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Wikiquote:Quote of the day/March

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Today is Monday, December 30, 2024; it is now 15:23 (UTC)


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This page lists quote of the day proposals specifically for dates in the month of March, 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: March 2008 · 2009 · 2010 · 2011 · 2012 · 2013 · 2014 · 2015 · 2016 · 2017

Ranking system:

4 : Excellent - should definitely be used.
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.
2004
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. ~ John Stuart Mill
2005
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. ~ Jef Raskin (recent death)
2006
I dreamt the past was never past redeeming:
But whether this was false or honest dreaming
I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead.
~ Richard Wilbur (born 1 March 1921)
2007
We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. ~ Tzvetan Todorov ( born 1 March 1922)
  • proposed by Fys
2008
Try to remember this: what you project
Is what you will perceive; what you perceive
With any passion, be it love or terror,
May take on whims and powers of its own.
~ Richard Wilbur ~
2009
From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. ~ Napoleon I of France
2010
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. ~ Frédéric Chopin
2011
My social and political interests are part of my career. I cannot separate them. My songs reflect the human condition. The role of art isn't just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be. ~ Harry Belafonte
2012
We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. ~ Tzvetan Todorov
2013

A =POPE= is someone who is not under the authority of the authorities.
~ Principia Discordia ~
2014
I, who have sent armies into fire and soldiers to their death, say today: We sail onto a war which has no casualties, no wounded, no blood nor suffering. It is the only war which is a pleasure to participate in — the war for peace.
~ Yitzhak Rabin ~
2015
March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.
~ Anonymous ~
2016
Neither the sword of popes, nor the cross, nor the image of death — nothing will halt the march of truth. I wrote what I felt and that is what I preached with trusting spirit. I am convinced that after my destruction the teachings of false prophets will collapse.
~ Ferenc Dávid ~
2017
It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; that constitute his ideal audience and his better self. To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men. And he speaks not in private grunts and mutterings but in the public language of the dictionary, of literary tradition, and of the street. Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the products something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.
~ Richard Wilbur ~
2018
Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life.
~ Yitzhak Rabin ~
2019
Pride is not a wise counselor. People who believe themselves to be the incarnation of good have a distorted view of the world. The absence of any obstacle to the deployment of strength is dangerous for the strong themselves: passion takes precedence over reason. "No power without limit can be legitimate," as Montesquieu wrote long ago. Political wisdom does not consist in seeking only immediate victory, nor does it require systematic preference of "us" over "them."
~ Tzvetan Todorov ~
2020
I am neither a saint nor a theologian.
To me, good works are more important than theology. We all know that religion has been historically, and still is today, a cause of great evil as well as great good in human affairs. We have seen terrible wars and terrible persecutions conducted in the name of religion. We have also seen large numbers of people inspired by religion to lives of heroic virtue, bringing education and medical care to the poor, helping to abolish slavery and spread peace among nations. Religion amplifies the good and evil tendencies of individual souls. Religion will always remain a powerful force in the history of our species. To me, the meaning of progress in religion is simply this, that as we move from the past to the future the good works inspired by religion should more and more prevail over the evil.
~ Freeman Dyson ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
2021
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
~ William Dean Howells ~
2022
As the war in Ukraine rages on, and Ukrainians fight bravely for their country, the European Union steps up once more its support for Ukraine and the sanctions against the aggressor — Putin's Russia.
For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack.
This is a watershed moment.
~ Ursula von der Leyen ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard to the current invasion of Ukraine.
2023
A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.
~ Richard Wilbur ~
2024
Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life.
Almost all the regimes which did not place Man and the sanctity of Life at the heart of their world view, all those regimes have collapsed and are no more. You can see it for yourselves in our own day.
~ Yitzhak Rabin ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. ~ Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
2005
From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere. ~ Dr. Seuss (born 2 March 1904)
2006
Our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right." ~ Carl Schurz (born 2 March 1829)
2007
Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America. ~ Russ Feingold (born 2 March 1953)
2008
I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends.
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!
… So, on beyond Z!
It's high time you were shown
That you really don't know
All there is to be known.
~ Dr. Seuss ~
2009
In times like these, it's helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. ~ Paul Harvey
2010
Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. ~ Carl Schurz
2011
I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. Look at the sun. If there is no sun, then we cannot exist. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev
2012
Rights may be universal, but their enforcement must be local. ~ Murray Rothbard (born 2 March 1926)
2013
Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It's more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.
~ Dr. Seuss ~
2014
I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.
~ Murray Rothbard ~
2015
We have retreated from the perennial values. I don't think that we need any new values. The most important thing is to try to revive the universally known values from which we have retreated.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev ~
2016
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It's not.
~ Dr. Seuss ~
2017
There are two ways of confronting the country's problems. One is through a management style based on adventurism, instability, play-acting, exaggerations, wrongdoing, being secretive, self-importance, superficiality and ignoring the law. The second way is based on realism, respect, openness, collective wisdom and avoiding extremism.
~ Mir-Hossein Mousavi ~
2018
It’s a troublesome world. All the people who're in it
are troubled with troubles almost every minute.
You oughta be thankful, a whole heaping lot,
For the places and people you're lucky you're not!.
~ Dr. Seuss ~
2019
Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
~ John Irving ~
2020
My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

