Quote of the Day archive 2004

From BillionQuotes

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

[edit]

December 2004

  • Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
    Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
    And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
    Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:
    And down the wave and in the flame was borne
    A naked babe...
    ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~
  • I sometimes hold it half a sin
    To put in words the grief I feel;
    For words, like Nature, half reveal
    And half conceal the Soul within.
    ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~
  • "Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight— always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?" ~ J. M. Barrie
    • Wikiqoute Quote of the day for the 100th anniversary of the first public performance of Peter Pan.
  • "There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know— listen to me, now— don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy." ~ J. D. Salinger
  • I danced in the morning
    When the world was begun,
    And I danced in the moon
    And the stars and the sun,
    And I came down from heaven
    And I danced on the earth,
    At Bethlehem
    I had my birth.
    Dance, then, wherever you may be,
    I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
    And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
    And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
    ~ Sydney Carter ~
  • 'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
    'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
    And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
    'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
    ~ Joseph Brackett ~
  • Good fortune attend each merry man's friend
    That doth but the best that he may,
    Forgetting old wrongs with carols and songs
    To drive the cold winter away.
    ~ "All Hail to The Days" (or "The Praise of Christmas") ~
    Traditional 17th century English carol
  • "i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday..." ~ e. e. cummings
  • "The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed." ~ Joseph Campbell
  • "In the winter season, for seven days of calm, Alcyone broods over her nest on the surface of the waters while the sea-waves are quiet. Through this time Aeolus keeps his winds at home, and ocean is smooth for his descendants’ sake." ~ Ovid
  • The Tree that was withered shall be renewed, and he shall plant it in the high places, and the City shall be blessed. Sing all ye people! ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
    • From The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King (Book VI, Chapter 5, "The Steward and the King"); in the novel this is a song of a great Eagle heralding the victory of Aragorn's forces against those of Sauron and the Dark Tower.
  • "The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange." ~ G. K. Chesterton
  • "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." ~ Albert Einstein
  • "Loving kindness is greater than laws; and the charities of life are more than all ceremonies." ~ The Talmud
  • "How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway... And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!" ~ Anne Frank
  • "Every single moment of a person's life, both of the understanding and of the will, is a new beginning." ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
  • "I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another." ~ Ellen Goodman
  • "Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
    Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
    Now, therefore, The General Assembly, Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations..."
    ~ From the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ~
    Adopted and proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly, 10 December 1948
  • "Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves." ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
  • "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one; I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will live as one." ~ John Lennon
  • "Oh, if a man tried to take his time on earth and prove before he died what one man's life could be worth, I wonder what would happen to this world?" ~ Harry Chapin
  • "Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself." ~ Samuel Butler
  • "To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction." ~ Theodore Zeldin
  • Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
    hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
    pressed me against his heart, I would perish
    in the embrace of his stronger existence.
    For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
    which we are barely able to endure and are awed
    because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
    Each single angel is terrifying.
    ~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
  • "The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society." ~ Emma Goldman
  • "Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail." ~ Helen Keller
  • "Ooh, with a little luck— December will be magic again." ~ Kate Bush
[edit]

November 2004

  • "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." ~ William James
  • "Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." ~ George Washington
  • "I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate." ~ Elbert Hubbard
  • "When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude." ~ Elie Wiesel
  • "Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision." ~ Tecumseh
  • "Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them." ~ Washington Irving
  • "Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." ~ Václav Havel
  • "Fame is something which must be won; honor is something which must not be lost." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
  • "The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous." ~ Margot Fonteyn
  • "Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have." ~ Oprah Winfrey
  • "Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation." ~ James Thurber
  • "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." ~ Henry David Thoreau
  • "When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." ~ Jimi Hendrix
  • "Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men's souls to joy." ~ Jack Kerouac in On The Road
  • "If I want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure. There must merely be the silent observation of a fact." ~ J. Krishnamurti
  • "Anyone who believes in God and the Last Day should not harm his neighbor. Anyone who believes in God and the Last Day should entertain his guest generously. And anyone who believes in God and the Last Day should say what is good or keep quiet." ~ Muhammad
  • "Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time." ~ Thomas Carlyle
  • "All the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind." ~ Kurt Vonnegut
  • "The time has come", the Walrus said,
    "To talk of many things:
    Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
    Of cabbages—and Kings—
    And why the Sea is boiling hot—
    And whether pigs have wings."
    ~ Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass ~
  • "It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand?" ~ Spider Robinson
  • "Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do." ~ Wendell Berry
  • "The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made." ~ Jean Giraudoux
  • "America has spoken, and I'm humbled by the trust and the confidence of my fellow citizens." ~ George W. Bush
  • "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US." ~ CATS of Zero Wing
  • "I remain just one thing, and one thing only— and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician." ~ Charlie Chaplin
  • "We’d all like t’vote fer th’best man, but he’s never a candidate." ~ Kin Hubbard
  • "The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
[edit]

