Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January

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This page lists quote of the day proposals specifically for dates in the month of January, and quotes proposed should ideally have some relation to the day, or persons born on it, though sometimes exceptions can be made, usually for notable quotes that relate to recent events, such as the death of prominent individuals. Developing ideas of people or works to quote on specific days can be explored through the Wikipedia page: List of historical anniversaries. The numeric section heading of each date is also a direct link to the Wikipedia list of births, deaths, and other events which occured on that date.

See also: January 2008 · 2009 · 2010 · 2011 · 2012 · 2013 · 2014 · 2015 · 2016 · 2017 · 2018 · 2019

The Quote of the Day (QOTD) is a prominent feature of the Wikiquote Main Page. Thank you for submitting, reviewing, and ranking suggestions!

Ranking system
4 : Excellent – should definitely be used. (This is the utmost ranking and should be used by any editor for only one quote at a time for each date.)
3 : Very Good – strong desire to see it used.
2 : Good – some desire to see it used.
1 : Acceptable – but with no particular desire to see it used.
0 : Not acceptable – not appropriate for use as a quote of the day.
An averaging of the rankings provided to each suggestion produces it’s general ranking in considerations for selection of Quote of the Day. The selections made are usually chosen from the top ranked options existing on the page, but the provision of highly ranked late additions, especially in regard to special events (most commonly in regard to the deaths of famous people, or other major social or physical occurrences), always remain an option for final selections.
Thank you for participating!
2004
Jackie Biskupski is running for a seat in the Utah Legislature, and she's attracting a lot of attention because she's a lesbian. Her Republican opponent, Dan Alderson, is a staunch Mormon, and is running a negative ad campaign calling her lifestyle abnormal and deviant. His six wives agree. ~ Rick Mercer, on This Hour Has 22 Minutes (12 October 1998)
2005
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~
2006
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. ~ E. M. Forster (date of birth)
2007
I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith, and there are so many militant creeds that, in self defence, one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world where ignorance rules, and Science, which ought to have ruled, plays the pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy — they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long. ~ E. M. Forster
2008
What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse. ~ E. M. Forster
  • proposed by Fys
2009
The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. ~ E. M. Forster
2010
The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it. ~ J. D. Salinger
2011
All we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next. ~ J. D. Salinger
2012
Life is a gift horse in my opinion. ~ J. D. Salinger
2013
You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know from experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
~ E. M. Forster‎‎ ~
2014
A legend is sung of when England was young,
And Knights were brave and bold.
The good King had died, and no one could decide
Who was rightful heir to the Throne.
It seemed that the land would be torn by war,
Or saved by a miracle alone —
And that miracle appeared in London town:
The Sword in the Stone.
~ The Sword in the Stone ~
2015
I can't see why anybody — unless he was a child, or an angel, or a lucky simpleton like the pilgrim — would even want to say a prayer to a Jesus who was the least bit different from the way he looks and sounds in the New Testament. My God! He's only the most intelligent man in the Bible, that's all! Who isn't he head and shoulders over? Who? Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls — but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody. Not Moses. Don't tell me Moses. He was a nice man, and he kept in beautiful touch with his God, and all that — but that's exactly the point. He had to keep in touch. Jesus realized there is no separation from God.
~ J. D. Salinger ~
2016
I believe in aristocracy … — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.
~ E. M. Forster‎‎ ~
2017
My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century ... To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.
~ Barry Goldwater ~
2018
Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.
~ Barry Goldwater ~
2019
A humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
~ E. M. Forster‎‎ ~
2020
Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. … Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
~ Barry Goldwater ~
2021
I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
in
~ Four Quartets, "Little Gidding" ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. ~ Albert Einstein
2005
We are all in this together. ~ English proverb
2006
How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection...That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers. ~ Isaac Asimov (born c. 2 January 1920)
2007
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. ~ Isaac Asimov
2008
When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field. ~ Isaac Asimov
2009
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be … ~ Isaac Asimov
2010
I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. ~ Isaac Asimov
2011
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not. ~ Isaac Asimov
2012
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety. ~ Isaac Asimov
2013
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
~ Isaac Asimov ~
2014
There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.
~ Isaac Asimov ~
2015
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
~ Isaac Asimov ~
2016
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
~ Isaac Asimov ~
2017
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
~ Isaac Asimov ~
2018
To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.
~ Isaac Asimov ~
2019
It is better to go to defeat with free will than to live in a meaningless security as a cog in a machine.
~ Isaac Asimov ~
2020
All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else. We’re in no way different ourselves … You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.
~ Isaac Asimov ~
2021
In memory yet green, in joy still felt,
The scenes of life rise sharply into view.
We triumph; Life’s disasters are undealt,
And while all else is old, the world is new.
~ Isaac Asimov ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~
2005
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee… ~ John Donne
2006
Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age? ~ Cicero (born 3 January 106 BC)
2007
Each comprehended only that part of the mind of Ilúvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion (Tolkien born 3 January 1892)
2008
The rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. ~ "Gandalf" in The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien
2009
This is an ancient hallow, and ere the kings failed or the Tree withered in the court, a fruit must have been set here. For it is said that, though the fruit of the Tree comes seldom to ripeness, yet the life within may then lie sleeping through many long years, and none can foretell the time in which it will awake. ~ Gandalf in The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien
2010
Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion
2011
He who looks on a true friend looks, as it were, upon a kind of image of himself: wherefore friends, though absent, are still present; though in poverty, they are rich; though weak, yet in the enjoyment of health; and, what is still more difficult to assert, though dead, they are alive. ~ Cicero
2012
The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien in The Return of the King
2013
We must not say every mistake is a foolish one.
~ Cicero ~
2014
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~
in
~ The Return of the King ~
2015
My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … The most improper job of any man … is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~
2016
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~
in
~ The Fellowship of the Ring ~
2017
True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.
~ Cicero ~
2018
The news today about "Atomic bombs" is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope "this will ensure peace". ... Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~
2019
Appetitus rationi pareat.
Let your desires be ruled by reason.
~ Cicero ~
2020
How long will men dare to call anything expedient that is not right? Can odium and infamy be of service to any empire, which ought to be supported by glory and by the good-will of its allies?
~ Cicero ~
2021
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they no more look awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~
Rank or add further suggestions…
2005
I know this in no way alleviates the enormous amounts of pain and loss experienced by those who have suffered from the tsunami, but I hope it can make a difference. ~ Sandra Bullock on her large donation to tsunami relief efforts of the American Red Cross
2006
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. ~ Isaac Newton (born 4 January 1643)
2007
Men learn little from others' experience. But in the life of one man, never the same time returns. ~ T. S. Eliot, in Murder in the Cathedral (died 4 January 1965)
2008
The main Business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical. ~ Isaac Newton (born 4 January 1643)
2009
It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine).
~ R.E.M. ~ (birthday of Michael Stipe, lead singer and major song writer in the band — which divides the credit on all its songs equally)
2010
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough.
~ R.E.M. ~
2011
The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretell times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt.
The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify mens curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world. For the event of things predicted many ages before will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by Providence. ~ Isaac Newton
2012
When your day is long
and the night,
the night is yours alone,
when you're sure you've had enough
of this life, well hang on.
Don't let yourself go,
'cause everybody cries
and everybody hurts
sometimes.
~ R.E.M. ~
2013
Godliness consists in the knowledge love & worship of God, Humanity in love, righteousness & good offices towards man.
~ Isaac Newton ~
2014
Christ is called the righteous & by his righteousness we are saved & except our righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees we shall not enter into the kingdome of heaven. Righteousness is the religion of the kingdom of heaven & even the property of God himself towards man. Righteousness & Love are inseparable for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
~ Isaac Newton ~
2015
Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
~ Isaac Newton ~
2016
If your language lacks poetry and paradox, it’s unequal to the task of accounting for actuality. Otherwise anything radically new is literally unspeakable.
~ Bob Black ~
2017
Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.
You may be wondering if I'm joking or serious. I'm joking and serious.
~ Bob Black ~
2018
I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people.
~ Isaac Newton ~
2019
You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education. People who are regimented all their lives, handed off to work from school and bracketed by the family in the beginning and the nursing home at the end, are habituated to hierarchy and psychologically enslaved. Their aptitude for autonomy is so atrophied that their fear of freedom is among their few rationally grounded phobias.
~ Bob Black ~
2020
To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.
~ Isaac Newton ~
2021
All you hear is time stand still in travel
And feel such peace and absolute
The stillness still that doesn't end
But slowly drifts into sleep
The stars are the greatest thing you've ever seen
And they're there for you
For you alone you are the everything.
~ R.E.M. ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. ~ Carl Sagan
2005
I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do. ~ Helen Keller
2006
Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of speading even against it. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda (born 5 January 1893)
2007
All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. ~ Principia Discordia
  • proposed by Kalki (for the anniversary of discovery of the "dwarf planet" Eris, named after the patron goddess of the Discordians)
2008
A dreaded society is not a civilized society. The most progressive and powerful society in the civilized sense, is a society which has recognized its ethos, and come to terms with the past and the present, with religion and science, with modernism and mysticism, with materialism and spirituality; a society free of tension, a society rich in culture. Such a society cannot come with hocus-pocus formulas and with fraud. It has to flow from the depth of a divine search. ~ Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (born 5 January 1928)
2009
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon. In an instant age, perhaps we must relearn the ancient truth that patience, too, has its victories. ~ Konrad Adenauer (born 5 January 1876)
2010
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis. ~ Umberto Eco
2011
In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that he did not also limit his stupidity. ~ Konrad Adenauer
2012
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all. ~ Umberto Eco
2013
Learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.
~ Umberto Eco ~
2014
The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.
~ Umberto Eco ~
2015
I am guiding you to seek truth from the facts of the historical conditions of our society and to identify the problems. The correct solutions will come with the correct identification of the problems.
~ Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ~
2016
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. If it had been possible he would have settled the matter otherwise, and without bloodshed. He doesn't boast of his own death or of others'. But he does not repent. He suffers and keeps his mouth shut; if anything, others then exploit him, making him a myth, while he, the man worthy of esteem, was only a poor creature who reacted with dignity and courage in an event bigger than he was.
