Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 2014

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May 1

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ~

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May 2

Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.

~ Novalis ~

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May 3

It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers — not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell.

~ Steven Weinberg ~

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May 4

For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.

~ T. H. Huxley ~

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May 5

Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.

~ Christopher Morley ~

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May 6

Faith is more basic than language or theology. Faith is the response to something which is calling us from the timeless part of our reality. Faith may be encouraged by what has happened in the past, or what is thought to have happened in the past, but the only proof of it is in the future. Scriptures and creeds may come to seem incredible, but faith will still go dancing on. Even though (because it rejects a doctrine) it is now described as "doubt". This, I believe, is the kind of faith that Christ commended.

~ Sydney Carter ~

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May 7

All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit — the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth of life in history.

~ Rabindranath Tagore ~

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May 8

The growth of the human mind is part of the growth of civilization; it is the state of civilization at any given moment that determines the scope and possibilities of human ends and values. The mind can never foresee its own advance.

~ Friedrich Hayek ~

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May 9

Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being.

~ José Ortega y Gasset ~

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May 10

Our Yes towards life from the very beginning carries within it the Divine No which breaks forth from the antithesis and points away from what now was the thesis to the original and final synthesis. The No is not the last and highest truth, but the call from home which comes in answer to our asking for God in the world.

~ Karl Barth ~

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May 11

Conquering evil, not the opponent, is the essence of swordsmanship.

~ Yagyū Munenori ~

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May 12

File:Newwold.jpg

Education is not a function of any church — or even of a city — or a state; it is a function of all mankind.

~ Philip Wylie ~

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May 13

Charity keepeth us in Faith and Hope, and Hope leadeth us in Charity. And in the end all shall be Charity.

~ Julian of Norwich ~

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May 14

Remember, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware: Anger, fear, aggression — the dark side, are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

~ George Lucas ~
in
~ Star Wars Episode VI : Return of the Jedi ~

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May 15

Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.

~ L. Frank Baum ~

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May 16

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

~ George Bernard Shaw ~
in
~ Man and Superman ~

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May 17

Is there not glory enough in living the days given to us? You should know there is adventure in simply being among those we love and the things we love, and beauty, too.

~ Lloyd Alexander ~

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May 18

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

~ Bertrand Russell ~

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May 19

Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your — your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action.

~ Malcolm X ~

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May 20

There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure only as its final act. It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully resisted by violence. It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions and social structure are changing in consequence. It promises a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. Its ultimate creation will be a new and enduring wholeness and beauty — a renewed relationship of man to himself, to other men, to society, to nature, and to the land.
This is the revolution of the new generation.

~ Charles A. Reich ~

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May 21

The environment of human life has changed more rapidly and more extensively in recent years than it has ever changed before. When environment changes, there must be a corresponding change in life. That change must be so great that it is not likely to be completed in a decade or in a generation.

~ Charles Lindbergh ~

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May 22

My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle ~

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May 23

Mercury has cast aside
The signs of intellectual pride,
Freely offers thee the soul:
Art thou noble to receive?
Canst thou give or take the whole,
Nobly promise and believe?
Then thou wholly human art,
A spotless, radiant, ruby heart,
And the golden chain of love
Has bound thee to the realm above.

~ Margaret Fuller ~

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May 24

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth.

~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~

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May 25

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

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May 26

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 ~

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May 27

File:Pesadilla (8189437215).jpg

I am anti-entropy. My work is foursquare for chaos. I spend my life personally, and my work professionally, keeping the soup boiling. Gadfly is what they call you when you are no longer dangerous; I much prefer troublemaker, malcontent, desperado. I see myself as a combination of Zorro and Jiminy Cricket. My stories go out from here and raise hell. From time to time some denigrator or critic with umbrage will say of my work, "He only wrote that to shock." I smile and nod. Precisely.

~ Harlan Ellison ~

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May 28

People will forget what you said
People will forget what you did
But people will never forget how you made them feel.

~ Maya Angelou ~

I enjoy decoration. By accumulating this mass of detail you throw light on things in a longer sense: in the long run it all adds up. It creates a texture — how shall I put it — a background, a period, which makes everything you write that much more convincing. Of course, all artists are terrible egoists. Unconsciously you are largely writing about yourself. I could never write anything factual; I only have confidence in myself when I am another character. All the characters in my books are myself, but they are a kind of disguise.

~ Patrick White ~

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May 29

File:Anonymous (2013) by anonymous.tif

The one thing that can never be told is the last notion of the President, for his notions grow like a tropical forest. So in case you don't know, I'd better tell you that he is carrying out his notion of concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the most extraordinary lengths just now. … He said that if you didn't seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out. Well, he is the only man on earth, I know; but sometimes I really think that his huge brain is going a little mad in its old age. For now we flaunt ourselves before the public. … They say we are a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they are anarchists.

~ G. K. Chesterton ~
in
~ The Man Who Was Thursday ~

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May 30

A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well — in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.

~ Mikhail Bakunin ~

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May 31

All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
The words of true poems do not merely please,
The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters of beauty;
The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers,
The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.

~ Walt Whitman ~
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~ Song of the Answerer ~

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Today is Tuesday, December 3, 2024; it is now 17:42 (UTC)