October 2004

  • "Merry meet, and merry part, and Blessed Be." ~ A pagan expression of blessing.
  • "It’s always worthwhile to make others aware of their worth." ~ Malcolm Forbes
  • "The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination." ~ John Schaar
  • "We're just being ourselves and having fun playing baseball. The biggest thing is when people look at our team, they can see that we're having a lot of fun." ~ Johnny Damon
  • "The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious— fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance." ~ T. H. Huxley
  • "I'm not against God. I'm against the misuse of God." ~ Marilyn Manson
  • "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." ~ John Wesley
  • "You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it." ~ Maya Angelou
  • "There’s a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost, that the ship has sailed, and that only a fool would continue. The truth is, I’ve always been a fool." ~ Albert Finney as "Ed Bloom" in Big Fish
  • "It doesn't matter if we were down 3-0. You've just got to keep the faith. The game is not over until the last out." ~ David Ortiz
  • "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." ~ Leo Tolstoy
  • "These children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going through..." ~ David Bowie
  • "Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try." ~ "Yoda" in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
  • "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world." ~ Margaret Mead
  • "It is better to debate a question without deciding it than to decide it without debate." ~ Joseph Joubert
  • "Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't." ~ Richard Bach
  • "So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable." ~ Christopher Reeve
  • "I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me. All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet." ~ Wangari Maathai
  • "You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence." ~ Robert Frost
  • "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." ~ Groucho Marx
  • "No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else." ~ Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend
  • "Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves." ~ U Thant
  • "You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful." ~ Marie Curie
  • "As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher." ~ Giacomo Casanova
  • "Given the choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier." ~ "Blore's Razor" (Author unknown)
  • "Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before." ~ Mae West
  • "When you get to a fork in the road, take it." ~ Yogi Berra
[edit]

September 2004

  • "Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed." ~ William Blake
  • "We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects." ~ Herman Melville
  • "Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect." ~ Hermann Hesse
  • "Those who think they know it all are very annoying to those of us who do." ~ Anonymous
    • The above variant was how this quotation was originally posted. It seems to be derived from this statement attributed to a specific author: "Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." ~ Isaac Asimov
  • "We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another." ~ Jonathan Swift
  • "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." ~ Blaise Pascal
  • "To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals." ~ William Penn
  • "Goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil." ~ Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land
  • "At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols." ~ Aldous Huxley
  • "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." ~ H. G. Wells
  • "A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love... Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love." ~ Leonard Cohen
  • "The cardinal doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the enemies of God." ~ Andrew Dickson White
  • "A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world." ~ Tony Benn
  • "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." ~ Wilhelm Stekel
  • "The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn’t permit anyone to lower his head to him. The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor to anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him." ~ Carlos Castaneda
  • "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." ~ Anaïs Nin
  • "He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave." ~ William Drummond
  • "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition." ~ Carl Sagan
  • "Only tragedy allows the release of love and grief never normally seen." ~ Kate Bush
  • "He that would live in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows, nor judge all he sees." ~ Benjamin Franklin
  • "The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first; Be not discouraged— keep on— there are divine things, well envelop'd; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell." ~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass
  • "I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear." ~ George Eliot
  • "In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood." ~ Henry David Thoreau
  • "Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received." ~ Seneca
  • "I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff— I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy." ~ J. D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye
  • "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." ~ George Bernard Shaw
  • "There is no sudden entrance into Heaven. Slow is the ascent by the path of Love." ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
[edit]

