Word of the day for the month of september

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September 1, 2019October 1, 2019

everyday quotes, faithquotes, inspirational quotes, inspiring quotes, motivational quotes, quote, quote of the day, quotes, thoughts

The month of September is here and let’s welcome September with quotes for inspiring and promoting positive qualities among ourselves. It is a well-known fact that one positive thought is more powerful than a few negative thoughts. So, let’s inspire ourselves every day with one ‘Quote of the day September Series’. So what are you waiting for? Bookmark the page to read positive quotes every day for the month of September.

Through hard work, perseverance and a faith in God, you can live your dreams.

Ben Carson

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And that’s a wrap for September series, Here’s the link to October series Quote of the day October Series: Inspiration every day.

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September 29:

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking

George S. Patton

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September 28:

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Albert Einstein.

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September 27:

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.

Elbert Hubbard

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September 26:

Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the Solar System, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.

Isaac newton

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September 25:

Each day, I come in with a positive attitude, trying to get better.

Steffon Diggs

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September 24:

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

Albert Einstein.

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September 23:

Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.

Napoleon Hill

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September 22:

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.

Saint Augustine.

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September 21:

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

Napoleon Hill

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September 20:

Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one.

Hans selye.

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September 19:

Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen.

Wayne Huizenga

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September 18:

Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.

Rumi

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September 17:

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.

Alan Alda

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September 16

If you wait for others to change, you’re a victim. But when you change, you’re a master.

Dana Gore.

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September 15

The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.

Napoleon Hill

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September 14

Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.

Wayne W. Dyer

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September 13

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Carl Jung

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September 12

Stay positive and happy. Work hard and don’t give up hope. Be open to criticism and keep learning. Surround yourself with happy, warm and genuine people.

Tena Desae

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September 11

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.

Albert Einstein

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September 10

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

J.K. Rowling

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September 09

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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September 08

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Helen Keller

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September 07

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgment of the intellect is only part of the truth.

Carl Jung

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September 06

It is not love that should be depticted as blind, but self-love.

Voltaire

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September 05

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, Awakes.

Carl Jung

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September 4

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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September 3

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

Joel Osteen.

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September 2

It is nice when you can enjoy yourself and make people smile.

Peter Crouch

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September 1

“If you paint in your mind a picture of bright and happy expectations, you put youerself into a condition conducive to your goal.”

Norman Vincent Peale.

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Feeling inspired? Don’t forget to share the quote or tweet the quote to inspire your near and dear ones. Have a nice day!

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Looking for previous months’ quotes? Visit: Quote of the day August Series: Quotes for the month of August

We hope that these quotes have surely uplifted the way you think and feel. Enjoyed reading these Quotes? Share it among your friends because everyone deserves to lead an inspired life.

Looking for more quotes? You might want to look at the following categories: Thoughts and Quotes and Thoughtful Tuesday

Suggested Daily Learnings:

Word of the Day, Idiom of the Day, Fact of the Day, Today in History.

QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January — February — March — April — May — June — July — August — September — October — November — December
<– Last Month · This Month –>

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Today is Friday, April 14, 2023; it is now 22:56 (UTC)

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August << September 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 >> October

This page lists quote of the day proposals specifically for dates in the month of September, and quotes proposed should ideally have some relation to the day, or persons born on it, though sometimes exceptions can be made, usually for notable quotes that relate to recent events, such as the death of prominent individuals. Developing ideas of people or works to quote on specific days can be explored through the Wikipedia page: List of historical anniversaries. The numeric section heading of each date is also a direct link to the Wikipedia list of births, deaths, and other events which occured on that date.

See also: September 2008 · 2009 · 2010 · 2011 · 2012 · 2013 · 2014 · 2015 · 2016 · 2017 · 2018 · 2019

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Ranking system:

4 : Excellent — should definitely be used.

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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2004

There is no sudden entrance into Heaven. Slow is the ascent by the path of Love. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

• selected by Kalki

2005

It takes a real storm in the average person’s life to make him realize how much worrying he has done over the squalls. ~ Bruce Fairchild Barton

• proposed by Kalki, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina

2006

I like a huge range of comedy — from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated — but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it. ~ Lily Tomlin

• proposed by Kalki

2007

I have always felt that humor was a wonderful vehicle to let us become connected with each other and ourselves… I try to portray the similarities and polarities in men and women, so that we can acknowledge and embrace our collective consciousness. ~ Lily Tomlin

• proposed by Kalki

2008

Deep in the minds of the apes was rooted the conviction that Tarzan was a mighty fighter and a strange creature. Strange because he had had it in his power to kill his enemy, but had allowed him to live — unharmed. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

• proposed by Kalki

2009

Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof. Lev. XXV X
~ Inscription on the Liberty Bell ~ (delivered to Philadelphia on this date in 1752)

• proposed by Kalki

2010

We’ve traveled halfway ’round the world
To find ourselves again —
September morn —
We danced until the night became a brand new day,
Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play —
September morning still can make me feel that way.
~ Neil Diamond ~

• proposed by Kalki

2011

If you’re up against a smart opponent, make him think himself to death. ~ C. J. Cherryh

• proposed by Zarbon

2012

When the legend is retold, it mirrors the reality of the time, and one can learn from studying how various authors have attempted to retell the story. I don’t think we have an obligation to change it radically. I think that if we ever move too far from the basic story, we would lose something very precious. I don’t, for instance, approve of fantasy that attempts to go back and rewrite the Middle Ages until it conforms to political correctness in the twentieth century. That removes all the benefit from reading the story. If you don’t understand other people in their time and why they did what they did, then you don’t understand your own past. And when you lose your past, you lose some potential for your own future.

~ C. J. Cherryh ~

• proposed by bystander

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

There’s very good news from the asteroids. It appears that a large fraction of them, including the big ones, are actually very rich in H2O. Nobody imagined that. They thought they were just big rocks … It’s easier to get to an asteroid than to Mars, because the gravity is lower and landing is easier. Certainly the asteroids are much more practical, right now. If we start space colonies in, say, the next 20 years, I would put my money on the asteroids.

~ Freeman Dyson ~

• proposed by Kalki — in regard to the close approach of the 5 km NEO 3122 Florence, on this date.

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

My fellow Americans, the war in Afghanistan is now over. I’m the fourth president who has faced the issue of whether and when to end this war. When I was running for president, I made a commitment to the American people that I would end this war. Today, I’ve honored that commitment. It was time to be honest with the American people again. We no longer had a clear purpose and an open-ended mission in Afghanistan. After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, I refuse to send another generation of America’s sons and daughters to fight a war should have ended long ago.

~ Joe Biden ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

2003

Ars longa, vita brevis. (Art is long, life is short.) ~ Horace

• selected by Nanobug

2004

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

• selected by Kalki

2005

Speak softly and carry a big stick. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

• proposed by MosheZadka: First public use of the phrase by Roosevelt in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair (2 September 1901)

2006

Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone’s attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process. ~ Salma Hayek (born 2 September 1966)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood. ~ Paul Bourget (born 2 September 1852)

• proposed by Kalki

2008

The first casualty when war comes is truth. ~ Hiram Johnson (born 2 September 1866)

• proposed by Zarbon

2009

If thinking men are few, they are for that reason all the more powerful. Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power. ~ Henry George (born 2 September 1839)

• proposed by Zarbon

2010

To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be. ~ Henry George

• proposed by Kalki

2011

The great work of the present for every man, and every organization of men, who would improve social conditions, is the work of education — the propagation of ideas. It is only as it aids this that anything else can avail. ~ Henry George

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by bystander

2013

• proposed by bystander

2014

Whoever becomes imbued with a noble idea kindles a flame from which other torches are lit, and influences those with whom he comes in contact, be they few or many. How far that influence, thus perpetuated, may extend, it is not given to him here to see.

~ Henry George ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

More is given to us than to any people at any time before; and, therefore, more is required of us. We have made, and still are making, enormous advances on material lines. It is necessary that we commensurately advance on moral lines. Civilization, as it progresses, requires a higher conscience, a keener sense of justice, a warmer brotherhood, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit. Falling these, civilization must pass into destruction. It cannot be maintained on the ethics of savagery.

~ Henry George ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum: it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other. Within the compass of five generations we find the Puritan first an uncompromising believer in demonology and magic, and then a scoffer at everything involving the play of fancy.

~ Eugene Field ~

• proposed by bystander

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same — to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

~ Henry George ~

• proposed by DanielTom

2019

• proposed by bystander

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

Some day you will know for yourself that it is almost as true to say that one recovers from all things as that there is nothing which does not leave its scar.

