Wikiquote:Quote of the day/December 2014

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Today is Wednesday, January 14, 2026; it is now 17:11 (UTC)

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December 1

Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled.

~ Rex Stout ~

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December 2

I wear this Saint Christopher medal sometimes because — I'm Jewish — but my boyfriend is Catholic. It was cute, the way he gave it to me. He said if it doesn't burn through my skin, it will protect me. Who cares? Different religions.
The only time it's an issue, I suppose, would be like if you're having a baby and you've got to figure out how you want to raise it. Which still wouldn't be an issue for us, because we'd be … honest, and just say, you know, like, "Mommy is one of the chosen people … and daddy believes that Jesus is magic!"

~ Sarah Silverman ~

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December 3

The mind of man is capable of anything — because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage — who can tell? — but truth — truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder — the man knows, and can look on without a wink.

~ Joseph Conrad ~
in
~ Heart of Darkness ~

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December 4

It is love that alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern. Our concern is so to order ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter into life — although we know it not.

~ Samuel Butler ~

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December 5

Courage is the main quality of leadership, in my opinion, no matter where it is exercised. Usually it implies some risk — especially in new undertakings. Courage to initiate something and to keep it going, pioneering an adventurous spirit to blaze new ways, often, in our land of opportunity.

~ Walt Disney ~

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December 6

If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its first apostles.

~ Max Müller ~

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December 7

As soon as one identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists. What they call themselves doesn’t matter to me. … This world is full of suffering, distress, violence and catastrophes. Students must decide: does something concern you or not? I say: look around, analyze the problems, ask yourself what you can do and set out on the work!

~ Noam Chomsky ~

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December 8

No one saves us but ourselves,
No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the path
Buddhas merely teach the way.
By ourselves is evil done,
By ourselves we pain endure,
By ourselves we cease from wrong,
By ourselves become we pure.

~ Gautama Buddha ~
as translated by
~ Paul Carus ~

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December 9

The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested — rulers, lawyers, clerics — have carefully enwound her.
She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness of the religious political, legal, and social prejudices amid which she has vegetated. She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences.

~ Peter Kropotkin ~

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December 10

A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much.

~ George MacDonald ~

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December 11

Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God. One must not have any negative attitude to any religion but nonetheless the depth of understanding God and the depth of applying God's commandments is different in different religions.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ~

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December 12

Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage. The great mass of mankind shun the labor and responsibility of forming opinions for themselves.

~ William Lloyd Garrison ~

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December 13

A higher power than man power guided and watched over me and told me what to do. … There can be no doubt in the world of the fact of the divine power being in that. No other power under heaven could bring a man out of a place like that. Men were killed on both sides of me; and I was the biggest and the most exposed of all. Over thirty machine guns were maintaining rapid fire at me, point-blank from a range of about twenty-five yards.

~ Alvin C. York ~

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December 14

At sea on a ship in a thunder storm
on the very night the Christ was born
a sailor heard from overhead
a mighty voice cry "Pan is Dead!"
So follow Christ as best you can
Pan is dead — Long live Pan!

~ Mike Scott ~

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December 15

We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God.

~ Freeman Dyson ~

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December 16

We'll know homo superior when he comes — by definition. He'll be the one we won't be able to euth.

~ Philip K. Dick ~

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December 17

We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.

~ Pope Francis ~

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December 18

God buries his workmen, but carries on his work.

~ Charles Wesley ~

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December 19

Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

~ Charles Dickens ~
in
~ A Christmas Carol ~

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December 20

Why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused, only to be disappointed and punished? My volition shrinks from the painful task of recalling my humiliation; yet, like a second Prometheus, I will endure this and worse, if by any means I may arouse in the interiors of Plane and Solid Humanity a spirit of rebellion against the Conceit which would limit our Dimensions to Two or Three or any number short of Infinity.

~ Edwin Abbott Abbott ~

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December 21

The light
Begin to bleed,
Begin to breathe,
Begin to speak.
D'you know what?
I love you better now.

~ Kate Bush ~

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December 22

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

~ George Eliot ~

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December 23

All I'm saying is, if you celebrate Festivus, you may live a little longer.
You are getting back to the essentials, to the days of gods on mountaintops and howling wolves. Because you are saying the holidays are in the heart, a celebration of being alive with our fellow humans. For that purpose, an aluminum pole will do just as well as anything else — as long as it's not stuck in the wrong place.

~ Jerry Stiller ~

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December 24

I feel like a spinning top or a Dreidel
The spinning don't stop when you leave the cradle
You just slow down
Round and around this world you go
Spinning through the lives of the people you know
We all slow down.

~ Don McLean ~

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December 25

The earth has grown old with its burden of care
But at Christmas it always is young,
The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair
And its soul full of music breaks the air,
When the song of angels is sung.

~ Phillips Brooks ~

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December 26

Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjiev, Krishnamurti.

~ Henry Miller ~

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December 27

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.

~ Louis Pasteur ~

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December 28

There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't.

~ John von Neumann ~

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December 29

Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.

~ Mary Tyler Moore ~

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December 30

God was Life, the drop of light fallen into the darkness, spreading out, reaching out, drinking up the night. But the night is limitless, and the Divine struggle will never cease: and none can know how it will end. It was a heroic symphony wherein the very discords clashed together and mingled and grew into a serene whole!

~ Romain Rolland ~

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December 31

If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.

~ George Marshall ~

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Today is Wednesday, January 14, 2026; it is now 17:11 (UTC)