Wikiquote:Quote of the day/November 2024

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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 12:34 (UTC)

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November 1

Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach;
Once we have left it, we can never return.

~ Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux ~

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November 2

I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.

~ Stephen Grellet ~

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November 3

The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves … is what I call hell.

~ André Malraux ~

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November 4

The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone.

~ Laura Welch Bush ~

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November 5

I find a rapture linked with each despair,
Well worth the price of anguish. I detect
More good than evil in humanity.
Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes,
And men grow better as the world grows old.

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox ~

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November 6

We have a great many politicians in the country, perhaps as many as the country requires. I should not wish to ask for a larger supply of these; but there is a wide difference between the politician and the statesman. A politician, for example, is a man who thinks of the next election; while the statesman thinks of the next generation. The politician thinks of the success of his party, the statesman of the good of his country. The politician wishes to carry this or that measure, the statesman to establish this or the other principle. Finally, the statesman wishes to steer; while the politician is contented to drift.
The difficulty about a politician, no matter how honest and well-intentioned he may be, is always this: that the matter of absolute importance in his mind, to which every thing else must yield, is to carry the next election for his party.

~ James Freeman Clarke ~

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November 7

A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny. And anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. At the same time, in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God. My allegiance to all three is why I am here to say, while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign — the fight: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people. A fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best. That is a fight I will never give up.

~ Kamala Harris ~

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November 8

This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before and, frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time — there's never been anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond, and now it's going to reach a new level of importance because we're going to help our country heal. We're going to help our country heal. We have a country that needs help, and it needs help very badly. We're going to fix our borders, we're going to fix everything about our country and we've made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that.

~ Donald Trump ~

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November 9

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life… There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

~ Carl Sagan ~

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November 10

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

~ Neil Gaiman ~

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November 11

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

~ Kurt Vonnegut ~

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November 12

Once you have acquired the skills, you must test them on an opponent, but in no way should you consider victory or submission to be a cause for shame or pride. Rather, you ought to think, "By what means did I defeat him?" Or, "By what means could I have defeated him?" Then you exert and test yourself for a while.

~ Qi Jiguang ~

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November 13

Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.

~ Augustine of Hippo ~

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November 14

You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.

~ Jawaharlal Nehru ~

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November 15

To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.

~ Daniel Barenboim ~

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November 16

Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical, stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth. We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if that beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and that all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarled to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skien, or indeed, if we may be permitted on more stock phrase, in the skien of life. … These are the delusions of the pure and unprepared, the beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man, the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless.

~ José Saramago ~

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November 17

Many people dream of success. To me success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents the 1% of your work which results only from the 99% that is called failure.

~ Soichiro Honda ~

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November 18

While we labour to subdue our passions, we should take care not to extinguish them. Subduing our passions, is disengaging ourselves from the world; to which however, Whilst we reside in it, we must always bear relation; and we may detach ourselves to such a degree as to pass an useless and insipid life, which we were not meant to do. Our existence here is at least one part of a system.
A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.

~ William Shenstone ~

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November 19

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?

~ Dick Cavett ~

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November 20

There is a Chinese curse which says, "May he live in interesting times.” Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. And everyone here will ultimately be judged — will ultimately judge himself — on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

~ Robert F. Kennedy ~

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November 21

Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.

~ Voltaire ~

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November 22

The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness.

~ André Gide ~

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November 23

Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.

~ Alfonso X of Castile ~

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November 24

Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.

~ Baruch Spinoza ~
in
~ Ethics ~

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November 25

Every town in China should establish a museum about the Cultural Revolution.

~ Ba Jin ~

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November 26

You know, the Cathars believed that the world was not created by God but by a demon who had stolen a few technological secrets from Him and made this world — which is why it doesn’t work. I don’t share this heresy. I’m too afraid! But I put it in a play called This Extraordinary Brothel, in which the protagonist doesn’t talk at all. There is a revolution, everybody kills everybody else, and he doesn’t understand. But at the very end, he speaks for the first time. He points his finger towards the sky and shakes it at God, saying, “You rogue! You little rogue!” and he bursts out laughing. He understands that the world is an enormous farce, a canular played by God against man, and that he has to play God’s game and laugh about it.

~ Eugène Ionesco ~

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November 27

Don't fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

~ Bruce Lee ~

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November 28

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

~ William Blake ~

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November 29

If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not.

~ C. S. Lewis ~
in
~ Prince Caspian ~

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November 30

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

~ Mark Twain ~

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Today is Saturday, December 21, 2024; it is now 12:34 (UTC)