~ Carl Schurz ~
2021
Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.
And, ideally, peace means the absence of violence. It is an ethical value.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev ~
2022
We have proven our strength. We have proven that at a minimum, we are exactly the same as you are. So do prove that you are with us. Do prove that you will not let us go. Do prove that you indeed are Europeans.
And then life will win over death and light will win over darkness.
Glory be to Ukraine.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.
~ Dr. Seuss ~
2024
The truth is: Aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough now. It's nowhere nearly enough.
Innocent lives are on the line and children's lives are on the line, and we won't stand by … until they — until we get more aid in there. We — we should be getting hundreds of trucks in, not just several.
And I won't stand by, we won't let up, and we're … trying to pull out every stop we can to get more assistance in.
~ Joe Biden ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on responses to the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
It is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true. ~ James Branch Cabell
2005
Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do you will be certain to find something you have never seen before. ~ Alexander Graham Bell (born 3 March 1847)
2006
In mathematics the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems. ~ Georg Cantor (born 3 March 1845)
2007
You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them. ~ Alexander Graham Bell
2008
Consent in virtue knit your hearts so fast,
That still the knot, in spite of death, does last;
For as your tears, and sorrow-wounded soul,
Prove well that on your part this bond is whole,
So all we know of what they do above,
Is that they happy are, and that they love.
Let dark oblivion, and the hollow grave,
Content themselves our frailer thoughts to have;
Well-chosen love is never taught to die,
But with our nobler part invades the sky.
~ Edmund Waller ~ (born 3 March 1606)
2009
If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind. ~ William Godwin
2010
The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself. ~ William Godwin
2011
Those who try to combat the production of shoddy pictures are enemies of the best art today. Those woodland lakes in a thousand sitting-rooms with gold-tinted wallpaper belong to the profoundest inspirations of art. It always feels tragic to see people labouring to saw off the branch they are sitting on. ~ Asger Jorn
2012
Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility. ~ William Godwin ~
2013
Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion. We agree to try strength by counting heads instead of breaking heads, but the principle is exactly the same. … The minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it is convinced that it is a minority.
~ James Fitzjames Stephen ~
2014
We prove what we want to prove, and the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove.
~ Émile Chartier ~
2015
It is the human condition to question one god after another, one appearance after another, or better, one apparition after another, always pursuing the truth of the imagination, which is not the same as the truth of appearance.
~ Émile Chartier ~
2016
One must preach life, not death; spread hope, not fear and cultivate joy, man's most valuable treasure. That is the secret of the greatest of the wise, and it wil be the light of tomorrow.
~ Émile Chartier ~
2017
I did not hate the author of my misfortunes — truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved — and this resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me — to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer.
~ William Godwin ~
2018
The anomaly of war is that the best men get themselves killed while crafty men find their chance to govern in a manner contrary to justice.
~ Émile Chartier ~
2019
Truth is powerful, and, if not instantly, at least by slow degrees, may make good her possession. Gleams of good sense may penetrate through the thickest clouds of error … and, as the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking; open to him new mines of science and new incentives to virtue; and perhaps, by a blended and compound effect, produce in him an improvement which was out of the limits of his lessons, and raise him to heights the preceptor never knew.
~ William Godwin ~
2020
Persuasion, indeed, is a kind of force. It consists in showing a person the consequences of his actions. It is, in a word, force applied through the mind.
~ James Fitzjames Stephen ~
2021
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it's the only one we have.
~ Émile Chartier ~
2022
Six days ago, Russia’s Vladimir Putin sought to shake the foundations of the free world thinking he could make it bend to his menacing ways. But he badly miscalculated.
He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead he met a wall of strength he never imagined.
He met the Ukrainian people.
From President Zelenskyy to every Ukrainian, their fearlessness, their courage, their determination, inspires the world.
~ Joe Biden ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
2023
It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient. The lawyer never yet existed who has not boldly urged an objection which he knew to be fallacious, or endeavoured to pass off a weak reason for a strong one. … Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings should be uniform and sound, whose sense should be alive to every impression and hardened to none, who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the world, ought never to have been a practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.
~ William Godwin ~
2024
Everybody continually tries to get away with as much as he can; and society is a marvelous machine which allows decent people to be cruel without realizing it.
~ Émile Chartier ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair. ~ Winston Churchill
2005
One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it. ~ Knute Rockne (born 4 March 1888)
2006
There was a young fellow from Trinity,
Who took the square root of infinity.
But the number of digits, Gave him the fidgets;
He dropped Math and took up Divinity.
~ George Gamow ~ (born 4 March 1904)
2007
In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions. ~ P. D. Ouspensky (born 4 March 1878)
2008
Philosophy is based on speculation, on logic, on thought, on the synthesis of what we know and on the analysis of what we do not know. Philosophy must include within its confines the whole content of science, religion and art. ~ P. D. Ouspensky
2009
When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others. ~ Julia Cameron
2010
I honor my importance and the importance of others. None of us is dispensable, none of us is replacable. In the chorus of life each of us brings a True Note, a perfect pitch that adds to the harmony of the whole. I act creatively and consciously to actively endorse and encourage the expansion of those whose lives I touch. Believing in the goodness of each, I add to the goodness of all. We bless each other even in passing. ~ Julia Cameron
2011
The idea of "crime" in existing criminology is artificial, for what is called crime is really an infringement of "existing laws", whereas "laws" are very often a manifestation of barbarism and violence. Such are the prohibiting laws of different kinds which abound in modern life. The number of these laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm. On the other hand, unquestionable crimes escape the field of vision of criminology, either because they have not recognized the form of crime or because they surpass a certain scale. In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently what is often regarded as "political" activity is in fact a criminal activity. ~ P. D. Ouspensky
2012
Focused on our good, focused on our abundance we naturally attract more of the same. This is spiritual law. Our consciousness is creative. What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of? ~ Julia Cameron
2013
We know that with the very first awakening of knowledge, man is confronted with two obvious facts:
The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself.
Neither of these can he prove or disprove, but they are facts: they constitute reality for him.
~ P. D. Ouspensky ~
2014
Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness. We need to acknowledge this. All too often, we think only in terms of light: "And then the lightbulb went on and I got it!" It is true that insights may come to us as flashes. It is true that some of these flashes may be blinding. It is, however, also true that such bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary.
~ Julia Cameron ~
2015
The problem of Eternity, of which the face of the Sphinx speaks, takes us into the realm of the impossible. Even the problem of Time is simple in comparison with the problem of Eternity.
~ P. D. Ouspensky ~
2016
How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.
~ Kenneth Tynan ~
2017
Life is a creative endeavor. It is active, not passive. We are the yeast that leavens our lives into rich, fully baked loaves. When we experience our lives as flat and lackluster, it is our consciousness that is at fault. We hold the inner key that turns our lives from thankless to fruitful. That key is "Blessing."
~ Julia Cameron ~
2018
The greatest barrier to consciousness is the belief that one is already conscious.
~ P. D. Ouspensky ~
2019
Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.
~ Knute Rockne ~
2020
Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough — that we should try again. No. We should not.
Focused on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure. Focused on product, the same creative life can feel foolish or barren.
~ Julia Cameron ~
2021
Knowledge must start from some foundation, something must be recognized as known; otherwise we shall be obliged always to define one unknown by means of another.
~ P. D. Ouspensky ~
2022
Now, at more than any other point in recent history, the United Nations is being challenged. If the United Nations has any purpose, it is to prevent war, it is to condemn war, to stop war. That is our job here today. It is the job you were sent here to do – not just by your capitals, but by all of humanity.
~ Linda Thomas-Greenfield ~
2023
Every shot that takes an innocent life must result in a legal and fair sentence that punishes murder.
Every violence that destroys a person's life must result in a legal and fair judicial decision that protects human dignity.
These are constants for civilized and democratic countries. For the countries in which the rule of law is consistently ensured.
But it is time to make it constant for international relations as well.
The constants that will act universally and most importantly — irrevocably in relation to any violator of international law.
Especially when it comes to the crime of aggression.
The world needs a real embodiment of the rule of law, which is guaranteed to protect humanity from the "right of force" — from the source of all aggressions.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2024
Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.
~ Julia Cameron ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth. ~ Dawn of the Dead (1978) by George Romero
2005
The most dangerous phrase in the language is, "We've always done it this way." ~ Grace Hopper
2006
Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. ~ Rosa Luxemburg (born 5 March 1870 or 1871)
2007
I've always wanted to make the world a more rational place. I'm still working on it. ~ Penn Jillette (born 5 March 1955)
2008
Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision. ~ Penn Jillette
2009
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man. ~ William Beveridge
2010
It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. ~ Grace Hopper
2011
This is a haunted world. It hath no breeze
But is the echo of some voice beloved:
Its pines have human tones; its billows wear
The color and the sparkle of dear eyes.
Its flowers are sweet with touch of tender hands
That once clasped ours. All things are beautiful
Because of something lovelier than themselves,
Which breathes within them, and will never die.—
Haunted,—but not with any spectral gloom;
Earth is suffused, inhabited by heaven.
~ Lucy Larcom ~
2012
All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. ~ Zhou Enlai
2013
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
~ William Beveridge ~
2014
I do not own an inch of land,
But all I see is mine.
~ Lucy Larcom ~
2015
Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.
~ Rosa Luxemburg ~
2016
Two things have always been true about human beings. One, the world is always getting better. Two, the people living at that time think it`s getting worse.
It's because you get older, your responsibilities are different. Now I'm taking care of children instead of being a child. It makes the world look scarier. That happens to everyone.
~ Penn Jillette ~
2017
I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less.
~ Penn Jillette ~
2018
War unleashes — at the same time as the reactionary forces of the capitalist world — the generating forces of social revolution which ferment in its depths.
~ Rosa Luxemburg ~
2019
My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them.
~ Penn Jillette ~
2020
We shall use only peaceful means and we shall not permit any other kind of method.
~ Zhou Enlai ~
2021
If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passsed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.
~ Penn Jillette ~
2022
Of all the consequences of Moscow’s unprovoked attack, one of the most unexpected is the spark it has lit in people around the world who have come out to demonstrate for freedom, for the rights of Ukrainians. That includes valiant individuals in places where protesting the Kremlin’s war means risking arrest, beatings, or worse, as thousands of Russians and Belarusians have done. For years, we’ve seen the dangerous tide rolling back democracy and human rights and undercutting the rules-based order, fueled in no small part by Moscow. With this brutal invasion, we, our European allies and partners, and people everywhere are being reminded of just how much is at stake. Now, we see the tide of democracy rising to the moment.
~ Antony Blinken ~
2023
Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule.
~ Rosa Luxemburg ~
2024
Thy universe, O God, is home,
In height or depth, to me;
Yet here upon thy footstool green
Content am I to be;
Glad when is oped unto my need
Some sea-like glimpse of Thee.
~ Lucy Larcom ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. ~ John Milton
2005
Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God: but only he who sees, takes off his shoes, the rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries, and daub their natural faces unaware... ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning (born 6 March 1806)
2006
Give thought to life and liberty. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac (born 6 March 1619)
2007
For all eternity has God not occupied His intellect with the cabbage's birth as well as yours? It also seems that He has necessarily provided more for the birth of the vegetable than for the thinking being... Will anyone say that we are born in the image of the Sovereign Being, while cabbages are not? ~ Cyrano de Bergerac
2008
You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand … someone blind from birth cannot imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colors of a painting or the shadings of an iris. He will imagine them as something palpable, edible, audible or olfactory. Likewise, if I were to explain to you what I perceive by the senses you do not have, you would interpret it as something that could be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted; but it is not like that. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac
2009
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who watches the Watchmen?
~ Juvenal ~
(release date of the Watchmen film)
2010
A man contains all that is needed to make up a tree; likewise, a tree contains all that is needed to make up a man. Thus, finally, all things meet in all things, but we need a Prometheus to distill it. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac
2011
Most men judge only by their senses and let themselves be persuaded by what they see... On top of that, insufferable vanity has convinced humans that nature has been made only for them, as though the sun, a huge body four hundred and thirty-four times as large as the earth, had been lit only to ripen our crab apples and cabbages. … Do people really think that because the sun gives us light every day and year, it was made only to keep us from bumping into walls? No, no, this visible god gives light to man by accident, as a king's torch accidentally shines upon a working man or burglar passing in the street. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac
2012
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all. ~ Michelangelo
2013
A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame. I don't really like to say this because it never sounds sincere, but I would really have liked for my books to have been published after my death, so I wouldn't have to go through all this business of fame and being a great writer. In my case, the only advantage to fame is that I have been able to give it a political use. Otherwise, it is quite uncomfortable. The problem is that you're famous for twenty-four hours a day, and you can't say, "Okay, I won't be famous until tomorrow," or press a button and say, "I won't be famous here or now."
~ Gabriel García Márquez ~
2014
Who are you and who am I
To say we know the reason why
Some are born, some men die,
Beneath one infinite sky?
There'll be war, there'll be peace,
But everything one day will cease,
All the iron turned to rust,
All the proud men turned to dust,
And so all things time will mend,
So this song will end.
~ David Gilmour ~
2015
Even if a king defeats his enemy in battle, that still doesn't settle anything. There are other, less numerous armies of philosophers and scientists, and their contests determine the true triumph ordefeat of nations.
One scholar is matched with another; one creative mind with another; and one judicious temperament with his counterpart. A victory won on that field counts for three won by force of arms.
~ Cyrano de Bergerac ~
2016
Politics: a Trojan horse race.
~ Stanisław Jerzy Lec ~
2017
If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants flying in the sky, people will probably believe you.
~ Gabriel García Márquez ~
2018
In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.
~ Stanisław Jerzy Lec ~
2019
All is in the hands of Man. Therefore you should wash them often.
~ Stanisław Jerzy Lec ~
2020
When everything has to be right, something isn't.
~ Stanisław Jerzy Lec ~
2021
All of our separate fictions add up to joint reality.
~ Stanisław Jerzy Lec ~
2022
So-called humanitarian corridors or other measures aimed at providing respite to those affected by conflict must be well planned and implemented with the agreement of the parties to the conflict.
Regardless of whether humanitarian corridors are implemented in the coming days, parties must continue to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure under international humanitarian law both for those who choose to leave and those who remain.
~ International Committee of the Red Cross ~
2023
Life, struck sharp on death,
Makes awful lightning.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~
2024
Whatever's lost, it first was won;
We will not struggle nor impugn.
Perhaps the cup was broken here,
That Heaven's new wine might show more clear.
I praise Thee while my days go on.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
2005
Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design. ~ John Herschel (born 7 March 1792)
2006
Burn all the statutes and their shelves:
They stir us up against our kind;
And worse, against ourselves.
We have a passion — make a law,
Too false to guide us or control!
And for the law itself we fight
In bitterness of soul.
And, puzzled, blinded thus, we lose
Distinctions that are plain and few:
These find I graven on my heart:
That tells me what to do.
~ William Wordsworth in "Rob Roy's Grave" ~ (Rob Roy born 7 March 1671)
2007
Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement. ~ Aristotle
2008
Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game. ~ Gary Gygax (recent death)
2009
Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do. ~ Thomas Aquinas
2010
It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs. ~ Aristotle
2011
I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. ~ Aristotle
2012
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. ~ Aristotle
2013
Reason in man is rather like God in the world.
~ Thomas Aquinas ~
2014
He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.
~ Aristotle ~
2015
One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
~ Aristotle ~
2016
Life can be great, but not when you can't see it. So, open your eyes to life: to see it in the vivid colors that God gave us as a precious gift to His children, to enjoy life to the fullest, and to make it count. Say yes to your life. And when it comes to drugs and alcohol just say NO.
~ Nancy Reagan ~
  • proposed by Kalki, to commemorate her recent death.
2017
Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.
~ Aristotle ~
2018
What is history … without politics? A guide who walks on and on with no one following to learn the road, so that his every step is wasted; just as politics without history is like a man who walks along without a guide.
~ Alessandro Manzoni ~
2019
Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue.
~ John Herschel ~
2020
A mind which has once imbibed a taste for scientific inquiry, and has learnt the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases which occur, has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations. … Accustomed to trace the operation of general causes, and the exemplification of general laws, in circumstances where the uninformed and unenquiring eye perceives neither novelty nor beauty, he walks in the midst of wonders.
~ John Herschel ~
2021
In whatever state of knowledge we may conceive man to be placed, his progress towards a yet higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the last existence of society.
~ John Herschel ~
2022
There was a lot of talk about humanitarian corridors. Every day they talked about the opportunity for people to get out of the cities where Russia moved in, the Russian military. I am grateful to every Ukrainian and everyone who stays around to defend our cities, our freedom. But I also know that there are people who really need to flee, who can't stay, and we heard the promise that there will be humanitarian corridors. There are none! Instead of humanitarian corridors, they can only ensure bloody ones.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
If we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children's birthright.
~ Amanda Gorman ~
2024
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.
~ Amanda Gorman ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's. ~ J. D. Salinger
2005
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (born 8 March 1841)
2006
The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (born 8 March 1841)
2007
Animals arrived, liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down, spread, and flourished. They didn't bother themselves about the past — they never do; they're too busy. ~ Kenneth Grahame (born March 8, 1859)
2008
We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh enrichment. ~ Johannes Kepler
2009
We no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why. That is, we don't know what information is relevant, and what information is irrelevant to our lives. ~ Neil Postman
2010
I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be — that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
2011
You cannot avoid making judgements but you can become more conscious of the way in which you make them. This is critically important because once we judge someone or something we tend to stop thinking about them or it. Which means, among other things, that we behave in response to our judgements rather than to that to which is being judged. People and things are processes. Judgements convert them into fixed states. This is one reason that judgements are often self-fulfilling. ~ Neil Postman
2012
As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of imagination that they are so sadly to seek. ~ Kenneth Grahame
2013
Eloquence may set fire to reason.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ~
2014
Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.
~ Neil Postman ~
2015
A page of history is worth a volume of logic.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ~
2016
Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ~
2017
The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane. The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking. It cannot provide a means of understanding why we are here or why we fight each other or why decency eludes us so often, especially when we need it the most. The computer is... a magnificent toy that distracts us from facing what we most need to confront — spiritual emptiness, knowledge of ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and future.
~ Neil Postman ~
2018
We are a bunch of hooligans and anarchists but we do clean up nice. … Look around, ladies and gentlemen, because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed. Don't talk to us about it at the parties tonight. Invite us into your office in a couple days, or you can come to ours, whatever suits you best, and we'll tell you all about them.
I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen: "inclusion rider".
~ Frances McDormand ~
2019
In a world populated by people who believe that through more and more information, paradise is attainable, the computer scientist is king. But I maintain that all of this is a monumental and dangerous waste of human talent and energy. Imagine what might be accomplished if this talent and energy were turned to philosophy, to theology, to the arts, to imaginative literature or to education? Who knows what we could learn from such people — perhaps why there are wars, and hunger, and homelessness and mental illness and anger.
~ Neil Postman ~
2020
The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ~
2021
Survival in a stable environment depends almost entirely on remembering the strategies for survival that have been developed in the past, and so the conservation and transmission of these becomes the primary mission of education. But, a paradoxical situation develops when change becomes the primary characteristic of the environment. Then the task turns inside out — survival in a rapidly changing environment depends almost entirely upon being able to identify which of the old concepts are relevant to the demands imposed by the new threats to survival, and which are not.
~ Neil Postman ~
2022
We are #Anonymous
We are involved in the biggest Anonymous op ever seen. That being said, we are worried that some governments will indeed see us as a threat and create some scenario to make us look bad (false flag). We only want peace, not war.
We've been in the limelight before. We've made the news plenty of times, but never anything like what we are experiencing right now. ... We abhor violence. We are anti-war.
~ Anonymous ~
2023
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
People often say to me, "I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don't really feel it, I don't realize it," and I am apt to reply, "I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it." ~ Alan Watts
2005
When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it! ~ Yuri Gagarin (born 9 March 1934)
2006
Some choices will choose you. How you face these choices, these turns in the road, with what kind of attitude, more than the choices themselves, is what will define the context of your life. ~ Dana Reeve (recent death)
2007
Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book. ~ Mickey Spillane (born 9 March 1918)
2008
If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes. ~ Mickey Spillane
2009
A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. ~ Shashi Tharoor
2010
Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it! ~ Yuri Gagarin
2011
It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind; how the observation of last year seems childish, superficial; how this year — even this week — even with this new phrase — it seems to us that we have grown to a new maturity. It may be a fallacious persuasion, but at least it is stimulating, and so long as it persists, one does not stagnate. ~ Vita Sackville-West
2012
I would have these good people to recollect, that the laws of this country hold out to foreigners an offer of all that liberty of the press which Americans enjoy, and that, if this liberty be abridged, by whatever means it may be done, the laws and the constitution, and all together, is a mere cheat; a snare to catch the credulous and enthusiastic of every other nation; a downright imposition on the world. ~ William Cobbett
2013
I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.
~ Vita Sackville-West ~
2014

It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space
It has risen in red and black and white,
It is there in every race.

