Wikiquote:Quote of the day/December 2010
QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
Today is Tuesday, December 31, 2024; it is now 14:05 (UTC)
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Stop the habit of wishful thinking and start the habit of thoughtful wishes. ~ Mary Martin ~ |
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| File:Maria Callas (La Traviata).JPG | It is not enough to have a beautiful voice. What does that mean? When you interpret a role, you have to have a thousand colors to portray happiness, joy, sorrow, fear. How can you do this with only a beautiful voice? Even if you sing harshly sometimes, as I have frequently done, it is a necessity of expression. You have to do it, even if people will not understand. But in the long run they will, because you must persuade them of what you're doing. ~ Maria Callas ~ |
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The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition — and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation — and to the subtle but invincible, conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity — the dead to the living and the living to the unborn. | 
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Standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. ~ Edith Cavell ~ |
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Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding." | 
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Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who profess to be their disciples. ~ Max Müller ~ |
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| That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed. ~ Algernon Sydney ~ |
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Better than a thousand hollow words ~ Gautama Buddha ~ |
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Freely we serve, Because we freely love, as in our will To love or not; in this we stand or fall. ~ John Milton ~ |
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The history of the human race has generated several papers articulating basic moral imperatives, or fundamental principles, of human coexistence that… substantially influenced the fate of humanity on this planet. Among these historic documents, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights … holds a very special, indeed, unique position. It is the first code of ethical conduct that was not a product of one culture, or one sphere of civilization only, but a universal creation, shaped and subscribed to by representatives of all humankind. Since its very inception, the Declaration has thus represented a planetary, or global commitment, a global intention, a global guideline. For this reason alone, this exceptional document — conceived as a result of a profound human self-reflection in the wake of the horrors of World War II, and retaining its relevance ever since — deserves to be remembered today. ~ Václav Havel ~ |
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Our All is at Stake, and the little Conveniencys and Comforts of Life, when set in Competition with our Liberty, ought to be rejected not with Reluctance but with Pleasure. ~ George Mason ~ |
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An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. ~ Gustave Flaubert ~ |
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The best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination. ~ George Pólya ~ |
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The project of organizing a democratic political movement entails the hope that one's ideas and beliefs are not merely idiosyncratic but speak to vital human needs, interests and desires, and therefore will be persuasive to many and ultimately most people. But this is a very different matter from deciding to put forward only those ideas presumed (accurately or not) to be compatible with what most people already believe. ~ Ellen Willis ~ |
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The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms. ~ Muriel Rukeyser ~ |
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Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ George Santayana ~ |
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Those who have served the cause of the revolution have plowed the sea. ~ Simón Bolívar ~ |
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Hark! the herald angels sing, "Glory to the new-born King; Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!" Joyful, all ye nations, rise. Join the triumph of the skies. With th'angelic hosts proclaim "Christ is born in Bethlehem!" ~ Charles Wesley ~ |
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And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here. ~ Phil Ochs ~ |
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We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent "elementary parts" of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole. ~ David Bohm ~ |
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I was persuaded and am, that God's way is first to turn a soul from its idols, both of heart, worship, and conversation, before it is capable of worship to the true and living God. ~ Roger Williams ~ |
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God is not, as in scholasticism, the final subject of all predicates. He is being as unpredicable. The existence of the creature, in so far as it exists, is the existence of God, and the creature’s experience of God is therefore in the final analysis equally unpredicable. Neither can even be described; both can only be indicated. We can only point at reality, our own or God’s. The soul comes to the realization of God by knowledge, not as in the older Christian mysticism by love. Love is the garment of knowledge. The soul first trains itself by systematic unknowing until at last it confronts the only reality, the only knowledge, God manifest in itself. The soul can say nothing about this experience in the sense of defining it. It can only reveal it to others. ~ Kenneth Rexroth ~ |
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We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery. ~ Samuel Smiles ~ |
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Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city’s jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar. ~ Matthew Arnold ~ |
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Joy to the world! the Lord is come; Let earth receive her King. Let ev'ry heart prepare Him room, And heav'n and nature sing, And heaven and nature sing, And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing. ~ Isaac Watts ~ |
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To each his suff'rings: all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan, The tender for another's pain; Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise. ~ Thomas Gray ~ |
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One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me... ~ Louis Pasteur ~ |
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The external world of physics has … become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. ... The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and evil. The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances. |
  
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Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home. | 
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One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved. ~ Romain Rolland ~ |
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At each stage I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find that there is a weakness in the whole, I make my way back into the picture by means of the weakness — I re-enter through the breach — and I reconceive the whole. Thus everything becomes fluid again. ~ Henri Matisse ~ |
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Today is Tuesday, December 31, 2024; it is now 14:05 (UTC)