January 10

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2005

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

• selected by Kalki

2006

Know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful...
… the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
~ Robinson Jeffers (born 10 January 1887)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~

• proposed by Kalki

2008

I believe that the Universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine. ~ Robinson Jeffers

• proposed by Kalki

2009

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history. ~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

• proposed by Zarbon

2010

Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains. ~ Robinson Jeffers

• proposed by Kalki

2011

All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. ~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

• proposed by Zarbon

2012

Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~

• proposed by Kalki

2013

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• proposed by bystander

2014

I think, here is your emblem To hang in the future sky; Not the cross, not the hive, But this; bright power, dark peace; Fierce consciousness joined with final Disinterestedness; Life with calm death; the falcon’s Realist eyes and act Married to the massive Mysticism of stone, Which failure cannot cast down Nor success make proud.

~ Robinson Jeffers ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

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 ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• proposed by Kalki

2019

In ancient times the State absorbed authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of personal freedom. In the Middle Ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered others to intrude. Modern States fall habitually into both excesses. The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• proposed by Kalki

2020

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith. But it gave an immense impulse to absolutism by silencing the consciences of very religious kings, and made the good and the bad very much alike. … The way was paved for absolute monarchy to triumph over the spirit and institutions of a better age, not by isolated acts of wickedness, but by a studied philosophy of crime, and so thorough a perversion of the moral sense that the like of it had not been since the Stoics reformed the morality of paganism.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• proposed by Kalki

2021

Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump. His use of the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice. Our Constitution and our Republic will overcome this stain and We the People will come together again in our never-ending effort to form a more perfect Union, while Mr. Trump will deservedly be left a man without a country.

~ Jim Mattis ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• proposed by Kalki

2023

The gang serves lies, the passionate Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth Hunts in no pack.

~ Robinson Jeffers ~

• proposed by Kalki

2024

He takes it in the naked ecstasy; it breaks in his hand, the atom is broken, the power that massed it Cries to the power that moves the stars, "I have come home to myself, behold me. I bruised myself in the flint mortar and burnt me In the red shell, I tortured myself, I flew forth, Stood naked of myself and broke me in fragments, And here am I moving the stars that are me." I have seen these ways of God: I know of no reason For fire and change and torture and the old returnings.

~ Robinson Jeffers ~

• proposed by Kalki

2025

Rank or add further suggestions…

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Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:

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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the tablets of eternity. ~ James Anthony Froude (this was long misattributed to Lord Acton, and initially presented as a quote by him; subsequent research for Wikiquote helped bring to an end some of the most extensive uses of this misattribution.)

• used 30 June 2004, selected by Kalki

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Long live freedom and damn the ideologies. ~ Robinson Jeffers

• used 9 August 2004, selected by Kalki

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The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. ~ Lord Acton

• used 18 January 2005, selected by Kalki

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"You are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf, I am the smaller one on its upper side," said the dewdrop to the lake. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds.

• Posted on 7 January 2006, at the January 10th QotD page, by IP 67.37.190.144
• 2 Kalki 23:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC) (no clear correlation to the date)
• 1 Zarbon 18:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

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Look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet:
this dome, this half-globe, this bulging
Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia,
Australia and white Antartica: those are the eyelids that never close;
this is the staring unsleeping
Eye of the earth; and what it watches is not our wars.
~ Robinson Jeffers (born January 10, 1887)

• 3 InvisibleSun 21:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
• 3 Kalki 21:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
• 1 Zarbon 18:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

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It is said that heaven does not create one man above or below another man. Any existing distinction between the wise and the stupid, between the rich and the poor, comes down to a matter of education. ~ Fukuzawa Yukichi

• 3 Zarbon 06:01, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
• 3 Kalki 14:55, 6 January 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
• 3 InvisibleSun 23:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

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O that our souls could scale a height like this,
A mighty mountain swept o'er by the bleak
Keen winds of heaven; and, standing on that peak
Above the blinding clouds of prejudice,
Would we could see all truly as it is;
The calm eternal truth would keep us meek.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~

• 3 Kalki (talk · contributions) 20:09, 5 January 2010 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

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Volunteering is good for our heart and soul.

~ Roy E. Disney ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 04:27, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

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One of the functions of entertainment, I think, is education.

~ Roy E. Disney ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 04:27, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

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I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my task. In the ages of which I have spoken, the history of freedom was the history of the thing that was not. But since the Declaration of Independence, or, to speak more justly, since the Spaniards, deprived of their king, made a new government for themselves, the only known forms of Liberty, Republics and Constitutional Monarchy, have made their way over the world.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 17:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

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Atrocious deeds were done, in which religious passion was often the instrument, but policy was the motive. Fanaticism displays itself in the masses; but the masses were rarely fanaticised; and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the calculations of dispassionate politicians.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 17:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 17:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

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Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Liberty alone demands for its realisation the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 17:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

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Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.

~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 17:45, 9 January 2016 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.

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