It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
It screams in tyrants’ eyes,
It has reached the peak of mountains high,
It comes searing ‘cross the skies.

It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is "the undauntable thought", my friend,
That thought that says "I'm right!"

~ Bobby Sands ~
2015
Of course I have no right whatsoever to write down the truth about my life involving as it naturally does the lives of so many other people, but I do so urged by a necessity of truth-telling, because there is no living soul who knows the complete truth; here, may be one who knows a section; and there, one who knows another section: but to the whole picture not one is initiated.
~ Vita Sackville-West ~
2016
I am full of doubts ... Each new film is like a trial. Before I step in front of the camera, I do not know whether I am going to fall or whether I am going to fly — and that is exactly the way I want it to stay.
~ Juliette Binoche ~
2017
There isn't a coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren't those of wild animals but man's can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead.
~ Mickey Spillane ~
2018
I could feel the hackles on the back of my neck stiffening and I knew he felt the same way.
Dog was meeting dog. Nobody knew it but the dogs and they weren't telling.
He was bigger than I thought. The suggestion of power I had seen in his photographs was for real. When he moved it was with the ponderous grace of some jungle animal, dangerously deceptive, because he could move a lot faster if he had to.
When we were ten feet away he pretended to see us for the first time and a wave of charm washed the cautious expression from his face and he stepped out to greet Dulcie with outstretched hand.
But it wasn't her he was seeing. It was me he was watching. I was one of his own kind. I couldn't be faked out and wasn't leashed by the proprieties of society. I could lash out and kill as fast as he could and of all the people in the room, I was the potential threat. I knew what he felt because I felt the same way myself.
~ Mickey Spillane ~
2019
I have nothing to prove to you.
~ Captain Marvel ~
2020
Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed.
~ William Cobbett ~
2021
America has always been a nation of fearless explorers who dream bigger and reach further than others imagined. … There are no limits so open your eyes and open your imagination. The next great discovery could be yours.
~ Barack Obama ~
2022
The past eight years of conflict in Ukraine have already inflicted profound and lasting harm to children.
With the escalation of the conflict, the immediate and very real threat to Ukraine’s 7.5 million children has grown. Homes, schools, orphanages, and hospitals have all come under attack. Civilian infrastructure like water and sanitation facilities have been hit, leaving millions without access to safe water.
For many, life has moved underground as families seek safety in shelters, subways, or basements, often for hours on end. Women are giving birth in makeshift maternity wards with limited medical supplies.
Most stores are closed, making it hard for people to buy essential items, including basic necessities for children like diapers and medication. And even if stores were open, millions of people are too afraid to venture outside for food or water because of continuous shelling and shooting.
The intensification of the armed conflict is posing severe human costs, which are increasing exponentially by the day.
~ Catherine M. Russell ~
2023
Any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake.
~ Luis Barragán ~
2024
To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future and what can and should be done.
Tonight, you’ve heard mine.
I see a future where defending democracy, you don’t diminish it.
I see a future where we restore the right to choose and protect our freedoms, not take them away.
I see a future where the middle class has — finally has a fair shot and the wealthy have to pay their fair share in taxes.
I see a future where we save the planet from the climate crisis and our country from gun violence.
Above all, I see a future for all Americans. I see a country for all Americans. And I will always be President for all Americans because I believe in America. I believe in you, the American people.
You’re the reason we’ve never been more optimistic about our future than I am now.
So, let’s build the future together. Let’s remember who we are.
We are the United States of America.
And there is nothing — nothing beyond our capacity when we act together.
~ Joe Biden ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks in the close of the State of the Union address.


2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. ~ Carl Jung
2005
A loser doesn't know what he'll do if he loses, but talks about what he'll do if he wins, and a winner doesn't talk about what he'll do if he wins, but knows what he'll do if he loses. ~ Eric Berne
2006
All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome. ~ Kate Sheppard (born 10 March 1847)
2007
I'm not aware of too many things.
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
~ Edie Brickell ~
2008
We are tired of having a "sphere" doled out to us, and of being told that anything outside that sphere is "unwomanly". We want to be natural just for a change … we must be ourselves at all risks. ~ Kate Sheppard
2009
In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not.
~ Joaquin Miller ~
2010
I don't believe in hatred anymore.
I hate to think of how it felt before
When anger overwhelms your very soul
It's hard to realize you'll ever know
Love like we do.
~ Edie Brickell ~
2011
Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt
I knew thee, in thy glorious youth,
And loved thy vast face, white as truth;
I stood where thunderbolts were wont
To smite thy Titan-fashioned front,
And heard dark mountains rock and roll;
I saw the lightning's gleaming rod
Reach forth and write on heaven's scroll
The awful autograph of God!
~ Joaquin Miller ~
2012
Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth. ~ Anonymous
2013
Let justice be done, though the world perish.
~ Ferdinand I ~
2014
What I am is what I am.
Are you what you are — or what?
~ Edie Brickell ~
2015
Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
~ Friedrich Schlegel ~
2016
I had crossed de line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but dere was no one to welcome me to de land of freedom, I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in de old cabin quarter, wid de ole folks, and my brudders and sisters. But to dis solemn resolution I came; I was free, and dey should be free also; I would make a home for dem in de North, and de Lord helping me, I would bring dem all dere. Oh, how I prayed den, lying all alone on de cold, damp ground; "Oh, dear Lord," I said, "I haint got no friend but you. Come to my help, Lord, for I'm in trouble!"
~ Harriet Tubman ~
2017
If there is an invisible church, then it is of the great paradox, which is inseparable from morality, and which must be distinguished from the merely philosophical. People who are so eccentric that they are completely serious in being and becoming virtuous understand one another in everything, find one another easily, and form a silent opposition against the prevailing immorality that pretends to be morality. A certain mysticism of expression, which joined with romantic fantasy and grammatical understanding, can be something charming and good, often serves as a symbol of their beautiful secrets.
~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel ~
2018
People who are eccentric enough to be quite seriously virtuous understand each other everywhere, discover each other easily, and form a silent opposition to the ruling immorality that happens to pass for morality.
~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel ~
2019
Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.
~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel ~
2020
Search not to find how other men offend,
But by that glass thy own offences mend;
Still seek to learn, yet care not much from whom,
(So it be learning) or from whence it come.
Of thy own actions, others' judgments learn;
Often by small, great matters we discern:
Youth what man's age is like to be doth show;
We may our ends by our beginnings know.
~ John Denham ~
2021
Through artists mankind becomes an individual, in that they unite the past and the future in the present. They are the higher organ of the soul, where the life spirits of entire external mankind meet and in which inner mankind first acts.
~ Friedrich Schlegel ~
2022
What happened just over a week ago was impossible to believe. Our country was peaceful; our cities, towns, and villages were full of life.
On February 24th, we all woke up to the announcement of a Russian invasion. Tanks crossed the Ukrainian border, planes entered our airspace, missile launchers surrounded our cities.
Despite assurances from Kremlin-backed propaganda outlets, who call this a "special operation" — it is, in fact, the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians.
~ Olena Zelenska ~
2023
The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit.
~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel ~
2024
The artist should have as little desire to rule as to serve. He can only create, do nothing but create, and so help the state only by … exalting politicians and economists into artists.
~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel ~