~ Paul Bourget ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

I wanted to have a voice, and it was okay if I wasn’t going to be so famous or so rich. And this the one thing I learned: How do you recognize what’s your true dream and what is the dream that you are dreaming for other people to love you? … The difference is very easy to understand. If you enjoy the process, it’s your dream. … If you are enduring the process, just desperate for the result, it’s somebody else’s dream.

~ Salma Hayek ~

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

There’s nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos. ~ Jim Hightower

• selected by Nanobug

2004

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

• selected by Kalki

2005

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. ~ Frederick Douglass

• proposed by Kalki

2006

Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it. ~ Oliver Cromwell

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2007

A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing, since adventurers come into it as well as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it takes something from the world, and has something to give in return. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett (born 3 September 1849)

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2008

The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett

• proposed by Kalki

2009

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies in a twinkling.
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law. ~ Louis Sullivan (born 3 September 1856)

• proposed by Ningauble

2010

Your patience may have long to wait,
Whether in little things or great,
But all good luck, you soon will learn,
Must come to those who nobly earn.
Who hunts the hay-field over
Will find the four-leaved clover.
~ Sarah Orne Jewett ~

• proposed by Kalki

2011

The warm sun kissed the earth
To consecrate thy birth,
And from his close embrace
Thy radiant face
Sprang into sight,
A blossoming delight.
~ Sarah Orne Jewett ~

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2013

How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it. Yet evidently the true object of education, now as ever, is to develop the capabilities of the head and of the heart.

~ Louis Sullivan ~

• proposed by bystander

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to its life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit. It must stand for the actual, vital first-hand experiences of the one who made it, and must represent his deep-down impression not only of physical nature but more especially and necessarily his understanding of the out-working of that Great Spirit which makes nature so intelligible to us that it ceases to be a phantasm and becomes a sweet, a superb, a convincing Reality.

~ Louis Sullivan ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

Unceasingly the essence of things is taking shape in the matter of things, and this unspeakable process we call birth and growth. Awhile the spirit and the matter fade away together, and it is this that we call decadence, death. These two happenings seem jointed and interdependent, blended into one like a bubble and its iridescence, and they seem borne along upon a slowly moving air. This air is wonderful past all understanding.

~ Louis Sullivan ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old. ~ Jonathan Swift

• selected by Nanobug

2004

The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails. ~ William Shakespeare in The Winter’s Tale

• selected by Kalki

2005

I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise? ~ Federico Fellini

• proposed by MosheZadka for the anniversary of the first transatlantic television broadcast (4 September 1951)

2006

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. ~ L. P. Jacks (originally attributed to François-René de Chateaubriand, born 4 September 1768, because of a widespread misattribution.)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant. ~ François-René de Chateaubriand

• proposed by Kalki

2008

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate. ~ François-René de Chateaubriand

• proposed by Zarbon

2009

As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before. ~ François-René de Chateaubriand

• proposed by Kalki

2010

In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul. ~ Mary Renault (born 4 September 1905)

• proposed by Ningauble

2011

A degree of silence envelops Washington’s actions; he moved slowly; one might say that he felt charged with future liberty, and that he feared to compromise it. It was not his own destiny that inspired this new species of hero: it was that of his country; he did not allow himself to enjoy what did not belong to him; but from that profound humility what glory emerged! Search the woods where Washington’s sword gleamed: what do you find? Tombs? No; a world! Washington has left the United States behind for a monument on the field of battle. ~ François-René de Chateaubriand

• proposed by Kalki

2012

Machines which ape people are tending to encroach on every aspect of people’s lives, and that such machines force people to behave like machines. The new electronic devices do indeed have the power to force people to «communicate» with them and with each other on the terms of the machine. Whatever structurally does not fit the logic of machines is effectively filtered from a culture dominated by their use. The machine-like behaviour of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed.

~ Ivan Illich ~

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know — all mystics — Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion — are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.

~ Anthony de Mello ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki for the day of Canonization of Mother Teresa

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

The issue which I propose for discussion should … be clear: how to counter the encroachment of new, electronic devices and systems upon commons that are more subtle and more intimate to our being than either grassland or roads — commons that are at least as valuable as silence. Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving. A transformation of the environment from a commons to a productive resource constitutes the most fundamental form of environmental degradation. This degradation has a long history, which coincides with the history of capitalism but can in no way just be reduced to it. Unfortunately the importance of this transformation has been overlooked or belittled by political ecology so far. It needs to be recognized if we are to organize defense movements of what remains of the commons.

~ Ivan Illich ~

• «Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving.» — proposed by Ningauble; extended for context regarding transformations of the commons which Illich was addressing, by Kalki.

2020

If this country can’t find its way to a human path, if it can’t inform conduct with a deep sense of life, then all of us, black as well as white, are going down the same drain… I picked up a pencil and held it over a sheet of white paper, but my feelings stood in the way of my words. Well, I would wait, day and night, until I knew what to say. Humbly now, with no vaulting dream of achieving a vast unity, I wanted to try to build a bridge of words between me and that world outside, that world which was so distant and elusive that it seemed unreal. I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human.

~ Richard Wright ~

• proposed by bystander

2021

If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a flower, a bird, a child; they are perfect images of the kingdom. For they live from moment to moment in the eternal now with no past and no future. So they are spared the guilt and anxiety that so torment human beings and they are full of the sheer joy of living, taking delight not so much in persons or things as in life itself. As long as your happiness is caused or sustained by something or someone outside of you, you are still in the land of the dead. The day you are happy for no reason whatsoever, the day you find yourself taking delight in everything and in nothing, you will know that you have found the land of unending joy called the kingdom.

~ Anthony de Mello ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

Rank or add further suggestions…

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir mens’ blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

~ Daniel Burnham‎‎ ~

• proposed by Kalki

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2003

Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe … every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy. ~ Hannes Alfven

• selected by Nanobug

2004

Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received. ~ Seneca the Younger

• selected by Kalki

2005

The role of the Supreme Court is to uphold those claims of individual liberty that it finds are well-founded in the Constitution, and to reject other claims against the government that it concludes are not well-founded. Its role is no more to exclusively uphold the claims of the individual than it is to exclusively uphold the claims of the government: It must hold the constitutional balance true between these claims. ~ William Rehnquist (recent death)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

I’ve probably saved thousands of peoples’ lives with my educational message on snake bites — how to get in around venomous anything. Yeah, I’m a thrill seeker — but crikey, education’s the most important thing. ~ Steve Irwin (recent death)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

The pure, frank sentiments we hold in our hearts are the only truthful sources of art. … All authentic art is conceived at a sacred moment and nourished in a blessed hour; an inner impulse creates it, often without the artist being aware of it. ~ Caspar David Friedrich (born 4 September 1774)

• proposed by Kalki

2008

A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever. ~ Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky

• proposed by Zarbon

2009

I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full; I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am. ~ Caspar David Friedrich

• proposed by Kalki

2010

Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that one. ~ Black Elk (Crazy Horse died on this date in 1877; his birth date is unknown)

• proposed by 200.203.55.240

2011

Whether religion is a divisive or reconciling force depends on our certainty or our humility as we practice our faith in our politics. If we believe that we know God’s truth and that we can embody that truth in a political agenda, we divid the realm of politics into those who are God’s side, which is our side, and those with whom we disagree, who oppose the side of God. This is neither good religion nor good politics. It is not consistent with following a Lord who reached out to a variety of people — prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers. If politics is the art of compromise, certainty is not really politics, for how can one compromise with God’s own truth? Reconciliation depends on acknowledging that God’s truth is greater than our own, that we cannot reduce it to any political platform we create, no matter how committed we are to that platform, and that God’s truth is large enough to accommodate the opinions of all kinds of people, even those with whom we strongly disagree. ~ John Danforth

• proposed by Zarbon

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Zarbon

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him. Otherwise his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead.