~ Umberto Eco ~
2017
Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d'état, still use tanks. If a country has reached a high degree of industrialization the whole scene changes. The day after the fall of Khrushchev, the editors of Pravda, Izvestiia, the heads of the radio and television were replaced; the army wasn't called out. Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications.
~ Umberto Eco ~
2018
How should we deal with intrusions of fiction into life, now that we have seen the historical impact that this phenomenon can have? … Reflecting on these complex relationships between reader and story, fiction and life, can constitute a form of therapy against the sleep of reason, which generates monsters.
~ Umberto Eco ~
2019
Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world.
~ Hayao Miyazaki ~
2020
Incredulity doesn't kill curiosity; it encourages it. Though distrustful of logical chains of ideas, I loved the polyphony of ideas. As long as you don't believe in them, the collision of two ideas — both false — can create a pleasing interval, a kind of diabolus in musica. I had no respect for some ideas people were willing to stake their lives on, but two or three ideas that I did not respect might still make a nice melody. Or have a good beat, and if it was jazz, all the better.
~ Umberto Eco ~
in
~ Foucault's Pendulum ~
2021
Philosophies can be judged, at most, on the grounds of the perspicacity with which they decide that something is worthy of becoming the starting point for a global explanatory hypothesis. Thus I do not think that the sign (or any other suitable object for a general semiotics) is a mere figment.
~ Umberto Eco ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly — right now. ~ Buckminster Fuller
2005
I know the biggest crime is just to throw up your hands and say "This has nothing to do with me, I just want to live as comfortably as I can." ~ Ani DiFranco
2006
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want... everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear... anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt
2007
History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth. ~ E.L. Doctorow (born 6 January 1931)
2008
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. ~ Khalil Gibran (born 6 January 1883)
2009
Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be. ~ Khalil Gibran
2010
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to. ~ Khalil Gibran
2011
Your thought advocates fame and show. Mine counsels me and implores me to cast aside notoriety and treat it like a grain of sand cast upon the shore of eternity. Your thought instills in your heart arrogance and superiority. Mine plants within me love for peace and the desire for independence. Your thought begets dreams of palaces with furniture of sandalwood studded with jewels, and beds made of twisted silk threads. My thought speaks softly in my ears, "Be clean in body and spirit even if you have nowhere to lay your head." Your thought makes you aspire to titles and offices. Mine exhorts me to humble service. ~ Khalil Gibran
2012
Faith lived in the incognito is one which is located outside the criticism coming from society, from politics, from history, for the very reason that it has itself the vocation to be a source of criticism. It is faith (lived in the incognito) which triggers the issues for the others, which causes everything seemingly established to be placed in doubt, which drives a wedge into the world of false assurances. ~ Jacques Ellul
2013
When no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.
~ Alan Watts ~
2014
There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.
~ Alan Watts ~
2015
Your thought sees power in armies, cannons, battleships, submarines, aeroplanes, and poison gas. But mine asserts that power lies in reason, resolution, and truth. No matter how long the tyrant endures, he will be the loser at the end. Your thought differentiates between pragmatist and idealist, between the part and the whole, between the mystic and materialist. Mine realizes that life is one and its weights, measures and tables do not coincide with your weights, measures and tables. He whom you suppose an idealist may be a practical man.
~ Khalil Gibran ~
2016
It must be obvious... that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.
~ Alan Watts ~
2017
My aim is not the establishment of an anarchist society or the total destruction of the state. Here I differ from anarchists. I do not believe that it is possible to destroy the modern state. It is pure imagination to think that some day this power will be overthrown. From a pragmatic standpoint there is no chance of success. Furthermore, I do not believe that anarchist doctrine is the solution to the problem of organization in society and government. I do not think that if anarchism were to succeed we should have a better or more livable society. Hence I am not fighting for the triumph of this doctrine.
On the other hand, it seems to me that an anarchist attitude is the only one that is sufficiently radical in the face of a general statist system.
~ Jacques Ellul ~
2018
There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence. Hence I cannot accept either nihilists or anar­chists who choose violence as a means of action.
~ Jacques Ellul ~
2019
Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.
~ Jacques Ellul ~
2020
Anarchism can teach Christian thinkers to see the realities of our societies from a different standpoint than the dominant one of the state. What seems to be one of the disasters of our time is that we all appear to agree that the nation-state is the norm.
~ Jacques Ellul ~
2021
I believe that life has meaning. We are not on earth by chance; we do not come from nowhere to go to nowhere. This is a statement; it cannot be proved. Meaning implies both orientation and significance. Not every event or act or word has meaning, but everything is set in that orientation and signification.
~ Jacques Ellul ~
2022
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2004
Truth alone will endure; all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. ~ Mohandas Gandhi
2005
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. ~ Abraham Lincoln
2006
There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in. ~ Gerald Durrell (born 7 January 1925)
2007
It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? ~ Richard Feynman (speaking of art, reality, and Jupiter, which Galileo Galilei discovered to have moons on this day in 1610)
2008
You cannot begin to preserve any species of animal unless you preserve the habitat in which it dwells. Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that you have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself. This is not only vital for the preservation of animal life generally, but for the future existence of man himself — a point that seems to escape many people. ~ Gerald Durrell (born 7 January 1925)
2009
There are years that ask questions and years that answer. ~ Zora Neale Hurston
2010
When I take people round to see my animals, one of the first questions they ask (unless the animal is cute and appealing) is, "what use is it?" by which they mean, "what use is it to them?" To this one can reply "What use is the Acropolis?" Does a creature have to be of direct material use to mankind in order to exist? By and large, by asking the question "what use is it?" you are asking the animal to justify its existence without having justified your own. ~ Gerald Durrell
2011
We have inherited an incredibly beautiful and complex garden, but the trouble is that we have been appallingly bad gardeners. We have not bothered to acquaint ourselves with the simplest principles of gardening. By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors. ~ Gerald Durrell
2012
Love, I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much. ~ Zora Neale Hurston
2013
The whole country is full of enterprise. Our common schools are diffusing intelligence among the people and our industry is fast accumulating the comforts and luxuries of life. … It is not strange, however much it may be regretted, that such an exuberance of enterprise should cause some individuals to mistake change for progress and the invasion of the rights of others for national prowess and glory.
~ Millard Fillmore ~
2014
Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.
~ Gerald Durrell ~
2015
Anyone who has got any pleasure at all from living should try to put something back. … I'm glad to be giving something back because I've been so extraordinarily lucky and had such great pleasure from it.
~ Gerald Durrell ~
2016
We now stand so aloof from nature that we think we are God. This has always been a dangerous supposition.
~ Gerald Durrell ~
2017
May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not.
~ Millard Fillmore ~
2018
Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free institutions were not the offspring of our Revolution. They existed before.
~ Millard Fillmore ~
2019
Many people think that conservation is just about saving fluffy animals – what they don’t realise is that we’re trying to prevent the human race from committing suicide … We have declared war on the biological world, the world that supports us … At the moment the human race is in the position of a man sawing off the tree branch he is sitting on.
~ Gerald Durrell ~
2020
I accept this idea of democracy. I am all for trying it out. It must be a good thing if everybody praises it like that. If our government has been willing to go to war and sacrifice billions of dollars and millions of men for the idea I think that I ought to give the thing a trial.
The only thing that keeps me from pitching head long into this thing is the presence of numerous Jim Crow laws on the statute books of the nation. I am crazy about the idea of Democracy. I want to see how it feels.
~ Zora Neale Hurston ~
2021
We're debating a step that has never been taken in American history. Whether Congress should overrule the voters and overturn a Presidential election. … President Trump claims the election was stolen. The assertions range from specific local allegations to Constitutional arguments to sweeping conspiracy theories. I supported the President's right to use the legal system, dozens of lawsuits received hearings in courtrooms all across our country, but over and over, the courts rejected these claims, including all-star judges whom the President himself has nominated. … The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. They've all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever. … If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. Self-government, my colleagues, requires a shared commitment to the truth and a shared respect for the ground rules of our system. We cannot keep drifting apart into two separate tribes with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share. Congress will either override the voters, overrule them, the voters, the states, and the courts for the first time ever, or honor the people's decision. I will not pretend such a vote would be a harmless protest gesture while relying on others to do the right thing. I will vote to respect the people’s decision and defend our system of government as we know it.
~ Mitch McConnell ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to historical issues and events which have occurred on this date.
2022
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2004
True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
2005
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity. ~ George Bernard Shaw
2006
For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk. ~ Stephen Hawking (born 8 January 1942)
2007
Some marry the first information they receive, and turn what comes later into their concubine. Since deceit is always first to arrive, there is no room left for truth. ~ Baltasar Gracián (born 8 January 1601)
2008
If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend. ~ Baltasar Gracián
2009
I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief. ~ Gerry Spence
2010
My intent is to tell the truth as I know it, realizing that what is true for me may be blasphemy for others. ~ Gerry Spence
2011
Some would be sages if they did not believe they were so already. ~ Baltasar Gracián
2012
The people of a nation are enslaved when, together, they are helpless to institute effective change, when the people serve the government more than the government serves them. ~ Gerry Spence
2013
There is a certain indolence in us, a wish not to be disturbed, which tempts us to think that when things are quiet, all is well. Subconsciously, we tend to give the preference to "social peace," though it be only apparent, because our lives and possessions seem then secure. Actually, human beings acquiesce too easily in evil conditions; they rebel far too little and too seldom. There is nothing noble about acquiescence in a cramped life or mere submission to superior force.
~ A. J. Muste ~
2014
We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.
Disarmament cannot be achieved nor can the problem of war be resolved without being accompanied by profound changes in the economic order and the structure of society.
~ A. J. Muste ~
2015
The psychological basis for the use of nonviolent methods is the simple rule that like produces like, kindness provokes kindness, as surely as injustice produces resentment and evil. It is sometimes forgotten by those whose pacifism is a spurious, namby-pamby thing that if one Biblical statement of this rule is "Do good to them that hate you" (an exhortation presumably intended for the capitalist as well as for the laborer), another statement of the same rule is, "They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind." You get from the universe what you give, with interest!
~ A. J. Muste ~
2016
Virtue alone is for real; all else is sham. Talent and greatness depend on virtue, not on fortune. Only virtue is sufficient unto herself. She makes us love the living and remember the dead.
~ Baltasar Gracián ~
2017
Teach the child to respect that which is not respectable and you teach the child the first requirement of slavery: submission to unjust authority.
~ Gerry Spence ~
2018
To bargain freedom for security is the devil's bargain. Having made the bargain, one enjoys neither freedom nor security.
~ Gerry Spence ~
2019