2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed. That can make life a garden. ~ Goethe
2005
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. ~ Douglas Adams (born 11 March 1950)
2006
Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. ~ Douglas Adams (born 11 March 1950)
2007
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries. ~ Vannevar Bush
2008
The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it. ~ Vannevar Bush
2009
All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others. ~ Douglas Adams
2010
Perhaps if only once you did enjoy
The thousandth part of all the happiness
A heart beloved enjoys, returning love,
Repentant, you would surely sighing say,
"All time is truly lost and gone
Which is not spent in serving love."
~ Torquato Tasso ~
2011
I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. ~ Douglas Adams
2012
We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying. ~ Douglas Adams
2013
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone 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 ~
2014
We puzzle as to whether the universe is bounded or extends forever; whether, indeed, it may only be one universe among many. We speculate as to whether our universe began in a vast explosion, whether it pulsates between utter compression and wide diffusion, whether it is self-renewing and thus unchanged forever. And we are humble.
But science teaches more than this. It continually reminds us that we are still ignorant and there is much to learn. Time and space are interconnected in strange ways; there is no absolute simultaneity.
~ Vannevar Bush ~
2015
One Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly for ever.
~ Douglas Adams ~
in
~ So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish ~
2016
Scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.
~ Vannevar Bush ~
2017
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
~ Douglas Adams ~
in
~ The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ~
2018
Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how to live without the deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for ages past. Advances in science will also bring higher standards of living, will lead to the prevention or cure of diseases, will promote conservation of our limited national resources, and will assure means of defense against aggression. But to achieve these objectives — to secure a high level of employment, to maintain a position of world leadership — the flow of new scientific knowledge must be both continuous and substantial.
~ Vannevar Bush ~
2019
Science, by itself, provides no panacea for individual, social, and economic ills. It can be effective in the national welfare only as a member of a team, whether the conditions be peace or war. But without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.
~ Vannevar Bush ~
2020
Better defence than shield or breastplate, is holy innocence to the naked breast.
~ Torquato Tasso ~
2021
These are hard times. The world hurts. We live in fear and forget to walk with hope. But hope has not forgotten you. So ask it to dinner. It's probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation.
~ Libba Bray ~
2022
People underestimate how dangerous dictators are. In 2014, we spoke to the UK parliament, we spoke at the Senate in the US, we were asked by a lot of people how they should talk to Putin, how they should frame the conversation, and I always advised that they should be as strict as they could.
You cannot play nice with Putin.
~ Nadezhda Tolokonnikova ~
2023
My favorite word is "redemption." I like both its meaning and the sound. My least favorite word is "maybe." "Maybe" is almost always a "no" drawn out in cruel fashion.
~ Libba Bray ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. ~ André Gide
2005
I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down. ~ Jack Kerouac (born 12 March 1922)
2006
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite." ~ Edward Albee (born 12 March 1928)
2007
They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" ~ Jack Kerouac (born 12 March 1922)
2008
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. ~ Jack Kerouac
2009
Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth and the bosom of the deep with endless successions of life and happiness. ~ William Buckland
2010
Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty? ~ Jack Kerouac
2011
All is well, practice kindness, heaven is nigh. ~ Jack Kerouac
2012
With the improving of here and now comes the stark realisation that here and now is all we have. Each of us has only this one brief experience with the bright light of consciousness in that endless dark night of eternity and must make the most of it. Doing this means we must respect the existence of everyone else and the most criminal act imaginable is the terminating of one of these conscious existences. ~ Harry Harrison
2013
At one point the driver said, "For God's sakes, you're rocking the boat back there." Actually we were; the car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives.
~ Jack Kerouac ~
2014
With a mental effort, he grabbed hold of his thoughts and braked them to a stop. There was something new here, factors he hadn't counted on. He kept reassuring himself there was an explanation for everything, once you had your facts straight.
~ Harry Harrison ~
2015
I've seen fire and I've seen rain.
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.
But I always thought that I'd see you again.
~ James Taylor ~
2016
I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life but that great consciousness of life.
~ Jack Kerouac ~
2017
One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.
~ Edward Albee ~
2018
Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.
~ Richard Steele ~
2019
Doth the reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?
~ George Berkeley ~
2020
A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it.
~ Richard Steele ~
2021
We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.
~ Jack Kerouac ~
in
~ On the Road ~
2022
We — Russia — want to be a nation of peace. Alas, few people would call us that now.
But let's at least not become a nation of frightened silent people. Of cowards who pretend not to notice the aggressive war against Ukraine unleashed by our obviously insane czar.
I cannot, do not want and will not remain silent watching how pseudo-historical nonsense about the events of 100 years ago has become an excuse for Russians to kill Ukrainians, and for Ukrainians to kill Russians while defending themselves.
It's the third decade of the 21st century, and we are watching news about people burning down in tanks and bombed houses. We are watching real threats to start a nuclear war on our TVs.
I am from the USSR myself. I was born there. And the main phrase from there — from my childhood — was "fight for peace." I call on everyone to take to the streets and fight for peace.
~ Alexei Navalny ~
2023
A play is fiction — and fiction is fact distilled into truth.
~ Edward Albee ~
2024
Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.
~ Edward Albee ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
2005
What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others. ~ Joseph Priestley (born 13 March 1733)
2006
Don't play for safety. It's the most dangerous thing in the world. ~ Hugh Walpole (born 13 March 1884)
2007
Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane... something sacred shows itself to us … something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural "profane" world. ~ Mircea Eliade
2008
Don’t give up! I believe in you all
A person’s a person, no matter how small!
And you very small persons will not have to die
If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!
~ Dr. Seuss ~ (from Horton Hears a Who!, the movie adaptation of which is opening tomorrow)
2009
The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant. ~ Mircea Eliade
2010
For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality. ~ Mircea Eliade
2011
I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to lie in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not overanxious about your own comic fallibilities; that gives you tranquility without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself. ~ Hugh Walpole
2012
One is devoured by Time, not because one lives in Time, but because one believes in its reality, and therefore forgets or despises eternity. ~ Mircea Eliade
2013
The history of religions reaches down and makes contact with that which is essentially human: the relation of man to the sacred. The history of religions can play an extremely important role in the crisis we are living through. The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning.
~ Mircea Eliade ~
2014
The History of Religions is destined to play an important role in contemporary cultural life. This is not only because an understanding of exotic and archaic religions will significantly assist in a cultural dialogue with the representatives of such religions. It is more especially because … the history of religions will inevitably attain to a deeper knowledge of man. It is on the basis of such knowledge that a new humanism, on a world-wide scale, could develop.
~ Mircea Eliade ~
2015
In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.
~ Mircea Eliade ~
2016
Whereas "false stories" can be told anywhere and at any time, myths must not be recited except during a period of sacred time.
~ Mircea Eliade ~
2017
Christianity is perhaps as much indebted to its enemies, as to its friends, for this important service. In their indiscriminate attacks, whatever has been found to be untenable has been gradually abandoned, and I hope the attack will be continued till nothing of the wretched outworks be left; and then, I doubt not, a safe and impregnable fortress, will be sound in the center, a fortress built upon a rock, against which the gates of death will not prevail.
~ Joseph Priestley ~
2018
War is a survival among us from savage times and affects now chiefly the boyish and unthinking element of the nation. The wisest realize that there are better ways for practicing heroism and other and more certain ends of insuring the survival of the fittest. It is something a people outgrow. But whether they consciously practice peace or not, nature in its evolution eventually practices it for them, and after enough of the inhabitants of a globe have killed each other off, the remainder must find it more advantageous to work together for the common good.
~ Percival Lowell ~
2019
It may, perhaps, be true, though we cannot distinctly see it to be so, that as all finite things require a cause, infinites admit of none. It is evident, that nothing can begin to be without a cause; but it by no means follows from thence, that that must have had a cause which had no beginning. But whatever there may be in this conjecture, we are constrained, in pursuing the train of causes and effects, to stop at last at something uncaused.
~ Joseph Priestley ~
2020
The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and a thousand other things well.
~ Hugh Walpole ~
2021
It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the "natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant.
~ Mircea Eliade ~
2022
Putin's war on Ukraine has entered its next phase, one of destruction and slaughter of civilians. It is also a part of Putin's World War, a war on the civilized world of international law, democracy, and any threat to his power, which he declared long ago.
~ Garry Kasparov ~
2023
I will cherish these few specks of time.
~ Everything Everywhere All at Once ~
  • proposed by Kalki; quote from the Winner of Best Picture as well as several other major categories at the 95th Academy Awards.
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace. ~ Helen Keller
2005
Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest. ~ Albert Einstein (born 14 March 1879)
2006
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. ~ Albert Einstein (born 14 March 1879)
2007
Let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.
What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living. ~ Albert Einstein
2008
Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars... The stakes are immense, the task colossal, the time is short. But we may hope — we must hope — that man’s own creation, man’s own genius, will not destroy him. ~ Albert Einstein
2009
Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society — nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.
The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion. ~ Albert Einstein
2010
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; —
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy ~
2011
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.
~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy
2012
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy ~
2013
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. ~
~ Albert Einstein ~
2014
Sweet and gentle and sensitive man
With an obsessive nature and deep fascination
For numbers
And a complete infatuation with the calculation
Of π.
~ Kate Bush ~
2015
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity
3.14159 26535897932 3846 264 338 3279...
~ Kate Bush ~
2016
Let us accept the world is a mystery. Nature is neither solely material nor entirely spiritual. Man, too, is more than flesh and blood; otherwise, no religions would have been possible. Behind each cause is still another cause; the end or the beginning of all causes has yet to be found.
~ Albert Einstein ~
2017
If we want to improve the world we cannot do it with scientific knowledge but with ideals. Confucius, Buddha, Jesus and Gandhi have done more for humanity than science has done. We must begin with the heart of man — with his conscience — and the values of conscience can only be manifested by selfless service to mankind.
~ Albert Einstein ~
2018
The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.
~ Albert Einstein ~
2019
The genuine scientist is not moved by praise or blame, nor does he preach. He unveils the universe and people come eagerly, without being pushed, to behold a new revelation: the order, the harmony, the magnificence of creation! And as man becomes conscious of the stupendous laws that govern the universe in perfect harmony, he begins to realize how small he is. He sees the pettiness of human existence, with its ambitions and intrigues, its "I am better than thou" creed. This is the beginning of cosmic religion within him; fellowship and human service become his moral code. And without such moral foundations, we are hopelessly doomed.
~ Albert Einstein ~
2020
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
~ Albert Einstein ~
2021
The God Spinoza revered is my God, too: I meet Him everyday in the harmonious laws which govern the universe. My religion is cosmic, and my God is too universal to concern himself with the intentions of every human being. I do not accept a religion of fear; My God will not hold me responsible for the actions that necessity imposes. My God speaks to me through laws.
~ Albert Einstein ~
2022
With an aching heart I add my voice to that of the common people, who implore the end of the war. In the name of God, listen to the cry of those who suffer, and put an end to the bombings and the attacks!
The city that bears the name of the Virgin Mary, Mariupol, has become a city martyred by the ruinous war that is devastating Ukraine.
Before the barbarism of killing children and innocent and defenceless citizens, no strategic reasons hold: the only thing to be done is to cease the unacceptable armed aggression before cities are reduced to cemeteries.
~ Pope Francis ~
2023
The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness.
In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.
~ Albert Einstein ~
2024
Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.
~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against. ~ Malcolm X
2005
Beware the ides of March. ~ William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar (The Ides of March)
  • proposed by IP 84.56.18.77
2006
Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces." ~ Julius Caesar (died 15 March 44 BC)
2007
There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. ~ Andrew Jackson
2008
As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of person and property, liberty of conscience, and of the press, it will be worth defending. ~ Andrew Jackson
2009
Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in. ~ Andrew Jackson
2010
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government. ~ Andrew Jackson
2011
Beware the March of Ideas? ~ Neil Gaiman in Sandman #7, p. 10)
2012

Alone he rides, alone,
The fair and fatal king:
Dark night is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing.

~ Lionel Johnson ~

2013
Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.
~ Lionel Johnson ~
2014
What comes now? The earth awaits
What fierce wonder from the skies?
Thunder, trampling through the night?
Morning, with illustrious eyes?
Morning, from the springs of light:
Thunder, round Heaven's opening gates.
~ Lionel Johnson ~
2015
Strive for perfection in everything we do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it. Accept nothing nearly right or good enough.
~ Henry Royce ~
2016
Let us accept this as a sign from the Gods, and follow where they beckon, in vengeance on our double-dealing enemies. The die is cast.
~ Julius Caesar ~
2017

Through thee, the gracious Muses turn,
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.

Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering place of fears:
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears.

~ Lionel Johnson ~
2018
Life would be tragic if it weren't funny. … My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.
~ Stephen Hawking ~
  • proposed by Kalki in regard to his recent death.
2019
Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg ~
2020
Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.
~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg ~
2021
Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg ~
2022
Ukraine is on fire.
The country is being decimated before the eyes of the world.
The impact on civilians is reaching terrifying proportions.
Countless innocent people – including women and children – have been killed.
After being hit by Russian forces, roads, airports and schools lie in ruins.
According to the World Health Organization, at least 24 health facilities have suffered attacks.
Hundreds of thousands of people are without water or electricity.
With each passing hour, two things are increasingly clear:
First — it keeps getting worse.
Second — whatever the outcome, this war will have no winners, only losers.
~ António Guterres ~
2023
Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, "My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way." But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.
~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg ~
2024
The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.
~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Do not say, "I follow the one true path of the Spirit", but rather, "I have found the Spirit walking on my path", for the Spirit walks on all paths. ~ Khalil Gibran
2005
If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead try to help deal with the world's larger problems. Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it. ~ Richard Stallman (born 16 March 1953)
2006
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. ~ Raymond Chandler
  • proposed by IP 220.233.188.149
2007
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. ~ James Madison (born 16 March 1751)
2008
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents. ~ James Madison
2009
Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (from The Scarlet Letter first published on this date in 1850)
2010
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ~ James Madison (born 16 March 1751)
2011
One can start from the perspective of a religious naturalist or from the perspective of the world religions and arrive at the same place: a moral imperative that this Earth and its creatures be respected and cherished. ~ Ursula Goodenough
2012
A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. ~ James Madison
2013
Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.
~ René Daumal ~
2014
Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.
~ René Daumal ~
2015
The Big Bang, the formation of stars and planets, the origin and evolution of life on this planet, the advent of human consciousness and the resultant evolution of cultures — this is the story, the one story, that has the potential to unite us, because it happens to be true.
~ Ursula Goodenough ~
2016
There are tremendous actual differences in values. Some value systems, such as the ones that motivate "honor killings", deserve to be morally condemned and rejected. But there are many other variations in values within the bounds of decency.
~ Richard Stallman ~
2017
You can't have thought without emotion, and one emotion is fear, and making an important decision on the basis of fear is not a good idea. So develop your courage.
~ Ursula Goodenough ~
2018
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
~ James Madison ~
2019
Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism behind the human shield of their believers' feelings.
~ Richard Stallman ~
2020
We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man. What has been the source of those unjust laws complained of among ourselves? Has it not been the real or supposed interest of the major number? Debtors have defrauded their creditors. The landed interest has borne hard on the mercantile interest. The Holders of one species of property have thrown a disproportion of taxes on the holders of another species. The lesson we are to draw from the whole is that where a majority are united by a common sentiment, and have an opportunity, the rights of the minor party become insecure.
~ James Madison ~
2021
I don't have a problem with someone using their talents to become successful, I just don't think the highest calling is success. Things like freedom and the expansion of knowledge are beyond success, beyond the personal. Personal success is not wrong, but it is limited in importance, and once you have enough of it it is a shame to keep striving for that, instead of for truth, beauty, or justice.
~ Richard Stallman ~
2022
It is here, in war-torn Kyiv, that history is being made. It is here, that freedom fights against the world of tyranny. It is here that the future of us all hangs in the balance.
~ Mateusz Morawiecki ~
2023
We want to replace proprietary software, with its unjust social system with Free Software and its ethical social system. And so we develop free replacements for proprietary software, and other free programs whenever we get an idea, so that the world can live in freedom. The part that uses computers, at least, in that one area of life. Because winning and maintaining freedom in general is a much bigger, much broader and harder activity, but this is one part of it.
~ Richard Stallman ~
2024
I like mindful people. Fear prevents mindfulness, and then greed marches in because you are fearful, so you feel like you have to shore everything up.
~ Ursula Goodenough ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…


