Wikiquote:Quote of the day/March 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 ~
Rights may be universal, but their enforcement must be local.
~ Murray Rothbard ~
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 ~
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 ~
All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
~ Zhou Enlai ~
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.
~ Michelangelo ~
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
~ Aristotle ~
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 ~
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 ~
Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.
~ Anonymous ~
We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying.
~ Douglas Adams ~
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 ~
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 ~
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.
Alone he rides, alone,
The fair and fatal king:
Dark night is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing.
~ Lionel Johnson ~
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 ~
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 ~
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 ~
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 ~
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.
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 ~
'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 ~
Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
~ Erich Fromm ~
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 ~
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 ~
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.
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 ~
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 ~
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 ~
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 ~
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 ~