Wikiquote:Quote of the day/December 2020

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Today is Tuesday, December 3, 2024; it is now 17:40 (UTC)

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December 1

I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions.

~ Rex Stout ~
in
~ The Rubber Band ~

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December 2

The big discoveries raise questions that make astronomers work feverishly and argue with an agitation that verges on rudeness.

~ Nigel Calder ~

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December 3

The good author is he who contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventures of his soul amongst criticisms.

~ Joseph Conrad ~

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December 4

The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh: it is meteoric — suspended in mid-air; it is the baseless fabric of a vision so vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails, a system based on faith fails also.
Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is an inflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another matter. If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable certainty for everything that they have taken hitherto as paper money on the credit of the bank of public opinion, is there money enough behind it all to stand so great a drain even on so great a reserve?

~ Samuel Butler ~

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December 5

I believe firmly in the efficacy of religion, in its powerful influence on a person's whole life. It helps immeasurably to meet the storms and stress of life and keep you attuned to the Divine inspiration. Without inspiration, we would perish.

~ Walt Disney ~

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December 6

The Science of Language has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship; and missionaries, instead of looking only for points of difference, will look out more anxiously for any common ground, any spark of the true light that may still be revived, any altar that may be dedicated afresh to the true God.

~ Max Müller ~

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December 7

To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

~ Willa Cather ~

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December 8

When I look at a body I know it gives me choices of what to put in a painting; what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.

~ Lucian Freud ~

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December 9

While science and technology play critical roles in sustaining modern civilization, they are not part of our culture in the sense that they are not commonly studied or well comprehended. Neither the potential nor the limitations of science are understood so that what can be achieved and what is beyond reach are not comprehended. The line between science and magic becomes blurred so that public judgments on technical issues can be erratic or badly flawed. It frequently appears that some people will believe almost anything. Thus judgments can be manipulated or warped by unscrupulous groups. Distortions or outright falsehoods can come to be accepted as fact.

~ Henry Way Kendall ~

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December 10

Let it never be said by future generations that indifference, cynicism or selfishness made us fail to live up to the ideals of humanism which the Nobel Peace Prize encapsulates.
Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war.
Let the efforts of us all, prove that he was not a mere dreamer when he spoke of the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace being more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.
Let a new age dawn!

~ Nelson Mandela ~

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December 11

Practised in acts of despotism and cruelty, we become callous to the dictates of humanity and all the finer feelings of the soul. Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes.

~ George Mason ~

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December 12

An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.

~ Avicenna ~

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December 13

The Muslim world, with its history and cultures, and indeed its different interpretations of Islam, is still little known in the West… The two worlds, Muslim and non-Muslim, Eastern and Western, must, as a matter of urgency, make a real effort to get to know one another, for I fear that what we have is not a clash of civilisations, but a clash of ignorance on both sides.

~ Aga Khan IV ~

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December 14

A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, Brother Michael liked to say. A bad man survives but loses his soul.

~ John le Carré ~

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December 15

Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

~ Muriel Rukeyser ~

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December 16

Do not merely practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; it deserves that, for only art and science can exalt man to divinity.

~ Ludwig van Beethoven ~

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December 17

The Son of God became incarnate to infuse into the human soul the feeling of brotherhood. All are brothers and all children of God. Abba, as he called the Father. I will show you the way, he said. Follow me and you will find the Father and you will all be his children and he will take delight in you. Agape, the love of each one of us for the other, from the closest to the furthest, is in fact the only way that Jesus has given us to find the way of salvation and of the Beatitudes.

~ Pope Francis ~

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December 18

Was I stupid to love you?
Was I reckless to help?
Was it obvious to everybody else
That I'd fallen for a lie?
You were never on my side.

Fool me once, fool me twice
Are you death or paradise?
Now you'll never see me cry
There's just no time to die.

~ Billie Eilish ~

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December 19

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

~ Charles Dickens ~
in
~ A Christmas Carol ~

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December 20

If I am right in saying that thought is the ultimate origin or source, it follows that if we don't do anything about thought, we won't get anywhere. We may momentarily relieve the population problem, the ecological problem, and so on, but they will come back in another way.

~ David Bohm ~

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December 21

The tide has turned!
The light will come again!
In a new dawn, in a new day,
The sun is rising!
Io! Evohe! Blessed Be!

~ Starhawk ~

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December 22

As concentration and depersonalization increase in the dominant society, as the concentration of capital increases with the takeover of ever larger businesses by conglomerates and international corporations, as more and more local initiative is abandoned to the rule of the central State, and as computerization and automation narrow the role of human initiative in both labor and administration, life becomes ever more unreal, aimless, and empty of meaning for all but a tiny elite who still cling to the illusion they possess initiative. Action and reaction — thesis and antithesis — this state of affairs produces its opposite. All over the world we are witnessing an instinctive revolt against dehumanization.

~ Kenneth Rexroth ~

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December 23

When you're talking about cybersecurity, you're talking about being able to protect your points. It's not directed against a country, but to secure your points of access or specific end points or network access. It's not as though you're arming yourself against a specific threat — you're simply undertaking all aspects of protection.

~ Wesley Clark ~

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December 24

What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.

~ Matthew Arnold ~

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December 25

The advent of every baby completely upsets his little world, both physically and spiritually. And it is not one of the smallest values of the fact that the Saviour of the world came into it as a baby, that it reminds men that every baby is born a savior, to some extent, from selfishness and greed and sin in the little circle which his advent blesses.

~ Halford E. Luccock ~

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December 26

Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.

~ Henry Miller ~

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December 27

Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.

~ Charles Darwin ~

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December 28

Attention, please note! Attention, please note! The expansion committee announces that after the hundred and eightieth all twittering is to be treated as a sign of hopelessness!

~ Alasdair Gray ~
in
~ Lanark: A Life in Four Books ~

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December 29

The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the world.

~ William Ewart Gladstone ~

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December 30

Ye know who use the Crystal Ball
⁠(To peer by stealth on Doom),
⁠The Shade that, shaping first of all,
⁠⁠Prepares an empty room.
⁠⁠⁠Then doth It pass
⁠⁠⁠Like breath from glass,
⁠But, on the extorted vision bowed intent,
⁠No man considers why It came or went.

~ Rudyard Kipling ~

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December 31

I believe our students must first seek to understand the conditions, as far as possible without national prejudices, which have led to past tragedies and should strive to determine the great fundamentals which must govern a peaceful progression toward a constantly higher level of civilization. There are innumerable instructive lessons out of the past, but all too frequently their presentation is highly colored or distorted in the effort to present a favorable national point of view. In our school histories at home, certainly in years past, those written in the North present a strikingly different picture of our Civil War from those written in the South. In some portions it is hard to realize they are dealing with the same war. Such reactions are all too common in matters of peace and security. But we are told that we live in a highly scientific age. Now the progress of science depends on facts and not fancies or prejudice. Maybe in this age we can find a way of facing the facts and discounting the distorted records of the past.

~ George Marshall ~

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Today is Tuesday, December 3, 2024; it is now 17:40 (UTC)