~ Caspar David Friedrich ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

When you see your neighbors, their needs, their joys, their sorrows, when you see them next door or halfway around the world, you will know what to do. It is concern that precedes and inspires agendas, and survives when agendas fail, and it causes us to try again, always trying our best, never certain about our own judgment. It is knowing that God’s purpose exceeds whatever we can put in an agenda. For Christians, it is trusting in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

~ John Danforth ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Ilovemydoodle

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2004

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. ~ Henry David Thoreau

• selected by Kalki

2005

No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

• proposed by Kalki

2006

My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Opinions are not to be learned by rote, like the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a dictionary. They are conclusions to be formed, and formed by each individual in the sacred and free citadel of the mind, and there enshrined beyond the arm of law to reach, or force to shake. ~ Frances Wright (born 6 September 1795)

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2008

When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

• proposed by Kalki

2009

I saw a rainbow earlier today
Lately those rainbows be comin’ round like everyday
Deep in the struggle I have found the beauty of me
God is watchin’ and the Devil finally let me be.
Here in this moment to myself.
~ Macy Gray ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2010

An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue. ~ Frances Wright

• proposed by Kalki

2011

The Immortal Principle was first called water by Thales. Anaximenes called it air. The Pythagoreans called it number and were thus the first to see the Immortal Principle as something nonmaterial. Heraclitus called the Immortal Principle fire and introduced change as part of the Principle. He said the world exists as a conflict and tension of opposites. He said there is a One and there is a Many and the One is the universal law which is immanent in all things. Anaxagoras was the first to identify the One as nous, meaning «mind.»
Parmenides made it clear for the first time that the Immortal Principle, the One, Truth, God, is separate from appearance and from opinion, and the importance of this separation and its effect upon subsequent history cannot be overstated. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

• proposed by Kalki

2012

There is no contradiction. There never really can be between the core terms of monistic philosophies. The One in India has got to be the same as the One in Greece. If it’s not, you’ve got two. The only disagreements among the monists concern the attributes of the One, not the One itself. Since the One is the source of all things and includes all things in it, it cannot be defined in terms of those things, since no matter what thing you use to define it, the thing will always describe something less than the One itself. The One can only be described allegorically, through the use of analogy, of figures of imagination and speech.

~ Robert M. Pirsig ~

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2014

The word patriotism has been employed … to express a love of the public good; a preference for the interests of the many to those of the few; a desire for the emancipation of the human race from the thrall of despotism, religious and civil; in short … to express the interest felt in the human race in general, than that felt for any country, or inhabitants of a country, in particular. And patriot, in like manner, is employed to signify a lover of human liberty and human improvement, rather than a mere lover of the country in which he lives, or the tribe to which he belongs. … Patriotism, in the exclusive meaning, is surely not made for America. Mischievous every where, it were here both mischievous and absurd. … It is for Americans, more especially to nourish a nobler sentiment; one more consistent with their origin, and more conducive to their future improvement. It is for them more especially to know why they love their country, not because it is their country, but because it is the palladium of human liberty — the favoured scene of human improvement.

~ Frances Wright ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.

~ Robert M. Pirsig ~

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and «best» was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.

~ Robert M. Pirsig ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2004

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

• selected by Kalki

2005

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. ~ Edith Sitwell (born 7 September 1887)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. ~ Edith Sitwell (born 7 September 1887)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?. ~ Edith Sitwell

• proposed by Kalki

2008

The more bombers, the less room for doves of peace. ~ Nikita Khrushchev

• proposed by MosheZadka

2009

I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday, as I have thought of it, as I remember all the things from childhood on through the years, good ones, and unpleasant ones, that is how they come out and that is how we have to take them.
I look back on my life like a good day’s work, it was done and I am satisfied with it. I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. ~ Grandma Moses

• proposed by Kalki

2010

As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality. It should make our days holy to us. The poet should speak to all men, for a moment, of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten. ~ Edith Sitwell

• proposed by Kalki

2011

It is a part of the poet’s work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees. ~ Edith Sitwell

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki; not only is it Sitwell’s birthday, but it is also the date on which the Blitz which she writes about in the poem began.

2016

When a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry. The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity. They stimulate their people’s natural fear of all other men by channeling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors. This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide.

~ Taylor Caldwell ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

We’re only here for a little while, and you’ve got to have some fun, right? I don’t take myself seriously, and I think the ones that do, there’s some sickness with people like that.

~ Burt Reynolds ~

• proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

Learning … should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life’s greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of noble and learned men, not a conducted tour through a jail. So its surroundings should be as gracious as possible, to complement it.

~ Taylor Caldwell ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Kalki in regard of her recent appointment as Prime Minister of the UK.

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

Dare to be naïve. ~ Buckminster Fuller

• selected by Nanobug

2004

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

• selected by Kalki

2005

Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give. ~ David O. McKay, (born 8 September 1873)

• proposed by MosheZadka

2006

Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat. ~ Peter Sellers

• proposed by Kalki

2007

I’m not a politician, I’m a musician. I care about giving people a place where they can go to enjoy themselves and to begin to live again. To the man you have to give the spirit, and when you give him the spirit, you have done everything. ~ Luciano Pavarotti (recent death)

• proposed by Kalki

2008

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
~ Siegfried Sassoon (born September 8, 1886)

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2009

What voice revisits me this night? What face
To my heart’s room returns?
From the perpetual silence where the grace
Of human sainthood burns
Hastes he once more to harmonise and heal?
I know not. Only I feel
His influence undiminished
And his life’s work, in me and many, unfinished.
~ Siegfried Sassoon ~

• proposed by Kalki

2010

Oh, he tells me tears are something to hide
And something to fear
And I try so hard to keep it inside
So no one can hear.

«Hush, hush, keep it down now.
Voices carry.»

~ Aimee Mann ~ (born 8 September 1960)

• proposed by Kalki

2011

Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle! ~ Peter Sellers

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

Like Peter Pan, or Superman, You have come… to save me. Come on and save me… Why don’t you save me? If you could save me, From the ranks of the freaks, Who suspect they could never love anyone, Except the freaks… Who could never love anyone.

~ Aimee Mann‎‎ ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

I don’t know how to break the news, but It’s pretty clear you’ll be asked to choose between What you lack and what you excuse In this tug of war You can’t say that they didn’t warn you Though you’d rather that they just ignore you Cause your devices are not working for you anymore. What you want, you don’t know You’re with stupid now.

~ Aimee Mann ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

Though you pay for the hands they’re shaking The speeches and the mistakes they’re making As they struggle with the undertaking Of simple thought. What you want, you don’t know You’re with stupid now. What you know, you don’t want to know You’re with stupid now.

~ Aimee Mann ~

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

• proposed by DanielTom

2022

Trump was saying that the only way he could lose the election is if there was — let me get the exact quote — «the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.» Now he is making that statement at a time when virtually every national poll has him behind. … there is a very high likelihood that Trump will contest the results if he loses … And it would be an unprecedented moment in American history and undermining everything that this country stands for if we have a president remain in office who lost the election. … I certainly hope with all of my heart that none of this happens.

~ Bernie Sanders ~

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

What’s another word for Thesaurus? ~ Steven Wright

• selected by Nanobug

2004

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

• selected by Kalki

2005

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. ~ Leo Tolstoy (born 9 September 1828)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen. ~ Leo Tolstoy (born 9 September 1828)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you. ~ Madeleine L’Engle (recent death)

• proposed by Kalki

2008

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here. ~ Leo Tolstoy

• proposed by Kalki

2009

All men live not by the thought they spend on their own welfare, but because love exists in man.
I knew before that God gave life to men and desires that they should live; now I understood more than that.
I understood that God does not wish men to live apart, and therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all.
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love. ~ Leo Tolstoy

• proposed by Kalki

2010

One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it: the indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which is one and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in due time emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsense that has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go the evil from which humanity now suffers. ~ Leo Tolstoy

• proposed by Kalki

2011

As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual. ~ Leo Tolstoy

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

~ Leo Tolstoy ~

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2022

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant. ~ Richard Ferris

• selected by Fonzy

2004

He that would live in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows, nor judge all he sees. ~ Benjamin Franklin

• selected by Kalki

2005

I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme positions lies somewhere between them. More fruitful perspectives often require that we step off the line to a site outside the dichotomy. ~ Stephen Jay Gould (born 10 September 1941)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life’s pool table. Sufficiently complex systems have greater richness. Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways. ~ Stephen Jay Gould (born 10 September 1941)

• proposed by MosheZadka

2007

The river of truth is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between them, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the mainstream. ~ Cyril Connolly (born 10 September 1903)

• Loosely sourced variant originally proposed by Kalki, correctly sourced version from a published edition of The Unquiet Grave (1944) proposed by InvisibleSun

2008

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. ~ Cyril Connolly

• proposed by Kalki

2009

It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

• proposed by Zarbon

2010

The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

• proposed by Kalki

2011

The idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

• proposed by Zarbon

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Zarbon

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

What I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled — to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Zarbon

2017

You’d better hope and pray That you make it safe back to your own world You’d better hope and pray That you’ll wake one day in your own world Because when you sleep at night They don’t hear your cries in your own world Only time will tell If you can break the spell back in your own world.

~ Siobhan Fahey ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Zarbon

2021

In a little over a week’s time we will come together as a nation, as a Commonwealth and indeed a global community, to lay my beloved mother to rest. In our sorrow, let us remember and draw strength from the light of her example. On behalf of all my family, I can only offer the most sincere and heartfelt thanks for your condolences and support. They mean more to me than I can ever possibly express. And to my darling mama, as you begin your last great journey to join my dear late papa, I want simply to say this: thank you. Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years. May «flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.»

