Wikiquote:Quote of the day/September 2016

From Wikiquote
Jump to navigation Jump to search
QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
<– Last Month · This Month –>

Today is Tuesday, March 19, 2024; it is now 10:22 (UTC)


September 1
 
As he had grown older, he found that he had grown away from his people. Their interests and his were far removed. They had not kept pace with him, nor could they understand aught of the many strange and wonderful dreams that passed through the active brain of their human king. So limited was their vocabulary that Tarzan could not even talk with them of the many new truths, and the great fields of thought that his reading had opened up before his longing eyes, or make known ambitions which stirred his soul.
Among the tribe he no longer had friends as of old. A little child may find companionship in many strange and simple creatures, but to a grown man there must be some semblance of equality in intellect as the basis for agreeable association.
~ Edgar Rice Burroughs ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 2
 
Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum: it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other. Within the compass of five generations we find the Puritan first an uncompromising believer in demonology and magic, and then a scoffer at everything involving the play of fancy.
~ Eugene Field ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 3
 
An architect, to be a true exponent of his time, must possess first, last and always the sympathy, the intuition of a poet … this is the one real, vital principle that survives through all places and all times.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 4
 
I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?
~ Saint Teresa of Calcutta ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 5
 
While no tradition coincides with experience, every tradition is essentially unique and valuable. While all traditions are of value, none is finally binding.
~ Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 6
 
Liberty means, not the mere voting at elections, but the free and fearless exercise of the mental faculties, and that self-possession which springs out of well-reasoned opinions and consistent practice.
~ Frances Wright ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 7
 
When a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry. The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity. They stimulate their people’s natural fear of all other men by channeling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors. This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide.
~ Taylor Caldwell ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 8
 

When you’re a charmer
the world applauds
they don’t know that secretly charmers
feel like they’re frauds

When you’re a charmer
you hate yourself
a victim of sideshow hypnosis
like everyone else.

~ Aimee Mann ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 9
 
The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.
~ Leo Tolstoy ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 10
 
For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.
~ Franz Werfel ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 11
 
Terrorists will never be able to defeat the United States. Their only hope is to terrorize us into changing who we are or our way of life. That’s why we Americans will never give in to fear. And it’s why this weekend we remember the true spirit of 9/11. We’re still the America of heroes who ran into harm’s way; of ordinary folks who took down the hijackers; of families who turned their pain into hope. We are still the America that looks out for one another, bound by our shared belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.
In the face of terrorism, how we respond matters. We cannot give in to those who would divide us. We cannot react in ways that erode the fabric of our society. Because it’s our diversity, our welcoming of all talent, our treating of everybody fairly — no matter their race, gender, ethnicity, or faith — that’s part of what makes our country great. It’s what makes us resilient. And if we stay true to those values, we’ll uphold the legacy of those we’ve lost, and keep our nation strong and free.
God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.
~ Barack Obama ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 12
 
Like it or not, we have placed our destiny in the hands of the experts. A politician is, after all, a kind of expert, if self-styled. Even the fact that competent experts must serve under politicians of mediocre intelligence and little foresight is a problem that we are stuck with, because the experts themselves cannot agree on any major world issue. A logocracy of quarreling experts might be no better than the rule of the mediocrities to which we are subject. The declining intellectual quality of political leadership is the result of the growing complexity of the world. Since no one, be he endowed with the highest wisdom, can grasp it in its entirety, it is those who are least bothered by this who strive for power.
~ Stanisław Lem ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 13
 
The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist's imaginative life there is purpose. There is determination to give the tale, the song, the painting, form — to make it true and real to the theme, not to life. Often the better the job is done, the greater the confusion. … The confusion arises out of the fact that others besides practicing artists have imaginations. But most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.
~ Sherwood Anderson ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 14
 
Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify. Some people have easy temperaments and weak characters; others have difficult temperaments and strong characters.
We are all prone to confuse the two in assessing people we associate with. Those with easy temperaments and weak characters are more likable than admirable; those with difficult temperaments and strong characters are more admirable than likable. Of course, the optimum for a person is to possess both an easy temperament and a strong character, but this is a rare combination, and few of us are that lucky.
~ Sydney J. Harris ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 15
 
The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management, instead of manifesting the frank, fearless qualities of the democracy he so prodigally professes.
The man who maintains the rights of the people on pure grounds, may be distinguished from the demagogue by the reverse of all these qualities. He does not flatter the people, even while he defends them, for he knows that flattery is a corrupting and dangerous poison. Having nothing to conceal, he is frank and fearless, as are all men with the consciousness of right motives. He oftener chides than commends, for power needs reproof and can dispense with praise.
He who would be a courtier under a king, is almost certain to be a demagogue in a democracy.
~ James Fenimore Cooper ~
in
~ The American Democrat ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 16
 
Heart of my heart, we are one with the wind,
One with the clouds that are whirled o'er the lea,
One in many, O broken and blind,
One as the waves are at one with the sea!
Ay! when life seems scattered apart,
Darkens, ends as a tale that is told,
One, we are one, O heart of my heart,
One, still one, while the world grows old.
~ Alfred Noyes ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 17
 
I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.
~ Ken Kesey ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 18
 
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
~ Samuel Johnson ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 19
 
"Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn't you?" said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?"
~ William Golding ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 20
 
The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart. Too many contemporary Fantasies take the easy way out by externalizing the struggle, so the heroic protagonists need only smite the evil minions of the dark power to win the day. And you can tell the evil minions, because they're inevitably ugly and they all wear black.
I wanted to stand much of that on its head.
In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.
~ George R. R. Martin ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 21
 
I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin' to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I cain't.
~ Stephen King ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 22
 
Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox!
~ D. H. Lawrence ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 23
 
I have not yet begun to fight!
~ John Paul Jones ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 24
 
If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary.
The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner-stone of our liberty.
~ Horace Walpole ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 25
 
I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
~ William Faulkner ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 26
 
In all Debates, let Truth be thy Aim, not Victory, or an unjust Interest: And endeavor to gain, rather than to expose thy Antagonist.
~ William Penn ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 27
 
If Virtue & Knowledge are diffus'd among the People, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great Security.
~ Samuel Adams ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 28
 
Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.
~ Shimon Peres ~
 
 
It is by character and not by intellect the world is won.
~ Evelyn Beatrice Hall ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 29
 
Act so that in your own judgment and in the judgment of others you may merit eternity, act so that you may become irreplaceable, act so that you may not merit death. Or perhaps thus: Act as if you were to die tomorrow, but to die in order to survive and be eternalized. The end of morality is to give personal, human finality to the Universe; to discover the finality that belongs to it — if indeed it has any finality — and to discover it by acting.
~ Miguel de Unamuno ~
 

view - discussion - history


September 30
 
Love rests on no foundation.
It is an endless ocean,
with no beginning or end.
~ Rumi ~
 

view - discussion - history


QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
<– Last Month · This Month –>

Today is Tuesday, March 19, 2024; it is now 10:22 (UTC)