2004
Try to have a good day today, wherever you are, whatever you do, whoever is near, if no one is near. Try to be happy, because you may not see tomorrow. There is someone this morning, who didn't wake up, who will never see this day. Try to feel lucky that this is not you. ~ Margaret Cho
  • proposed by IP 172.169.22.135
2005
I am imperfect in many things, nevertheless I want my brethren and kinsfolk to know my nature so that they may be able to perceive my soul's desire. ~ Saint Patrick (died 17 March 1493; St. Patrick's Day)
2006
Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. There is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof. ~ "V" in V for Vendetta (opened 17 March 2006)
2007
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.
~ Nat King Cole ~ (born 17 March 1919)
2008
Let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, who knew everything, even before the beginning of time. ~ Saint Patrick
2009
Man dwells apart, though not alone,
He walks among his peers unread;
The best of thoughts which he hath known
For lack of listeners are not said.
~ Jean Ingelow ~
2010
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
~ Saint Patrick ~
2011
That truth-is-stranger-than-fiction factor keeps getting jacked up on us on a fairly regular, maybe even exponential, basis. I think that's something peculiar to our time. I don't think our grandparents had to live with that. ~ William Gibson (17 March 1948)
2012
If I have any worth, it is to live my life for God so as to teach these peoples; even though some of them still look down on me. ~ Saint Patrick
2013
I am Patrick, yes a sinner and indeed untaught; yet I am established here in Ireland where I profess myself bishop. I am certain in my heart that "all that I am," I have received from God. So I live among barbarous tribes, a stranger and exile for the love of God.
~ Saint Patrick ~
2014
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…
~ William Gibson ~
2015
Acceptance. Acceptance of the impermanence of being. And acceptance of the imperfect nature of being, or possibly the perfect nature of being, depending on how one looks at it. Acceptance that this is not a rehearsal. That this is it.
~ William Gibson ~
2016
At Tara today in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And fire with all the strength it hath,
And lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness
All these I place,
By God's almighty help and grace,
Between myself and the powers of darkness.
~ Saint Patrick ~
  • proposed by Kalki, for Saint Patrick's day, and the eternal struggles of humanity and the holy against the powers of darkness, ignorance, confusion and delusions.
2017
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity
Through belief in the threeness
Through confession of the Oneness
Towards the creator.
~ Saint Patrick ~
2018
When the law can stop the blades of grass
From growing as they grow,
And when the leaves in summer time
Their verdure dare not show,
Then I will change the colour
I wear in my caubeen,
But till that day I'll stick for aye
To wearing of the green.
~ Dion Boucicault ~
  • proposed by Kalki — Boucicault's version of traditional Irish song, for St. Patrick's Day.
2019
I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me:
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s host to secure me
against snares of devils
against temptations of vices
against inclinations of nature
against everyone who shall wish me ill,
afar and anear,
alone and in a crowd.
~ Saint Patrick ~
2020
Be wise;
Soar not too high, to fall; but stoop to rise.
~ Philip Massinger ~
2021
O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!
O Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!
~ Madame Roland ~
2022
The wars of the past have prompted our predecessors to create institutions that should protect us from war, but they unfortunately don’t work. We see it, you see it, so we need new ones, new institutions, new alliances and we offer them.
We propose to create an association U-24 united for peace, a union of responsible countries that have the strength and consciousness to stop conflicts immediately, provide all the necessary assistance in 24 hours, if necessary, even weapons if necessary, sanctions, humanitarian support, political support, finances, everything you need to keep the peace and quickly save the world, save lives.
In addition, such association, such union would provide assistance to those who are experiencing natural disasters, man-made disasters, who fell victims to humanitarian crisis or epidemic.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun
Brilliance of moon
Splendor of fire
Speed of lightning
Swiftness of wind
Depth of sea
Stability of earth
Firmness of rock.
~ Saint Patrick ~
2024
Man dwells apart, though not alone,
He walks among his peers unread;
The best of thoughts which he hath known
For lack of listeners are not said.
~ Jean Ingelow ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. ~ Booker T. Washington
2005
We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. ~ John Updike (born 18 March 1932)
2006
The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party. ~ John C. Calhoun (born 18 March 1782)
2007
I mistake the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation and another for a weak one, and that even by indirection a strong power may with impunity despoil a weak one of its territory. ~ Grover Cleveland (born 18 March 1837)
2008
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. ~ Wilhelm Stekel
2009
Candor is always a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate. ~ Wilhelm Stekel
2010
I am inventing a language which must necessarily burst forth from a very new poetics, that could be defined in a couple of words: Paint, not the thing, but the effect it produces. ~ Stéphane Mallarmé
2011
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
~ Wilfred Owen ~ (born 18 March 1893)
2012
A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world. ~ John Updike
2013
The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.
~ John C. Calhoun ~
2014
From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.
~ John Updike ~
2015
I do not think discursively. It is not so much that I arrive at truth as that I take my start from it.
~ Nikolai Berdyaev ~
2016
Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-Thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.
~ John Updike ~
2017
We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality. If war should come, it will do so on account of our delusions, for which our hag-ridden conscience attempts to find moral excuses. To recover a sense of reality is to recover the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live, and thereby to gain the power of keeping this world from flying asunder.
~ Nikolai Berdyaev ~
2018
Fate and freedom alike play a part in history; and there are times, as in wars and revolutions, when fate is the stronger of the two. Freedom — the freedom of man and of nations — could never have been the origin of two world wars. These latter were brought about by fate, which exercises its power owing to the weakness and decline of freedom and of the creative spirit of man. Almost all contemporary political ideologies, with their characteristic tendency to state-idolatry, are likewise largely a product of two world wars, begotten as they are of the inexorability's of fate.
~ Nikolai Berdyaev ~
2019
Ethics occupies a central place in philosophy because it is concerned with sin, with the origin of good and evil and with moral valuations. And since these problems have a universal significance, the sphere of ethics is wider than is generally supposed. It deals with meaning and value and its province is the world in which the distinction between good and evil is drawn, evaluations are made and meaning is sought.
~ Nikolai Berdyaev ~
2020
Man is an animal, but a social animal. Society for its manifold blessings asks in exchange sacrifice and compromise. Concession is the world's walking gait. Fevers and hallucinations sweep over us, it is true; but be they permitted to infect the public body, slaughter shall result. Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.
~ John Updike ~
2021
A real reconciliation of East and West is impossible and inconceivable on the basis of a materialistic Communism, or of a materialistic Capitalism, or indeed of a materialistic Socialism. The third way will neither be "anti-Communist" nor "anti-Capitalist". It will recognize the truth in liberal democracy, and it will equally recognize the truth in Communism. A critique of Communism and Marxism does not entail an enmity towards Soviet Russia, just as a critique of liberal democracy is not entail enmity towards the west. … But the final and most important justification of a "third way" is that there must be a place from which we may boldly testify to, and proclaim, truth, love and justice. No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth.
~ Nikolai Berdyaev ~
2022
President Biden said that in his opinion, war crimes have been committed in Ukraine. Personally, I agree. Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime. After all the destruction of the past three weeks, I find it difficult to conclude that the Russians are doing otherwise.
~ Antony Blinken ~
2023
Today, 17th of March 2023, the International Criminal Court has issued two warrants of arrest in the Ukraine situation for Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation and for Maria Lvova-Belova, Commissioner of the Russian President's [office] for children’s rights, for the alleged war crimes of deportation of children from Ukrainian occupied territories into the Russian Federation. It is forbidden by international law for occupying powers to transfer civilians from the territory they live in to other territories. Children enjoy special protection under the Geneva Convention. The contents of the warrants are secret in order to protect victims. The ICC attaches great importance to the protection of victims especially children. Nevertheless, the judges of the chamber dealing with this case decided to make the existence of the warrants public in the interest of justice and to prevent the commission of future crimes.
This is an important moment in the process of justice before the ICC, the judges have reviewed the information and evidence submitted by the prosecutor, and determined that there are credible allegations against these persons for the alleged crimes.
~ International Criminal Court ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on current situations.
2024
I see myself immersed in the depths of human existence and standing in the face of the ineffable mystery of the world and of all that is. And in that situation, I am made poignantly and burningly aware that the world cannot be self-sufficient, that there is hidden in some still greater depth a mysterious, transcendent meaning. This meaning is called God. Men have not been able to find a loftier name, although they have abused it to the extent of making it almost unutterable. God can be denied only on the surface; but he cannot be denied where human experience reaches down beneath the surface of flat, vapid, commonplace existence.
~ Nikolai Berdyaev ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. ~ Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary
2005
The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior. ~ Earl Warren (born 19 March 1891)
2006
Who save the madman dares to cry: "'Tis I am right, you all are wrong"?
"You all are right, you all are wrong," we hear the careless Soofi say,
"For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day."
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~ (born 19 March 1821)
2007
All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~
2008
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~
2009

"Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!

~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~

2010
Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?
~ Richard Francis Burton
2011
Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~
2012
How shall the Shown pretend to ken aught of the Showman or the Show?
Why meanly bargain to believe, which only means thou ne'er canst know?
How may the passing Now contain the standing Now — Eternity? —
An endless is without a was, the be and never the to-be?
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~
2013
The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error.
~ William Jennings Bryan ~
2014
I am an individual … a circle touching and intersecting my neighbours at certain points, but nowhere corresponding, nowhere blending. … But my individuality, however all-sufficient for myself, is an infinitesimal point, an atom subject in all things to the Law of Storms called Life. I feel, I know that Fate is. But I cannot know what is or what is not fated to befall me. Therefore in the pursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and indeed my only duty, the "I" being duly blended with the "We." … I am bound to take careful thought concerning the consequences of every word and deed. When, however, the Future has become the Past, it would be the merest vanity for me to grieve or to repent over that which was decreed by universal Law.
~ Richard Francis Burton ~
2015
I believe the preservation of our civil liberties to be the most fundamental and important of all our governmental problems, because it always has been with us and always will be with us and if we ever permit those liberties to be destroyed, there will be nothing left in our system worthy of preservation.
~ Earl Warren ~
2016
Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.
~ William Jennings Bryan ~
2017
Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.
~ Earl Warren ~
2018
In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane — the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future.
~ William Jennings Bryan ~
2019
No government can long endure unless its citizens are willing to make some sacrifice for its existence.
In this, our land, we are called upon to give but little in return for the advantages which we receive. Shall we give that little grudgingly? Our definition of patriotism is often too narrow.
Shall the lover of his country measure his loyalty only by his service as a soldier? No! Patriotism calls for the faithful and conscientious performance of all of the duties of citizenship, in small matters as well as great, at home as well as upon the tented field.
~ William Jennings Bryan ~
2020
No one I know of has foreseen an America like the one we live in today. No one (except perhaps the acidic H. L. Mencken, who famously described American democracy as "the worship of jackals by jackasses") could have imagined that the 21st-century catastrophe to befall the U.S.A., the most debasing of disasters, would appear not, say, in the terrifying guise of an Orwellian Big Brother but in the ominously ridiculous commedia dell’arte figure of the boastful buffoon.
~ Philip Roth ~
2021
Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.
~ Philip Roth ~