An ancient Chinese curse runs, "May you live in interesting times." Since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has rarely been more interesting times than these. Whenever history becomes unstable and destinies hang in the balance, then magicians and messiahs appear everywhere. Our own civilization has moved into an epoch of permanent crisis and upheaval, and we are beset with a plague of wizards. They serve an historic purpose, for whenever a society undergoes radical change, alternative spiritualities proliferate, and from among these a culture will select a new world view.
~ Peter J. Carroll ~
2020
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2004
Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased — thus do we refute entropy. ~ Spider Robinson
2005
Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. ~ Robert F. Kennedy
2006
Life will not perish! It will begin anew with love; it will start out naked and tiny; it will take root in the wilderness, and to it all that we did and built will mean nothing — our towns and factories, our art, our ideas will all mean nothing, and yet life will not perish! Only we have perished. Our houses and machines will be in ruins, our systems will collapse, and the names of our great will fall away like dry leaves. Only you, love, will blossom on this rubbish heap and commit the seed of life to the winds. ~ Karel Čapek (born 9 January 1890)
2007
I think it is possible, and that is the most dramatic element in modern civilization, that a human truth is opposed to another human truth no less human, ideal against ideal, positive worth against worth no less positive, instead of the struggle being as we are so often told, one between noble truth and vile selfish error. ~ Karel Čapek (date of birth)
2008
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion. ~ Simone de Beauvoir
2009
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me. ~ Simone de Beauvoir
2010
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end. ~ Simone de Beauvoir
2011
The individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others. ~ Simone de Beauvoir
2012
It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood. ~ Simone de Beauvoir
2013
Science condemns itself to failure when, yielding to the infatuation of the serious, it aspires to attain being, to contain it, and to possess it; but it finds its truth if it considers itself as a free engagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusion with the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries; what the mind then projects is the concrete accomplishment of its freedom.
~ Simone de Beauvoir ~
2014
Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.
~ Simone de Beauvoir ~
2015
That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.
~ Simone de Beauvoir ~
2016
You can't decide how you're going to die. Or when. What you can decide is how you're going to live now.
~ Joan Baez ~
2017
Relativism is not indifference; on the contrary, passionate indifference is necessary in order for you not to hear the voices that oppose your absolute decrees. … Relativism is neither a method of fighting, nor a method of creating, for both of these are uncompromising and at times even ruthless; rather, it is a method of cognition. If one must fight or create, it is necessary that this be preceded by the broadest possible knowledge ... One of the worst muddles of this age is its confusing of the ideas behind combative and cognitive activity. Cognition is not fighting, but once someone knows a lot, he will have much to fight for, so much that he will be called a relativist because of it.
~ Karel Čapek ~
2018
I know that it can be very easy, under the intensive pressures of a campaign, for even well-intentioned people to fall into shady tactics — to rationalize this on the grounds that what is at stake is of such importance to the Nation that the end justifies the means. And both of our great parties have been guilty of such tactics in the past.
In recent years, however, the campaign excesses that have occurred on all sides have provided a sobering demonstration of how far this false doctrine can take us. The lesson is clear: America, in its political campaigns, must not again fall into the trap of letting the end, however great that end is, justify the means.
I urge the leaders of both political parties, I urge citizens, all of you, everywhere, to join in working toward a new set of standards, new rules and procedures to ensure that future elections will be as nearly free of such abuses as they possibly can be made. This is my goal. I ask you to join in making it America's goal.
~ Richard Nixon ~
2019
The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another; it is never the given that confers superiorities: "virtue", as the ancients called it, is defined at the level of "that which depends on us". In both sexes is played out the same drama of the flesh and the spirit, of finitude and transcendence; both are gnawed away by time and laid in wait for by death, they have the same essential need for one another; and they can gain from their liberty the same glory. If they were to taste it, they would no longer be tempted to dispute fallacious privileges, and fraternity between them could then come into existence.
~ Simone de Beauvoir ~
2020
Together with the rest of the world, let us resolve to move forward from the beginnings we have made. Let us continue to bring down the walls of hostility which have divided the world for too long, and to build in their place bridges of understanding — so that despite profound differences between systems of government, the people of the world can be friends.
Let us build a structure of peace in the world in which the weak are as safe as the strong — in which each respects the right of the other to live by a different system — in which those who would influence others will do so by the strength of their ideas, and not by the force of their arms.
Let us accept that high responsibility not as a burden, but gladly — gladly because the chance to build such a peace is the noblest endeavor in which a nation can engage; gladly, also, because only if we act greatly in meeting our responsibilities abroad will we remain a great Nation, and only if we remain a great Nation will we act greatly in meeting our challenges at home.
~ Richard Nixon ~
2021
We gather due to a selfish man's injured pride, and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning. What happened here today was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. … For any who remain insistent on an audit in order to satisfy the many people who believe that the election was stolen, I'd offer this perspective — no Congressional audit is ever going to convince these voters, particularly when the President will continue to say that the election was stolen. The best way we could show respect for the voters who were upset is by telling them the truth.
That's the burden, that's the duty of leadership.
The truth is that President-elect Biden won the election, President Trump lost.
~ Mitt Romney ~
2022
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2005
The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
2006
Know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful...
… the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
~ Robinson Jeffers (born 10 January 1887)
2007
Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~
2008
I believe that the Universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine. ~ Robinson Jeffers
2009
Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history. ~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
2010
Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains. ~ Robinson Jeffers
2011
All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. ~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
2012
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~
2013
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist.
~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~
2014
I think, here is your emblem
To hang in the future sky;
Not the cross, not the hive,
But this; bright power, dark peace;
Fierce consciousness joined with final
Disinterestedness;
Life with calm death; the falcon’s
Realist eyes and act
Married to the massive
Mysticism of stone,
Which failure cannot cast down
Nor success make proud.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~
2015
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars,
life is your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye
that watched before there was an ocean.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~
2016
No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws.
~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~
2017
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~
2018
There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.
~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~
2019
In ancient times the State absorbed authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of personal freedom. In the Middle Ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered others to intrude. Modern States fall habitually into both excesses. The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~
2020
Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith. But it gave an immense impulse to absolutism by silencing the consciences of very religious kings, and made the good and the bad very much alike. … The way was paved for absolute monarchy to triumph over the spirit and institutions of a better age, not by isolated acts of wickedness, but by a studied philosophy of crime, and so thorough a perversion of the moral sense that the like of it had not been since the Stoics reformed the morality of paganism.
~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~
2021
Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump. His use of the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice.
Our Constitution and our Republic will overcome this stain and We the People will come together again in our never-ending effort to form a more perfect Union, while Mr. Trump will deservedly be left a man without a country.
~ Jim Mattis ~
2022
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2005
If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world. ~ Joseph Addison
2006
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. ~ Alexander Hamilton (born 11 January 1755)
2007
Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity. ~ Alexander Hamilton
2008
I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly. ~ William James (born 11 January 1842)
2009
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. ~ William James
2010
I should esteem it the extreme of imprudence to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs, and to expose the union to the jeopardy of successive experiments, in the chimerical pursuit of a perfect plan. I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom of the individuals of whom they are composed. ~ Alexander Hamilton
2011
We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
2012
When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation. ~ Alexander Hamilton
2013
We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided.
~ Alexander Hamilton ~
2014
There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, — the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.
~ William James ~
2015
There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists.
~ William James ~
2016
Men often oppose a thing, merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike. But if they have been consulted, and have happened to disapprove, opposition then becomes, in their estimation, an indispensable duty of self-love. They seem to think themselves bound in honor, and by all the motives of personal infallibility, to defeat the success of what has been resolved upon contrary to their sentiments.
~ Alexander Hamilton ~
2017
There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.
~ Abraham Joshua Heschel ~
2018
There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.
The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
~ Abraham Joshua Heschel ~
2019
Not the individual man nor a single generation by its own power can erect the bridge that leads to God. Faith is the achievement of many generations, and effort accumulated over many centuries. … There is a collective memory of God in the human spirit, and it is this memory which is the main source of our faith.
~ Abraham Joshua Heschel ~
2020
An avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the State to the acquisition of wealth. An ambitious man might make his own aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the price of his treachery to his constituents. The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue, which would make it wise in a Nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind, as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of a Magistrate created and circumstanced as would be a President of the United States.
~ Alexander Hamilton ~
2021
I am appalled by the reckless behavior of some political leaders since the election and by the lack of respect shown today for our institutions, our traditions, and our law enforcement. The violent assault on the Capitol — and disruption of a Constitutionally-mandated meeting of Congress — was undertaken by people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes.
~ George W. Bush ~
  • proposed by Kalki; significant statement of a past US President on current issues and recent major events.
2022
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2004
Dignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them. ~ Aristotle
2005
Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. ~ Horace Mann
2006
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. ~ Edmund Burke (born 12 January 1729)
2007
Society is indeed a contract... it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. ~ Edmund Burke
2008
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. ~ Edmund Burke (born 12 January 1729)
2009
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. ~ Edmund Burke
2010
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe. ~ Edmund Burke
2011
The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered. ~ Edmund Burke
2012
To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink the ocean”, says the persevering soul; “at my will mountains will crumble up”. Have that sort of energy, that sort of will; work hard, and you will reach the goal. ~ Swami Vivekananda (born 12 January 1863)
2013
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
~ Edmund Burke ~
2014
Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
~ Edmund Burke ~
2015
Give me few men and women who are pure and selfless and I shall shake the world.
~ Swami Vivekananda ~
2016

