Wikiquote:Quote of the day/February 2010
QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
Today is Saturday, November 23, 2024; it is now 07:20 (UTC)
- February 1
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What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Maybe it just sags Or does it explode? ~ Langston Hughes ~ |
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- February 2
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I'm not playing by their rules anymore! ~ Bill Murray ~ |
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- February 3
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Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice. ~ Simone Weil ~ |
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- February 4
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If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes. |
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- February 5
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Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility. No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will. ~ Roger Williams ~ |
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- February 6
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Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same... ~ Ronald Reagan ~ |
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- February 7
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Extreme justice is an extreme injury: for we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; as if there were no difference to be made between the killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion. ~ Thomas More ~ |
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- February 8
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Punishment is the last and least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
~ John Ruskin ~ |
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- February 9
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I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever. But that does not make me angry any more. They are all dear to me now even while they laugh at me — yes, even then they are for some reason particularly dear to me. I shouldn't have minded laughing with them — not at myself, of course, but because I love them — had I not felt so sad as I looked at them. I feel sad because they do not know the truth, whereas I know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only man to know the truth! But they won't understand that. No, they will not understand. |  |
- February 10
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Reason gains all men, by compelling none. Mercy was always Heaven's distinguished mark: And he, who bears it not, has no friend there. ~ Aaron Hill ~ |
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- February 11
| The people who have sufficient passion for the truth to give the truth a chance to prevail, if it runs counter to their bias, are in a minority. How important is this "minority?" It is difficult to say at this point, for, at the present time their influence on governmental decisions is not perceptible.
~ Leó Szilárd ~ |
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- February 12
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I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
~ Abraham Lincoln ~ |
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- February 13
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Of what use to destroy the children of evil? It is evil itself we must destroy at the roots.
~ Eleanor Farjeon ~ |
- February 14
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Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd, ~ William Shakespeare ~ |
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- February 15
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A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity. |  |
- February 16
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What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
~ Henry Adams ~ |
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- February 17
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The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.
~ Giordano Bruno ~ |
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- February 18
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Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and I rejoice in it all. |  |
- February 19
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People have such terrible assumptions about ghosts — you know, phantoms that haunt you, that make you scared, that turn the house upside down. Yin people are not in our living presence but are around, and kind of guide you to insights. Like in Las Vegas when the bells go off, telling you you've hit the jackpot. Yin people ring the bells, saying, "Pay attention." And you say, "Oh, I see now." Yet I'm a fairly skeptical person. I'm educated, I'm reasonably sane, and I know that this subject is fodder for ridicule. ... To write the book, I had to put that aside. As with any book. I go through the anxiety, "What will people think of me for writing something like this?" But ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses.
~ Amy Tan ~ |
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- February 20
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Our world is in profound danger. Mankind must establish a set of positive values with which to secure its own survival. This quest for enlightenment must begin now. It is essential that all men and women become aware of what they are, why they are here on Earth and what they must do to preserve civilization before it is too late. ~ Richard Matheson ~ |
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- February 21
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All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. ~ W. H. Auden ~ |
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- February 22
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I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak, Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store, Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower. |
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- February 23
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How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.
~ W. E. B. Du Bois ~ |
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- February 24
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A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
~ George A. Moore ~ |
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- February 25
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When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final things. ~ John Leonard ~ |
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- February 26
| A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France. A day will come when a cannon will be a museum-piece, as instruments of torture are today. And we will be amazed to think that these things once existed! ~ Victor Hugo ~ |
- February 27
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If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. | 
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- February 28
| Virtue refuses facility for her companion ... the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road. |
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Today is Saturday, November 23, 2024; it is now 07:20 (UTC)