Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 2020

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May 1

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

~ Joseph Heller ~
in
~ Catch-22 ~

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May 2

Realists are, as a rule, only men in the rut of routine who are incapable of transcending a narrow circle of antiquated notions. But their adverse opinion does carry some weight and can do great harm to a new project — at least until the innovation is strong enough to push the "realists" and their moldy notions aside.

~ Theodore Herzl ~

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May 3

A prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice.

~ Niccolò Machiavelli ~

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May 4

Advanced cultures are usually sophisticated enough, or have been sophisticated enough at some point in their pasts, to realize that foxes shouldn't be relied on to guard henhouses.

~ Jane Jacobs ~

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May 5

There is within us a moral instinct which forbids us to rejoice at the death of even an enemy.

~ Henryk Sienkiewicz ~

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May 6

If we judge by wealth and power, our times are the best of times; if the times have made us willing to judge by wealth and power, they are the worst of times.

~ Randall Jarrell ~

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May 7

Men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries.

~ David Hume ~

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May 8

As is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself.

~ Friedrich Hayek ~

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May 9

No one knows toward what center human things are going to gravitate in the near future, and hence the life of the world has become scandalously provisional. Everything that today is done in public and in private — even in one's inner conscience — is provisional, the only exception being certain portions of certain sciences. He will be a wise man who puts no trust in all that is proclaimed, upheld, essayed, and lauded at the present day. All that will disappear as quickly as it came. All of it, from the mania for physical sports (the mania, not the sports themselves) to political violence; from "new art" to sun-baths at idiotic fashionable watering-places. Nothing of all that has any roots; it is all pure invention, in the bad sense of the word, which makes it equivalent to fickle caprice. It is not a creation based on the solid substratum of life; it is not a genuine impulse or need. In a word, from the point of view of life it is false.
We are in presence of the contradiction of a style of living which cultivates sincerity and is at the same time a fraud. There is truth only in an existence which feels its acts as irrevocably necessary.

~ José Ortega y Gasset ~

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May 10

In choosing a theory, one should pay attention to simplicity in hypotheses only. Simplicity in computation can be of no weight in the balance of probabilities. Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis. She avoids complication only in means. Nature seems to have proposed to do much with little: it is a principle that the development of physics constantly supports by new evidence.

~ Augustin-Jean Fresnel ~

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May 11

Wop-bop-a-loo-mop alop-bom-bom!
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, woo!
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
Awop-bop-a-loo-mop alop-bom-bom!

~ Little Richard ~

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May 12

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm.

~ Florence Nightingale ~

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May 13

I charge you — forget the names you bear, forget the words I speak as soon as they are uttered. Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves, which arises as I address it. It hearkens not to my words, but to the reality within me, of which it is part. This is the atman, which hears me rather than my words. All else is unreal. To define is to lose. The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma. Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream. Essence dreams it a dream of form. Forms pass, but the essence remains, dreaming new dreams. Man names these dreams and thinks to have captured the essence, not knowing that he invokes the unreal. These stones, these walls, these bodies you see seated about you are poppies and water and the sun. They are the dreams of the Nameless. They are fire, if you like.

~ Roger Zelazny ~
in
~ Lord of Light ~

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May 14

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.

~ Carl Schurz ~

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May 15

The Scarecrow was now the ruler of the Emerald City, and although he was not a Wizard the people were proud of him. "For," they said, "there is not another city in all the world that is ruled by a stuffed man." And, so far as they knew, they were quite right.

~ L. Frank Baum ~

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May 16

If ever I do escape, no one shall reproach me with having broken or violated my faith, not having given my word to any one, whosoever it may be.

~ Joan of Arc ~

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May 17

The idea of motherland is not a false idea, but it is a little idea, and one which must remain little.
There is only one common good. There is only one moral duty, only one truth, and every man is the shining recipient and guardian of it. The present understanding of the idea of motherland divides all these great ideas, cuts them into pieces, specializes them within impenetrable circles. We meet as many national truths as we do nations, and as many national duties, and as many national interests and rights — and they are antagonistic to each other.

~ Henri Barbusse ~

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May 18

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell,
And by and by my Soul returned to me,
And answered, I Myself am Heav'n and Hell:

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill's Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire.

~ Omar Khayyám ~

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May 19

Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.

~ Edward de Bono ~

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May 20

Lies run sprints but the truth runs marathons.

~ Michael Jackson ~

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May 21

Teach me to feel another's woe,
To right the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.

~ Alexander Pope ~

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May 22

To glimpse one’s own true nature is a kind of homegoing, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon — the homegoing that needs no home, like that waterfall on the upper Suli Gad that turns to mist before touching the earth and rises once again into the sky.

~ Peter Matthiessen ~

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May 23

Act in such a way that your heart may be free from hatred. Let not your heart be offended with anyone. If someone commits an error and wrong toward you, you must instantly forgive him. Do not complain of others. Refrain from reprimanding them, and if you wish to give admonition or advice, let it be offered in such a way that it will not burden the bearer. Turn all your thoughts toward bringing joy to hearts. Beware! Beware! Lest ye offend any heart. Assist the world of humanity as much as possible. Be the source of consolation to every sad one, assist every weak one, be helpful to every indigent one, care for every sick one, be the cause of glorification to every lowly one, and shelter those who are overshadowed by fear.

~ `Abdu'l-Bahá ~

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May 24

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown.
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

~ Bob Dylan ~

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May 25

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion: to he worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to have an oratory in my own heart, and present spotless sacrifices of dignified kindness in the temple of humanity; to spread no opinions glaringly out like show-plants, and yet leave the garden gate ever open for the chosen friend and the chance acquaintance: to make no pretenses to greatness; to seek no notoriety; to attempt no wide influence; to have no ambitious projects; to let my writings be the daily bubbling spring flowing through constancy, swelled by experiences, into the full, deep river of wisdom; to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; … in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.

~ William Henry Channing ~

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May 26

The world wants oatmeal. It is not my job to give the world oatmeal. It is my job not to be a hack. It is my job to try to make the world chew, lest its lazy jaw muscles atrophy and its collective mandible withers and all its teeth fall out. It is my job, as a writer, to give the world toffee and peanut brittle and tough steak and celery. I write peanut butter sandwiches, not oatmeal. And every time some dolt whines, "I'm confused" or "I don't understand" or "This doesn't make any sense," I should smile and know that I'm doing my job. Not because it is my job to be opaque, but because it is not my job to be transparent.

~ Caitlín R. Kiernan ~

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May 27

There are certain injustices in this life you’ve got to do something about. You can’t just say that you can’t fight it, or it’s too much trouble, or that you don’t have the time or the effort, or that you can’t win. Forget all that. Fight them all!

~ Harlan Ellison ~

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May 28

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.

~ George Washington ~

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May 29

I believe in an America with a government of men devoted solely to the public interests — men of ability and dedication, free from conflict or corruption or other commitment — a responsible government that is efficient and economical, with a balanced budget over the years of the cycle, reducing its debt in prosperous times — a government willing to entrust the people with the facts that they have — not a businessman's government, with business in the saddle … not a labor government, not a farmer's government, not a government of one section of the country or another, but a government of, for and by the people.

~ John F. Kennedy ~

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May 30

It is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.

~ Mikhail Bakunin ~

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May 31

Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality,
And the vast that is evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.

~ Walt Whitman ~
in
~ Leaves of Grass ~

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QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
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Today is Thursday, November 14, 2024; it is now 20:28 (UTC)