Wikiquote:Quote of the day/August 2025

QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
<– Last Month · This Month –>

Today is Thursday, March 5, 2026; it is now 23:50 (UTC)

Purge page cache

August 1

A man of true science... uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the smatterer in science... thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things.

~ Herman Melville ~

view - discussion - history

August 2

The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down.

~ Ken MacLeod ~

view - discussion - history

August 3

As a Yazidi refugee I spoke to said … in the West you have Christians, you have Muslims, you have Jews who all speak up for their co-religionists, but who cares about the Yazidi? Who cares about them?

~ Tom Holland ~

view - discussion - history

August 4

With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

~ Barack Obama ~

view - discussion - history

August 5

I remember on the trip home on Apollo 11 it suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

~ Neil Armstrong ~

view - discussion - history

August 6

The altar of liberty totters when it is cemented only with blood, when it is supported only with carcases. The liberty which I look for is that which would increase the happiness of mankind. In the service of this liberty I have devoted my life and whatever portion of talents I may have or acquire.

~ Daniel O'Connell ~

view - discussion - history

August 7

We are Wikipedians. This means that we should be: kind, thoughtful, passionate about getting it right, open, tolerant of different viewpoints, open to criticism, bold about changing our policies and also cautious about changing our policies. We are not vindictive, childish, and we don't stoop to the level of our worst critics, no matter how much we may find them to be annoying.

~ Jimmy Wales ~

view - discussion - history

August 8

Every breath you draw, every accelerated beat of your heart in the emotional periods of your oratory depend upon highly elaborated physical and chemical reactions and mechanisms which nature has been building up through a million centuries. If one of these mechanisms, which you owe entirely to your animal ancestry, were to be stopped for a single instant, you would fall lifeless on the stage. Not only this, but some of your highest ideals of human fellowship and comradeship were not created in a moment, but represent the work of ages.

~ Henry Fairfield Osborn ~

view - discussion - history

August 9

Before games are played in common, no rules in the proper sense can come into existence. Regularities and ritualized schemas are already there, but these rites, being the work of the individual, cannot call forth that submission to something superior to the self which characterizes the appearance of any rule.

~ Jean Piaget ~

view - discussion - history

August 10

You realize that people often say, "I hope to go to heaven when I die." In reality, if you think about it, you go to heaven when you're born.
You arrive on a planet that has the proper mass, has the gravity to contain water and an atmosphere, which are the very essentials for life … And you arrive on this planet that's orbiting a star just at the right distance — not too far to be too cold, or too close to be too hot — and just at the right distance to absorb that star's energy and then, with that energy, cause life to evolve here in the first place. … In reality, you know, God has really given us a stage, just looking at where we were around the moon, a stage on which we perform. And how that play turns out is up to us, I guess.

~ Jim Lovell ~

view - discussion - history

August 11

A precious place is Paradise and none may know its worth,
But Eden ever longeth for the knicknacks of the earth.

~ Nathalia Crane ~

view - discussion - history

August 12

Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical, namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma.

~ Erwin Schrödinger ~

view - discussion - history

August 13

The moral improvement of the nations and their individual components has not kept pace with the march of intellect and the advance of industry.

~ Felix Adler ~

view - discussion - history

August 14

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy, the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.

~ John Galsworthy ~

view - discussion - history

August 15

Spirituality is not necessarily exclusive; it can be and in its fullness must be all-inclusive. … It sees the infinite behind all things finite and it adjudges the value of the finite by higher infinite values of which they are the imperfect translation and towards which, to a truer expression of them, they are always trying to arrive.

~ Sri Aurobindo ~

view - discussion - history

August 16

I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead: men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideals.

~ Charles Bukowski ~

view - discussion - history

August 17

Dark to me is the earth. Dark to me are the heavens.
Where is she that I loved, the woman with eyes like stars?
Desolate are the streets. Desolate is the city.
A city taken by storm, where none are left but the slain.

~ Wilfrid Scawen Blunt ~

view - discussion - history

August 18

Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.

~ Brian Aldiss ~

view - discussion - history

August 19

Perhaps indeed the possession of wealth is constantly distressing,
But I should be quite willing to assume every curse of wealth if I could at the same time assume every blessing.
The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure,
Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor.

~ Ogden Nash ~

view - discussion - history

August 20

I believe in tension and release, in that if you stay in the the same tone and mode and intensity for too long, it actually becomes monotonous. When you change up your pace or your humour level, then the release is welcome. … I believe that's my biggest job: tone control, and maintaining enough unity so that it all feels like one movie and all the scenes belong together, and yet diversity so that emotional and narrative interest is maintained.

~ Patricia Rozema ~

view - discussion - history

August 21

I should have done violence to my convictions of duty, had I not made use of all the lawful means in my power to liberate those people, and assist them to become men and women, rather than leave them in the condition of chattels personal.
I am called an abolitionist, once a name of reproach, but one I am ever proud to be considered worthy of being called.

~ Thomas Garrett ~

view - discussion - history

August 22

If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.

~ Ray Bradbury ~
in
~ Fahrenheit 451 ~

view - discussion - history

August 23

The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE.

~ Donald Trump ~

view - discussion - history

August 24

One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and the unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country.

~ Howard Zinn ~

view - discussion - history

August 25

Money doesn’t mind if we say it’s evil, it goes from strength to strength. It’s a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy we have all agreed to go along with.

~ Martin Amis ~

view - discussion - history

August 26

Civilisation needs more than the law to hold it together. You see, all mankind are not equally willing to accept as divine justice what is called human law.

~ John Buchan ~

view - discussion - history

August 27

The History of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom; a progress whose development according to the necessity of its nature, it is our business to investigate.

~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ~

view - discussion - history

August 28

This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~

view - discussion - history

August 29

All I wanna say is that they don't really care about us.

Some things in life they just don't wanna see
But if Martin Luther was livin'
He wouldn't let this be.

~ Michael Jackson ~

view - discussion - history

August 30

We should be looking to trade with the rest of the world. We should do what we do best, and they should do what they do best.
With eight countries possessing nuclear weapons, including a few I would call quite unstable, I don't think it's a great idea to design a world where a few countries say, "Haha, we've won" while other countries are envious.
… The main thing is that trade should not be a weapon. The more prosperous the rest of the world becomes, it won't be at our expense — the more prosperous we'll become and the safer we'll feel and your children will feel someday.

~ Warren Buffet ~

view - discussion - history

August 31

The whole world and every human being in it is everybody's business.

~ William Saroyan ~

view - discussion - history

QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
<– Last Month · This Month –>

Today is Thursday, March 5, 2026; it is now 23:50 (UTC)