Look up here, I’m in heaven
I’ve got scars that can’t be seen
I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen
Everybody knows me now

Look up here, man, I’m in danger
I’ve got nothing left to lose
I’m so high it makes my brain whirl
Dropped my cell phone down below

Ain’t that just like me

~ David Bowie ~
2017
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
~ Edmund Burke ~
2018
All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls.
~ Swami Vivekananda ~
2019
Liberty, if I understand it at all, is a general principle, and the clear right of all the subjects within the realm, or of none. Partial freedom seems to me a most invidious mode of slavery. But, unfortunately, it is the kind of slavery the most easily admitted in times of civil discord; for parties are but too apt to forget their own future safety in their desire of sacrificing their enemies. People without much difficulty admit the entrance of that injustice of which they are not to be the immediate victims … great determined measures are not commonly so dangerous to freedom. They are marked with too strong lines to slide into use. … But the true danger is, when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.
~ Edmund Burke ~
2020
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a man means well to his country; it is not enough that in his single person he never did an evil act, but always voted according to his conscience, and even harangued against every design which he apprehended to be prejudicial to the interests of his country. This innoxious and ineffectual character, that seems formed upon a plan of apology and disculpation, falls miserably short of the mark of publick duty. That duty demands and requires, that what is right should not only be made known, but made prevalent; that what is evil should not only be detected, but defeated.
~ Edmund Burke ~
2021
We faced an unprecedented assault on our Capitol, our Constitution, and our country.
The assault was fueled by more than four years of poison politics spreading deliberate misinformation, sowing distrust in our system, and pitting Americans against one another. The match was lit by Donald Trump and his most ardent enablers, including many in Congress, to overturn the results of an election he lost.
The election was free, the count was fair, the result is final. We must complete the peaceful transfer of power our Constitution mandates.
~ Bill Clinton ~
  • proposed by Kalki; remarks of a former US President on major current issues and events.
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
There may be love without jealousy, but there is none without fear. ~ Miguel de Cervantes
2005
Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance. ~ Anthony de Mello
2006
I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. ~ Émile Zola (J'accuse published 13 January 1898)
2007
I still feel that sincerity and realism are avant-garde, or can be, just as I did when I started out. ~ Edmund White (born January 13, 1940)
2008
The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find. ~ Sir Edmund Hillary
  • proposed by Kalki (recent death)
2009
All religions speak about death during this life on earth. Death must come before rebirth. But what must die? False confidence in one’s own knowledge, self-love and egoism. Our egoism must be broken. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff
2010
Conscious faith is freedom.
Emotional faith is slavery.
Mechanical faith is foolishness.
~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~
2011
Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small. ~ Edmund Spenser
2012
LIBERATION LEADS TO LIBERATION.
These are the first words of truth — not truth in quotation marks but truth in the real meaning of the word; truth which is not merely theoretical, not simply a word, but truth that can be realized in practice. The meaning behind these words may be explained as follows:
By liberation is meant the liberation which is the aim of all schools, all religions, at all times.
This liberation can indeed be very great. All men desire it and strive after it. But it cannot be attained without the first liberation, a lesser liberation. The great liberation is liberation from influences outside us. The lesser liberation is liberation from influences within us. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff
2013
Knowledge can be acquired by a suitable and complete study, no matter what the starting point is. Only one must know how to "learn." What is nearest to us is man; and you are the nearest of all men to yourself. Begin with the study of yourself; remember the saying "Know thyself." ~ G. I. Gurdjieff
~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~
2014
Faith can not be given to man. Faith arises in a man and increases in its action in him not as the result of automatic learning, that is, not from any automatic ascertainment of height, breadth, thickness, form and weight, or from the perception of anything by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste, but from understanding.
~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~
2015
Knowledge and understanding are quite different. Only understanding can lead to being, whereas knowledge is but a passing presence in it.
~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~
2016
It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.
~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~
2017
RELIGION IS DOING; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he lives his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy. Whether he likes it or not he shows his attitude towards religion by his actions and he can show his attitude only by his actions.
~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~
2018
The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne.
For a man by nothing is so well bewrayd,
As by his manners.
~ Edmund Spenser ~


2019
Objective knowledge, the idea of unity included, belongs to objective consciousness. The forms which express this knowledge when perceived by subjective consciousness are inevitably distorted and, instead of truth, they create more and more delusions. With objective consciousness it is possible to see and feel the unity of everything. But for subjective consciousness the world is split up into millions of separate and unconnected phenomena. Attempts to connect these phenomena into some sort of system in a scientific or philosophical way lead to nothing because man cannot reconstruct the idea of the whole starting from separate facts and they cannot divine the principles of the division of the whole without knowing the laws upon which this division is based.
~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~


2020
In right knowledge the study of man must proceed on parallel lines with the study of the world, and the study of the world must run parallel with the study of man.
~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~
2021
Rosalynn and I are troubled by the violence at the U.S. Capitol today. This is a national tragedy and is not who we are as a nation. Having observed elections in troubled democracies worldwide, I know that we the people can unite to walk back from this precipice to peacefully uphold the laws of our nation, and we must. We join our fellow citizens in praying for a peaceful resolution so our nation can heal and complete the transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries.
~ Jimmy Carter ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. ~ Robert Heinlein in Stranger In A Strange Land
2005
Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen. ~ Æschylus
2006
Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage. ~ Albert Schweitzer (born 14 January 1875)
2007
Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd. ~ Robert Anton Wilson (recent death)
2008
At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it. ~ Yukio Mishima (born 14 January 1925)
2009
In my great tiredness and discouragement, the phrase, Reverence for Life, struck me like a flash. As far as I knew, it was a phrase I had never heard nor ever read. I realized at once that it carried within itself the solution to the problem that had been torturing me. Now I knew that a system of values which concerns itself only with our relationship to other people is incomplete and therefore lacking in power for good. Only by means of reverence for life can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach. Only in this fashion can we avoid harming others, and, within the limits of our capacity, go to their aid whenever they need us. ~ Albert Schweitzer
2010
The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. That is possible for him who never argues and strives with men and facts, but in all experience retires upon himself, and looks for the ultimate cause of things in himself. ~ Albert Schweitzer
2011
To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together constitute the world is ethical mysticism. All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe. ~ Albert Schweitzer
2012
The only way out of today's misery is for people to become worthy of each other's trust. ~ Albert Schweitzer
2013
I do not want to frighten you by telling you about the temptations life will bring. Anyone who is healthy in spirit will overcome them. But there is something I want you to realize. It does not matter so much what you do. What matters is whether your soul is harmed by what you do. If your soul is harmed, something irreparable happens, the extent of which you won't realize until it will be too late.
~ Albert Schweitzer ~
2014
The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the question is what is his attitude to the world and all life that comes within his reach. A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, and that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help. Only the universal ethic of the feeling of responsibility in an ever-widening sphere for all that lives — only that ethic can be founded in thought. … The ethic of Reverence for Life, therefore, comprehends within itself everything that can be described as love, devotion, and sympathy whether in suffering, joy, or effort.
~ Albert Schweitzer ~
2015
Not less strong than the will to truth must be the will to sincerity. Only an age, which can show the courage of sincerity, can possess truth, which works as a spiritual force within it.
~ Albert Schweitzer ~
2016
Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life — it is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound and universal, has the significance of a religion. It is religion.
~ Albert Schweitzer ~
2017
May the men who hold the destiny of peoples in their hands, studiously avoid anything that might cause the present situation to deteriorate and become even more dangerous. May they take to heart the words of the Apostle Paul: "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." These words are valid not only for individuals, but for nations as well. May these nations, in their efforts to maintain peace, do their utmost to give the spirit time to grow and to act.
~ Albert Schweitzer ~
2018
The thinking man must … oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. True manhood is too precious a spiritual good for us to surrender any part of it to thoughtlessness.
~ Albert Schweitzer ~
2019
Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life. From an inner necessity, I exert myself in producing values and practising ethics in the world and on the world even though I do not understand the meaning of the world. For in world- and life-affirmation and in ethics I carry out the will of the universal will-to-live which reveals itself in me. I live my life in God, in the mysterious divine personality which I do not know as such in the world, but only experience as mysterious Will within myself.
Rational thinking which is free from assumptions ends therefore in mysticism.
~ Albert Schweitzer ~
2020
We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Most certainly I am! I cannot escape my responsibility by saying the State will do all that is necessary. It is a tragedy that nowadays so many think and feel otherwise.
~ Albert Schweitzer ~
2021
President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.… Donald John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.
~ The United States House of Representatives ~
  • proposed by Kalki — the concluding lines of the article of Impeachment voted on a few hours ago.
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. … There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ~ Douglas Adams
2005
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. (born 15 January 1929)
2006
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. ~ Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia Day — Wikipedia started 15 January 2001)
2007
I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
  • selected by Kalki (no other proposals existed)
2008
I'm concerned about justice. I'm concerned about brotherhood. I'm concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
2009
I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate... I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
2010
Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
2011
Those whose conduct gives room for talk
Are always the first to attack their neighbors.
~ Molière (born 15 January 1622)
2012
I stand ready to negotiate, but I want no part of laws: I acknowledge none; I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
2013
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
2014
Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is truth-seeker. My mission is written in these words of the law:
Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest.
~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ~
2015
As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ~
2016
I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, Equity, Liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.
~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ~
2017
The great problem facing modern man is that, that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man's soul. We haven't learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. The real problem is that through our scientific genius we've made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we've failed to make of it a brotherhood. And the great danger facing us today is not so much the atomic bomb that was created by physical science. Not so much that atomic bomb that you can put in an aeroplane and drop on the heads of hundreds and thousands of people — as dangerous as that is. But the real danger confronting civilization today is that atomic bomb which lies in the hearts and souls of men, capable of exploding into the vilest of hate and into the most damaging selfishness — that's the atomic bomb that we've got to fear today.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
2018
If everyone were clothed with integrity,
If every heart were just, frank, kindly,
The other virtues would be well-nigh useless,
Since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience
The injustice of our fellows.
~ Molière ~
2019
All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.
~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ~
2020
Education does have a great role to play in this period of transition. But it is not either education or legislation; it is both education and legislation. It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important also. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless, and this is what we often do and we have to do in society through legislation. We must depend on religion and education to change bad internal attitudes, but we need legislation to control the external effects of those bad internal attitudes. And so there is a need for meaningful civil right legislation.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
2021
An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality. … These are the people who cannot face disappointments. These are the people who cannot face being defeated. These are the people who cannot face being criticized. These are the people who cannot face these many experiences of life which inevitably come because they are too centered in themselves.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. ~ Arthur C. Clarke
2005
If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. ~ Ernest Hemingway
2006
What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love... I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. (Martin Luther King Day 2006 in U.S.)
2007
To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That's what lasts. That's what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better. A better state of one's feelings or simply the idea of a silence in one's self that allows one to think or to feel. Which to me is the same. ~ Susan Sontag (born January 16, 1933)
2008
I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up. ~ Susan Sontag
2009
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. ~ Evelyn Beatrice Hall
2010
Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction. We measure truth in terms of the cost to the writer in suffering — rather than by the standard of an objective truth to which a writer's words correspond. Each of our truths must have a martyr. ~ Susan Sontag
2011
We are told we must choose — the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new? It seems to me that one should always be seeking to talk oneself out of these stark oppositions. ~ Susan Sontag
2012
One of my oldest crusades is against the distinction between thought and feelings… which is really the basis of all anti-intellectual views: the heart and the head, thinking and feeling, fantasy and judgment. We have more or less the same bodies, but very different kinds of thoughts. I believe that we think much more with the instruments provided by our culture than we do with our bodies, and hence the much greater diversity of thought in the world. Thinking is a form of feeling; feeling is a form of thinking. ~ Susan Sontag
2013
We live in a culture in which intelligence is denied relevance altogether, in a search for radical innocence, or is defended as an instrument of authority and repression. In my view, the only intelligence worth defending is critical, dialectical, skeptical, desimplifying.
~ Susan Sontag ~
2014
From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art.
~ Susan Sontag ~
2015
Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another.
~ Susan Sontag ~
2016
One cannot condemn tendencies in art; one can only condemn works of art. To be categorically against a current art tendency or style means, in effect, to pronounce on works of art not yet created and not yet seen. It means inquiring into the motives of artists instead of into results. Yet we all know — or are supposed to know — that results are all that count in art.
~ Clement Greenberg ~
2017
Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable.
~ Susan Sontag ~
2018
Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens — and real diseases are useful material. Epidemic diseases usually elicit a call to ban the entry of foreigners, immigrants. And xenophobic propaganda has always depicted immigrants as bearers of disease … Such is the extraordinary potency and efficacy of the plague metaphor: it allows a disease to be regarded both as something incurred by vulnerable "others" and as (potentially) everyone's disease.
~ Susan Sontag ~
2019
The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders. Can we really say there is no response to this? Is it acceptable that such slaughters be dismissed as civil wars, also known as "age-old ethnic hatreds." (After all, anti-Semitism was an old tradition in Europe; indeed, a good deal older than ancient Balkan hatreds. Would this have justified letting Hitler kill all the Jews on German territory?) Is it true that war never solved anything? (Ask a black American if he or she thinks our Civil War didn't solve anything.)
War is not simply a mistake, a failure to communicate. There is radical evil in the world, which is why there are just wars.
~ Susan Sontag ~
2020
For Peace. Against War. Who is not? But how can you stop those bent on genocide without making war?
~ Susan Sontag ~
2021
It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.
~ Susan Sontag ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2005
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
2006
Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. ~ Benjamin Franklin (born 17 January 1706)
2007
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. ~ Benjamin Franklin
2008
All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge. I sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others; but the world may judge for itself. Shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture; and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend. ~ Anne Brontë (born 17 January 1820)
2009
We have this window of opportunity; we have a chance to make something real happen. Something possible happen, to live beyond our fear — think about that, and help us. Help lift us up, help us fight this fight to change, — transform — this country in a fundamental way.
This chance won’t come around again. ~ Michelle Obama
2010
I somehow see what's beautiful
In things that are ephemeral.
I'm my only friend of mine,
And love is just a piece of time
In the world
In the world.
And I couldn't help but fall in love again.
~ Zooey Deschanel ~
2011
I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude or they would not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as that would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them. Do not, however mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that has brought upon him the character of heretic. ~ Benjamin Franklin
2012
My goal as an actor is always to be as truthful as possible, and to find the truth in the material I am representing. So I think that it’s the same with performing music. But in a way, performing your own music, it’s easier to find the truth in it, because it’s coming from yourself. There’s no translation needed. ~ Zooey Deschanel
2013
Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd: Whatever sooths our Pride, and tends to exalt our Species above the rest of the Creation, we are pleas'd with and easily believe, when ungrateful Truths shall be with the utmost Indignation rejected. "What! bring ourselves down to an Equality with the Beasts of the Field! with the meanest part of the Creation! 'Tis insufferable!" But, (to use a Piece of common Sense) our Geese are but Geese tho' we may think 'em Swans; and Truth will be Truth tho' it sometimes prove mortifying and distasteful.
~ Benjamin Franklin ~
2014