~ Charles III ~

• proposed by Kalki; in regard of his ascension to the throne, and his mother’s recent death.

2022

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

Never burn a penny candle looking for a halfpenny. ~ Irish proverb

• selected by Nanobug

2004

Only tragedy allows the release of love and grief never normally seen. ~ Kate Bush

• selected by Kalki

2005

September 11 was, and remains, above all an immense human tragedy. But September 11 also posed a momentous and deliberate challenge not just to America but to the world at large. The target of the terrorists was not only New York and Washington but the very values of freedom, tolerance and decency which underpin our way of life. ~ Tony Blair

• proposed by Kalki

2006

On September 11 — what happened? Picture this: two upended matchboxes, knocked over by the sheer force of paper-darts.
Only it was much, much worse than that. In fact, words alone cannot adduce how much worse it was than that. September 11 was an attack on words: we felt a general deficit. ~ Martin Amis

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Our best destiny, as planetary cohabitants, is the development of what has been called «species consciousness» — something over and above nationalisms, blocs, religions, ethnicities … I have been trying to apply such a consciousness, and such a sensibility. Thinking of the victims, the perpetrators, and the near future, I felt species grief, then species shame, then species fear. ~ Martin Amis on the terrorist attacks of 11^th September 2001

• proposed by Kalki

2008

Although September 11 was horrible, it didn’t threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do. … I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars. ~ Stephen Hawking

• proposed by MosheZadka

2009

On September 11, 2001, the world fractured. It’s beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day, and the days that would follow — the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another’s heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction. ~ Barack Obama

• proposed by Zarbon

2010

We have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire. If today, after the horror of 11 September, we see better, and we see further — we will realize that humanity is indivisible. New threats make no distinction between races, nations or regions. A new insecurity has entered every mind, regardless of wealth or status. A deeper awareness of the bonds that bind us all — in pain as in prosperity — has gripped young and old.
In the early beginnings of the 21st century — a century already violently disabused of any hopes that progress towards global peace and prosperity is inevitable — this new reality can no longer be ignored. It must be confronted. ~ Kofi Annan

• proposed by Kalki

2011

This enemy attacked not just our people, but all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world. The United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy. We will rally the world. We will be patient, we will be focused, and we will be steadfast in our determination.… we will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms. ~ George W. Bush ~

On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.
We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. … The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.
Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. ~ Barack Obama ~

• proposed by Kalki, as two quotes for the 10th anniversary of the attacks in which the twin towers fell by the two men who have served as US President since that time, in the battles against terrorism.

2012

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new; an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking, is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto, «Anyone can cook». But I realize — only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more.

~ Brad Bird ~ in ~ Ratatouille ~

• proposed by Kalki (Bird born 11 September 1957)

2013

The magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.

~ D. H. Lawrence ~

• proposed by Kalki

2014

Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud. Submit yourself to ordeals and test yourself in fire. Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief, and seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way opposes your calm. Evaluate your beliefs first and then arrive at your emotions. Let yourself say: “If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it is hot, and if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool.”

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women’s rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. These are tyrants, not Muslims. … The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his worldview, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world’s resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them. How to defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized. Don’t let fear rule your life.

~ Salman Rushdie ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

Terrorists will never be able to defeat the United States. Their only hope is to terrorize us into changing who we are or our way of life. That’s why we Americans will never give in to fear. And it’s why this weekend we remember the true spirit of 9/11. We’re still the America of heroes who ran into harm’s way; of ordinary folks who took down the hijackers; of families who turned their pain into hope. We are still the America that looks out for one another, bound by our shared belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper. In the face of terrorism, how we respond matters. We cannot give in to those who would divide us. We cannot react in ways that erode the fabric of our society. Because it’s our diversity, our welcoming of all talent, our treating of everybody fairly — no matter their race, gender, ethnicity, or faith — that’s part of what makes our country great. It’s what makes us resilient. And if we stay true to those values, we’ll uphold the legacy of those we’ve lost, and keep our nation strong and free. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

~ Barack Obama ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

~ D.H. Lawrence ~

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true. ~ Niels Bohr

2004

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. ~ Carl Sagan

2005

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of the truth — that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one. ~ H. L. Mencken (born 12 September 1880)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either. ~ Jesse Owens (born 12 September 1913)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right… The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds. ~ H. L. Mencken (born 12 September 1880)

• proposed by Kalki

2008

If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently. ~ Stanisław Lem (born 12 September 1921)

• proposed by Kalki

2009

You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down. ~ Stanisław Lem

• proposed by Kalki

2010

It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous. ~ Charles Dudley Warner

• proposed by Zarbon

2011

The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself — the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us — that’s where it’s at. ~ Jesse Owens

• proposed by Kalki

2012

There is something inside us which we don’t like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don’t leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don’t like it any more.

~ Stanisław Lem ~

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

Each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable.

~ Stanisław Lem ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

Clarity of thought is a shining point in a vast expanse of unrelieved darkness. Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom, and its typical cowardice is to bathe in its own glow and avoid, as much as possible, looking out beyond its boundary. No matter how much genuine strength it may contain, there is also, inevitably, a considerable part that is only the pretense of that strength.

~ Stanisław Lem ~

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

• proposed by Kalki; in regard to the anniversary of his death.

2022

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

2004

He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave. ~ William Drummond of Logiealmond

• selected by Kalki

2005

Miss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets. ~ Judith Martin, widely known as «Miss Manners» (born 13 September 1938)

• proposed by MosheZadka

2006

What I need is a good defense
‘Cause I’m feeling like a criminal
And I need to be redeemed
To the one I’ve sinned against
Because he’s all I ever knew of love.
~ Fiona Apple ~ (born 13 September 1977)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind, which now comes this way and now comes that, and changes name because it changes quarter. ~ Dante Alighieri (died 13 or 14 September 1321)

• proposed by Kalki

2008

Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it. ~ Roald Dahl

• proposed by Zarbon

2009

By Jove the stranger and the poor are sent,
And what to those we give, to Jove is lent.
~ Alexander Pope,
in his interpretation of
The Odyssey by Homer

• proposed by Kalki (in relation to the legendary date of the dedication of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill on the ides of September, 13 September 509 BC)

2010

Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified. ~ Sherwood Anderson

• proposed by Kalki

2011

Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass ~

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by bystander

2013

You will have to know life … If you are to become a writer you’ll have to stop fooling with words … It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it’s time to be living. I don’t want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.

~ Sherwood Anderson ~

• proposed by Kalki

2014

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is «mere». I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part… What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

~ Richard Feynman ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

ZEUS, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.

~ Ambrose Bierce ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist’s imaginative life there is purpose. There is determination to give the tale, the song, the painting, form — to make it true and real to the theme, not to life. Often the better the job is done, the greater the confusion. … The confusion arises out of the fact that others besides practicing artists have imaginations. But most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.

~ Sherwood Anderson ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

«The matter with human beans,» the BFG went on, «is that they is absolutely refusing to believe in anything unless they is actually seeing it right in front of their own schnozzles.»

~ Roald Dahl ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki, in regard to the Friday the 13th full Harvest Moon of this year.

2020

• proposed by Kalki; in relation to the legendary date of the dedication of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill on the ides of September, 13 September 509 BC: Zeus/Jupiter speaking, in Sartre’s play The Flies.

2021

• proposed by Kalki

2022

Yesterday and today, the Russian army struck the Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians found themselves in the dark — without electricity. Houses, hospitals, schools, communal infrastructure … Russian missiles hit precisely those objects that have absolutely nothing to do with the infrastructure of the Armed Forces of our country. On the one hand, this is a sign of the desperation of those who invented this war. This is how they react to the defeat of Russian troops in the Kharkiv region. They can’t do anything to our heroes on the battlefield, and that’s why Russia is directing its vile strikes against civilian infrastructure.