2022
I urge the Russian people and the Russian soldiers in Ukraine to understand the propaganda and the disinformation that you are being told. I ask you to help me spread the truth so that your fellow Russians will know the human catastrophe that is happening in Ukraine. To President Putin, I say: You started this war. You’re leading this war. You can stop this war now.
And to the Russians who have been protesting on the streets against the invasion of Ukraine: the world has seen your bravery. We know that you have suffered the consequences of your courage. You have been arrested. You have been jailed and you’ve been beaten. You are my new heroes. You have the strength of Yury Petrovich Vlasov. You have the true heart of Russia.
~ Arnold Schwarzenegger ~
2023
Times change but principles endure. The jury has protected us from the abuse of power.
While human government exists the tendency to abuse power will remain. This system, coming down from former generations crowned with the honors of age, is today and for the future our hope.
Let us correct its defects with kindly hands, let us purge it of its imperfections and it will be, as in the past, the bulwark of our liberties.
~ William Jennings Bryan ~
2024
You can't undo the past but you can certainly not repeat it.
~ Bruce Willis ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Where there is great love there are always miracles. ~ Willa Cather
2005
Everything comes gradually and at its appointed hour. ~ Ovid (born 20 March 43 BC)
2006
The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom — these are the pillars of society. ~ Henrik Ibsen (born 20 March 1828)
2007
It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us. ~ Henrik Ibsen (born 20 March 1828)
2008
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative. ~ Arthur C. Clarke (recent death)
2009
What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go. ~ Friedrich Hölderlin
2010
A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. ~ Henrik Ibsen
2011
When we dead awaken. … We see that we have never lived. ~ Henrik Ibsen
2012
I knew the Spring was come. I knew it even
Better than all by this, that through my chase
In bush and stone and hill and sea and heaven
I seem'd to see and follow still your face.
Your face my quarry was. For it I rode,
My horse a thing of wings, myself a god.
~ Wilfrid Scawen Blunt ~
2013
Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the mania
Which insists there is only the One, one country, one truth, and one way.
~ Friedrich Hölderlin ~
2014
The trees are cloth'd with leaves, the fields with grass;
The blossoms blow; the birds on bushes sing;
And Nature has accomplish'd all the Spring.
~ Virgil ~
as translated by
~ John Dryden ~
2015
The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Æquinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment.
~ Thomas Browne ~
2016
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
~ Jesus ~
2017
His mother told him "Someday you will be a man,
And you will be the leader of a big old band.
Many people coming from miles around
To hear you play your music when the sun go down.
Maybe someday your name will be in lights
Saying 'Johnny B. Goode tonight'."
~ Chuck Berry ~
  • proposed by Kalki in regard to his recent death.
2018
I've always assumed that every time a child is born, the Divine reenters the world. Okay? That's the meaning of the Christmas story. And every time that child's purity is corrupted by society, that's the meaning of the Crucifixion story. Your man Jesus stands for that child, that pure spirit, and as its surrogate, he's being born and put to death again and again, over and over, every time we inhale and exhale, not just at the vernal equinox and on the twenty-fifth of December.
~ Tom Robbins ~
2019
Fas est et ab hoste doceri.
It is right to learn even from an enemy.
~ Ovid ~
in
~ Metamorphoses ~
2020
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
~ B. F. Skinner ~
2021
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~
in
~ Locksley Hall ~
2022
What is happening in Ukraine is a crime. Russia is an aggressor country and the responsibility for this aggression rests on the conscience of only one person. That person is Vladimir Putin. My father is Ukrainian, my mother is Russian, and they've never been enemies. This necklace I'm wearing is a symbol of the fact that Russia must immediately end this fratricidal war and our fraternal peoples will still be able to reconcile. Unfortunately, I've spent the last few years working for Channel One, doing Kremlin propaganda, and I'm very ashamed of this. Ashamed that I allowed lies to be broadcast from TV screens. Ashamed that I allowed others to zombify Russian people. We were silent in 2014 when all this started. We didn't protest when the Kremlin poisoned Navalny. We just silently watched this inhuman regime at work. And now the whole world has turned its back on us. And the next 10 generations won't wash away the stain of this fratricidal war. We Russians are thinking and intelligent people. It's in our power alone to stop all this madness. Go protest. Don't be afraid of anything. They can't lock us all away.
~ Marina Ovsyannikova ~
2023
The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!
~ Robert Browning ~
2024
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard to the first full day of Spring in the northern hemisphere of Earth.
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you. ~ Samuel Johnson
2005
Between individuals, as between nations, respect for the rights of others is peace. ~ Benito Juárez (born 21 March 1806)
2006
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. ~ Jean Cocteau
2007
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly — and Lo! The Bird is on the Wing.
~ Omar Khayyám ~ (Quote relating to Spring, on the date of the Vernal equinox for most of the world this year.)
2008
If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
2009
The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature — translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive. ~ Hans Hofmann
2010
In the scenery of spring,
nothing is better, nothing worse;
The flowering branches are
of themselves, some short, some long.
~ Ryōkan ~
2011
The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven —
All's right with the world!
~ Robert Browning ~
2012
I do not want to avoid immersing myself in trouble — to be a mess — to struggle out of it. I want to invent, to discover, to imagine, to speculate, to improvise — to seize the hazardous in order to be inspired. I want to experience the manifestation of the absolute — the manifestation of the unexpected in an extreme and unique relation. I know that only by following my creative instincts in an act of creative destruction will I be able to find it. ~ Hans Hofmann
2013
The community as a whole doesn't listen patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints. Although the great lesson of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints. If you simply have a consensus, it generally stultifies. It fails to see the problems of that consensus and it depends on the existence of critics to break up that iceberg and permit knowledge to develop. This is in fact one of the underpinnings of democratic theory. It is one of the reasons why we believe in notions of free speech and its one of the great forces in terms of intellectual development.
~ Walter Gilbert ~
2014
Let us now pledge all our efforts to obtain and consolidate the benefits of peace. Under its auspices, the protection of the laws and of the authorities will be sufficient for all the inhabitants of the Republic. May the people and the government respect the rights of all. Between individuals, as between nations, peace means respect for the rights of others.
~ Benito Juárez ~
2015
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc’d true friends, and beat down baffling foes?
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2016
My view is that this is the beginning, not the end, of what is going to be a journey that takes some time.
~ Barack Obama ~
  • proposed by Kalki, on his assessment of the significance of his current historical visit to the island of Cuba.
2017
Art is something absolute, something positive, which gives power just as food gives power.
While creative science is a mental food, art is the satisfaction of the soul.
~ Hans Hofmann ~
2018
When the full-grown poet came,
Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine;
But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled,
Nay he is mine alone;
— Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand;
And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands,
Which he will never release until he reconciles the two,
And wholly and joyously blends them.
~ Walt Whitman ~
in
~ Leaves of Grass ~
2019
Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.
~ Philip James Bailey ~
2020
Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
~ Samuel Ullman ~
2021
Everything rhythmically organic is true. Everything, which results from the proper feeling for rhythmically organized spiritual units, is true and alive — alive within itself. When we lose the sense for such true beauty we lose our natural sense for the rich flavor of life, which is the basis for all inspirational work.
~ Hans Hofmann ~
2022
The besieged Mariupol will go down in history of responsibility for war crimes. The terror the occupiers did to the peaceful city will be remembered for centuries to come. And the more Ukrainians tell the world about it, the more support we find. The more Russia uses terror against Ukraine, the worse the consequences will be for it.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
~ Jean Paul ~
2024
The last, best fruit that comes to perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard; forbearance toward the unforbearing; warmth of heart toward the cold; and philanthropy toward the misanthropic.
~ Jean Paul ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. ~ Martin Luther King
2005
Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words? ~ Marcel Marceau (born 22 March 1923)
2006
As I understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway. ~ Anne Hutchinson (banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 22 March 1638)
2007
Man’s destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth... I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish. ~ Marcel Marceau
2008
Music and silence... combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music. ~ Marcel Marceau
2009

I buoyed me on the wings of dream,
Above the world of sense;
I set my thought to sound the scheme,
And fathom the Immense;
I tuned my spirit as a lute
To catch wind-music wandering mute.

Yet came there never voice nor sign;
But through my being stole
Sense of a Universe divine,
And knowledge of a soul
Perfected in the joy of things,
The star, the flower, the bird that sings.

Nor I am more, nor less, than these;
All are one brotherhood;
I and all creatures, plants, and trees,
The living limbs of God;
And in an hour, as this, divine,
I feel the vast pulse throb in mine.
~ Francis William Bourdillon ~

2010
To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man. ~ Marcel Marceau
2011

The Night has a thousand eyes,
And the Day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
~ Francis William Bourdillon

