Wikiquote:Quote of the day/September 2019

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September 1

People ask where writers get ideas.
Take my advice. Some cool, clear night, drive to a country place where city lights don’t block your view. Turn off the car lights. Get out and look up. And see our real neighborhood.

~ C. J. Cherryh ~

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September 2

What sin is to the moralist and crime to the jurist so to the scientific man is ignorance. On our plane knowledge and ignorance are the immemorial adversaries.

~ Frederick Soddy ~

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September 3

What are books but folly, and what is an education but an arrant hypocrisy, and what is art but a curse when they touch not the heart and impel it not to action?

~ Louis Sullivan ~

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September 4

The issue which I propose for discussion should … be clear: how to counter the encroachment of new, electronic devices and systems upon commons that are more subtle and more intimate to our being than either grassland or roads — commons that are at least as valuable as silence. Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving.
A transformation of the environment from a commons to a productive resource constitutes the most fundamental form of environmental degradation. This degradation has a long history, which coincides with the history of capitalism but can in no way just be reduced to it. Unfortunately the importance of this transformation has been overlooked or belittled by political ecology so far. It needs to be recognized if we are to organize defense movements of what remains of the commons.

~ Ivan Illich ~

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September 5

When you see your neighbors, their needs, their joys, their sorrows, when you see them next door or halfway around the world, you will know what to do. It is concern that precedes and inspires agendas, and survives when agendas fail, and it causes us to try again, always trying our best, never certain about our own judgment. It is knowing that God's purpose exceeds whatever we can put in an agenda. For Christians, it is trusting in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

~ John Danforth ~

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September 6

We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.

~ Robert M. Pirsig ~

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September 7

I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live.

~ Grandma Moses ~

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September 8

Little tornado
You and the hurricane
Close your eyes and go campaign
Make it go faster
Baby go faster
Make it go twice the speed of you and me

~ Aimee Mann ~

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September 9

In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.

~ Cesare Pavese ~

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September 10

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

~ Mary Oliver ~

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September 11

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

~ D.H. Lawrence ~

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September 12

Clarity of thought is a shining point in a vast expanse of unrelieved darkness. Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom, and its typical cowardice is to bathe in its own glow and avoid, as much as possible, looking out beyond its boundary. No matter how much genuine strength it may contain, there is also, inevitably, a considerable part that is only the pretense of that strength.

~ Stanisław Lem ~

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September 13

I see the bad moon arising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today.

Don't go around tonight
Well, it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise.

~ John Fogerty ~

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September 14

Baby hold on to me
Whatever will be, will be
The future is ours to see
So baby hold on to me.

~ Eddie Money ~

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September 15

To be part of something one doesn't in the least understand is, I think, one of the most intriguing things about life.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

~ Agatha Christie ~

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September 16

Yes; as the music changes,
Like a prismatic glass,
It takes the light and ranges
Through all the moods that pass;
Dissects the common carnival
Of passions and regrets,
And gives the world a glimpse of all
The colours it forgets.

~ Alfred Noyes ~

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September 17

Well you're looking for another end
Doing time
But you still can't turn away
Well you're looking for a real friend
Any kind
That wants to play the games you play
On this side of paradise
Where you're never going to go through twice
Stay tuned at any price
To this side of paradise.

~ Ric Ocasek ~

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September 18

I have to tell you I don't just see this role of women as caretakers in the world that I cover, I see it in the world I live in. Slowly, slowly, slowly but definitely, the workplace is becoming a more humane place because of the presence of women.

~ Cokie Roberts ~

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September 19

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men — they are far superior and always have been.

~ William Golding ~

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September 20

History is full of stories, full of triumph and tragedy and battles won and lost. It is the people who speak to me, the men and women who once lived and loved and dreamed and grieved, just as we do. Though some may have had crowns on their heads or blood on their hands, in the end they were not so different from you and me, and therein lies their fascination. I suppose I am still a believer in the now unfashionable "heroic" school, which says that history is shaped by individual men and women and the choices that they make, by deeds glorious and terrible.

~ George R. R. Martin ~

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September 21

You couldn't get hold of the things you'd done and turn them right again. Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.

~ Stephen King ~

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September 22

We must not draw general conclusions from certain particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it. No. We are complicated machines: and though we have one main-spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.

~ Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield ~

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September 23

For all their laughter, ghouls are a dull lot. Hunger is the fire in which they burn, and it burns hotter than the hunger for power over men or for knowledge of the gods in a crazed mortal. It vaporizes delicacy and leaves behind only a slag of anger and lust. They see their fellows as impediments to feeding, to be mauled and shrieked at when the mourners go home.

~ Brian McNaughton ~

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September 24

First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines.

~ John Brunner ~

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September 25

The actions of the Trump Presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the President's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.
Therefore, today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. I am directing our six Committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry.
The President must be held accountable. No one is above the law.

~ Nancy Pelosi ~

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September 26

We must always take risks. That is our destiny.

~ T. S. Eliot ~
in
~ The Cocktail Party ~

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September 27

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

~ Samuel Adams ~

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September 28

The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort. The superior man thinks of the sanctions of law; the small man thinks of favors which he may receive.

~ Confucius (孔子 · Kongzi) ~

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September 29

The lives of all are in the hands of Him who knows best whether to preserve it or no, and to His will do I resign myself. My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied, and, if anything happens to me recollect death is a debt we must all pay, and whether now or in a few years hence can be but of little consequence.

~ Horatio Nelson ~

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September 30

Silence
is an ocean. Speech is a river.

When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk
into the language-river. Listen to the ocean,
and bring your talky business to an end

Traditional words are just babbling
in that presence, and babbling is a substitute
for sight.

~ Rumi ~

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Today is Thursday, November 21, 2024; it is now 20:08 (UTC)