Wikiquote:Quote of the day/January 2015

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Today is Friday, November 29, 2024; it is now 04:32 (UTC)

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January 1

I can't see why anybody — unless he was a child, or an angel, or a lucky simpleton like the pilgrim — would even want to say a prayer to a Jesus who was the least bit different from the way he looks and sounds in the New Testament. My God! He's only the most intelligent man in the Bible, that's all! Who isn't he head and shoulders over? Who? Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls — but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody. Not Moses. Don't tell me Moses. He was a nice man, and he kept in beautiful touch with his God, and all that — but that's exactly the point. He had to keep in touch. Jesus realized there is no separation from God. ~ J. D. Salinger ~

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January 2

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. ~ Isaac Asimov ~

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January 3

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … The most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~

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January 4

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. ~ Isaac Newton ~

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January 5

I am guiding you to seek truth from the facts of the historical conditions of our society and to identify the problems. The correct solutions will come with the correct identification of the problems. ~ Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ~

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January 6

Your thought sees power in armies, cannons, battleships, submarines, aeroplanes, and poison gas. But mine asserts that power lies in reason, resolution, and truth. No matter how long the tyrant endures, he will be the loser at the end. Your thought differentiates between pragmatist and idealist, between the part and the whole, between the mystic and materialist. Mine realizes that life is one and its weights, measures and tables do not coincide with your weights, measures and tables. He whom you suppose an idealist may be a practical man. ~ Khalil Gibran ~

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January 7

Anyone who has got any pleasure at all from living should try to put something back. … I'm glad to be giving something back because I've been so extraordinarily lucky and had such great pleasure from it. ~ Gerald Durrell ~

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January 8

The psychological basis for the use of nonviolent methods is the simple rule that like produces like, kindness provokes kindness, as surely as injustice produces resentment and evil. It is sometimes forgotten by those whose pacifism is a spurious, namby-pamby thing that if one Biblical statement of this rule is "Do good to them that hate you" (an exhortation presumably intended for the capitalist as well as for the laborer), another statement of the same rule is, "They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind." You get from the universe what you give, with interest! ~ A. J. Muste ~

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January 9

That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing. ~ Simone de Beauvoir ~

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January 10

The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean. ~ Robinson Jeffers ~

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January 11

There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists. ~ William James ~

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January 12

Give me few men and women who are pure and selfless and I shall shake the world. ~ Swami Vivekananda ~

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January 13

Knowledge and understanding are quite different. Only understanding can lead to being, whereas knowledge is but a passing presence in it. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~

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January 14

Not less strong than the will to truth must be the will to sincerity. Only an age, which can show the courage of sincerity, can possess truth, which works as a spiritual force within it. ~ Albert Schweitzer ~

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January 15

As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ~

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January 16

Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another. ~ Susan Sontag ~

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January 17

God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, "This is my Country." ~ Benjamin Franklin ~ [[File:Ankh-Symbol.svg|11px] ]

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January 18

Everyone has a belief system, B.S., the trick is to learn not to take anyone's B.S. too seriously, especially your own. ~ Robert Anton Wilson ~

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January 19

If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth; what rights are, therefore, inherent in him as a human being, necessarily remain with him during life; and, however capable of being trampled upon, are incapable of being blotted out, extinguished, annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his nature as a human being, or deprived of their inherent authority or obligation. ~ Lysander Spooner ~

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January 20

There's this beautiful ocean of bliss and consciousness that is able to be reached by any human being by diving within, which is really peaceful and harmonious and can be enlivened by the group process. … This is all about establishing peace. Right now, we gotta get peace back in the world. Peace is a real thing. ~ David Lynch ~

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January 21

Ever since I arrived to a state of manhood, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations doomed to perpetual slavery, in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical horror; so that the first systematical and bloody attempt at Lexington, to enslave America, thoroughly electrified my mind, and fully determined me to take part with my country. ~ Ethan Allen ~

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January 22

If I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may not weep… ~ Lord Byron ~ in ~ Don Juan ~

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January 23

Insofar as thought could be governed at all, it could only be commanded to follow what reason affirmed anyhow; command it otherwise, and it would not obey. ~ Walter M. Miller, Jr. ~

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January 24

I warrant you, if he danced till doomsday, he thought I was to pay the piper. ~ William Congreve ~

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January 25

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel. ~ W. Somerset Maugham ~

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January 26

India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all. ~ Will Durant ~

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January 27

The Quakers have an excellent approach to thinking through difficult problems, where a number of intelligent and responsible people must work together. They meet as equals, and anyone who has an idea speaks up. There are no parliamentary procedures and no coercion from the Chair. They continue the discussion until unanimity is reached. I want you guys to do that. Get in a room with no phones and leave orders that you are not to be disturbed. And sit there until you can deal with each other as individuals… ~ Hyman G. Rickover ~

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January 28

Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity. ~ José Martí ~

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January 29

It is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. ~ Thomas Paine ~

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January 30

Any technology that does not appear magical is insufficiently advanced. ~ Gregory Benford ~

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January 31

To bear up under loss — to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief — to be victor over anger — to smile when tears are close — to resist evil men and base instincts — to hate hate and to love love — to go on when it would seem good to die — to seek ever after the glory and the dream — to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be — that is what any man can do, and so be great. ~ Zane Grey ~

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Today is Friday, November 29, 2024; it is now 04:32 (UTC)

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