August 2004

  • "Know Thyself" ~ Ancient proverb that was inscribed upon the temple of the Oracle of Delphi.
  • "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm." ~ William Cowper
  • "It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing." ~ Muhammad
  • "Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair." ~ Elie Wiesel
  • "The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
  • "It’s no use crying over spilt evils. It’s better to mop them up laughing." ~ Eleanor Farjeon
  • "As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular." ~ Oscar Wilde
  • "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
  • "No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad." ~ Thomas Carlyle
  • "One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent." ~ H. L. Mencken
  • "Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious." ~ Peter Ustinov
  • "The best mind-altering drug is the truth." ~ Lily Tomlin
  • "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
  • Where is the Life we have lost in living?
    Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
    Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
    ~ T. S. Eliot ~
  • "Humour is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him." ~ Romain Gary
  • "There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble." ~ Washington Irving
  • "The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others." ~ Dag Hammarskjöld
  • "Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a thousand sincere people have denounced him for blasphemy." ~ Anthony de Mello
  • "It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion." ~ Tertullian
  • "Character does count. For too long we have gotten by in a society that says the only thing right is to get by and the only thing wrong is to get caught. Character is doing what's right when nobody is looking..." ~ J. C. Watts
  • "Your strength is but an accident arising from the weakness of others." ~ Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness
  • "Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children." ~ Khalil Gibran
  • "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts..." ~ William Shakespeare in As You Like It
  • "Called or uncalled, God is there." ~ Ancient proverb, said to be Spartan, popularized by Carl Jung
    • This is a translation of the Latin phrase Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit. which Jung used as an inscription on his house, and also on his tomb. It is also commonly translated as " Called or uncalled, God is present." or sometimes "Invoked or not invoked...", "Bidden or unbidden", or "Summoned or not summoned..." God is present.
[edit]

July 2004

  • "Blue Moon, now I'm no longer alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own." ~ Lorenz Hart
  • "I just know that something good is going to happen. I don't know when— but just saying it could even make it happen." ~ Kate Bush
  • "In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less, and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them." ~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass
  • "Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down." ~ Oprah Winfrey
  • "When I was a kid my parents used to tell me: "Don't go near the cellar door, Emo!" &nbsp One day when they were away, I went to the door and opened it... &nbsp and I saw birds and trees..." ~ Emo Philips
  • "Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands. It is part and parcel of our knowledge and obscures our insight only when it holds that the understanding given by it is the only kind there is." ~ Carl Jung
  • "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern." ~ William Blake
  • "Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, Lady, were no crime." ~ Andrew Marvell
  • "I'll tell you this— No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn." ~ Jim Morrison
  • "What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal." ~ John Howe
  • "Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit." ~ Elbert Hubbard
  • "It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
  • "Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom." ~ Charles H. Spurgeon
  • Of all the creatures that creep, swim or fly,
    Peopling the earth, waters and the sky,
    From Rome to Iceland, Paris to Japan,
    I really think, the greatest fool is man.
    ~ Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux ~
  • "When we wish to correct with advantage and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken and that he only failed to see all sides." ~ Blaise Pascal
  • "Thar’s only two possibilities: Thar is life out there in the universe which is smarter than we are, or we’re the most intelligent life in the universe. Either way, it’s a mighty sobering thought." ~ Walt Kelly
  • "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone. For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth, but has trouble enough of its own." ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
  • "Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity." ~ G. K. Chesterton
  • "What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children— not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women— not merely peace in our time but peace for all time." ~ John F. Kennedy
  • "Why can't you harness Might so that it works for Right? I know it sounds nonsense, but, I mean, you can't just say there is no such thing. The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can't neglect it. You can't cut it out but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean, so that it was useful instead of bad." ~ T. H. White in The Once and Future King
  • "Why is all around us here as if some lesser god had made the world, but had not force to shape it as he would, till the High God behold it from beyond, and enter it, and make it beautiful? Or else as if the world were wholly fair, but that these eyes of men are dense and dim, and have not power to see it as it is: perchance, because we see not to the close..." ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson in Idylls of the King
  • "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." ~ Søren Kierkegaard
  • "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." ~ opening statement of The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America, composed primarily by Thomas Jefferson
  • "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness." ~ Thomas Jefferson in an early draft of The Declaration of Independence.
  • "With great power comes great responsibility." ~ Stan Lee
  • "A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
[edit]