2012
'Tis now the summer of your youth; time has not cropt the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them. Then use your beauty wisely; and, freed by injuries, fly from the cruellest of men, for shelter with the kindest. ~ Edward Moore
2013
If you please to give me leave I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true.
~ Anne Hutchinson ~
2014
I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.
~ Marcel Marceau ~
2015
A knife is sharpened on stone, steel is tempered by fire, but men must be sharpened by men.
~ Louis L'Amour ~
in
~ The Walking Drum ~
2016
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.
~ Louis L'Amour ~
2017
Do not let yourself be bothered by the inconsequential. One has only so much time in this world, so devote it to the work and the people most important to you, to those you love and things that matter. One can waste half a lifetime with people one doesn't really like, or doing things when one would be better off somewhere else.
~ Louis L'Amour ~
2018
Most Americans, in their sweet innocence, think that class has to do with money. But a glance at Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley will indicate that it has very little to do with money. It has to do with taste and style, and it has to do with the development of those features by acts of character.
~ Paul Fussell ~
2019
History is not made only by kings and parliaments, presidents, wars, and generals. It is the story of people, of their love, honor, faith, hope and suffering; of birth and death, of hunger, thirst and cold, of loneliness and sorrow.
~ Louis L'Amour ~
2020
Nobody sings a love song quite like you do
Oh, and nobody else can make me sing along
Nobody else can make me feel things are right
When I know they're wrong,
Nobody sings a love song quite like you.
…
Sing your song sweet music man, I believe in you.
~ Kenny Rogers ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard of his recent death.
2021
Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.
~ Louis L'Amour ~
2022
In its Order, which has binding effect, the Court indicates the following provisional measures: ... The Russian Federation shall immediately suspend the military operations that it commenced on 24 February 2022 in the territory of Ukraine ... The Russian Federation shall ensure that any military or irregular armed units which may be directed or supported by it, as well as any organizations and persons which may be subject to its control or direction, take no steps in furtherance of the military operations referred to ... Both Parties shall refrain from any action which might aggravate or extend the dispute before the Court or make it more difficult to resolve.
~ International Court of Justice ~
2023
How much of what we do is free will, and how much is programmed in our genes? Why is each people so narrow that it believes that it, and it alone, has all the answers?
In religion, is there but one road to salvation? Or are there many, all equally good, all going in the same general direction?
I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn.
~ Louis L'Amour ~
2024
Most Americans, in their sweet innocence, think that class has to do with money. But a glance at Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley will indicate that it has very little to do with money. It has to do with taste and style, and it has to do with the development of those features by acts of character. That was one of my points: to try to separate class from mercantilism or commercialism.
~ Paul Fussell ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. ~ Albert Einstein
2005
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. ~ Erich Fromm (born 23 March 1900)
2006
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! ~ Patrick Henry, in a speech to the House of Burgesses (23 March 1775)
2007
No work which is destined to become a classic can look like the classics which have preceded it. In art, as in biology, there is heredity but no identity with the ascendants. Painters inherit characteristics acquired by their forerunners; that is why no important work of art can belong to any period but its own, to the very moment of its creation. It is necessarily dated by its own appearance. The conscious will of the painter cannot intervene. ~ Juan Gris (born 23 March 1887)
2008
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) ~ (For Easter Sunday 2008)
2009
I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for "life" instead of for "death." ~ Erich Fromm
2010
Society must be organized in such a way that man's social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature. ~ Erich Fromm
2011
I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the "growth" of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. ~ Erich Fromm
2012
Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either. ~ Erich Fromm
2013
I believe that if an individual is not on the path to transcending his society and seeing in what way it furthers or impedes the development of human potential, he cannot enter into intimate contact with his humanity.
~ Erich Fromm ~
2014
Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
~ Erich Fromm ~
2015
Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings — the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave — even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem.
~ Akira Kurosawa ~
on
~ Rashomon ~
2016
You could never teach other people anything that mattered. The important things they had to learn for themselves, almost always by making mistakes, so that the lessons arrived too late to help. Experience was in that sense useless. It was precisely what could not be passed along in a lesson or an equation.
~ Kim Stanley Robinson ~
2017
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
~ Erich Fromm ~
2018
Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently.
~ Wernher von Braun ~
2019
Man's life cannot "be lived" by repeating the pattern of his species; he must live. Man is the only animal that can be bored, that can be discontented, that can feel evicted from paradise. Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature; he must proceed to develop his reason until he becomes the master of nature, and of himself.
~ Erich Fromm ~
2020
To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.
~ Erich Fromm ~
2021
One test result is worth one thousand expert opinions.
~ Wernher von Braun ~
2022
How many more lives must be lost?
How many more bombs must fall?
How many Mariupols must be destroyed?
How many Ukrainians and Russians will be killed before everyone realizes that this war has no winners — only losers?
How many more people will have to die in Ukraine, and how many people around the world will have to face hunger for this to stop?
Continuing the war in Ukraine is morally unacceptable, politically indefensible and militarily nonsensical.
What I said from this podium almost one month ago should be even more evident today.
By any measure — by even the shrewdest calculation — it is time to stop the fighting now and give peace a chance.
It is time to end this absurd war.
~ António Guterres ~
2023
Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism have in common that they offered the atomized individual a new refuge and security. These systems are the culmination of alienation. The individual is made to feel powerless and insignificant, but taught to project all of his human powers into the figure of the leader, the state, the "fatherland," to whom he has to submit and whom he has to worship. He escapes from freedom and into a new idolatry. All the achievements of individuality and reason, from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century are sacrificed on the altars of the new idols. ...built on the most flagrant lies, both with regard to their programs and to their leaders.
~ Erich Fromm ~
in
~ The Sane Society ~
2024
Spinoza formulated the problem of the socially patterned defect very clearly. He says: "Many people are seized by one and the same affect with great consistency. All his senses are so affected by one object that he believes this object to be present even when it is not. If this happens while the person is awake, the person is believed to be insane. … but if the greedy person thinks only of money and possessions, the ambitious one only of fame, one does not think of them as being insane, but only has annoying; generally one has contempt for them. But factually greediness, ambition, and so forth are forms of insanity, although usually one does not think of them as 'illness.'"
These words were written a few hundred years ago; they still hold true, although the defects have been culturally patterned to such an extent now that they are not even generally thought any more to be annoying or contemptible.
~ Erich Fromm ~
in
~ The Sane Society ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. ~ Thomas Paine
2005
Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it. ~ Wilhelm Reich (born 24 March 1897)
2006
With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on. ~ William Morris (born 24 March 1834)
2007
What is humility but truthfulness? There is no real difference. ~ Walter Hilton (died March 24, 1396; date of birth unknown)
2008
I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few. ~ William Morris
2009
Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily... ~ Wilhelm Reich
2010
Love is enough: though the World be a-waning
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.
~ William Morris ~
2011
Almighty Freedom! give my venturous song
The force, the charm that to thy voice belong;
Tis thine to shape my course, to light my way,
To nerve my country with the patriot lay,
To teach all men where all their interest lies,
How rulers may be just and nations wise:
Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant knee,
Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee.
~ Joel Barlow ~
2012
I knew, as everyone knows, that the easiest way to attract a crowd is to let it be known that at a given time and a given place some one is going to attempt something that in the event of failure will mean sudden death. ~ Harry Houdini
2013
Freedom is a mystical truth — Its expressed best in The Brothers Karamazov, the chapter when the Grand Inquisitor confronted the returned Christ. The freedom that Christ gave the world was the freedom of being an individual, in a collectivity, of basing ones life on love, as distinct from power, of seeking the good of others rather than nourishing ones own ego. That was liberation. And the Chief Inquisitor, who speaks for every dictator, every millionaire, every ideologue that's ever been, says we can't have it. Go away. Stay away.
~ Malcolm Muggeridge ~
2014
The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.
~ Wilhelm Reich ~
2015
If "freedom" means, first of all, the responsibility of every individual for the rational determination of his own personal, professional and social existence, then there is no greater fear than that of the establishment of general freedom. Without a thoroughgoing solution of this problem there never will be a peace lasting longer than one or two generations. To solve this problem on a social scale, it will take more thinking, more honesty and decency, more conscientiousness, more economic, social and educational changes in social mass living than all the efforts made in previous and future wars and post-war reconstruction programs taken together.
~ Wilhelm Reich ~
2016
When we estrange ourselves from history we do not enlarge, we diminish ourselves, even as individuals. We subtract from our lives one meaning which they do in fact possess, whether we recognize it or not. We cannot help living in history. We can only fail to be aware of it. If we are to meet, endure, and transcend the trials and defeats of the future — for trials and defeats there are certain to be — it can only be from a point of view which, seeing the future as part of the sweep of history, enables us to establish our place in that immense procession in which is incorporated whatever hope humankind may have.
~ Robert Heilbroner ~
2017
Fascist rebelliousness always occurs where fear of the truth turns a revolutionary emotion into illusions.
In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all irrational reactions of the average human character. To the narrow-minded sociologist who lacks the courage to recognize the enormous role played by the irrational in human history, the fascist race theory appears as nothing but an imperialistic interest or even a mere "prejudice." The violence and the ubiquity of these "race prejudices" show their origin from the irrational part of the human character. The race theory is not a creation of fascism. No: fascism is a creation of race hatred and its politically organized expression.
~ Wilhelm Reich ~
2018
Our schools are unsafe. Our children and teachers are dying. We must make it our top priority to save these lives.
March For Our Lives is created by, inspired by, and led by students across the country who will no longer risk their lives waiting for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass school shootings that has become all too familiar. In the tragic wake of the seventeen lives brutally cut short in Florida, politicians are telling us that now is not the time to talk about guns. March For Our Lives believes the time is now.
~ March For Our Lives ~
2019
Six minutes, and about 20 seconds. In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us, 15 more were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone in the Douglas community was forever altered. Everyone who was there understands. Everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands. … Six minutes and 20 seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice. Aaron Feis would never call Kyra "miss sunshine," Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan, Scott Beigel would never joke around with Cameron at camp, Helena Ramsay would never hang around after school with Max, Gina Montalto would never wave to her friend Liam at lunch, Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan. Alaina Petty would never, Cara Loughren would never, Chris Hixon would never, Luke Hoyer would never, Martin Duque Anguiano would never, Peter Wang would never, Alyssa Alhadeff would never, Jamie Guttenberg would never, Jamie Pollack would never … [long silence] … Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and 20 seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting, and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest. Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job.
~ Emma González ~
2020
First-rate pursuits involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding — inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, a Roosevelt can feel themselves to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, a Blake. Understanding is for ever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention.
~ Malcolm Muggeridge ~
2021
Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.
~ William Morris ~
2022
In early 2000, I became the first senior U.S. official to meet with Vladimir Putin in his new capacity as acting president of Russia. ... I have been reminded in recent months of that nearly three-hour session with Mr. Putin as he has massed troops on the border with neighboring Ukraine. After calling Ukrainian statehood a fiction in a bizarre televised address, he issued a decree recognizing the independence of two separatist-held regions in Ukraine and sending troops there.
Mr. Putin’s revisionist and absurd assertion that Ukraine was “entirely created by Russia” and effectively robbed from the Russian empire is fully in keeping with his warped worldview. Most disturbing to me: It was his attempt to establish the pretext for a full-scale invasion.
Should he invade, it will be a historic error. ... Instead of paving Russia’s path to greatness, invading Ukraine would ensure Mr. Putin’s infamy by leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance. ... Ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty, no matter who its neighbors happen to be. In the modern era, great countries accept that, and so must Mr. Putin.
~ Madeleine Albright ~
2023
The first thing I remember about the world — and I pray that it may be the last — is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which everyone has in some degree, and which is, at once, the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides the only thread of consistency that I can detect in my life.
~ Malcolm Muggeridge ~
2024
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
2005
If those who lead you say, "See, the Kingdom is in the sky", then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, "It is in the sea", then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) (Good Friday for Western Christianity, 25 March 2005)
2006
A wiki works best where you're trying to answer a question that you can't easily pose, where there's not a natural structure that's known in advance to what you need to know. ~ Ward Cunningham (Cunningham started the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, on 25 March 1995.)
2007
I am an Anarchist not because I believe Anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal. ~ Rudolf Rocker
2008
Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution. One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being. ~ Rudolf Rocker
2009
Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity. ~ Rudolf Rocker
2010
We have come more and more under the dominance of mechanics and sacrificed living humanity to the dead rhythm of the machine without most of us even being conscious of the monstrosity of the procedure. Hence we frequently deal with such matters with indifference and in cold blood as if we handled dead things and not the destinies of men. ~ Rudolf Rocker
2011
Our whole evolution has reached a stage where nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of dependence has been greatly strengthened, for a truly free man does not like to play the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action. ~ Rudolf Rocker
2012
Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves. ~ A. J. P. Taylor
2013
Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development.
~ Rudolf Rocker ~
2014
All social phenomena are the result of a series of various causes, in most cases so inwardly related that it is quite impossible clearly to separate one from the other. We are always dealing with the interplay of various causes which, as a rule, can be clearly recognised but cannot be calculated according to scientific methods.
~ Rudolf Rocker ~
2015
This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen, or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.
~ Gloria Steinem ~
2016
Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.
~ Jesus ~
2017
Democracy says that the popular vote can take right away and once taken away the act is sanctioned and upheld by all laws, human and divine. I deny it. I say it is a wrong, however it is perpetuated. Why, mothers. What do you care how you are robbed of your babe? The question is not how it is done, the outrage is that it is done at all. No matter whether it is done by an individual or a conspiracy of many individuals in a community agreeing and concerting according to the forms of law. If the poor babe is torn from your heart, that is the unspeakable wrong. Not the manner in which it is perpetrated.
~ Owen Lovejoy ~
2018
Every process which arises from our physical being and is related to it, is an event which lies outside of our volition. Every social process, however, arises from human intentions and human goal setting and occurs within the limits of our volition. Consequently, it is not subject to the concept of natural necessity. … We are here stating no prejudiced opinion, but merely an established fact. Every result of human purposiveness is of indisputable importance for man's social existence, but we should stop regarding social processes as deterministic manifestations of a necessary course of events. Such a view can only lead to the most erroneous conclusions and contribute to a fatal confusion in our understanding of historical events.
~ Rudolf Rocker ~
2019
Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.
~ Robert Quillen ~
2020
Dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation. In Russia, the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat has not led to Socialism, but to the domination of a new bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole people. … What the Russian autocrats and their supporters fear most is that the success of libertarian Socialism in Spain might prove to their blind followers that the much vaunted "necessity of dictatorship" is nothing but one vast fraud which in Russia has led to the despotism of Stalin and is to serve today in Spain to help the counter-revolution to a victory over the revolution of the workers and the peasants.
~ Rudolf Rocker ~
2021
In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men’s behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction.
~ A. J. P. Taylor ~
2022
Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine represents a fundamental challenge to the values and norms that have brought security and prosperity to all on the European continent. President Putin’s choice to attack Ukraine is a strategic mistake, with grave consequences also for Russia and the Russian people. We remain united and resolute in our determination to oppose Russia’s aggression, aid the government and the people of Ukraine, and defend the security of all Allies.
~ NATO ~
2023
You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.
~ Norman Borlaug ~
2024
Bangladesh, Bangladesh
Where so many people are dying fast
And it sure looks like a mess
I've never seen such distress.
Now won't you lend your hand, try to understand?
Relieve the people of Bangladesh.
~ George Harrison ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. ~ Aldous Huxley
2005
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down. ~ Robert Frost (born 26 March 1874)
2006
He acts without contact,
instructs without meeting,
guides without pointing.
Desires do not conflict with Him,
thoughts do not mingle with Him:
His essence is without qualification,
His action without effort.
~ Mansur al-Hallaj (died 26 March 922)
2007
The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realise that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand. ~ Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941)
2008
People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about. ~ Joseph Campbell (born 26 March 1904)
2009
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~ Robert Frost ~
2010
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
~ Robert Frost ~
2011
In the Name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate, Who manifests Himself through everything, the revelation of a clear knowing to whomsoever He wishes, peace be upon you, my son. This praise belongs to Allah Who manifests Himself on the head of a pin to whom He wishes, so that one testifies that He is not, and another testifies that there is none other than He. But the witnessing in the denying of Him is not rejected, and the witnessing in the affirming of Him is not praised. ~ Mansur Al-Hallaj
2012
Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. ~ Tennessee Williams
2013
The very scientist who, in the service of the sinful king, was the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom. But the hero-heart must be at hand. … Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn. Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
~ Joseph Campbell ~
2014
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
~ Robert Frost ~
2015
It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.
~ Paul Erdős ~
2016
The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.
~ Sterling Hayden ~
2017
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
~ Robert Frost ~
2018
I may have wept that any should have died
Or missed their chance, or not have been their best,
Or been their riches, fame, or love denied;
On me as much as any is the jest.
I take my incompleteness with the rest.
God bless himself can no one else be blessed.