All I know is that I'm tired of being clever
Everybody's clever these days

Take a win
Take a fall
I never wanted your love
But I needed it all…

~ Zooey Deschanel ~
2015
God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, "This is my Country."
~ Benjamin Franklin ~
2016
As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of Others, we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
~ Benjamin Franklin ~
2017
It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country. Our hope that if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, then we can be whatever we dream, regardless of the limitations that others may place on us. The hope that when people see us for who we truly are, maybe, just maybe they, too, will be inspired to rise to their best possible selves.
~ Michelle Obama ~
2018
I want our young people to know that they matter, that they belong. So don't be afraid — you hear me, young people? Don't be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered. Empower yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise. Lead by example with hope, never fear. And know that I will be with you, rooting for you and working to support you for the rest of my life.
~ Michelle Obama ~
2019
If your family doesn't have much money, I want you to remember that in this country, plenty of folks, including me and my husband — we started out with very little. But with a lot of hard work and a good education, anything is possible — even becoming President. That's what the American Dream is all about.
If you are a person of faith, know that religious diversity is a great American tradition, too. In fact, that's why people first came to this country — to worship freely. And whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh — these religions are teaching our young people about justice, and compassion, and honesty. So I want our young people to continue to learn and practice those values with pride. You see, our glorious diversity — our diversities of faiths and colors and creeds — that is not a threat to who we are, it makes us who we are.
~ Michelle Obama ~
2020
Do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don't matter, or like you don't have a place in our American story — because you do. And you have a right to be exactly who you are.
But I also want to be very clear: This right isn't just handed to you. No, this right has to be earned every single day. You cannot take your freedoms for granted. Just like generations who have come before you, you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms.
~ Michelle Obama ~
2021
When people ask me whether being in the White House has changed my husband, I can honestly say that when it comes to his character, and his convictions, and his heart, Barack Obama is still the same man I fell in love with all those years ago.
He's the same man who started his career by turning down high paying jobs and instead working in struggling neighborhoods where a steel plant had shut down, fighting to rebuild those communities and get folks back to work … because for Barack, success isn't about how much money you make, it's about the difference you make in people's lives.
~ Michelle Obama ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2005
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. ~ Lord Acton
2006
There is absolutely nothing that can be taken for granted in this world. ~ Robert Anton Wilson (born 18 January 1932)
2007
It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. ~ Robert Anton Wilson
2008
The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed. ~ Charles de Montesquieu (born 18 January 1689)
2009
Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation. ~ Robert Anton Wilson
2010
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise. ~ Charles de Montesquieu
2011
"Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still. ~ Robert Anton Wilson ~
2012

The force that makes the winter grow
Its feathered hexagons of snow,
and drives the bee to match at home
Their calculated honeycomb,
Is abacus and rose combined.

An icy sweetness fills my mind,
A sense that under thing and wing
Lies, taut yet living, coiled, the spring.
~ Jacob Bronowski ~

2013
The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles.
~ Robert Anton Wilson ~
2014
"Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.
~ Robert Anton Wilson ~
2015
Everyone has a belief system, B.S., the trick is to learn not to take anyone's B.S. too seriously, especially your own.
~ Robert Anton Wilson ~
2016
You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it.
~ Robert Anton Wilson ~
2017
Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show a truly staggering ability to "ignore" certain kinds of information — that which does not "fit" their imprinted/conditioned reality-tunnel. We generally call this "conservatism" or "stupidity", but it appears in all parts of the political spectrum, and in learned societies as well as in the Ku Klux Klan.
~ Robert Anton Wilson ~
2018

I can't find a word to say to you
I can't comprehend, I can't relate to you.

Plain to see your faith for me
Take me higher angel fire
Take me where I want to go
Teach me things I need to know.

~ Dolores O'Riordan ~
2019
Dr. Reich vastly offended many people by his sociological theory, which holds that fascism is just an exaggerated form of the basic structure of sex-negative societies and has existed under other names in every civilization based on sexual repression. In this theory, the character and muscular armor of the average citizen — a submissive and frightened attitude anchored in body reflexes — causes the average person to want a strong authority figure above them. Tyranny, in this model, is not created by tyrants alone but by neurotic masses who want tyrants.
~ Robert Anton Wilson ~