June 2004

  • "Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the tablets of eternity." ~ Lord Acton
  • "How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read." ~ Karl Kraus
  • "They serve so that we don't have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?" ~ Michael Moore
  • "Faith and doubt both are needed— not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve." ~ Lillian Smith
  • "It is circumstances which show what men are." ~ Epictetus
  • "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." ~ Hugh Latimer
  • "Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." ~ Alfred Whitney Griswold
  • "How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress." ~ Niels Bohr
  • "Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a soldier's servant, a cook, a porter brags and wishes to have his admirers. Even philosophers wish for them. Those who write against it want to have the glory of having written well; and those who read it desire the glory of having read it. I who write this have perhaps this desire, and perhaps those who will read it..." ~ Blaise Pascal
  • "I'm not a prettier everywoman. I am an everywoman that they clean up awfully well for TV." ~ Kelly Ripa
  • "There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great." ~ G. K. Chesterton
  • "Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
  • "Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it's a little thing, do something for those who need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it." ~ Albert Schweitzer
  • "Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice." ~ Arnold J. Toynbee
  • "To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level." ~ Bertrand Russell
  • "Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty’s lamp guiding your steps and opportunity’s arm steadying your way." ~ Ronald Reagan
  • "History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap." ~ Ronald Reagan
  • "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." ~ David Hume
  • "It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action." ~ Lin Yutang
  • "Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." ~ Euripides
  • "Do nothing, and everything is done." ~ Lao Zi; Variant: "When nothing is done, nothing is left undone."
  • "Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
  • "We all have ability. The difference is how we use it." ~ Stevie Wonder
  • "There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. That little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative." ~ W. Clement Stone
  • "The difference between a hooker and a ho ain't nothin' but a fee." ~ Cheryl James ("Salt" of the rap group "Salt 'N' Pepa")
  • "In properly organized groups no faith is required; what is required is simply a little trust and even that only for a little while, for the sooner a man begins to verify all he hears the better it is for him." ~ G. I. Gurdjieff
[edit]

May 2004

  • "There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing." ~ Maya Angelou
  • "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." ~ Edgar Allan Poe
  • "A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking." ~ Steven Wright
  • "Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures— in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
  • "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
  • "Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed." ~ Joseph Addison
  • "I got some new underwear the other day. Well, new to me." ~ Emo Philips
  • "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves." ~ Carl Jung
  • "I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal." ~ Bill Watterson
  • "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow you gotta be willing to put up with the rain." ~ Dolly Parton
  • "The road to wisdom? —Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less." ~ Piet Hein
  • "No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker." ~ Mikhail Bakunin
  • "Explanations exist; they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every human problems— neat, plausible, and wrong." ~ H. L. Mencken
  • "If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; if we begin with doubts, and are patient, we shall end in certainties." ~ Marcus Aurelius
  • "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind." ~ Louis Pasteur
  • "In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad." ~ Freeman Dyson
  • "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." ~ William Faulkner
  • "It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people." ~ Good Omens (by Gaiman & Pratchett)
  • "The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern.  But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well." ~ Ken Wilber
  • "There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times, all of them true, all of them real, and all of them (as children know) penetrating each other." ~ P. L. Travers
  • "All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her." ~ George Washington
  • "There are very few human beings who receive the truth , complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic." ~ Anaïs Nin
  • "If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain." ~ Emily Dickinson
  • "That best portion of a good man's life,— His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love." ~ William Wordsworth
  • "Everything in the universe relates to the number 5, one way or another, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter." ~ Principia Discordia, The Law of Fives
  • "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." ~ eden ahbez
  • "I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it." ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
  • "The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May." ~ Sir Thomas Malory
[edit]

April 2004

  • "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." ~ Robert J. Hanlon
  • "Prejudice comes from being in the dark; sunlight disinfects it." ~ Muhammad Ali
  • "The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own." ~ Benjamin Disraeli
  • "When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it." ~ Anatole France
  • "Nothing is better than the unintended humor of reality." ~ Steve Allen
  • "Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." ~ Gautama Buddha
  • "In war, you win or lose, live or die— and the difference is just an eyelash." ~ Douglas MacArthur
  • "The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go." ~ Martha Washington
  • "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." ~ Anne Frank
  • "It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do." ~ Molière
  • "Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." ~ Elbert Hubbard
  • "The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one." ~ Bill Hicks
  • "The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do." ~ B. F. Skinner
  • "The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr." ~ Will Rogers
  • "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~ Kurt Vonnegut
  • "Living next to [the US] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." ~ Pierre Trudeau
  • "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." ~ Yeshua of Galilee (Jesus Christ)
  • "Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." ~ Henry James
  • "Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous." ~ Zhuang Zi
  • "The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of hell." ~ Saint Augustine
  • "Life is too deep for words, so don't try to describe it, just live it." ~ C.S. Lewis
  • "Where there is great love there are always miracles." ~ Willa Cather
  • "Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they might have been." ~ William Hazlitt
  • "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life— It goes on." ~ Robert Frost
  • "Years ago my mother used to say to me... 'In this world, Elwood, you must be Oh-so-smart, or Oh-so-pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart— I recommend pleasant. You may quote me." ~ Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in the film Harvey
[edit]

