Wikiquote:Quote of the day/June 2007
- June 1
Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them. Even with the violence of emotion, judgment and principle must still function like a ship’s compass, which records the slightest variations however rough the sea. ~ Carl von Clausewitz
- June 2
To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction — every kind of evidence in the logician's list — have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation. ~ Thomas Hardy
- June 3
We are on the cusp of this time where I can say, "I speak as a citizen of the world" without others saying, "God, what a nut." ~ Lawrence Lessig
- June 4
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge —
That myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —
That hope always triumphs over experience —
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.
~ Robert Fulghum ~
That myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —
That hope always triumphs over experience —
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.
~ Robert Fulghum ~
- June 5
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. ~ John Maynard Keynes
- June 6
Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them. ~ Thomas Mann
- June 7
Exhaust the little moment.
Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical guise.
~ Gwendolyn Brooks ~
- June 8
I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar
- June 9
What is this thing called love?
This funny thing called love?
~ Cole Porter ~
- June 10
Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love. ~ Saul Bellow
- June 11
The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from one another. ~ John Constable
- June 12
I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again. ~ Anne Frank
- June 13
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- June 14
That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary. ~ Yasunari Kawabata
- June 15
All that you know is at an end. ~ The "Silver Surfer" in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
- June 16
It's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life. ~ James Joyce in Ulysses
- June 17
Nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our cities where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail. ~ Ken Livingstone
- June 18
The day after Columbine, I was interviewed... The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that... The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song ... The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous..." ~ Roger Ebert
- June 19
We are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact desensitizing us. They are saying that everyone is brutal, and the heroes must be as brutal as the villains or they turn into fools. There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. ... Yet surely, when night after night atrocities are served up to us as entertainment, it's worth some anxiety. ... How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience? ~ Pauline Kael
- June 20
If there's not love present, it's much, much harder to function. When there's love present, it's easier to deal with life. ~ Brian Wilson
- June 21
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling…
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass ~
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass ~
- June 22
Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh
- June 23
I grew up knowing I could have had a million different lives. It makes your life mysterious and your imagination go wild. ~ KT Tunstall
- June 24
Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. ~ Ambrose Bierce
- June 25
I always disagree ... when people end up saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence. In the same way, a man can kill a tiger because he is not like a tiger and uses his brain to invent the rifle, which no tiger could ever do. ~ George Orwell
- June 26
A knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate ... is not the blind superstition or helplessness that waits stupidly for what may happen. Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance. ~ Pearl S. Buck
- June 27
A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships. ~ Helen Keller
- June 28
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- June 29
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince
- June 30
Love means to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills —
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~