Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 2026

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Today is Saturday, January 17, 2026; it is now 02:18 (UTC)

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January 1

I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.

~ J. D. Salinger ~

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January 2

A moment like this comes rarely. Seldom do we hold such an opportunity to transform and reinvent. Rarer still is it the people themselves whose hands are the ones upon the levers of change.
And yet we know that too often in our past, moments of great possibility have been promptly surrendered to small imagination and smaller ambition. … In writing this address, I have been told that this is the occasion to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage the people of New York to ask for little and expect even less. I will do no such thing. The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations.
Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed. But never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.

~ Zohran Mamdani ~

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January 3

Time destroys the figments of the imagination, while confirming the judgments of nature.

~ Cicero ~

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January 4

We cannot take a chance of somebody else taking over Venezuela that does not have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind. We have had decades of that. We are not going to let that happen. We are there now and what people do not understand — but they understand as I say this — we are there now and we are going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place. … As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a total bust for a long period of time. They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place. We are going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.

~ Donald Trump ~

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January 5

Every state calls itself "country" or "nation" when it is about to commit murder. … We nurtured a beast with our virtues. We became drunk on the greatness of our country, but what we loved has now turned into gall and wormwood.

~ Friedrich Dürrenmatt ~

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January 6

The biblical view is not just apolitical but antipolitical in the sense that it refuses to confer any value on political power, or in the sense that it regards political power as idolatrous, inevitably entailing idolatry. Christianity offers no justification for political power; on the contrary, it radically questions it.

~ Jacques Ellul ~

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January 7

The President has been clear for months now that the United States should be the nation that has Greenland as part of our overall security apparatus … that has been the formal position of the U.S. government since the beginning of this administration, frankly, going back into the previous Trump administration, that Greenland should be part of the United States.

~ Stephen Miller ~

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January 8

We've been warning for weeks that the Trump administration's dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday, I said exactly that. What we're seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines, and conflict. It's governing by reality TV, and today that recklessness cost someone their life.

~ Tim Walz ~

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January 9

In the age of nuclear warfare to continue our political differences by means of war would be to discontinue civilization as we know it.
War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them.

~ Richard Nixon ~

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January 10

Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Liberty alone demands for its realisation the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

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January 11

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

~ William James ~

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January 12

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.

~ Edmund Burke ~

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January 13

Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square,
From the first point of his appointed sourse,
And being once amisse growes daily wourse and wourse.

~ Edmund Spenser ~

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January 14

Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.

~ Albert Schweitzer ~

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January 15

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.

~ Scott Adams ~

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January 16

It is my view that belief is the underlying and basic element of policy and action. First one must sort out matters of belief: who one is, in what relationship to whom, and what general direction in the realm of values is up and what direction is down. Then clear and rigorous logic, based upon a cold and unemotional assessment of the objective evidence concerning the relevant facts, and a careful analysis of the probable outcomes and probable material and moral costs of alternative courses of action, can help to get one from where one is to where one wants, and should want, to be.

~ Paul Nitze ~

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January 17

I love that for Barack, there is no such thing as "us" and "them" — he doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or none of the above … he knows that we all love our country … and he’s always ready to listen to good ideas … he’s always looking for the very best in everyone he meets.

~ Michelle Obama ~

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January 18

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 18, 2026
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January 19

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 19, 2026
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January 20

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 20, 2026
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January 21

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 21, 2026
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January 22

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 22, 2026
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January 23

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 23, 2026
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January 24

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 24, 2026
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January 25

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 25, 2026
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January 26

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 26, 2026
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January 27

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 27, 2026
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January 28

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 28, 2026
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January 29

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 29, 2026
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January 30

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 30, 2026
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January 31

Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 31, 2026
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Today is Saturday, January 17, 2026; it is now 02:18 (UTC)