~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

---

2004

We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are. ~ Anaïs Nin

• selected by Kalki

2005

I’ve had enough of breakdowns and diagrams — judging from picture books, apparently Heaven is a partly cloudy place. ~ Jenny Lewis, «Don’t Deconstruct»

• proposed by IP 69.3.198.42 («Pacian»)

2006

The acceptance of the principle of international cooperation is of immense importance for all states. Even the states which are most tempted to believe that they can stand by themselves have very much to gain by such cooperation. And for the smaller states — the weaker states — it is vital to all their hopes of liberty and justice. ~ Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (born 14 September 1864)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

The vast majority of the peoples of the world are against war and against aggression. If they make their wishes known and effective, war can be stopped. It all depends on whether they are willing to make the effort necessary for the purpose. For, that it will require an effort, no one who considers the history of the world on these subjects can doubt. ~ Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood

• proposed by Kalki

2008

Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, «the greatest,» but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is. ~ Sydney J. Harris

• proposed by Zarbon

2009

The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion. ~ Sydney J. Harris

• proposed by Zarbon

2010

An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. ~ Sydney J. Harris

• proposed by Zarbon

2011

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war. ~ Sydney J. Harris

• proposed by Zarbon

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

Freud’s prescription for personal happiness as consisting of work and love must be taken with the proviso that the work has to be loved, and the love has to be worked at.

~ Sydney J. Harris ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Zarbon

2016

Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify. Some people have easy temperaments and weak characters; others have difficult temperaments and strong characters. We are all prone to confuse the two in assessing people we associate with. Those with easy temperaments and weak characters are more likable than admirable; those with difficult temperaments and strong characters are more admirable than likable. Of course, the optimum for a person is to possess both an easy temperament and a strong character, but this is a rare combination, and few of us are that lucky.

~ Sydney J. Harris ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

Baby hold on to me Whatever will be, will be The future is ours to see So baby hold on to me.

~ Eddie Money ~

• proposed by Kalki

2020

The most worthwhile form of education is the kind that puts the educator inside you, as it were, so that the appetite for learning persists long after the external pressure for grades and degrees has vanished. Otherwise you are not educated; you are merely trained.

~ Sydney J. Harris ~

• proposed by Kalki

2021

Rank or add further suggestions…

---

2003

Our chiefs said ‘Done,’ and I did not deem it;
Our seers said ‘Peace,’ and it was not peace;
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
~ «A Song of Defeat» by Gilbert Keith Chesterton ~

• selected by Nanobug

2004

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

• selected by Kalki

2005

Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions. ~ Agatha Christie (born 15 September 1890)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

We hardly find any persons of good sense, save those who agree with us. ~ François de La Rochefoucauld (born 15 September 1613)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side. ~ François de La Rochefoucauld (born 15 September 1613)

• proposed by Kalki

2008

If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others. ~ François de La Rochefoucauld

• proposed by Kalki

2009

Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it. ~ Agatha Christie

• proposed by Kalki

2010

The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances. ~ Agatha Christie (date of birth)

• proposed by Kalki

2011

I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them. ~ Agatha Christie

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by bystander

2013

Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs, equally to the honest man and to the gentleman: to the first, as doing to others as we would ourselves be done by; to the last, as indispensable to the liberality of the character. By candor we are not to understand trifling and uncalled for expositions of truth; but a sentiment that proves a conviction of the necessity of speaking truth, when speaking at all; a contempt for all designing evasions of our real opinions; and a deep conviction that he who deceives by necessary implication, deceives willfully. In all the general concerns, the publick has a right to be treated with candor. Without this manly and truly republican quality, republican because no power exists in the country to intimidate any from its exhibition, the institutions are converted into a stupendous fraud.

~ James Fenimore Cooper ~

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management, instead of manifesting the frank, fearless qualities of the democracy he so prodigally professes. The man who maintains the rights of the people on pure grounds, may be distinguished from the demagogue by the reverse of all these qualities. He does not flatter the people, even while he defends them, for he knows that flattery is a corrupting and dangerous poison. Having nothing to conceal, he is frank and fearless, as are all men with the consciousness of right motives. He oftener chides than commends, for power needs reproof and can dispense with praise. He who would be a courtier under a king, is almost certain to be a demagogue in a democracy.

~ James Fenimore Cooper ~ in ~ The American Democrat ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

Party is known to encourage prejudice, and to lead men astray in the judgment of character. Thus it is we see one half the nation extolling those that the other half condemns, and condemning those that the other half extols. Both cannot be right, and as passions, interests and prejudices are all enlisted on such occasions, it would be nearer the truth to say that both are wrong. Party is an instrument of error, by pledging men to support its policy, instead of supporting the policy of the state. Thus we see party measures almost always in extremes, the resistance of opponents inducing the leaders to ask for more than is necessary. Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party. Thus have we seen those territorial divisions and regulations which ought to be permanent, as well as other useful laws, altered, for no other end than to influence an election. Party, has been a means of entirely destroying that local independence, which elsewhere has given rise to a representation that acts solely for the nation, and which, under other systems is called the country party, every legislator being virtually pledged to support one of two opinions; or, if a shade of opinion between them, a shade that is equally fettered, though the truth be with neither.

~ James Fenimore Cooper ~ in ~ The American Democrat ~

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2021

• proposed by bystander

2022

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

---

2003

One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power. ~ Human, All Too Human by Friedrich Nietzsche

• selected by Nanobug

2004

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

• selected by Kalki

2005

A planned life is a dead life. ~ Lauren Bacall (born 16 September 1924)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

The public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you’re not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self-examination to say, you know, I’m not perfect. I’m just like you. They don’t ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest, and show a modicum of good sense. ~ Ann Richards (recent death)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense. ~ Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (born 16 September 1678)

• proposed by David

2008

It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature’s God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word. ~ Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (born 16 September 1678)

• proposed by Dbiv

2009

Descend, descend, Urania, speak
To men in their own tongue!
Leave not the breaking heart to break
Because thine own is strong.
This is the law, in dream and deed,
That heaven must walk on earth!
O, shine upon the humble creed
That holds the heavenly birth.
~ Alfred Noyes ~

• proposed by Kalki

2010

Thou whose deep ways are in the sea,
Whose footsteps are not known,
To-night a world that turned from Thee
Is waiting — at Thy Throne.

The towering Babels that we raised
Where scoffing sophists brawl,
The little Antichrists we praised —
The night is on them all.
~ Alfred Noyes ~

• proposed by Kalki

2011

We have come by curious ways
To the Light that holds the days;
We have sought in haunts of fear
For that all-enfolding sphere:
And lo! it was not far, but near.

We have found, O foolish-fond,
The shore that has no shore beyond.

Deep in every heart it lies
With its untranscended skies;
For what heaven should bend above
Hearts that own the heaven of love?
~ Alfred Noyes ~

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

Carol, every violet has Heaven for a looking-glass! Every little valley lies Under many-clouded skies; Every little cottage stands Girt about with boundless lands; Every little glimmering pond Claims the mighty shores beyond; Shores no seaman ever hailed, Seas no ship has ever sailed. All the shores when day is done Fade into the setting sun, So the story tries to teach More than can be told in speech.

~ Alfred Noyes ~

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

~ Francis Parkman ~

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2016

Heart of my heart, we are one with the wind, One with the clouds that are whirled o’er the lea, One in many, O broken and blind, One as the waves are at one with the sea! Ay! when life seems scattered apart, Darkens, ends as a tale that is told, One, we are one, O heart of my heart, One, still one, while the world grows old.

~ Alfred Noyes ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by bystander

2018

• proposed by bystander

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

The fool hath said … The fool hath said And we, who deemed him wise, We, who believed that Thou wast dead, How should we seek Thine eyes? How should we seek to Thee for power, Who scorned Thee yesterday? How should we kneel in this dread hour? Lord, teach us how to pray.

~ Alfred Noyes ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Ningauble

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

---

2003

It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens. ~ Woody Allen

• selected by Nanobug

2004

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world. ~ Tony Benn

• selected by Kalki

2005

I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer — they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. ~ Ken Kesey (born 17 September 1935)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
~ William Carlos Williams ~ (born September 17, 1883)

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2007

You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. ~ Ken Kesey

• proposed by Kalki

2008

The real crazies who are looking for a messiah… after an hour or so they realise I’m not it and go off and look somewhere else. ~ Ken Kesey

• proposed by Kalki

2009

Many questions haven’t been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past. ~ William Carlos Williams

• proposed by Kalki

2010

What we hoped was that we could stop the coming end of the world. ~ Ken Kesey

• proposed by Kalki

2011

It’s a strange courage
you give me, ancient star:

Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!
~ William Carlos Williams ~

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

What I always wanted to be was a magician… Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it.

~ Ken Kesey ~

• proposed by bystander

2014

You know, that’s the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn’t anybody laughing. I haven’t heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

~ Ken Kesey ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

Now, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. If you’re on the bus, and you get left behind, then you’ll find it again. If you’re off the bus in the first place — then it won’t make a damn.