2020

The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.
~ Montesquieu ~
in
~ The Spirit of the Laws ~
2021
History will rightly remember today's violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation. … I've been heartened to see many members of the President's party speak up forcefully today. Their voices add to the examples of Republican state and local election officials in states like Georgia who've refused to be intimidated and have discharged their duties honorably. We need more leaders like these — right now and in the days, weeks, and months ahead as President-Elect Biden works to restore a common purpose to our politics. It's up to all of us as Americans, regardless of party, to support him in that goal.
~ Barack Obama ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. ~ Frank Herbert in Dune
2005
My experience of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them, or indisposed me to serve them; nor in spite of failures, which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge; or of the present aspect of affairs; do I despair of the future.
The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope. ~ Robert E. Lee
2006
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. ~ Edgar Allan Poe (born 19 January 1809)
2007
Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got. ~ Art Buchwald (recent death)
2008
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov'd— I lov'd alone.
~ Edgar Allan Poe ~
2009
Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love — a simple duty.
~ Edgar Allan Poe ~
2010
Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less. ~ Robert E. Lee
2011
I cannot consent to place in the control of others one who cannot control himself. ~ Robert E. Lee
2012
It is well that war is so terrible — lest we should grow too fond of it. ~ Robert E. Lee
2013
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule —
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE — out of TIME.
~ Edgar Allan Poe ~
2014
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
~ Edgar Allan Poe ~
2015
If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth; what rights are, therefore, inherent in him as a human being, necessarily remain with him during life; and, however capable of being trampled upon, are incapable of being blotted out, extinguished, annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his nature as a human being, or deprived of their inherent authority or obligation.
~ Lysander Spooner ~
2016
Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenceless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will, perform them. But of his legal duty — that is, of his duty to live honestly towards his fellow men — his fellow men not only may judge, but, for their own protection, must judge. And, if need be, they may rightfully compel him to perform it. They may do this, acting singly, or in concert. They may do it on the instant, as the necessity arises, or deliberately and systematically, if they prefer to do so, and the exigency will admit of it.
~ Lysander Spooner ~
2017
If justice be a natural principle, then it is necessarily an immutable one; and can no more be changed — by any power inferior to that which established it — than can the law of gravitation, the laws of light, the principles of mathematics, or any other natural law or principle whatever; and all attempts or assumptions, on the part of any man or body of men — whether calling themselves governments, or by any other name — to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion, in the place of justice, as a rule of conduct for any human being, are as much an absurdity, an usurpation, and a tyranny, as would be their attempts to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion in the place of any and all the physical, mental, and moral laws of the universe.
If there be any such principle as justice, it is, of necessity, a natural principle; and, as such, it is a matter of science, to be learned and applied like any other science. And to talk of either adding to, or taking from, it, by legislation, is just as false, absurd, and ridiculous as it would be to talk of adding to, or taking from, mathematics, chemistry, or any other science, by legislation.
~ Lysander Spooner ~
2018
A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters. What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always is to be, absolute and irresponsible.
~ Lysander Spooner ~
2019
Through all time, so far as history informs us, wherever mankind have attempted to live in peace with each other, both the natural instincts, and the collective wisdom of the human race, have acknowledged and prescribed, as an indispensable condition, obedience to this one only universal obligation: viz., that each should live honestly towards every other.
The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: "To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due."
This entire maxim is really expressed in the single words, to live honestly; since to live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due.
~ Lysander Spooner ~
2020
I don’t want much outa life,
I never wanted a mansion in the south.
I just-a want to find someone sincere
Who’d treat me like he talks,
One good man.
~ Janis Joplin ~
2021
We are here knowing that we are at an inflection point in the history of our world. We are at an inflection point in the history of our nation. We are here because the American Dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before.
We are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question: Who are we? Who are we as Americans?
So, let’s answer that question. To the world. And each other. Right here. And, right now. … We can heal our nation. We can give our children the future they deserve. We can reclaim the American Dream for every single person in our country. We can restore America’s moral leadership on this planet.
So let’s do this.
And let’s do it together.
And let's start now.
~ Kamala Harris ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another ~ Sir Thomas Browne
2005
The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. ~ George W. Bush
2006
I don't understand politics. I don't understand the concept of two sides. And I think that probably there's good on both sides, bad on both sides, and there's a middle ground. But it never seems to come to the middle ground. And it's very frustrating watching it, and seemingly we're not moving forward. ~ David Lynch (born 20 January 1946]
2007
What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one.... It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one — which is really the realm of the artist. ~ Federico Fellini (born 20 January 1920)
2008
I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child. When you're a child, something as simple as a tree doesn't make sense. You see it in the distance and it looks small, but as you go closer, it seems to grow — you haven't got a handle on the rules when you're a child. We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination. ~ David Lynch
2009
There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there. ~ Barack Obama
2010
To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. ~ Barack Obama
2011
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. … It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
We are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America. ~ Barack Obama
2012
All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography. ~ Federico Fellini (born 20 January 1920)
2013
Lord — Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.
~ Barack Obama ~
2014
Experience is what you get while looking for something else.
~ Federico Fellini ~
2015
There's this beautiful ocean of bliss and consciousness that is able to be reached by any human being by diving within, which is really peaceful and harmonious and can be enlivened by the group process. … This is all about establishing peace. Right now, we gotta get peace back in the world. Peace is a real thing.
~ David Lynch ~
2016
There is no conflict in the absolute universe, but there is conflict in the relative world.
~ Koichi Tohei ~
2017
Sadly, the American dream is dead. But if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and we will make America great again.
~ Donald Trump ~
  • proposed by Kalki in regard to the impending inauguration of Trump as the 45th President of the USA.
2018
There are so many clues and feelings in the world that it makes a mystery and a mystery means there's a puzzle to be solved. Once you think like that you're hooked on probably finding a meaning, and there're many avenues in life where we're given little indications that the mystery can one day be solved. We get little proofs, — not the big proof — but the little proofs that keep us searching.
~ David Lynch ~
2019
I don't think about technique. The ideas dictate everything. You have to be true to that or you're dead.
~ David Lynch ~
2020
Every single thing in the world that was made by anyone started with an idea. So to catch one that is powerful enough to fall in love with, it is one of the most beautiful experiences. It's like being jolted with electricity and knowledge at the same time.
~ David Lynch ~
2021
We must restore the soul of America.
Our nation is shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses.
It is time for our better angels to prevail.
Tonight, the whole world is watching America. I believe at our best America is a beacon for the globe.
And we lead not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. … Now, together — on eagle's wings — we embark on the work that God and history have called upon us to do.
With full hearts and steady hands, with faith in America and in each other, with a love of country — and a thirst for justice — let us be the nation that we know we can be.
A nation united.
A nation strengthened.
A nation healed.
The United States of America.
~ Joe Biden ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. ~ G. K. Chesterton
2005
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. ~ Thomas Paine
2006
So far as prejudice, or prepossession of opinion prevails over our minds, in the same proportion, reason is excluded from our theory or practice. Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must first divest ourselves of those impediments and sincerely endeavor to search out the truth: and draw our conclusions from reason and just argument, which will never conform to our inclination, interest or fancy but we must conform to that if we would judge rightly. ~ Ethan Allen (born 21 January 1738)
2007
A revelation, that may be supposed to be really of the institution of God, must also be supposed to be perfectly consistent or uniform, and to be able to stand the test of truth... Reason therefore must be the standard by which we determine the respective claims of revelation; for otherwise we may as well subscribe to the divinity of the one as of the other, or to the whole of them, or to none at all. ~ Ethan Allen
2008
If the general government should persist in the measures now threatened, there must be war. It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. They do not know its horrors. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils. ~ Stonewall Jackson
2009
Was a revelation to be made known to us, it must be accommodated to our external senses, and also to our reason, so that we could come at the perception and understanding of it, the same as we do to that of things in general. We must perceive by our senses, before we can reflect with the mind. ~ Ethan Allen
2010
That which is above comprehension we cannot perceive to be contradictory, nor on the other hand can we perceive its rationality or consistency. ~ Ethan Allen
2011
The gods of the valley are not the gods of the hills, and you shall understand it. ~ Ethan Allen
2012
To suppose that God Almighty has confined his goodness to this world, to the exclusion of all others, is much similar to the idle fancies of some individuals in this world, that they, and those of their communion or faith, are the favorites of heaven exclusively; but these are narrow and bigoted conceptions, which are degrading to a rational nature, and utterly unworthy of God, of whom we should form the most exalted ideas. ~ Ethan Allen
2013
We know our time on this Earth is fleeting.
We know that we will each have our share of pleasure and pain, that even after we chase after some earthly goal, whether it’s wealth or power or fame or just simple comfort, we will, in some fashion, fall short of what we had hoped. We know that, no matter how good our intentions, we’ll all stumble sometimes in some way.
We’ll make mistakes, we’ll experience hardships and even when we’re trying to do the right thing, we know that much of our time will be spent groping through the darkness, so often unable to discern God’s heavenly plans.
There’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child’s embrace, that is true.
~ Barack Obama ~
2014
It is bad policy to fear the resentment of an enemy.
~ Ethan Allen ~
2015
Ever since I arrived to a state of manhood, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations doomed to perpetual slavery, in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical horror; so that the first systematical and bloody attempt at Lexington, to enslave America, thoroughly electrified my mind, and fully determined me to take part with my country.
~ Ethan Allen ~
2016
I yield to no man in sympathy for the gallant men under my command; but I am obliged to sweat them tonight, so that I may save their blood tomorrow.
~ Stonewall Jackson ~
2017
No single law — no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society. But that can’t be an excuse for inaction.
~ Barack Obama ~
2018
Though "none by searching can find out God, or the Almighty to perfection," yet I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make better members of society, and acquire, manly powerful incentives to the practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that human nature is capable of.
~ Ethan Allen ~
2019
Undoubtedly it is our duty, and for our best good, that we occupy and improve the faculties, with which our creator has endowed us, but so far as prejudice, or prepossession of opinion prevails over our minds, in the same proportion, reason is excluded from our theory or practice. Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must first divest ourselves of those impediments and sincerely endeavor to search out the truth: and draw our conclusions from reason and just argument, which will never conform to our inclination, interest or fancy but we must conform to that if we would judge rightly.
~ Ethan Allen ~
2020
Reason spoiled, marred, or robbed of its perfection, ceaseth to be rational, and should not be called reason; inasmuch as it is premised to be depraved, or degenerated from a rational nature; and in consequence of the deprivation of its nature, should also be deprived of its name, and called subterfuge, or some such like name, which might better define its real character.
Those who invalidate reason, ought seriously to consider, "whether they argue against reason, with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle, that they are laboring to dethrone;" but if they argue without reason, (which, in order to be consistent with themselves, they must do,) they are out of the reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.
~ Ethan Allen ~
2021
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light.
If only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it.
~ Amanda Gorman ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. ~ Douglas Adams
2005
Even as the fingers of the two hands are equal, so are human beings equal to one another. No one has any right, nor any preference to claim over another. You are brothers. ~ Muhammad
2006
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. ~ Robert E. Howard (born 22 January 1906)
2007
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them. ~ Francis Bacon (born 22 January 1561)
2008

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
~ George Gordon, Lord Byron ~ (born 22 January 1788)

