Wikiquote

April 11

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. ~ Yeshua of Galilee (Jesus Christ) (Easter Sunday 2004)
2005
Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed'. ~ Charles Evans Hughes (born 11 April 1862)
2006
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others. ~ Leo Rosten (born 11 April 1908)
2007
Extremists think "communication" means agreeing with them. ~ Leo Rosten (born 11 April 1908)
2008
When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. ~ Charles Evans Hughes
2009
No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. … Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses. .. The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope! ~ Charles Evans Hughes
2010
The only real progress to abiding peace is found in the friendly disposition of peoples and … facilities for maintaining peace are useful only to the extent that this friendly disposition exists and finds expression. War is not only possible, but probable, where mistrust and hatred and desire for revenge are the dominant motives. Our first duty is at home with our own opinion, by education and unceasing effort to bring to naught the mischievous exhortation of chauvinists; our next is to aid in every practicable way in promoting a better feeling among peoples, the healing of wounds, and the just settlement of differences. ~ Charles Evans Hughes
2011
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong. ~ Leo Rosten
2012
History is merely a list of surprises. … It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down. ~ Kurt Vonnegut with a lean toward 4.
2013
A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.
~ Kurt Vonnegut ~
2014
Many people need desperately to receive this message: "I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone."
~ Kurt Vonnegut ~
in
~ Timequake ~
2015

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC.

~ Kurt Vonnegut ~
2016
We still proclaim the old ideals of liberty but we cannot voice them without anxiety in our hearts. The question is no longer one of establishing democratic institutions but of preserving them. … The arch enemies of society are those who know better but by indirection, misstatement, understatement, and slander, seek to accomplish their concealed purposes or to gain profit of some sort by misleading the public. The antidote for these poisons must be found in the sincere and courageous efforts of those who would preserve their cherished freedom by a wise and responsible use of it. Freedom of expression gives the essential democratic opportunity, but self-restraint is the essential civic discipline.
~ Charles Evans Hughes ~
2017
Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward — and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.
~ Kurt Vonnegut ~
2018
In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear. To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign proclaiming: Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong!
Open your eyes that you may see, Oh men of mildewed minds, and listen to me ye bewildered millions!
For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the "laws" of man and of "God"!
I request reason for your golden rule and ask the why and wherefore of your ten commandments. … I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness.
I raise up in stern invasion the standard of the strong!
~ Anton LaVey ~
2019
Black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole, both to the outside, and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up. There's a way out.
~ Stephen Hawking ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to the release of the first direct photograph of a Black Hole.
2020
We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.
~ Primo Levi ~
2021
When my own time comes to join the choir invisible or whatever, God forbid, I hope someone will say, "He's up in Heaven now." Who really knows? I could have dreamed all this.
My epitaph in any case? "Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt." I will have gotten off so light, whatever the heck it is that was going on.
~ Kurt Vonnegut ~
2022
The War on Ukraine is an unimaginable tragedy ... As a human, and as an artist, I felt compelled to respond in the most significant way I could. ... I had always said, that the only time I would ever consider singing 'IMAGINE' would be if it was the 'End of the World'
But also because his lyrics reflect our collective desire for peace worldwide. Because within this song, we’re transported to a space, where love and togetherness become our reality, if but for a moment in time…
The song reflects the light at the end of the tunnel, that we are all hoping for...
As a result of the ongoing murderous violence, millions of innocent families, have been forced to leave the comfort of their homes, to seek asylum elsewhere.
I’m calling on world leaders and everyone who believes in the sentiment of IMAGINE, to stand up for refugees everywhere!
~ Julian Lennon ~
2023
There is no path to peace except as the will of peoples may open to it. The way of peace is through agreement, not through force.
~ Charles Evans Hughes ~
2024
There is a sort of mythology that grows up about what happened, which is different from what really did happen.
~ Peter Higgs ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.


2025
Rank or add further suggestions…

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

  • I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another. ~ Ellen Goodman

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1 : Acceptable – but with no particular desire to see it used.
0 : Not acceptable – not appropriate for use as a quote of the day.
An averaging of the rankings provided to each suggestion produces it’s general ranking in considerations for selection of Quote of the Day. The selections made are usually chosen from the top ranked options existing on the page, but the provision of highly ranked late additions, especially in regard to special events (most commonly in regard to the deaths of famous people, or other major social or physical occurrences), always remain an option for final selections.
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If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my favorite joke. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

  • 3 Kalki 21:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 23:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

So it goes. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

  • 3 Kalki 21:34, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
  • 2. Somewhat short. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 22:26, 13 April 2007 (UTC) -->
  • 1 Zarbon 23:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

So Billy experiences death for a while. It is simply violet light and a hum. There isn't anybody else there. Not even Billy Pilgrim is there. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nahum Reduta (talk • contribs) on April 13, 2007 at 7:21 (UTC)

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. ~ Susan Ertz

  • 2 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.