~ Ken Kesey ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

What is the use of reading the common news of the day, the tragic deaths and abuses of daily living, when for over half a lifetime we have known that they must have occurred just as they have occurred given the conditions that cause them? There is no light in it. It is trivial fill-gap. We know the plane will crash, the train be derailed. And we know why. No one cares, no one can care. We get the news and discount it, we are quite right in doing so. It is trivial. But the hunted news I get from some obscure patients’ eyes is not trivial. It is profound.

~ William Carlos Williams ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by bystander

2019

Well you’re looking for another end Doing time But you still can’t turn away Well you’re looking for a real friend Any kind That wants to play the games you play On this side of paradise Where you’re never going to go through twice Stay tuned at any price To this side of paradise.

~ Ric Ocasek ~

• proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

My dad died, and my grandfather died, and my great-grandfather died. And the guy before him, I don’t know. Probably died.

~ Norm Macdonald ~

• proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.

2022

• proposed by bystander

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

---

2003

Remember that time is money. ~ Benjamin Franklin

• selected by Nanobug

2004

The cardinal doctrine of a fanatic’s creed is that his enemies are the enemies of God. ~ Andrew Dickson White

• selected by Kalki

2005

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ~ Samuel Johnson (born 18 September 1709)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark. ~ Samuel Johnson

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2007

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and the last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled and oceans bounded by the slender force of human beings. ~ Samuel Johnson

• proposed by Kalki

2008

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still. ~ Samuel Johnson (date of birth)

• proposed by Kalki

2009

As it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion; it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust. ~ Samuel Johnson

• proposed by Zarbon

2010

To contribute usefully to the advance of science, one must sometimes not disdain from undertaking simple verifications. ~ Léon Foucault (born 18 September 1819)

• proposed by Kalki

2011

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say. ~ Samuel Johnson

• proposed by Zarbon

2012

• proposed by Zarbon

2013

The time comes in the life of each of us when we realize that death awaits us as it awaits others, that we will receive at the end neither preference nor exemption. It is then, in that disturbed moment, that we know life is an adventure with an ending, not a succession of bright days that go on forever.

~ William March ~

• proposed by bystander

2014

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2015

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2016

• proposed by bystander

2017

• proposed by bystander

2018

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

~ Samuel Johnson ~

• proposed by bystander

2019

I have to tell you I don’t just see this role of women as caretakers in the world that I cover, I see it in the world I live in. Slowly, slowly, slowly but definitely, the workplace is becoming a more humane place because of the presence of women.

~ Cokie Roberts ~

• proposed by Kalki, in regard to her recent death.

2020

• proposed by Zarbon

2021

• proposed by Zarbon

2022

You can always tell an old battlefield where many men have lost their lives. The next spring the grass comes up greener and more luxuriant than on the surrounding countryside; the poppies are redder, the corn-flowers more blue. They grow over the field and down the sides of the shell holes and lean, almost touching, across the abandoned trenches in a mass of color that ripples all day in the direction that the wind blows. They take the pits and scars out of the torn land and make it a sweet, sloping surface again. Take a wood, now, or a ravine: In a year’s time you could never guess the things which had taken place there. … To me it has always seemed that God is so sickened with men, and their unending cruelty to each other, that he covers the places where they have been as quickly as possible.

~ William March ~

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

---

2004

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

2005

There comes a point when a dream becomes reality and reality becomes a dream. ~ Frances Farmer (born 19 September 1913)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy. ~ William Golding (born 19 September 1911)

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2007

I think everybody who has a brain should get involved in politics. Working within. Not criticizing it from the outside. Become an active participant, no matter how feeble you think the effort is. ~ Cass Elliot (born 19 September 1941)

2008

Basically I’m an optimist. Intellectually I can see man’s balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can’t see this any way but intellectually. I’m just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose. ~ William Golding

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2009

The soul of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathomed center. Like that ark,
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O’er the drowned hills, the human family,
And stock reserved of every living kind,
So, in the compass of the single mind,
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
That make all worlds.
~ Hartley Coleridge ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2010

Hard I strove
To put away my immortality,
Till my collected spirits swell’d my heart
Almost to bursting; but the strife is past.
It is a fearful thing to be a god,
And, like a god, endure a mortal’s pain;
To be a show for earth and wondering heaven
To gaze and shudder at! But I will live,
That Jove may know there is a deathless soul
Who ne’er will be his subject. Yes, ’tis past.
The stedfast Fates confess my absolute will, —
Their own co-equal.
~ Hartley Coleridge ~

• proposed by Kalki

2011

On this hapless earth
There’s small sincerity of mirth,
And laughter oft is but an art
To drown the outcry of the heart.
~ Hartley Coleridge ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Lyle

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

«Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you?» said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. «You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?»

~ William Golding ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

We need more humanity, more care, more love. There are those who expect a political system to produce that; and others who expect the love to produce the system. My own faith is that the truth of the future lies between the two and we shall behave humanly and a bit humanely, stumbling along, haphazardly generous and gallant, foolishly and meanly wise until the rape of our planet is seen to be the preposterous folly that it is. For we are a marvel of creation.

~ William Golding ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

There is a motto which has been borne by many of my ancestors — a noble motto, «I serve». Those words were an inspiration to many bygone heirs to the Throne when they made their knightly dedication as they came to manhood. I cannot do quite as they did. But through the inventions of science I can do what was not possible for any of them. I can make my solemn act of dedication with a whole Empire listening. I should like to make that dedication now. It is very simple. I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

~ Elizabeth II ~

• proposed by Kalki; in regard to her scheduled funeral.

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

---

2004

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil

• selected by Kalki

2005

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age. ~ Sophia Loren (born 20 September 1934)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

We control fifty percent of a relationship. We influence one hundred percent of it. ~ Joyce Brothers (born 20 September 1928)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

In each of us are places where we have never gone. Only by pressing the limits do you ever find them. ~ Joyce Brothers

• proposed by Kalki

2008

When you come right down to it, the secret of having it all is loving it all. ~ Joyce Brothers

• proposed by Kalki

2009

Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical. ~ Sophia Loren

• proposed by Kalki

2010

The silence of a wise man is always meaningful. ~ Leo Strauss

• proposed by Kalki

2011

I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. ~ Upton Sinclair

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by bystander

2013

After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It’s better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

~ Sophia Loren ~

• proposed by bystander

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart. Too many contemporary Fantasies take the easy way out by externalizing the struggle, so the heroic protagonists need only smite the evil minions of the dark power to win the day. And you can tell the evil minions, because they’re inevitably ugly and they all wear black. I wanted to stand much of that on its head. In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

~ George R. R. Martin ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2017

• proposed by bystander

2018

It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is.

~ Leo Strauss ~

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

Religious belief, trust, a sense of connection to the universe — no matter what you call it, there is a spiritual component to strong families. They see their lives as imbued with purpose, reflected in the things they do for one another and the community. Small problems provide a chance to grow; large ones are a lesson in courage. … It takes a certain type of spiritual grace to see beyond one’s own misery to the needs of others. Strong families try to live so they can look outward — and inward — every single day.

~ Joyce Brothers ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2004

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. ~ H. G. Wells (born 21 September 1866)

• selected by Kalki

2005

Hope is a good thing — maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies. ~ «Andy Dufresne» in The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King (born 21 September 1947)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
~ Leonard Cohen ~ (born 21 September 1934)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Life begins perpetually. Gathered together at last under the leadership of man, the student-teacher of the universe… unified, disciplined, armed with the scret powers of the atom, and with knowledge as yet beyond dreaming, Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars. ~ H. G. Wells

• proposed by Kalki

2008

I’m guided by a signal in the heavens,
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
~ Leonard Cohen ~

• proposed by Kalki

2009

Ah, you loved me as a loser,
But now you’re worried that I just might win.
You know the way to stop me,
But you don’t have the discipline.
How many nights I prayed for this,
To let my work begin.
First we take Manhattan,
Then we take Berlin.

~ Leonard Cohen ~

• proposed by Kalki

2010

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear. ~ Stephen King

• proposed by Kalki

2011

No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their affairs they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet, across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. ~ H. G. Wells

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Zarbon

2016

I’m rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I’m tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we’s comin from or goin’ to or why. I’m tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I’m tired of all the times I’ve wanted to help and couldn’t. I’m tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it’s the pain. There’s too much. If I could end it, I would. But I cain’t.

~ Stephen King ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

Maybe… there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends — maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that’s what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.

~ Stephen King ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by bystander

2019

You couldn’t get hold of the things you’d done and turn them right again. Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.

~ Stephen King ~

• proposed by bystander

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

• proposed by Kalki

2022

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone. They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on. And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song. Oh I hope you run into them, you who’ve been travelling so long.