March 2004

  • "The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder." ~ Æschylus
  • "Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit." ~ Peter Ustinov
  • "If a man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows." ~ Epictetus
  • "In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest." ~ Aesop
  • "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." ~ Aldous Huxley
  • "A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself." ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • "It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry." ~ Thomas Paine
  • "The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives." ~ Albert Einstein
  • "Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." ~ Martin Luther King
  • "Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you." ~ Samuel Johnson
  • "I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." ~ Booker T. Washington
  • "Try to have a good day today, wherever you are, whatever you do, whoever is near, if no one is near. Try to be happy, because you may not see tomorrow. There is someone this morning, who didn't wake up, who will never see this day. Try to feel lucky that this is not you." ~ Margaret Cho
  • "Do not say, 'I follow the one true path of the Spirit,' but rather, 'I have found the Spirit walking on my path', for the Spirit walks on all paths." ~ Khalil Gibran
  • "I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against." ~ Malcolm X
  • "I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace." ~ Helen Keller
  • "The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
  • "Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." ~ André Gide
  • "To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed. That can make life a garden." ~ Goethe
  • "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." ~ Carl Jung
  • "People often say to me, ‘I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don’t really feel it, I don’t realize it,' and I am apt to reply, ‘I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it.'" ~ Alan Watts
  • "An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's. ~ J. D. Salinger
  • "The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven." ~ John Milton
  • "The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair." ~ Winston Churchill
  • "It is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true." ~ James Branch Cabell
  • "Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think." ~ John Stuart Mill
[edit]

February 2004

  • "Just because it's old doesn't mean you have to read it." ~ Jolene Sugarbaker, the Trailer Park Queen, as portrayed by actor Jayson Saffer.
  • "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." ~ Oscar Wilde
  • "An interesting thing has happened since San Francisco started granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples: my marriage is just fine! Even though there are thousands of gay and lesbian couples affirming their love for and commitment to each other, my marriage— my affirmation of love and commitment to (my wife)— isn't threatened at all. As a matter of fact, the only people who can really "threaten" my marriage are the two of us." Wil Wheaton
  • "An amicable divorce is like a ventilated condom; it just doesn't work." ~ Rita Rudner
  • "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." ~ Dr. Seuss
  • "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." ~ Isaac Asimov
  • "Careful the things you say, children will listen. Guide them along the way, children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will look to you for which way to turn; to learn what to be! Careful before you say "Listen to Me." Children will listen." ~ Into the Woods (Sondheim/Lapine)
  • "There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom. Friendship loves a free Air, and will not be penned up in streight and narrow Enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is, ’twill easily forgive, and forget too, upon small Acknowledgments." ~ William Penn
  • "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us" ~ Bill Watterson
  • "What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts." ~ George Bernard Shaw
  • "Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be." ~ Anonymous
  • "I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance." ~ e. e. cummings
  • "If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity." ~ John F. Kennedy
  • "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." ~ George Santayana
  • "Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence." ~ Goethe in The Sorrows of Young Werther
  • "Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." ~ Eric Hoffer
  • "To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things." ~ Isaac Newton
  • "If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel." ~ Jim Morrison
  • "The things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done." ~ Buckminster Fuller
[edit]

January 2004

  • "I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow human being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." ~ Stephen Grellet
  • "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." ~ Albert Camus
  • " All the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love." ~ Eleanor Farjeon
  • "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." ~ Douglas Adams
  • "Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." ~ G. K. Chesterton
  • "No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another" ~ Sir Thomas Browne
  • "Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic." ~ Frank Herbert in Dune
  • "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." ~ Arthur C. Clarke
  • "There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. ... There is another theory which states that this has already happened." ~ Douglas Adams
  • "Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy —in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other" ~ Robert Heinlein in Stranger In A Strange Land
  • "Dignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them." ~ Aristotle
  • "Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased —thus do we refute entropy." ~ Spider Robinson
  • "True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths." ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • "Truth alone will endure; all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time." ~ Mohandas Gandhi
  • "All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly —right now." ~ Buckminster Fuller
  • "Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense." ~ Carl Sagan
  • Ring out a slowly dying cause,
    And ancient forms of party strife;
    Ring in the nobler modes of life,
    With sweeter manners, purer laws.
    ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~
  • "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." ~ Albert Einstein
  • Jackie Biskupski is running for a seat in the Utah Legislature, and she's attracting a lot of attention because she's a lesbian. Her Republican opponent, Dan Alderson, is a staunch Mormon, and is running a negative ad campaign calling her lifestyle abnormal and deviant. His six wives agree. ~ Rick Mercer, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, October 12, 1998
[edit]

Other Quote of the Day archives:

See also: Quote of the Day proposals


Wikiquote links: People - Literary Works - Proverbs - Films - TV Shows - Themes - Categories
Retrieved from "http://www.billionquotes.com/index.php/Quote_of_the_Day_archive_2004"
Personal tools