Farewell the hope that mocked, farewell despair
That went before me still and made the pace.
The earth is full of graves, and mine was there
Before my life began; my resting-place.
~ John Davidson

My feet are heavy now but on I go,
My head erect beneath the tragic years.
~ John Davidson

Unwilling friend, let not your spite abate;
Help me with scorn, and strengthen me with hate.
~ John Davidson

  • 3 and strong lean toward 4. Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Seraphs and saints with one great voice
Welcomed that soul that knew not fear.
Amazed to find it could rejoice,
Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.
~ John Davidson

Across the weltering deep she ran;
A stranger thing was never seen:
The damned stood silent to a man;
They saw the great gulf set between.

To her it seemed a meadow fair;
And flowers sprang up about her feet
She entered heaven; she climbed the stair
And knelt down at the mercy-seat.
Seraphs and saints with one great voice
Welcomed that soul that knew not fear.
Amazed to find it could rejoice,
Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.
~ John Davidson

  • 3 for either version. - InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him. ~ Anton LaVey

  • 3 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 1 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me; no stifling dogma shall encramp my pen! ~ Anton LaVey

  • 3 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

The devils of past religions have always, at least in part, had animal characteristics, evidence of man's constant need to deny that he too is an animal, for to do so would serve a mighty blow to his impoverished ego. ~ Anton LaVey

  • 3 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

You cannot love everyone; it is ridiculous to think you can. If you love everyone and everything you lose your natural powers of selection and wind up being a pretty poor judge of character and quality. If anything is used too freely it loses its true meaning. Therefore, the Satanist believes you should love strongly and completely those who deserve your love, but never turn the other cheek to your enemy! ~ Anton LaVey

When a person, by his reprehensible behavior, practically cries out to be destroyed, it is truly your moral obligation to indulge them their wish. ~ Anton LaVey

There are many who would take my time. I shun them.
There are some who share my time. I am entertained by them.
There are precious few who contribute to my time. I cherish them.
~ Anton LaVey

  • 3 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3 or eventual 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Man prides himself on being the only animal who can modify his nature, yet when he chooses to do so he is called a phony. ~ Anton LaVey

While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty. ~ Charles Evans Hughes

  • 2 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a VERY strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

At the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections. ~ Charles Evans Hughes

  • 3 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Great powers agreeing among themselves may indeed hold small powers in check. But who will hold great powers in check when great powers disagree? ~ Charles Evans Hughes

Nobody can be forced to commit an act of villainy. You can't push anybody into the mud; people always step into it themselves. No matter what the circumstances of life are, there are no justifications and there never will be any. But people look for justifications and they find them. All people have been taught to do that, and they've all proved diligent pupils. ~ Sergei Lukyanenko

  • 3 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3, save for the last sentence: not all people are diligent pupils of the paths of villainy.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I can prove anything by statistics except the truth. ~ George Canning

Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe,
Bold I can meet,—perhaps may turn his blow!
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save, save, oh save me from the candid friend!
~ George Canning

Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe and aren't even aware of. ~ Ellen Goodman

  • 2 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.

When we describe what the other person is really like, I suppose we often picture what we want. We look through the prism of our need. ~ Ellen Goodman

  • 3 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

When I am dead, no pageant train
Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain
Stain it with hypocritic tear.
~ Edward Everett

  • 3 and a strong lean toward 4. Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Ficaia (talk) 00:28, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

"The whole earth," said Pericles, as he stood over the remains of his fellow-citizens, who had fallen in the first year of the Peloponnesian War, — "the whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men." All time, he might have added, is the millennium of their glory. Surely I would do no injustice to the other noble achievements of the war, which have reflected such honor on both arms of the service, and have entitled the armies and the navy of the United States, their officers and men, to the warmest thanks and the richest rewards which a grateful people can pay. But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country there will be no brighter page than that which relates the Battles of Gettysburg. ~ Edward Everett

  • 2 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) (though this might be better for 3 July the day on which the battle ended.)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

The great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author and Sustainer. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim precedence of Astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system; the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us in twenty millions of years, of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a foot-ball; of starry hosts—suns like our own—numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces. ~ Edward Everett

  • 2 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant. ~ Edward Everett

  • 2 Zarbon 05:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) But a 3 if trimmed to the first sentence.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity. ~Albert Einstein

  • 3 It's the day he announced his Theory of relativity SuperJew 18:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean to 3 or perhaps an eventual 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 00:06, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it. ~Primo Levi

  • 4 It's his death date SuperJew 18:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 00:06, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

  • 3 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 00:06, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do. ~ Kurt Vonnegut in Timequake

  • 3 Kalki 19:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward an eventual 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 00:06, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to be a professional singer. … I've never been given the chance before. But here's hoping it'll change. ~ Susan Boyle (made her famous appearance on Britain's Got Talent 11 April 2009)

Ah, Love, the earth is woe’s
  And sadly helpers needs:
And, till its burden goes,
  Our work is—where it bleeds.
~ Bernard O'Dowd

Are you for Light, and trimmed, with oil in place,
Or but a Will o’ Wisp on marshy quest?
A new demesne for Mammon to infest?
Or lurks millennial Eden ’neath your face?
~ Bernard O'Dowd


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