~ Leonard Cohen ~

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read. ~ Samuel Johnson

• selected by Nanobug

2004

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

• selected by Kalki

2005

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~ George Eliot

• proposed by Kalki for the first day of Autumn 2005 in Northern Hemisphere

2006

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one’s self to be acquainted with it. ~ Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield (born 22 September 1694)

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2007

Just practice good, do good for others, without thinking of making yourself known so that you may gain reward. Really bring benefit to others, gaining nothing for yourself. This is the primary requisite for breaking free of attachments to the Self. ~ Dōgen (died today in 1253)

• proposed by Aphaia

2008

Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one. ~ Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2009

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the ground, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

~ John Keats ~ (first lines of «To Autumn» — for first day of Autumn 2009)

• proposed by Kalki

2010

I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it … Nature is our kindest friend and best critic in experimental science if we only allow her intimations to fall unbiased on our minds. Nothing is so good as an experiment which, whilst it sets an error right, gives us (as a reward for our humility in being reproved) an absolute advancement in knowledge. ~ Michael Faraday

• proposed by Kalki

2011

Work. Finish. Publish. ~ Michael Faraday

• proposed by Aphaia

2012

• proposed by Aphaia

2013

Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires. It is impossible for any one who has not been constrained, by the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of continual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error in relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.

~ Michael Faraday ~

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision’d bowers Of studious zeal or love’s delight Outwatch’d with me the envious night: They know that never joy illum’d my brow Unlink’d with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou, O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate’er these words cannot express. The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past; there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been! Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm, to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

We must not draw general conclusions from certain particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it. No. We are complicated machines: and though we have one main-spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.

~ Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield ~

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Ningauble

2021

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2022

Let us speak plainly. A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded its neighbor, attempted to erase a sovereign state from the map. Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter … the clear prohibition against countries taking the territory of their neighbor by force. Again, just today, President Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe and a reckless disregard for the responsibilities of the non-proliferation regime. Now Russia is … calling up more soldiers to join the fight. And the Kremlin is organizing a sham referenda to try to annex parts of Ukraine, an extremely significant violation of the U.N. Charter. This world should see these outrageous acts for what they are. Putin claims he had to act because Russia was threatened. But no one threatened Russia, and no one other than Russia sought conflict. … Putin’s own words make his true purpose unmistakable. Just before he invaded, Putin asserted — and I quote — Ukraine was «created by Russia» and never had, quote, «real statehood.» … This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and Ukraine’s right to exist as a people. Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe … that should make your blood run cold. That’s why 141 nations in the General Assembly came together to unequivocally condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine. … We chose principles to which every party to the United Nations Charter is beholding. We stood with Ukraine.

~ Joe Biden ~

• proposed by Kalki; recent remarks to the UN General Assembly.

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

When smashing monuments, save the pedestals — they always come in handy. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

• selected by Nanobug

2004

Goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil. ~ Robert A. Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land

• selected by Kalki

2005

There’s something happening somewhere — baby I just know that there is.
You can’t start a fire — you can’t start a fire without a spark.
This gun’s for hire — even if we’re just dancing in the dark.
~ Bruce Springsteen (born 23 September 1949)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change. ~ Euripides (by traditional accounts born on 23 September 480 BC)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Slight not what’s near through aiming at what’s far. ~ Euripides

• proposed by Kalki

2008

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger? ~ Thomas Huxley

• proposed by Zarbon

2009

In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University, the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; by so much greater and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man is greater than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

• proposed by Kalki

2010

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature — whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation — Nature will confirm them. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

• proposed by Kalki

2011

Agnosticism is not properly described as a «negative» creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle which is as much ethical as intellectual. This principle may be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this: that it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

• proposed by Kalki

2012

You got to set your mind right and the rest will come to you naturally. No restrictions, no hang-ups, no stupid rules, no formalities, no forbidden fruit — just everyone getting and giving as much as he and she can.

~ Ray Charles ~

• proposed by bystander

2013

• proposed by bystander

2014

• proposed by Zarbon

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Illegitimate Barrister

2017

• proposed by Kalki in regard to the latest «end of times» prophecy, regarding this date.

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

For all their laughter, ghouls are a dull lot. Hunger is the fire in which they burn, and it burns hotter than the hunger for power over men or for knowledge of the gods in a crazed mortal. It vaporizes delicacy and leaves behind only a slag of anger and lust. They see their fellows as impediments to feeding, to be mauled and shrieked at when the mourners go home.

~ Brian McNaughton ~

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

You better live every day like your last because one day you’re going to be right.

~ Ray Charles ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2022

• proposed by Kalki; in regard of the first full day of Autumn, in the Northern Hemisphere.

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

---

2003

Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

• selected by Nanobug

2004

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals. ~ William Penn

• selected by Kalki

2005

I wait . . . Wait for the mists and for the blacker rain — Heavier winds that stir the veil of fate, happier winds that pile her hair; Again they tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air upon me, winds that I know, and storm. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald (born 24 September 1896, and correlation to the current period of powerful storms)

• selected by Kalki

2006

To act with common sense, according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know; and the best philosophy, to do one’s duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one’s lot, bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is, and despise affectation. ~ Horace Walpole

• proposed by Kalki

2007

My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

• proposed by Kalki

2008

At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That’s a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

• proposed by Kalki

2009

Extremism. It is an almost infallible sign — a kind of death-rattle — when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and only those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them. ~ John Brunner (born 24 September 1934)

• proposed by Ningauble

2010

Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

• proposed by Kalki

2011

The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well. ~ Hugh Walpole

• proposed by Kalki — this was originally proposed and selected as a statement cited to Horace Walpole — but this has since been determined to be a misattribution which began as early as the 1930s. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:49, 13 March 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

2012

If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.

~ John Brunner ~

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by DanielTom

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

~ Horace Walpole ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

None of us chose this war. Not the Ukrainians, who knew the crushing toll it would take. Not the United States, which warned that it was coming and worked to prevent it. Not the vast majority of countries at the United Nations. And neither did our people, or the people of virtually every UN member-state, who are feeling the war’s consequences in greater food insecurity and higher energy prices. Nor did the Russian mothers and fathers whose children are being sent off to fight and die in this war, or the Russian citizens who continue to risk their freedom to protest against it, including those who came out into the streets of Moscow after President Putin announced his mobilization to chant, «Let our children live!» Indeed, it must be asked: How has this aggression against Ukraine by President Putin improved the lives or prospects of a single Russian citizen? One man chose this war. One man can end it. Because if Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.

~ Antony Blinken ~

• proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on the Russo-Ukrainian War.

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

2003

As for the future, your task is not to forsee it, but to enable it. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

• selected by Nanobug

2004

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. ~ Blaise Pascal

• selected by Kalki

2005

Between grief and nothing I will take grief. ~ William Faulkner (born 25 September 1897)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

No battle is ever won… They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. ~ William Faulkner

• proposed by Kalki

2007

We live in a time when the words impossible and unsolvable are no longer part of the scientific community’s vocabulary. Each day we move closer to trials that will not just minimize the symptoms of disease and injury but eliminate them. ~ Christopher Reeve (born 25 September 1952)

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2008

The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. ~ William Faulkner (date of birth)

• proposed by Kalki

2009

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling «Kilroy was here» on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass. ~ William Faulkner

• proposed by Kalki

2010

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual’s individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol — cross or crescent or whatever — that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race. ~ William Faulkner

• proposed by Kalki

2011

The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews. ~ William Faulkner

• proposed by Kalki

2012

When the first Superman movie came out, I gave dozens of interviews to promote it. The most frequent question was: What is a hero? My answer was that a hero is someone who commits a courageous action without considering the consequences. Now my definition is completely different. I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. They are the real heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.

~ Christopher Reeve ~

• proposed by Kalki

2013

I believe that the justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.

~ Glenn Gould ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by DanielTom

2016

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. 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. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

~ William Faulkner ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki, in regard to the recent historically significant announcement of investigations of an official impeachment inquiry against Donald J. Trump.

2020

Poets are almost always wrong about facts. That’s because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple and natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.

~ William Faulkner ~

• proposed by Kalki

2021

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

~ William Faulkner ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

We have a firm commitment to NATO; we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe; we are a part of Europe. ~ Dan Quayle

• selected by Nanobug

2004

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. ~ Jonathan Swift

• selected by Kalki

2005

The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed.
~ T. S. Eliot (born 26 September 1888)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~

• proposed by Kalki

2008

All is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~

• proposed by Kalki

2009

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us — a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~

• proposed by Kalki

2010

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~

• proposed by Ningauble

2011

Quick now, here, now, always —
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki for the date of the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, 2016

2017

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent If the unheard, unspoken Word is unspoken, unheard; Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world; And the light shone in darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the centre of the silent Word.       O my people, what have I done unto thee. Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence

~ T. S. Eliot ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by bystander

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

Every thinking of being, all philosophy, can never be confirmed by «facts,» ie, by beings. Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. Those who idolize «facts» never notice that their idols only shine in a borrowed light. They are also meant not to notice this; for thereupon they would have to be at a loss and therefore useless. But idolizers and idols are used wherever gods are in flight and so announce their nearness.

