Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 2013

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May 1

Gǣð ā Wyrd swā hīo scel!
Fate goes ever as it must.

~ Beowulf ~

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May 2

Moral Action is that great and only Experiment, in which all riddles of the most manifold appearances explain themselves. Whoso understands it, and in rigid sequence of Thought can lay it open, is forever master of Nature.

~ Novalis ~

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May 3

It's up to you whether or not you want to do work with no contract. I think artists do need to do work with no contract, because what we're motivated by is not money. We're motivated by a need to express ourselves and to get our ideas out. That's the motivation. It turns out that when people like it they frequently will support you if you give them a means, but this is not a contract.

~ Nina Paley ~

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May 4

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.

~ T. H. Huxley ~

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May 5

Sin is in itself separation from the good, but despair over sin is separation a second time.

~ Søren Kierkegaard ~

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May 6

They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.

~ Nathaniel Lee ~

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May 7

We live in a world changing so rapidly that what we mean frequently by common sense is doing the thing that would have been right last year.

~ Edwin H. Land ~

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May 8

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

~ Friedrich Hayek ~

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May 9

When a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies.

~ J. M. Barrie ~

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May 10

It seemed — in 1968 — the possibilities of peace and brotherhood could be realised that very year. We're still working on it.

~ Donovan ~

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May 11

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. ... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.

~ Richard Feynman ~

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May 12

Ignorance is not bliss — it is oblivion. Determined ignorance is the hastiest kind of oblivion.

~ Philip Wylie ~

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May 13

Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream. Essence dreams it a dream of form. Forms pass, but the essence remains, dreaming new dreams. Man names these dreams and thinks to have captured the essence, not knowing that he invokes the unreal. These stones, these walls, these bodies you see seated about you are poppies and water and the sun. They are the dreams of the Nameless.

~ Roger Zelazny ~
in
~ Lord of Light ~

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May 14

The great wheel of Fate rolls on like a Juggernaut, and crushes us all in turn, some soon, some late.

~ H. Rider Haggard ~

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May 15

I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts.

~ L. Frank Baum ~

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May 16

Religion is a great force — the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours. Instead of facing that fact, you persist in trying to convert all men to your own little sect, so that you can use it against them afterwards. You are all missionaries and proselytizers trying to uproot the native religion from your neighbor's flowerbeds and plant your own in its place. You would rather let a child perish in ignorance than have it taught by a rival sectary.

~ George Bernard Shaw ~

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May 17

Music is like a mirror in front of you. You're exposing everything, but surely that's better than suppressing. ... You have to dig deep and that can be hard for anybody, no matter what profession. I feel that I need to actually push myself to the limit to feel happy with the end result.

~ Enya ~

File:Enyasweet.jpg

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May 18

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.

~ Bertrand Russell ~

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May 19

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.

~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte ~

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May 20

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

~ Honoré de Balzac ~

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May 21

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

~ Alexander Pope ~

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May 22

I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle ~
in
~The Adventure of the Three Gables ~

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May 23

the greatest
Grace
we can aspire to
is the strength
to see the wounded
walk with the forgotten
and pull ourselves
from the screaming
blood of our losses
to fight on
undaunted
all the more

~ Jewel ~

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May 24

Peace is an awareness of reserves from beyond ourselves, so that our power is not so much in us as through us. Peace is the gift, not of volitional struggle, but of spiritual hospitality.

~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~

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May 25

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

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May 26

I was frustrated that computer hardware was being improved faster than computer software. I wanted to invent some software that was completely different, that would grow and change as it was used. That’s how wiki came about.

~ Ward Cunningham ~

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May 27

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

~ Henry Kissinger ~

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May 28

I feel that in my own life anything I have done of possible worth has happened in spite of my gross, worldly self. I have been no more than the vessel used to convey ideas above my intellectual capacities. When people praise passages I have written, more often than not I can genuinely say, "Did I write that?" I don't think this is due to my having a bad memory, because I have almost total recall of trivialities. I see it as evidence of the part the supernatural plays in lives which would otherwise remain earthbound.

~ Patrick White ~

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May 29

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.

~ John F. Kennedy ~

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May 30

What all other men are is of the greatest importance to me. However independent I may imagine myself to be, however far removed I may appear from mundane considerations by my social status, I am enslaved to the misery of the meanest member of society.

~ Mikhail Bakunin ~

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May 31

Our problem is to become acquainted with our own selves, letting our personalities loose upon the world for the sheer adventure of their full development and in the positive hope that they may in their own way lift the level of humanity.

~ Norman Vincent Peale ~

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Today is Thursday, November 21, 2024; it is now 10:28 (UTC)