, purity of purpose, devotion to the needs of others who have been placed in the world below you? The law is a great thing, — because men are poor and weak, and bad. And it is great, because where it exists in its strength, no tyrant can be above it. But between you and me there should be no mention of law as the guide of conduct. Speak to me of honour, of duty, and of nobility; and tell me what they require of you.

~ Anthony Trollope ~

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April 25

The best that most of us can hope to achieve in physics is simply to misunderstand at a deeper level.

~ Wolfgang Pauli ~

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April 26

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein ~

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April 27

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

~ Ulysses S. Grant ~

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April 28

The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he.

~ Karl Kraus ~

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April 29

Whatever is right can be achieved through the irresistible power of awakened and informed public opinion. Our object, therefore, is not to enquire whether a thing can be done, but whether it ought to be done, to so exert the forces of publicity that public opinion will compel it be done.

~ William Randolph Hearst ~

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April 30

Life does not forgive weakness.

~ Adolf Hitler ~

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Today is Tuesday, December 3, 2024; it is now 18:01 (UTC)