~ Martin Heidegger ~

• proposed by Kalki

2021

Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

~ T. S. Eliot ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Kalki

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long. ~ Boris Yeltsin

• selected by Nanobug

2004

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 since attributed to a specific author: Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. ~ Isaac Asimov
• selected by Kalki

2005

Could you see the storm rising?
Could you see the guy who was driving?
Could you climb higher and higher?
Could you climb right over the top?
~ Kate Bush

• proposed by Kalki, from «King of the Mountain», the first single from Bush’s first album in 12 years, made available for download on 27 September 2005.

2006

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule. ~ Samuel Adams (born 27 September 1722)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

You can decide what you want to eat for dinner, you can decide to go away for the weekend, and you can decide what clothes you’re going to wear in the morning, but when it comes to artistic things, there’s never a rhyme or reason. It’s, like, they just happen. And they happen when they happen. ~ Meat Loaf

• proposed by Kalki

2008

If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. ~ Samuel Adams

• proposed by Kalki

2009

The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv’d them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas’d them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath’d to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. — Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance

~ Samuel Adams ~

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2010

In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practised, and, both by precept and example, inculcated on mankind. ~ Samuel Adams

• proposed by Kalki

2011

We must not conclude merely upon a man’s haranguing upon liberty, and using the charming sound, that he is fit to be trusted with the liberties of his country. It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves. It is not, I say, unfrequent to see such instances, though at the same time I esteem it a justice due to my country to say that it is not without shining examples of the contrary kind; — examples of men of a distinguished attachment to this same liberty I have been describing; whom no hopes could draw, no terrors could drive, from steadily pursuing, in their sphere, the true interests of their country; whose fidelity has been tried in the nicest and tenderest manner, and has been ever firm and unshaken.
The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people. ~ Samuel Adams

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Zarbon

2019

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Kalki; congratulatory message to NASA teams after the successful impact of the DART spacecraft into the moonlet Dimorphos of the asteroid Didymos.

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

If homosexuality is a disease, let’s all call in queer to work. «Hello, can’t work today. Still queer.» ~ Robin Tyler

• selected by Nanobug

2004

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

• selected by Kalki

2005

In the season of white wild roses
We two went hand in hand:
But now in the ruddy autumn
Together already we stand. ~ Francis Turner Palgrave (born 28 September 1824)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

When once the mind has raised itself to grasp and to delight in excellence, those who love most will be found to love most wisely. ~ Francis Turner Palgrave (born 28 September 1824)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

A man’s life is interesting primarily when he has failed — I well know. For it’s a sign that he tried to surpass himself. ~ Georges Clemenceau (born 28 September 1841)

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2008

I don’t think there’s anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It’s the other attitude that confuses me. ~ Paul Newman (recent death)

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2009

The way which the superior man pursues, reaches wide and far, and yet is secret. Common men and women, however ignorant, may intermeddle with the knowledge of it; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage does not know. Common men and women, however much below the ordinary standard of character, can carry it into practice; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage is not able to carry into practice. Great as heaven and earth are, men still find some things in them with which to be dissatisfied. Thus it is that, were the superior man to speak of his way in all its greatness, nothing in the world would be found able to embrace it, and were he to speak of it in its minuteness, nothing in the world would be found able to split it. ~ Confucius

• proposed by Kalki

2010

It is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and it is the way of the mean man to seek notoriety, while he daily goes more and more to ruin. It is characteristic of the superior man, appearing insipid, yet never to produce satiety; while showing a simple negligence, yet to have his accomplishments recognized; while seemingly plain, yet to be discriminating. He knows how what is distant lies in what is near. He knows where the wind proceeds from. He knows how what is minute becomes manifested. Such a one, we may be sure, will enter into virtue. ~ Confucius

• proposed by Kalki

2011

The superior man examines his heart, that there may be nothing wrong there, and that he may have no cause for dissatisfaction with himself. That wherein the superior man cannot be equaled is simply this — his work which other men cannot see. ~ Confucius

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Kalki

2020

• proposed by Kalki

2021

I do not open up the truth to one who is not eager to get knowledge, nor help out any one who is not anxious to explain himself. When I have presented one corner of a subject to any one, and he cannot from it learn the other three, I do not repeat my lesson.

~ Confucius (孔子 · Kongzi) ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

• proposed by Zarbon

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2003

Outside of the killings, DC has one of the lowest crime rates in the country. ~ Marion Barry

• selected by Nanobug

2004

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. ~ Henry Melvill (originally misattributed to Herman Melville)

• selected by Kalki

2005

There are two possible outcomes: If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery. ~ attributed to Enrico Fermi (born 29 September 1901)

• proposed by IP 65.110.28.95

2006

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith. ~ Miguel de Unamuno (born 29 September 1864)

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2007

Honesty is the best policy, I will stick to that. The good shall have my hand and heart, but the bad neither foot nor fellowship. And in my mind, the main point of governing, is to make a good beginning. ~ Miguel de Cervantes (born 29 September 1547)

• proposed by Kalki

2008

It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love. ~ Miguel de Unamuno

• proposed by Zarbon

2009

I must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth. ~ Miguel de Cervantes

• proposed by Kalki

2010

The truth is that my work — I was going to say my mission — is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention in faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all those who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to agnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and passionate desire. ~ Miguel de Unamuno

• proposed by Kalki

2011

At that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. ~ Book of Daniel (Ch. 12), the first mention of Michael, for Michaelmas, 29 September.

• proposed by Kalki

2012

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

~ John of Patmos ~ in ~ The Book of Revelation ~

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth: and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince.

~ Book of Daniel ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

Act so that in your own judgment and in the judgment of others you may merit eternity, act so that you may become irreplaceable, act so that you may not merit death. Or perhaps thus: Act as if you were to die tomorrow, but to die in order to survive and be eternalized. The end of morality is to give personal, human finality to the Universe; to discover the finality that belongs to it — if indeed it has any finality — and to discover it by acting.

~ Miguel de Unamuno ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

• proposed by Kalki for Michaelmas.

2018

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Zarbon

2020

Man sees, hears, touches, tastes and smells that which it is necessary for him to see, hear, touch, taste and smell in order to preserve his life. The decay or loss of any of these senses increases the risks with which his life is environed, and if it increases them less in the state of society in which we are actually living, the reason is that some see, hear, touch, taste and smell for others. A blind man, by himself and without a guide, could not live long. Society is an additional sense; it is the true common sense.

~ Miguel de Unamuno ~

• proposed by Kalki

2021

• proposed by Zarbon

2022

• proposed by Zarbon

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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2004

Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed. ~ William Blake

• selected by Kalki

2005

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ~ Helen Schucman

• proposed by Kalki, and used on this date, because this had become attributed to Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (born 30 September 1207); the attribution was later corrected on 2007·09·30.

2006

Mankind must remember that peace is not God’s gift to his creatures, it is our gift to each other. ~ Elie Wiesel (born 30 September 1928)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. ~ Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi

• proposed by Kalki

2008

If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it. ~ Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi

• proposed by Zarbon

2009

Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.
~ Rumi ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2010

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry
moving through, and be silent.
~ Rumi ~

• proposed by Kalki

2011

There is a certain cloud,
impregnated with a
thousand lightnings.
There is my body —
in it an ocean formed of His glory.
All the creation,
All the universes,
All the galaxies,
Are lost in it.

~ Rumi ~

• proposed by Kalki

2012

• proposed by Kalki

2013

• proposed by Kalki

2014

• proposed by Kalki

2015

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous, Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape. Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.

~ Rumi ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

• proposed by Kalki

2017

When you see anyone complaining of such and such a person’s ill-nature and bad temper, know that the complainant is bad-tempered, forasmuch as he speaks ill of that bad-tempered person, because he alone is good-tempered who is quietly forbearing towards the bad-tempered and ill-natured.

~ Rumi ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, idolator, worshipper of fire, Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair.

~ Rumi ~

• proposed by Kalki

2019

• proposed by Zarbon

2020

• proposed by Zarbon

2021

• proposed by Kalki

2022

2023

Rank or add further suggestions…

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Ranking system:

4 : Excellent — should definitely be used. (Perhaps, at most, only one quote per day should be ranked thus by any user, as to avoid confusions.)

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.