2009
Honor is, or should be, the place of virtue and as in nature, things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm. All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man's self, whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. ~ Francis Bacon
2010
Truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
~ Lord Byron in Don Juan
2011
Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon. ~ Francis Bacon
2012
Near this spot
Are deposited the Remains of one
Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.
This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
If inscribed over human ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
BOATSWAIN, a DOG
~ George Gordon, Lord Byron ~
2013
Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.
~ Francis Bacon ~
2014
As a Buddhist, I was trained to be tolerant of everything except intolerance.
~ U Thant ~
2015
If I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep…
~ Lord Byron ~
in
~ Don Juan ~
2016
Man, whence is he?
Too bad to be the work of a god, too good for the work of chance.
~ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing ~
2017
Men must know that in this theater of Man's life it is reserved only for God and Angels to be lookers on.
~ Francis Bacon ~
2018
The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.
~ Francis Bacon ~
2019
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
~ Francis Bacon ~
2020
It will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and, as it were, grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, a vulgar and degenerate kind. The second is of those who labor to extend the power and dominion of their country among men. This certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called) is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot command nature except by obeying her.
~ Francis Bacon ~
2021
Let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to discover truth.
~ Francis Bacon ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
All the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love. ~ Eleanor Farjeon
2005
So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it. ~ Bertrand Russell
2006
To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security. ~ Walter M. Miller, Jr. (born 23 January 1923)
2007
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. ~ William Pitt the Younger (anniversary of death)
2008
Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely is, therefore, a great step towards happiness. ~ Stendhal
2009
One can acquire everything in solitude — except character. ~ Stendhal
2010
Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one. ~ Stendhal
2011
There is no such thing as natural law, the expression is nothing more than a silly anachronism … There is no such thing as right, except when there is a law to forbid a certain thing under pain of punishment. Before law existed, the only natural thing was the strength of the lion, or the need of a creature who was cold or hungry, to put it in one word, need. ~ Stendhal
  • first proposed by InvisibleSun in a more abbreviated form of a different translation: "There is no such thing as "natural law": this expression is nothing but old nonsense. Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need."
2012
O to be a dragon,
a symbol of the power of Heaven — of silkworm
size or immense; at times invisible.
Felicitous phenomenon!
~ Marianne Moore ~
2013
I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered. And besides, good society usurps its privileges. It had in the past the privilege of judging what was proper, but now that it supposes itself to be attacked, it condemns not what is coarse and disagreeable without compensation, but what it thinks harmful to its interest.
~ Stendhal ~
2014
A cultural inheritance may be acquired between dusk and dawn, and many have been so acquired. But the new "culture" was an inheritance of darkness, wherein "simpleton" meant the same thing as "citizen" meant the same thing as "slave." The monks waited. It mattered not at all to them that the knowledge they saved was useless, that much of it was not really knowledge now… empty of content, its subject matter long since gone. Still, such knowledge had a symbolic structure that was peculiar to itself, and at least the symbol-interplay could be observed. To observe the way a knowledge-system is knit together is to learn at least a minimum knowledge-of-knowledge, until someday — someday, or some century — an Integrator would come, and things would be fitted together again. So time mattered not at all. The Memorabilia was there, and it was given to them by duty to preserve, and preserve it they would if the darkness in the world lasted ten more centuries, or even ten thousand years...
~ Walter M. Miller, Jr. ~
2015
Insofar as thought could be governed at all, it could only be commanded to follow what reason affirmed anyhow; command it otherwise, and it would not obey.
~ Walter M. Miller, Jr. ~
2016
I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.
~ Stendhal ~
2017
Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry: But that is how I see it.
~ Walter M. Miller, Jr. ~
2018
He had never seen a "Fallout," and he hoped he'd never see one. A consistent description of the monster had not survived, but Francis had heard the legends. … Brother Francis visualized a Fallout as half-salamander, because, according to tradition, the thing was born in the Flame Deluge, and as half-incubus who despoiled virgins in their sleep, for, were not the monsters of the world still called "children of the Fallout"? That the demon was capable of inflicting all the woes which descended upon Job was recorded fact, if not an article of creed.
~ Walter M. Miller, Jr. ~
2019
We are finite creatures. Our lives are small and can only scientifically consider a small part of reality. What's common for us is just a sliver of what's available. We can only see so much of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can only delve so deep into extensions of space. Common sense applies to that which we can access. But common sense is just that. Common. If total sense is what we want, we should be prepared to accept that we shouldn't call infinity weird or strange. The results we've arrived at by accepting it are valid, true within the system we use to understand, measure, predict and order the universe. Perhaps the system still needs perfecting, but at the end of day, history continues to show us that the universe isn't strange. We are.
~ Michael Stevens ~
2020
Perhaps you and I were born too late to explore the world and too early in history to explore the stars, but we were born at just the right time, which is pretty much all times ever — to explore language — to explore what can be said. What should be said? What should we send out to space? What, that can be said, will you be the first to say?
~ Michael Stevens ~
2021
The way I see it, it's a great thing to be the man who hit the most home runs, but it's a greater thing to be the man who did the most with the home runs he hit. So as long as there's a chance that maybe I can hammer out a little justice now and then, or a little opportunity here and there, I intend to do as I always have — keep swinging.
~ Hank Aaron ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2005
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. ~ Albert Einstein
2006
Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
~ William Congreve (born 24 January 1670)
2007
Everything that's realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent. ~ Sharon Tate (born 24 January 1943)
2008
Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive. ~ Edith Wharton (born 24 January 1862)
2009
There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.
~ Edith Wharton ~
2010
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. ~ Edith Wharton
2011
Defer not till tomorrow to be wise,
Tomorrow's sun to thee may never rise.
~ William Congreve ~
2012
Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing. ~ William Congreve
2013
I'm searching for a heart,
Searching everyone.
They say love conquers all.
You can't start it like a car,
You can't stop it with a gun.
~ Warren Zevon ~
2014
In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
~ Edith Wharton ~
2015
I warrant you, if he danced till doomsday, he thought I was to pay the piper.
~ William Congreve ~
2016
It was part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real counselor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissues.
~ Edith Wharton ~
2017
We contemplate eternity
Beneath the vast indifference of heaven.
~ Warren Zevon ~
2018
Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.
~ Ursula K. Le Guin ~
2019
When I was young, times were hard.
When I got older it was worse.
~ Warren Zevon ~
2020
If we don’t have an informed electorate we don’t have a democracy. So I don’t care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I’m just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it.
~ Jim Lehrer ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2021
If you have passion, a chip on the shoulder, a sense of humor, and you can explain what you do very well, it doesn't matter if you're a plumber or a singer or a politician. If you have those four things, you are interesting.
~ Larry King ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2005
If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. ~ Isaac Newton on his intellectual debt to those who preceded him.
2006
While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace. ~ Orlando: A Biography, by Virginia Woolf (born 25 January 1882)
2007
I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues. ~ W. Somerset Maugham (born 25 January 1874)
2008
If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
2009
The strongest natures, when they are influenced, submit the most unreservedly; it is perhaps a sign of their strength. ~ Virginia Woolf
2010
O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us
An' ev'n Devotion.
~ Robert Burns ~
2011
Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in. ~ Virginia Woolf
2012
You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer. It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. I pity with all my heart the artist, whether he writes or paints, who is entirely dependent for subsistence upon his art. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
2013

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

~ Robert Burns ~
2014
Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.
~ W. Somerset Maugham ~
2015
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.
~ W. Somerset Maugham ~
2016
Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.
~ Virginia Woolf ~
2017
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.
~ W. Somerset Maugham ~
2018
It is notorious that illusions are shattered by conflict with reality, so no real happiness, no real wit, no real profundity are tolerated where the illusion prevails.
~ Virginia Woolf ~
in
~ Orlando: A Biography ~
2019
Time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon the mind of man. The mind of man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second. This extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind is less known than it should be and deserves fuller investigation.
~ Virginia Woolf ~
in
~ Orlando: A Biography ~
2020
The social, friendly, honest man,
Whate'er he be,
'Tis he fulfills great Nature's plan,
And none but he!
~ Robert Burns ~
2021
Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.
~ Virginia Woolf ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus
2005
Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world. ~ Archimedes
2006
I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes... But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. ~ Douglas MacArthur (born 26 January 1880)
2007
The only gold is love,
A coin that we have minted from the light
Of others who have cared for us on Earth
And who have deposited in us the power
That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.
~ Philip José Farmer ~
2008
Prometheus, I have no Titan's might,
Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart,
For daytime's vulture talons tear apart
The tender alcoves built by love at night.
~ Philip José Farmer ~
2009
I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I'm thinking of isn't Nietzsche's. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That's the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman. ~ Philip José Farmer
2010
If you don't have enemies, you don't have character. ~ Paul Newman
2011

Yes, we hope to seed a new, rich earth.
We hope to breed a race of men whose power
Dwells in hearts as open as all Space
Itself, who ask for nothing but the light
That rinses the heart of hate so that the stars
Above will be below when man has Love.

~ Philip José Farmer ~

2012
Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would gladly yield every honor which has been accorded me in war. ~ Douglas MacArthur
2013
Beauty in this Iron Age must turn
From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn
And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn
On whose gray surface runes are traced by a Norn
Who hopes to wake the Future to arise
In Phoenix-fashion, and to shine with rays
To blast the sight of modern men whose dyes
Of selfishness and lust have stained our days.
~ Philip José Farmer ~
2014
Let's give this entity which you call soul another name. Soul has too many incorrect meanings for humans, too many verbal reverberations, too many contrary definitions.
Speak the word soul, and unbelievers will automatically become deaf to what follows. Those who believe in souls will always hear you through the mental constructs that they formed on Earth. Let us call this nonmatter twin the... ah... ka…
~ Philip José Farmer ~
2015
India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
~ Will Durant ~
2016
Everybody should fear only one person, and that person should be himself.
~ Philip José Farmer ~
2017
Whatever it is, it’s OK because it’s what it is. Don’t be looking for perfection. Don’t be short-tempered with yourself. And you’ll be a whole lot nicer to be around with everyone else.
~ Mary Tyler Moore ~
  • proposed by Kalki in regard to her recent death.
2018
Men since the beginning of time have sought peace. Various methods through the ages have been attempted to devise an international process to prevent or settle disputes between nations. From the very start workable methods were found in so far as individual citizens were concerned, but the mechanics of an instrumentality of larger international scope have never been successful. Military alliances, balances of power, Leagues of Nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war now blocks out this alternative. We have had our last chance. If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.
~ Douglas MacArthur ~
2019
I shall set my course to the end that no man need fear to speak the truth. I could not do less, for the opportunities for service my country has given me and the honors it has conferred upon me have imposed an obligation which is not discharged by the termination of public service.
Much that I have seen since my return to my native land after an absence of many years has filled me with immeasurable satisfaction and pride. Our material progress has been little short of phenomenal.
It has established an eminence in material strength so far in advance of any other nation or combination of nations that talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense.
It is not of any external threat that I concern myself but rather of insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions — those institutions which formerly we hailed as something beyond question or challenge — those institutions we proudly called the American way of life.
~ Douglas MacArthur ~
2020
I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried — tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out.
~ Paul Newman ~
2021
Today, freedom is on the offensive, democracy is on the march.
~ Douglas MacArthur ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ring
2005
Remind yourself that all men assert that wisdom is the greatest good, but that there are few who strenuously seek out that greatest good. ~ Pythagoras
2006
If you drink much from a bottle marked "poison" it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. ~ Lewis Carroll (born 27 January 1832)
2007
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that's all."
~ Lewis Carroll ~
2008
"In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
~ Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ~
2009
Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. ~ Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
2010
Twas brillig and the slithy toves,
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son,
the jaws that bite and claws that scratch
Beware the jubjub bird
and shun the frumious bandersnatch."

~ Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass ~

2011
I suppose every child has a world of his own — and every man, too, for the matter of that. I wonder if that's the cause for all the misunderstanding there is in Life? ~ Lewis Carroll
2012
I believe it is the duty of each of us to act as if the fate of the world depended on him. Admittedly, one man by himself cannot do the job. However, one man can make a difference... We must live for the future of the human race, and not for our own comfort or success. ~ Hyman G. Rickover
2013
Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
But, once realise what the true object is in life — that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds' — but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man — and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!
~ Lewis Carroll ~
2014
Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.
~ John Updike ~
2015
The Quakers have an excellent approach to thinking through difficult problems, where a number of intelligent and responsible people must work together. They meet as equals, and anyone who has an idea speaks up. There are no parliamentary procedures and no coercion from the Chair. They continue the discussion until unanimity is reached. I want you guys to do that. Get in a room with no phones and leave orders that you are not to be disturbed. And sit there until you can deal with each other as individuals…
~ Hyman G. Rickover ~
2016
It is said that a wise man who stands firm is a statesman, and a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe.
~ Hyman G. Rickover ~
2017
For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: "The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon." In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way.
~ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ~
2018
To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger — and its immediacy. … Beyond the nuclear and climate domains, technological change is disrupting democracies around the world as states seek and exploit opportunities to use information technologies as weapons, among them internet-based deception campaigns aimed at undermining elections and popular confidence in institutions essential to free thought and global security. … International diplomacy has been reduced to name-calling, giving it a surreal sense of unreality that makes the world security situation ever more threatening.
Because of the extraordinary danger of the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes to midnight — the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.
~ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ~
2019
Free discussion requires an atmosphere unembarrassed by any suggestion of authority or even respect. If a subordinate always agrees with his superior he is a useless part of the organization.
~ Hyman G. Rickover ~
2020
When I was young, my mindset was image, image, image. I took that approach with the media. As I became more experienced I realized: No matter what, people are going to like you or not like you. So be authentic, and let them like you or not for who you actually are. At that point, I started keeping all of my answers blunt and straightforward. I would mix in some humor and sarcasm, too. I think fans and reporters came to appreciate that, came to appreciate the real me.
~ Kobe Bryant ~
2021
Responsibility is a unique concept … You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you … If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.
~ Hyman G. Rickover ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…

Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:

2005
Wise men don't need to prove their point;
men who need to prove their point aren't wise.
The Master has no possessions.
The more he does for others, the happier he is.
The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is.
The Tao nourishes by not forcing.
By not dominating, the Master leads.
~ Lao Zi ~
2006
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ~ Colette (born 28 January 1873)
2007
Man needs to go outside himself in order to find repose and reveal himself. ~ José Martí
2008
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his frank hand.
And for the cruel man who pulls out of me
the heart with which I live,
I grow neither nettles nor thorns:
I grow a white rose.
~ José Martí ~
2009
I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer. ~ Colette (born 28 January 1873)
2010
Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat... between the law of love and the law of hate. ~ José Martí
2011
Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave. ~ Colette
2012
By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet. ~ Colette
2013
To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.
~ Colette ~
2014
I am a sincere man
from where the palm tree grows,
and before I die I wish
to pour forth the verses from my soul.
~ José Martí ~
2015
Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.
~ José Martí ~
2016
Everything that divides men, everything that specified, separates or pens them, is a sin against humanity.
~ José Martí ~
2017
Up, abysmal thought, out of my depths! I am your rooster and dawn, you sleepy worm: Up! Up! My voice will yet crow you awake!
Unsnap the straps of your ears: listen! Because I want to hear you! Up! Up! Here there is thunder enough to make even graves learn to listen!
And wipe the sleep and all that befogs and blinds you from your eyes! Hear me with your eyes too: my voice is a remedy even for those born blind.
And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally. It is not my manner to wake great-grandmothers from their sleep only to tell them — go back to sleep!
You stir, you stretch, you gasp? Up! Up! No gasping — you will speak to me! Zarathustra summons you, the godless one!
I, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle — you I summon, my most abysmal thought!
Hail to me! You are coming – I hear you! My abyss speaks, I have unfolded my ultimate depth to the light!
~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~

~ ⨀ ~
  • proposed by Kalki in regard to the Chinese New Year — of the Fire Rooster.
2018
One must have faith in the best in men and distrust the worst. One must allow the best to be shown so that it reveals and prevails over the worst. Nations should have a pillory for whoever stirs up useless hate, and another for whoever fails to tell them the truth in time.
~ José Martí ~
2019
We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from. We must say no once more. Man is not free to watch impassively the enslavement and dishonor of men, nor their struggles for liberty and honor.
~ José Martí ~
2020
Whoever brushes aside even a part of the truth, whether through intention or oversight, is doomed to fall. The truth he lacks thrives on negligence, and brings down whatever is built without it. It is easy to resolve our problem knowing its components than resolve them without knowing them.
~ José Martí ~
2021
Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together. You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all.
~ José Martí ~
2022
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow human being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. ~ Stephen Grellet
2005
Time's glory is to command contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.
~ William Shakespeare ~
2006
Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace. ~ Milan Kundera
2007
I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good. ~ Thomas Paine
2008
The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well. ~ Germaine Greer (born 29 January 1939)
2009
The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all. ~ John Updike (recent death)
2010
Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external signs. ~ Anton Chekhov
2011
It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy. ~ Thomas Paine
2012
Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them. ~ Thomas Paine
2013
Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend.
~ Emanuel Swedenborg ~
2014
If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.
~ Thomas Paine ~
2015
It is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
~ Thomas Paine ~
2016
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
~ Edward Abbey ~
2017
When a person doesn’t understand something, he feels internal discord: however he doesn’t search for that discord in himself, as he should, but searches outside of himself. Thence a war develops with that which he doesn’t understand.
~ Anton Chekhov ~
2018
We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.
~ Edward Abbey ~
2019
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
~ Thomas Paine ~
2020
It is ridiculous that nations are to wait and government be interrupted till boys grow to be men.
Whether I have too little sense to see, or too much to be imposed upon; whether I have too much or too little pride, or of anything else, I leave out of the question; but certain it is, that what is called monarchy, always appears to me a silly, contemptible thing. I compare it to something kept behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be open — and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter.
~ Thomas Paine ~
2021
He who doesn’t know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others' successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.
~ Anton Chekhov ~
2022
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2005
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe... No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. ~ Winston Churchill
2006
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt (born 30 January 1882)
2007
If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
2008
We do not see faith, hope, and charity as unattainable ideals, but we use them as stout supports of a nation fighting the fight for freedom in a modern civilization.
Faith — in the soundness of democracy in the midst of dictatorships.
Hope — renewed because we know so well the progress we have made.
Charity — in the true spirit of that grand old word. For charity literally translated from the original means love, the love that understands, that does not merely share the wealth of the giver, but in true sympathy and wisdom helps men to help themselves. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
2009
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
2010
Is there not glory enough in living the days given to us? You should know there is adventure in simply being among those we love and the things we love, and beauty, too. ~ Lloyd Alexander (born 30 January 1924)
2011
I have marched in many a battle host, but I have also planted seeds and reaped the harvest with my own hands. And I have learned there is greater honor in a field well plowed than in a field steeped in blood. ~ Lloyd Alexander
2012
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
2013
Science is like literature, a continuing dialog among diverse and conflicting voices, no one ever wholly right or wholly wrong, but a steady conversation forever provisional and personal and living.
~ Gregory Benford ~
2014
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
~ Richard Brautigan ~
2015
Any technology that does not appear magical is insufficiently advanced.
~ Gregory Benford ~
2016
We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~
2017
No nation which refuses to exercise forbearance and to respect the freedom and rights of others can long remain strong and retain the confidence and respect of other nations. No nation ever loses its dignity or good standing by conciliating its differences and by exercising great patience with, and consideration for, the rights of other nations.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~
2018
Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~
2019
I am concerned about the attitude of a candidate or his sponsors with respect to the rights of American citizens to assemble peaceably and to express publicly their views and opinions on important social and economic issues. There can be no constitutional democracy in any community which denies to the individual his freedom to speak and worship as he wishes. The American people will not be deceived by anyone who attempts to suppress individual liberty under the pretense of patriotism.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~
2020
Those who cherish their freedom and recognize and respect the equal right of their neighbors to be free and live in peace must work together for the triumph of law and moral principles in order that peace, justice, and confidence may prevail in the world. There must be a return to a belief in the pledged word, in the value of a signed treaty. There must be recognition of the fact that national morality is as vital as private morality.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~
2021
I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there's nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.
~ Cicely Tyson ~
2022
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2005
I have one major rule: everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. ~ Ken Wilber
2006
Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. 'Life' plus 'significance' = magic. ~ Grant Morrison
2007
Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. … if some sort of reconciliation between science and religion is not forthcoming, the future of humanity is, at best, precarious. ~ Ken Wilber
2008
At this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the "edge of history." There would be a real New Age. ~ Ken Wilber
2009
A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behavior means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing — a spectrum that includes, at the very least, the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of spirit. ~ Ken Wilber
2010
Anybody can they say they are being "spiritual" — and they are, because everybody has some type and level of concern. Let us therefore see their actual conception, in thought and action, and see how many perspectives it is in fact concerned with, and how many perspectives it actually takes into account, and how many perspectives it attempts to integrate, and thus let us see how deep and how wide runs that bodhisattva vow to refuse rest until all perspectives whatsoever are liberated into their own primordial nature. ~ Ken Wilber
2011
Attunement could occur through any of the great religions, but would be tied exclusively to none of them. A person could be attuned to an "integral spirituality" while still be a practicing Christian, Buddhist, New-Age advocate, or Neopagan. This would be something added to one's religion, not subtracted from it. The only thing it would subtract (and there's no way around this) is the belief that one's own path is the only true path to salvation.~ Ken Wilber
2012
Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity — a total embrace of the entire Kosmos — a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane? ~ Ken Wilber
2013
Everything is literally entangled, it can all be communicated with and affected "at a distance" because there is no distance, only a simulation of apparent separation which our limited consciousness feeds us second by second at 11 bits. The "telepathy" which brings people together is no more or less supernatural or unlikely than the "telepathy" which brings two of your fingers together when you think about it. Patience, participation and constant close observation of what's going on, on the inside and on the outside will soon make you a fine sorcerer, if that's what you want to be.
~ Grant Morrison ~
2014
Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.
~ Augustine of Hippo ~
2015
To bear up under loss — to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief — to be victor over anger — to smile when tears are close — to resist evil men and base instincts — to hate hate and to love love — to go on when it would seem good to die — to seek ever after the glory and the dream — to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be — that is what any man can do, and so be great.
~ Zane Grey ~
2016
The cynic says "blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed." I say "blessed is he who expecteth everything, for he can't always be disappointed.
~ Tallulah Bankhead ~
2017
We move from part to whole and back again, and in that dance of comprehension, in that amazing circle of understanding, we come alive to meaning, to value, and to vision: the very circle of understanding guides our way, weaving together the pieces, healing the fractures, mending the torn and tortured fragments, lighting the way ahead — this extraordinary movement from part to whole and back again, with healing the hallmark of each and every step, and grace the tender reward.
~ Ken Wilber ~
2018
We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd ... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste...? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?
~ Norman Mailer ~
2019
I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.
~ Norman Mailer ~
2020
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.
~ Norman Mailer ~
2021
The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.
~ Norman Mailer ~
2022
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