Quotes of the day from previous years:
- 2003
- Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it. ~ The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
- 2004
- It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing. ~ Muhammad
- 2005
- I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today... ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
- proposed by MosheZadka, expanded from the first Wikiquote Quote of the Day, selected by Nanobug.
- 2006
- Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- 2007
- Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity: rather it is an elaborate balancing-act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites. ~ Robertson Davies
- 2008
- To which of the warring serpents should I turn with the problem that now faces me?
It is easy, and tempting, to choose the god of Science. Now I would not for a moment have you suppose that I am one of those idiots who scorns Science, merely because it is always twisting and turning, and sometimes shedding its skin, like the serpent that is its symbol. It is a powerful god indeed but it is what the students of ancient gods called a shape-shifter, and sometimes a trickster. ~ Robertson Davies
- 2009
- What is the use of being wise if we are not sometimes merry? The merriment of wise men is not the uninformed, gross fun of ignorant men, but it has more kinship with that than the pinched, frightened fun of those who are neither learned nor ignorant, gentle nor simple, bound nor free. The idea that a wise man must be solemn is bred and preserved among people who have no idea what wisdom is, and can only respect whatever makes them feel inferior. ~ Robertson Davies
- 2010
- The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement. ~ Robertson Davies
- 2011
- Love does not dominate, it cultivates. And that is more. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- 2012
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
⨀
My name is Harrison Bergeron. I am a fugitive, and a public threat. I am an abomination of the able. I am an exception to the accepted. I am the greatest man you have never known. And for the last six years, I have been held prisoner by the state — sentenced, without trial, to torture without end.
They… had hoped to destroy in me any trace of the extraordinary … but the extraordinary, it seems, was simply out of their reach.
So now I stand before you today, beaten, hobbled, and sickened … but, sadly, not broken. And I say to you, that if it is greatness we must destroy, then let us drag our enemy out of the darkness, where it has been hiding. Let us shine a light so, at last, all the world can see!
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| ~ 2081 ~
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- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
- 2019
- 2020
I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves.
Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.
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| ~ Donald Trump ~
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- proposed by Kalki, in regard of abiding assertions regarding his role as President of the United States of America.
- 2021
- 2022
- 2023
| The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
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| ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
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- proposed by Kalki; for the 60th anniversary of the delivery of the famous "I Have a Dream" speech on 28 August 1963.
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
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- 3 : Very Good – strong desire to see it used.
- 2 : Good – some desire to see it used.
- 1 : Acceptable – but with no particular desire to see it used.
- 0 : Not acceptable – not appropriate for use as a quote of the day.
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- Thank you for participating!
It is mankind's discovery of language which more than any other single thing has separated him from the animal creation. Without language, what concept have we of past or future as separated from the immediate present? Without language, how can we tell anyone what we feel, or what we think? It might be said that until he developed language, man had no soul, for without language how could he reach deep inside himself and discover the truths that are hidden there, or find out what emotions he shared, or did not share, with his fellow men and women. ~ Robertson Davies
- 3 InvisibleSun 10:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 23:07, 25 August 2007 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
- 1 Zarbon 16:20, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
- 2.5 //Gbern3 (talk) 01:55, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
- 3 allixpeeke (talk) 08:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (dob)
- 3 bystander (talk) 16:33, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
- 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 01:55, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
- 3 (leaning toward 2 because of the poor grammar; "one" is singular while "their" is plural) allixpeeke (talk) 08:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home–Then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free.
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire; that, where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.
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| ~ William Cowper ~
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Note: According to this page, "The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 receives Royal Assent, abolishing slavery through most the British Empire" on 28 August 1833.
Note: King's "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered on 28 August 1963. This quote is from said speech.
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage—the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical forces beyond his control. This is the caveman's version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.
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| ~ Ayn Rand ~
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Note: King's "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered on 28 August 1963. This quote was written around the same time as King's speech.
- 3 (very strongly leaning toward 4) allixpeeke (talk) 10:05, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
- 3, but tenuously; I like the quote, but the link to the date seems tenuous. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 13:29, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Note: Jack Black was born 28 August 1969.
| First you have to know—not fear, know—that, someday, you're gonna die.
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| ~ Tyler Durden in Fight Club ~
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Note: The film Fight Club was directed by David Fincher who, in turn, was born 28 August 1962.
- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 06:30, 27 August 2017 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
Piety is not an end but a means to attain by the greatest peace of mind the highest degree of culture.
This is why we may say that those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites.
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| ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~
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| The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.
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| ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~
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| All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life.
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| ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~
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All that must disappear
Is but a parable;
What lay beyond us, here
All is made visible;
Here deeds have understood
Words they were darkened by;
The Eternal Feminine
Draws us on high.
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~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~
in
~ Goethe's Faust ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 06:30, 27 August 2017 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
"Hughie, get your tanks off my lawn."" -- Harold Wilson
- Submitted by DarcyTy 1 (talk · contributions)
- 1, with a lean toward 0; this appears to have no strong relation to this date and does not seem a highly notable statement. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 07:07, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
| When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
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| ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
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| This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
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| ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
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| Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state, sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
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| ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
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- 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:17, 27 August 2023 (UTC) (even though most of this one has already been used previously, in 2014)
| I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
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| ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
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| This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
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| ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~
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