I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori.
And were an epitaph to be my story
I’d have a short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me on my stone:
I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.
~ Robert Frost ~
2019
I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy.
~ Richard Dawkins ~
2020
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. … what I see as I write is that I am lucky to be alive and so are you.
~ Richard Dawkins ~
2021
The word "mundane" has come to mean boring and dull, and it really shouldn't. It should mean the opposite because it comes from the latin mundus, meaning the world, and the world is anything but dull; the world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.
~ Richard Dawkins ~
2022
What you’re engaged in is much more than just whether or not you can alleviate the pain and suffering of the people of Ukraine.
We’re in a new phase — your generation. We’re at an inflection point. About every four or five generations, there comes along a change — a fundamental change takes place. The world ain’t going to be the same — not because of Ukraine, but — not going to be the same 10, 15 years from now in terms of our organizational structures.
So the question is: Who is going to prevail? Are democracies going to prevail ... and the values we share? Or are autocracies going to prevail? And that’s really what’s at stake.
So what you’re doing is consequential — really consequential.
~ Joe Biden ~
2023
And how am I to face the odds
Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
~ A. E. Housman ~
2024
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
~ Robert Frost ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest. ~ Aesop
2005
Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) (Easter in Western Christianity, 27 March 2005)
2006
All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower. ~ Karl Mannheim (born 27 March 1893)
2007
History is a novel written by the people. ~ Alfred de Vigny (born 27 March 1797)
2008
At this point in history when all things which concern man and the structure and elements of history itself are suddenly revealed to us in a new light, it behooves us in our scientific thinking to become masters of the situation, for it is not inconceivable that sooner than we suspect, as has often been the case before in history, this vision may disappear, the opportunity may be lost, and the world will once again present a static, uniform, and inflexible countenance. ~ Karl Mannheim
2009
There’s a good time coming, boys!
A good time coming.
We may not live to see the day,
But earth shall glisten in the ray
Of the good time coming.
Cannon-balls may aid the truth
But thought’s a weapon stronger;
We’ll win our battles by its aid,
Wait a little longer.
~ Charles Mackay ~
2010
Non-evaluative insight into history does not inevitably lead to relativism, but rather to relationism. Knowledge, as seen in the light of the total conception of ideology, is by no means an illusory experience, for ideology in its relational concept is not at all identical with illusion. Knowledge arising out of our experience in actual life situations, though not absolute, is knowledge none the less. ~ Karl Mannheim
2011
Today, there are too many points of view of equal value and prestige, each showing the relativity of the other, to permit us to take any one position and to regard it as impregnable and absolute. Only this socially disorganized intellectual situation makes possible the insight, hidden until now by a generally stable social structure and the practicability of certain traditional norms, that every point of view is particular to a social situation. ~ Karl Mannheim
2012
The smallest effort is not lost,
Each wavelet on the ocean tost
Aids in the ebb-tide or the flow;
Each rain-drop makes some floweret blow;
Each struggle lessens human woe.
~ Charles Mackay ~
2013
It has become extremely questionable whether, in the flux of life, it is a genuinely worthwhile intellectual problem to seek to discover fixed and immutable ideas or absolutes. It is a more worthy intellectual task perhaps to learn to think dynamically and relationally rather than statically. … When the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline, be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions.
~ Karl Mannheim ~
2014
They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hide
The sun’s meridian glow;
The heel of a priest may tread thee down,
And a tyrant work thee woe:
But never a truth has been destroyed;
They may curse it, and call it crime;
Pervert and betray, or slander and slay
Its teachers for a time.
But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run;
And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.
~ Charles Mackay ~
2015
I did not think; I investigated. … It seemed at first a new kind of invisible light. It was clearly something new, something unrecorded.
~ Wilhelm Röntgen ~
2016
Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
~ Jesus ~
  • proposed by Kalki for Easter Sunday in Western Christianity, 27 March 2016.
2017
As long as one does not call his own position into question but regards it as absolute, while interpreting his opponents' ideas as a mere function of the social positions they occupy, the decisive step forward has not yet been taken … the general form of the total conception of ideology is being used by the analyst when he has the courage to subject not just the adversary's point of view but all points of view, including his own, to the ideological analysis.
~ Karl Mannheim ~
2018
The thought of every group is seen as arising out of its life conditions. Thus, it becomes the task of the sociological history of thought to analyse without regard for party biases all the factors in the actually existing social situation which may influence thought. This sociologically oriented history of ideas is destined to provide modern men with a revised view of the whole historical process.
~ Karl Mannheim ~
2019
In our contemporary social and intellectual plight, it is nothing less than shocking to discover that those persons who claim to have discovered an absolute are usually the same people who also pretend to be superior to the rest. To find people in our day attempting to pass off to the world and recommending to others some nostrum of the absolute which they claim to have discovered is merely a sign of the loss of and the need for intellectual and moral certainty, felt by broad sections of the population who are unable to look life in the face.
~ Karl Mannheim ~
2020
The king can drink the best of wine;
So can I:
And has enough when he would dine —
So have I;
He cannot order rain or shine;
Nor can I.
Then, where's the difference — let me see —
Betwixt my lord the king and me?
~ Charles Mackay ~
2021
A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context. Even a god could not formulate a proposition on historical subjects like 2 x 2 = 4, for what is intelligible in history can be formulated only with reference to problems and conceptual constructions which themselves arise in the flux of historical experience.
~ Karl Mannheim ~
2022
A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase a people’s love for liberty. Brutality will never grind down their will to be free. Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia — for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.
We will have a different future — a brighter future rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light, of decency and dignity, of freedom and possibilities.
For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.
God bless you all. And may God defend our freedom.
And may God protect our troops.
~ Joe Biden ~
2023
Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation. Failing in these, it has some madness, to which it is goaded by political or religious causes, or both combined.
~ Charles Mackay ~
2024
You have no enemies, you say?
Alas, my friend, the boast is poor;
He, who has mingled in the fray
Of duty that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done,
You've hit no traitor on the hip,
You've dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You've never turned the wrong to right,
You've been a coward in the fight.
~ Charles Mackay ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
If a man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows. ~ Epictetus
2005
A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice. ~ James Callaghan (recent death)
2006
I'd like just to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs, and had a hell of a time. ~ Buck Owens (recent death)
2007
We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. Be sure that, in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing your love of God... ~ Teresa of Ávila
2008
Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly united with Him in the Mansions very near His presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild and venomous creatures and from this suffering winning merit. So this must not upset us, and we must not abandon the struggle, as the devil tries to make us do. Most of these trials and times of unrest come from the fact that we do not understand ourselves. ~ Teresa of Ávila
2009
I do not understand those terrors which make us cry out, Satan, Satan! when we may say, God, God! and make Satan tremble. Do we not know that he cannot stir without the permission of God? … I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors. ~ Teresa of Ávila
2010
I perceive the world in fragments. It is somewhat like being on a very fast train and getting glimpses of things in strange scales as you pass by. A person can be very, very tiny. And a billboard can make a person very large. You see the corner of a house or you see a bird fly by, and it's all fragmented. Somehow, in painting I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos. I have a very pretentious idea that I want to make life, I want to make sense out of it. The fact that I am doomed to failure that doesnt deter me in the least. ~ Grace Hartigan
2011
I saw an angel close by me, on my left side, in bodily form. This I am not accustomed to see, unless very rarely. Though I have visions of angels frequently, yet I see them only by an intellectual vision, such as I have spoken of before. It was our Lord's will that in this vision I should see the angel in this wise. He was not large, but small of stature, and most beautiful — his face burning, as if he were one of the highest angels, who seem to be all of fire: they must be those whom we call cherubim. ~ Teresa of Ávila
2012
However well equipped our language, it can never be forearmed against all possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact is richer than diction. ~ J. L. Austin
2013
We become obsessed with "truth" when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with "freedom" when discussing conduct … Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.
~ J. L. Austin ~
2014
If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.
~ Daniel Dennett ~
2015
It is love alone that gives worth to all things.
~ Teresa of Ávila ~
2016
Always think of yourself as everyone's servant; look for Christ Our Lord in everyone and you will then have respect and reverence for them all.
~ Teresa of Ávila ~
2017
Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.
~ Teresa of Ávila ~
2018
Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee:
All things pass;
God never changes.
Patience attains
All that it strives for.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.
~ Teresa of Ávila ~
2019
Why should it not be the whole function of a word to denote many things?
~ J. L. Austin ~
2020
Words are not (except in their own little corner) facts or things: we need therefore to prise them off the world, to hold them apart from and against it, so that we can realize their inadequacies and arbitrariness, and can relook at the world without blinkers.
~ J. L. Austin ~
2021
Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.
Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
~ Paul of Tarsus ~
in
~ Epistle to the Galatians ~
2022
Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics. #IStandWithUkraine
~ J. K. Rowling ~
2023
I'm beautiful in my way 'cause God makes no mistakes
I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way
Don't hide yourself in regret, just love yourself, and you're set
I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way.
~ Lady Gaga ~
2024
I will not hesitate to tell my friends when I think they're wrong and to tell my opponents when I think they're right.
~ Joe Lieberman ~


2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit. ~ Peter Ustinov (recent death)
2005
If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted. ~ Eric Idle (born 29 March 1943)
2006
Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way. ~ Stanisław Lem (recent death)
2007
I have been all men known to history,
Wondering at the world and at time passing;
I have seen evil, and the light blessing
Innocent love under a spring sky.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2008
I have known exile and a wild passion
Of longing changing to a cold ache.
King, beggar and fool, I have been all by turns,
Knowing the body’s sweetness, the mind’s treason;
Taliesin still, I show you a new world, risen,
Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart’s need.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2009
On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one."
But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet."
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2010
She is young. Have I the right
Even to name her? Child,
It is not love I offer
Your quick limbs, your eyes;
Only the barren homage
Of an old man whom time
Crucifies.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2011
I am like a tree,
From my top boughs I can see
The footprints that led up to me.
~ R. S. Thomas
2012
Let despair be known
as my ebb-tide; but let prayer
have its springs, too, brimming,
disarming him; discovering somewhere
among his fissures deposits of mercy
where trust may take root and grow.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2013
The power of the imagination is a unifying power, hence the force of metaphor; and the poet is the supreme manipulator of metaphor... the world needs the unifying power of the imagination. The two things that give it best are poetry and religion.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2014
Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enter a dark room.
Windows don't happen.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2015
A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet, the New Testament is metaphor, the Resurrection is a metaphor; and I feel perfectly within my rights in approaching my whole vocation as priest and preacher as one who is to present poetry; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. … My work as a poet has to deal with the presentation of imaginative truth.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2016
Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being … ultimate reality is what we call God.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2017
You have to imagine
a waiting that is not impatient
because it is timeless.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2018
The nearest we approach God … is as creative beings. The poet, by echoing the primary imagination, recreates. Through his work he forces those who read him to do the same, thus bringing them … nearer to the actual being of God as displayed in action.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2019
Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2020
We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who speak for it and support it.
~ Eugene McCarthy ~
2021
The darkness
is the deepening shadow
of your presence; the silence a
process in the metabolism
of the being of love.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2022
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion one month ago, the war has led to the senseless loss of thousands of lives; the displacement of ten million people, mainly women and children; the systematic destruction of essential infrastructure; and skyrocketing food and energy prices worldwide.
This must stop. ... A cessation of hostilities will allow essential humanitarian aid to be delivered and enable civilians to move around safely. It will save lives, prevent suffering, and protect civilians.
~ António Guterres ~
2023
A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history’s overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2024
Sometimes a strange light
shines, purer than the moon,
casting no shadow, that is
the halo upon the bones
of the pioneers who died for truth.
~ R. S. Thomas ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
There's no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day ~ Alexander Woolcott
2005
Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well. ~ Vincent van Gogh (born 30 March 1853)
2006
Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and . . . fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. ~ Archilochus
2007
Accept the truth from whatever source it comes. ~ Maimonides
2008
Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives. ~ Vincent van Gogh (born 30 March 1853)
2009
The best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. ~ Vincent van Gogh
2010
Laughter is wine for the soul – laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness. Comedy and tragedy step through life together, arm in arm, all along, out along, down along lea. A laugh is a great natural stimulator, a pushful entry into life; and once we can laugh, we can live. It is the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living. ~ Seán O'Casey
2011
But my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live. ~ Vincent van Gogh
2012
We are obligated to be more scrupulous in fulfilling the commandment of charity than any other positive commandment because charity is the sign of a righteous man. ~ Maimonides
2013
Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance.
~ Eric Clapton ~
2014
It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.
~ Maimonides ~
2015
The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
~ Vincent van Gogh ~
2016
Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.
~ Vincent van Gogh ~
2017
When I have a difficult subject before me — when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools — I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude; I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace.
~ Maimonides ~
2018
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood —
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
in
~ Four Quartets ~
2019
It's my rule never to lose me temper till it would be dethrimental to keep it.
~ Seán O'Casey ~
2020
Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich man to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.
~ Seán O'Casey ~
2021
The thing has already taken form in my mind before I start it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worthwhile in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real direction and purpose.
~ Vincent Van Gogh ~
2022
I'm sure you saw the news today that the Russian military command allegedly decided to "reduce hostilities in the directions of Kyiv and Chernihiv." ... I am grateful to all our defenders, to all those who ensure the defense of Kyiv. It is their brave and effective actions that force the enemy to retreat in this direction.
However, we should not lose vigilance. The situation has not become easier. The scale of the challenges has not diminished. The Russian army still has significant potential to continue attacks against our state. They still have a lot of equipment and enough people completely deprived of rights whom they can send to the cauldron of war.
Therefore, we stay alert and do not reduce our defense efforts.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil. As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.
~ Vincent van Gogh ~
2024
It is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.
~ Vincent van Gogh ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…
2004
The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder. ~ Æschylus
2005
Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks he is so well supplied with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters never desire more of it than they already possess. ~ René Descartes (born 31 March 1596)
2006
When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So, it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. ~ Cesar Chavez (born 31 March 1927)
2007
So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there. … I do not deny that sometimes in these wanderings they are lucky enough to find something true. But I do not allow that this argues greater industry on their part, but only better luck. ~ René Descartes
2008
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
~ Andrew Marvell ~
2009
Cogito ergo sum
I think, therefore I am.
~ René Descartes ~
2010
History will judge societies and governments — and their institutions — not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless. ~ Cesar Chavez
2011

Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrranic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant Poles have placed
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.

As lines (so loves) oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
~ Andrew Marvell ~

2012
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. ~ René Descartes
2013
I tell you this, that you will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf — kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now.
~ "Sunday" ~
in
The Man Who Was Thursday
by
~ G. K. Chesterton ~
2014
Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary.
~ Octavio Paz ~
2015
Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.
~ Leo Buscaglia ~
2016
I don't want to talk about the texts or the class. We can do that another time. I just want to know the last time you saw a unicorn and do you still believe in primeval forests.
~ Leo Buscaglia ~
2017
Everything free and decent in life is being locked away in filthy little cellars by beastly people who don’t care.
~ John Fowles ~
2018
I don’t think the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has much chance of actually affecting the government. It’s one of the first things you have to face up to. But we do it to keep our self-respect to show to ourselves, each one to himself or herself, that we care. And to let other people, all the lazy, sulky, hopeless ones like you, know that someone cares. We’re trying to shame you into thinking about it, about acting.
~ John Fowles ~
2019
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
~ Octavio Paz ~
2020
We have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women, and children have suffered not only the basic brutality of stoop labor, and the most obvious injustices of the system; they have also suffered the desperation of knowing that the system caters to the greed of callous men and not to our needs. Now we will suffer for the purpose of ending the poverty, the misery, and the injustice, with the hope that our children will not be exploited as we have been. They have imposed hunger on us, and now we hunger for justice. We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.
~ Cesar Chavez ~
2021
One does not fall "in" or "out" of love. One grows in love.
~ Leo Buscaglia ~
2022
The war continues. Russia is sending new forces to our land to continue to destroy us, to destroy Ukrainians. We must do more to stop the war!
The first and most important thing is weapons. Freedom must be armed no worse than tyranny.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
~ René Descartes ~
in
~ Discourse on the Method ~
2024
My spirit to yours dear brother,
Do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you,
I do not sound your name, but I understand you,
I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you, and to salute those who are with you, before and since, and those to come also,
That we all labor together transmitting the same charge and succession,
We few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times,
We, enclosers of all continents, all castes, allowers of all theologies,
Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men,
We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers nor any thing that is asserted,
We hear the bawling and din, we are reach'd at by divisions, jealousies, recriminations on every side,
They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade,
Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras,
Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races, ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are.
~ Walt Whitman ~
in
~ Leaves of Grass ~
  • proposed by Kalki; "To Him That Was Crucified" in regard to Easter Sunday 2024.
2025
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