Wikiquote:Quote of the day/December 2023

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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 13:14 (UTC)

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December 1

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

~ Henry Kissinger ~

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December 2

It is the individual who can and does make a difference even in this increasingly populous, complex world of ours. The individual can make things happen. It is the individual who can bring a tear to my eye and then cause me to take pen in hand. It is the individual who has acted or tried to act who will not only force a decision but also have a hand in shaping it. Whether acting in the legal, governmental, or private realm, one concerned and dedicated person can meaningfully affect what some consider an uncaring world. So give freely of yourself always to your family, your friends, your community, and your country. The world will pay you back many times over.

~ Sandra Day O'Connor ~

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December 3

It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much — everything — in a flash — before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence.

~ Joseph Conrad ~
in
~ Lord Jim ~

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December 4

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

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December 5

I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty. Call the child "innocence". The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be. In my work I try to reach and speak to that innocence, showing it the fun and joy of living; showing it that laughter is healthy; showing it that the human species, although happily ridiculous at times, is still reaching for the stars.

~ Walt Disney ~

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December 6

Matter is the creation of the mind, not the reverse. Our entire world is thought, not wood and stone. We learn to think or reflect upon the thoughts, which the Thinker of the world, invisible, yet everywhere visible, has first thought. What we see, hear, taste, and feel, is all within us, not without. Sugar is not sweet, we are sweet. The sky is not painted blue, we are blue. Nothing is large or small, heavy or light, except as to ourselves. Man is the measure of all things, as an ancient Greek philosopher asserted; and man has inferred, discovered, and named matter.

~ Max Müller ~

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December 7

Every person who is seeing me now — some are seeing me within months of my saying this, some are likely to see this years after I have said this, but whenever all of you are seeing it — that will be the moment you’re seeing it — as this is the moment I’m saying it. And what that means to me is: living in the moment. The moment between past and present, or present and past. The moment between after and next, the hammock in the middle of after and next. The moment. Treasure it. Use it with love.

~ Norman Lear ~

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December 8

Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.

Then, as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.

~ Gautama Buddha ~

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December 9

With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons, and their change; all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glist'ring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful ev'ning mild; then silent night
With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train.

~ John Milton ~
in
~ Paradise Lost ~

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December 10

It's such a little thing to weep —
So short a thing to sigh —
And yet — by Trades — the size of these
We men and women die!

~ Emily Dickinson ~

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December 11

I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances — from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer’s pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ~

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December 12

This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin. The district court rejected respondent's claims, correctly recognizing that former Presidents are not above the law and are accountable for their violations of federal criminal law while in office. … It is of imperative public importance that respondent's claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent's trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected. Respondent's claims are profoundly mistaken, as the district court held. But only this Court can definitively resolve them.

~ Jack Smith ~

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December 13

If our animosities are born out of fear, then confident generosity is born out of hope. One of the central lessons I have learned after a half century of working in the developing world is that the replacement of fear by hope is probably the single most powerful trampoline of progress.

~ Aga Khan IV ~

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December 14

I was grounded
While you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truth
You cut through lies
I saw the lone empty valley
You saw Brigadoon
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon.

~ Mike Scott ~

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December 15

We are against war and the sources of war. We are for poetry and the sources of poetry.
They are everyday, these sources, as the sources of peace are everyday, infinite and commonplace as a look, as each new sun.

~ Muriel Rukeyser ~

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December 16

Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost … perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that precious little fragment as well.

~ Philip K. Dick ~

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December 17

Do you know how many children have died in Gaza in this last war? More than 3,000. It is incredible, but it is the reality … And in Ukraine there are more than 500, and in Yemen, in years of war, thousands … Their memory leads us to be ourselves lights for the world, to touch the hearts of many people, especially those who can stop the whirlwind of violence.

~ Pope Francis ~

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December 18

I don't know how to feel
But I wanna try
I don't know how to feel
But someday I might
Someday I might

Think I forgot how to be happy
Something I'm not, but something I can be
Something I wait for
Something I'm made for.

~ Billie Eilish ~

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December 19

Show me a country where the bombs had to fall
Show me the ruins of buildings so tall
And I'll show you a young land
With many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I.

~ Phil Ochs ~

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December 20

The way a question is asked limits and disposes the ways in which any answer to it — right or wrong — may be given.

~ Susanne Langer ~

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December 21

President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three; because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.
We do not reach these conclusions lightly. We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.

~ Supreme Court of Colorado ~

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December 22

Each solstice shows us that we can choose. We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the Universe that we cannot refuse. But we can choose what we will contribute to Life when each arrives.

~ Gary Zukav ~

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December 23

Sanaka and the others were my sons through my mental powers and were born before you. Without any desires, they travel through the sky and go to all the worlds and the residents there. They once went to Vaikuntha, where the illustrious one with the unblemished atman resides. All the worlds revere Vaikuntha. All the people who reside in Vaikuntha have a form like Vaikuntha. They are not driven by any material aspirations, but worship Hari because of dharma. The original and illustrious Purusha is there and he can be approached through the use of words. He accepts the pure form of sattva and the foremost confers happiness on us, his devotees.

~ Bhagavata Purana ~

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December 24

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us, to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.

~ Matthew Arnold ~

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December 25

Lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

~ Gospel of Luke ~

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December 26

One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.

~ Henry Miller ~

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December 27

I don't say "Ho-ho-ho", but I do say "Oh-oh-oh" when I look out of the window, where I can see a night, then the evening, and then the night again.
The 20 days of my transportation were pretty exhausting, but I'm still in a good mood, as befits a Santa Claus. … I was transported with such precaution and on such a strange route … I didn't expect anyone to find me here before mid-January. That's why I was very surprised when the cell door was opened yesterday with the words: "A lawyer is here to see you". He told me that you had lost me, and some of you were even worried. Thanks very much for your support!

~ Alexei Navalny ~

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December 28

The emperor needs all the headmasters he can get. If a quarter of his people were headmasters he would be perfectly happy. But more than two poets would tear his kingdom apart.

~ Alasdair Gray ~

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December 29

It is out of time that my decision is taken
If you call that decision
To which my whole being gives entire consent.
I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.

~ T. S. Eliot ~
in
~ Murder in the Cathedral ~

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December 30

I conclude… that the record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power. I likewise conclude that Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it. … I do not reach this conclusion lightly. … I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.

~ Shenna Bellows ~

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December 31

No longer can we compound attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to these assaults.

~ Jeff Flake ~

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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 13:14 (UTC)