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Wikiquote:Quote of the day/October 2014

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Today is Friday, December 13, 2024; it is now 18:49 (UTC)


October 1
 

We live in a time of transition, an uneasy era which is likely to endure for the rest of this century. During the period we may be tempted to abandon some of the time-honored principles and commitments which have been proven during the difficult times of past generations. We must never yield to this temptation. Our American values are not luxuries, but necessities — not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself.

~ Jimmy Carter ~

 

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October 2
 

I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.

~ Mahatma Gandhi ~

 

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October 3


 


TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I’ve ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.

~ John Perry Barlow ~


 


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October 4

 

Buster survives tornados, waterfalls, avalanches of boulders, and falls from great heights, and never pauses to take a bow: He has his eye on his goal. And his movies, seen as a group, are like a sustained act of optimism in the face of adversity; surprising, how without asking, he earns our admiration and tenderness.
Because he was funny, because he wore a porkpie hat, Keaton's physical skills are often undervalued … no silent star did more dangerous stunts than Buster Keaton. Instead of using doubles, he himself doubled for his actors, doing their stunts as well as his own.

~ Roger Ebert ~

 

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October 5
 

The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.

~ Václav Havel ~

 

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October 6
 

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

~ David Brin ~

 

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October 7
 

I feel very much like Dirac: the idea of a personal God is foreign to me. But we ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science. True, we are inclined to think that science deals with information about objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far.

~ Niels Bohr ~


 


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October 8


 

Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.

~ John Cowper Powys ~

 


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October 9

 

We all been playing those mind games forever
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil.
Doing the mind guerrilla,
Some call it magic — the search for the grail.
Love is the answer and you know that for sure.
Love is a flower, you got to let it — you got to let it grow.

~ John Lennon ~

 

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October 10

 

To think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral down into ever-increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that disciplinetraining — is about.

~ James Clavell ~



  File:Origami (2).jpg

File:Laika ac Children's Peace Monument (8630587062).jpg

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October 11

 

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." ... You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~


 

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October 12

 

The cause of human sectarianism is not lack of sympathy in thought, but in speech; and this it is our not unambitious design to remedy.

~ Aleister Crowley ~





 

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October 13


 


Far above the golden clouds, the darkness vibrates.
The earth is blue.
And everything about it is a love song.
Everything about it.

~ Paul Simon ~

 


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October 14
 


Love is indeed Heaven upon Earth; since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not Love, there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear.

~ William Penn ~

 

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October 15
 

Omnia vincit Amor et nos cedamus Amori.
Love conquers all and we must yield to Love.

~ Virgil ~

 

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October 16
 

Supposing I was to tell you that it's just Beauty that's calling me, the beauty of the far off and unknown, the mystery and spell of the East which lures me in the books I've read, the need of the freedom of great wide spaces, the joy of wandering on and on — in quest of the secret which is hidden over there, beyond the horizon?

~ Eugene O'Neill ~

 

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October 17
 

The philosopher places himself at the summit of thought; from there he views what the world has been and what it must become. He is not just an observer, he is an actor; he is an actor of the highest kind in a moral world because it is his opinion of what the world must become that regulates society.

~ Henri de Saint-Simon ~

 

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October 18

 


Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

~ Herman Melville ~
in
~ Moby-Dick ~

 

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October 19

 

The severe Schools shall never laugh me out of the Philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible.

~ Thomas Browne ~

 

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October 20

 

The revelation of the Divine Reality hath everlastingly been identical with its concealment and its concealment identical with its revelation. That which is intended by "Revelation of God" is the Tree of divine Truth that betokeneth none but Him, and it is this divine Tree that hath raised and will raise up Messengers, and hath revealed and will ever reveal Scriptures. From eternity unto eternity this Tree of divine Truth hath served and will ever serve as the throne of the revelation and concealment of God among His creatures, and in every age is made manifest through whomsoever He pleaseth.

~ The Báb ~

 

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October 21
 


If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~


 

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October 22


 

Diwali is celebrated on the darkest night of the year when the necessity and the beauty of lights can be truly appreciated. Light is a symbol in the world's religions for God, truth and wisdom.
Given the antiquity of India, the diversity of its religious traditions and the interaction among these, it should not surprise us to know that many religious communities celebrate Diwali. Each one offers a distinctive reason for the celebration that enriches its meaning. For every community, however, Diwali celebrates and affirms hope, and the triumph of goodness and justice over evil and injustice. These values define the meaning of Diwali.

~ Anantanand Rambachan ~

 

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October 23


 

It is always darkest before the dawn.

~ Anonymous ~

 

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October 24
 

Perhaps he will not return.
                                            But what we have lived
comes back to us.
                        We see more.
                                                We feel, as our rings increase,
something that lifts our branches, that stretches our furthest
                                                                                                    leaf-tips
further.

~ Denise Levertov ~

 

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October 25
 

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods,
And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus
That wrought the deed of shame?"

~ Thomas Babington Macaulay ~

 

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October 26
 

these days you might feel a shaft of light
make its way across your face
and when you do
you'll know how it was meant to be
see the signs and know their meaning

~ Natalie Merchant ~

 

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October 27
 

Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

~ Dylan Thomas ~

 

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October 28

 

I do what I feel impelled to do, as an artist would. Scientists function in the same way. I see all these as creative activities, as all part of the process of discovery. Perhaps that's one of the characteristics of what I call the evolvers, any subset of the population who keep things moving in a positive, creative, constructive way, revealing the truth and beauty that exists in life and in nature.

~ Jonas Salk ~
 

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October 29

 

I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.

~ Alfred Jules Ayer ~


      

 


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October 30

 

There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks.

~ Joan Robinson ~

 

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October 31


 

On Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch, then flies through the air to bring toys to all the good little children everywhere. Wouldn't you like to sit with me in the pumpkin patch on Halloween night and wait for the Great Pumpkin?

~ Charles M. Schulz ~
in
~ It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown ~

 


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Today is Friday, December 13, 2024; it is now 18:49 (UTC)