Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 2012
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Today is Thursday, December 26, 2024; it is now 11:46 (UTC)
Since once again, O Lord, in the steppes of Asia, I have no bread, no wine, no altar, I will raise myself above those symbols to the pure majesty of reality, and I will offer to you, I, your priest, upon the altar of the entire earth, the labor and the suffering of the world. |
True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of every positive element she lifts her gloriously radiant countenance as the founder of a new world… ~ Novalis ~ |
Few men are brave by nature, but good discipline and experience make many so. |
Veracity is the heart of morality. ~ T. H. Huxley ~ |
You cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you. |
| Man found that he was faced with the acceptance of "spiritual" forces, that is to say such forces as cannot be comprehended by the senses, particularly not by sight, and yet having undoubted, even extremely strong, effects. If we may trust to language, it was the movement of the air that provided the image of spirituality, since the spirit borrows its name from the breath of wind (animus, spiritus, Hebrew: ruach = smoke). The idea of the soul was thus born as the spiritual principle in the individual. Observation found the breath of air again in the human breath, which ceases with death; even today we talk of a dying man breathing his last. Now the realm of spirits had opened for man, and he was ready to endow everything in nature with the soul he had discovered in himself. |
| ~ Sigmund Freud ~ |
| The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress. |
| ~ Joseph Joubert ~ |
| He had decided long ago that no Situation had any objective reality: it only existed in the minds of those who happened to be in on it at any specific moment. … The only consolation he drew from the present chaos was that his theory managed to explain it. |
| ~ Thomas Pynchon ~ |
| Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world. |
| ~ José Ortega y Gasset ~ |
| The most important of my achievements, if you want to call them that, was that I successfully introduced mystical ideas into pop culture, … I wanted to save our culture from the stupidity and the bigotry and the ignorance that threatened it. |
| ~ Donovan ~ |
| Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there. |
| ~ Richard Feynman ~ |
| A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim. |
| ~ L. Neil Smith ~ |
| The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. |
| ~ Roger Zelazny ~ in ~ Lord of Light ~ |
| What we're striving for is total freedom, where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, release them where we want them released and be completely free to express ourselves. That's very hard to do in the world of business. In this country, the only thing that speaks is money and you have to have the money in order to have the power to be free. So the danger is — in being as oppressive as the next guy to the people below you. We're going to do everything possible to avoid that pitfall. |
| ~ George Lucas ~ |
| To be individual, my friends, to be different from others, is the only way to become distinguished from the common herd. Let us be glad, therefore, that we differ from one another in form and in disposition. Variety is the spice of life, and we are various enough to enjoy one another's society; so let us be content. |
| ~ L. Frank Baum ~ |
| Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination? |
| ~ George Bernard Shaw ~ |
| Affection is the greatest of human feelings because it is made of respect, of lucidity, and light. To understand the truth and make one's self equal to it is everything; and to love is the same thing as to know and to understand. Affection, which I call also compassion, because I see no difference between them, dominates everything by reason of its clear sight. It is a sentiment as immense as if it were mad, and yet it is wise, and of human things it is the only perfect one. There is no great sentiment which is not completely held on the arms of compassion. |
| ~ Henri Barbusse ~ |
| Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever. |
| ~ Bertrand Russell ~ |
| I have found out that the real essentials of greatness in men are not written in books, nor can they be found in the schools, They are written into the inner consciousness of everyone who intensely searches for perfection in creative achievement and are understandable to such men only. |
| ~ Walter Russell ~ |
| To saunter is to enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions. |
| ~ Honoré de Balzac ~ |
| Trust not your self; but your Defects to know, Make use of ev'ry Friend — and ev'ry Foe. |
| ~ Alexander Pope ~ |
| I will make my meaning more clear when I say that I think right and wrong are both tools which are being wielded by those great hands which are shaping the destinies of the universe, that both are making for improvement; but that the action of the one is immediate, and that of the other more slow, but none the less certain. Our own distinction of right and wrong is founded too much upon the immediate convenience of the community, and does not inquire sufficiently deeply into the ultimate effect. |
| ~ Arthur Conan Doyle ~ |
| The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart. |
| ~ Margaret Fuller ~ |
| Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us. |
| ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~ |
| The less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual. |
| ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~ |
| Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they're defending us against the Mongols? |
| ~ Edward Whittemore ~ |
| My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration and ignoble deaths; that there is security in personal strength; that you can fight City Hall and win; that any action is better than no action, even if it's the wrong action; that you never reach glory or self-fulfillment unless you're willing to risk everything, dare anything, put yourself dead on the line every time; and that once one becomes strong or rich or potent or powerful it is the responsibility of the strong to help the weak become strong. |
| ~ Harlan Ellison ~ |
| Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone’s finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair? |
| ~ Walker Percy ~ |
| I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea. |
| ~ G. K. Chesterton ~ |
| Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations. Thus the individual, his freedom and reason, are the products of society, and not vice versa: society is not the product of individuals comprising it; and the higher, the more fully the individual is developed, the greater his freedom — and the more he is the product of society, the more does he receive from society and the greater his debt to it. |
| ~ Mikhail Bakunin ~ |
| Magnifying and applying come I, Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah, Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson, Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha, In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved, With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image, Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more, Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days, (They bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,) Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see… |
| ~ Walt Whitman ~ in ~ Song of Myself ~ |
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Today is Thursday, December 26, 2024; it is now 11:46 (UTC)