June 15

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it's a little thing, do something for those who need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it. ~ Albert Schweitzer

• selected by Kalki

2005

If fate means you to lose, give him a good fight anyhow. ~ William McFee (born 15 June 1881)

• proposed by Kalki

2006

Responsibility's like a string we can only see the middle of. Both ends are out of sight. ~ William McFee (born 15 June 1881)

• proposed by Kalki

2007

All that you know is at an end. ~ The "Silver Surfer" in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

• proposed by Kalki

2008

I protect my right to be a Catholic by preserving your right to believe as a Jew, a Protestant, or non-believer, or as anything else you choose. We know that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might some day force theirs on us. ~ Mario Cuomo

• proposed by Zarbon

2009

The world belongs to the Enthusiast who keeps cool. ~ William McFee (born 15 June 1881)

• proposed by Kalki

2010

There are some men whom a staggering emotional shock, so far from making them mental invalids for life, seems, on the other hand, to awaken, to galvanize, to arouse into an almost incredible activity of soul. ~ William McFee

• proposed by Kalki

2011

When established identities become outworn or unfinished ones threaten to remain incomplete, special crises compel men to wage holy wars, by the crudest means, against those who seem to question or threaten their unsafe ideological bases. ~ Erik Erikson

• proposed by Kalki

2012

People don't ever seem to realise that doing what's right's no guarantee against misfortune.

~ William McFee ~

• proposed by Kalki

2013

Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness.

~ Erik Erikson ~

• proposed by Kalki

2014

All world-images are apt to become corrupt when left to ecclesiastic bureaucracies. But this does not make the formation of world-images expendable. And I can only repeat that we deny the remnants of old-world images at our own risk, because we do not overcome them by declaring them — with all the righteousness of skepticism — something of a secret sin. They are not less powerful for being denied.

~ Erik Erikson ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

It is our will, and we firmly enjoin, that the English Church be free, and that the men in our kingdom have and hold all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably, freely and quietly, fully and wholly, for themselves and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all respects and in all places for ever, as is aforesaid. An oath, moreover, has been taken, as well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all these conditions aforesaid shall be kept in good faith and without evil intent. Given under our hand — the abovenamed and many others being witnesses — in the meadow which is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June, in the seventeenth year of our reign.

~ Magna Carta ~

• proposed by Kalki, for the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta

2016

We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we'll do it not so much with speeches that sound good as with speeches that are good and sound; not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that will bring people to their senses.

~ Mario Cuomo ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

I think it's already apparent that a good part of this Nation understands — if only instinctively — that anything which seems to suggest that God favors a political party or the establishment of a state church, is wrong and dangerous. Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions — or whole bodies of religious belief — and government. Apart from constitutional law and religious doctrine, there is a sense that tells us it's wrong to presume to speak for God or to claim God's sanction of our particular legislation and His rejection of all other positions. Most of us are offended when we see religion being trivialized by its appearance in political throw-away pamphlets. The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.

~ Mario Cuomo ~

• proposed by Kalki

2018

I protect my right to be a Catholic by preserving your right to believe as a Jew, a Protestant, or non-believer, or as anything else you choose. We know that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might some day force theirs on us. This freedom is the fundamental strength of our unique experiment in government. In the complex interplay of forces and considerations that go into the making of our laws and policies, its preservation must be a pervasive and dominant concern.

~ Mario Cuomo ~

• proposed by Kalki, for Coumo's birthdate — but also selected in regard to Eid al-Fitr of this year.

2019

There is nothing like an odor to stir memories.

~ William McFee ~

• proposed by Kalki

2020

We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need. We believe in a government that is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a reasonableness that goes beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do things that we know we can't do. We believe in a government strong enough to use words like "love" and "compassion" and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities. We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.

~ Mario Cuomo ~

• proposed by Kalki

2021

London is always beautiful to those who love and understand that extraordinary microcosm; but at five of a summer morning there is about her an exquisite quality of youthful fragrance and debonair freshness which goes to the heart.

~ William McFee ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep They just lie there, and they die there Are you warm? Are you real, Mona Lisa? Or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art?

~ Ray Evans ~

• proposed by Kalki; date of birth of Lisa del Giocondo, the woman of which "Mona Lisa" is a portrait.

2023

Drovers were racing brokenly across the milling hogs like wind through grass until a whole echelon of them careering up the outer flank forsook the land and faired into space with torn cries. Now the entire herd had begun to wheel wider and faster along the bluff and the outermost ranks swung centrifugally over the escarpment row on row wailing and squealing and above this the howls and curses of the drovers that now upreared in the moil of flesh they tended and swept with dust had begun to assume satanic looks with their staves and wild eyes as if they were no true swineherds but disciples of darkness got among these charges to herd them to their doom.

~ Cormac McCarthy ~

• proposed by Kalki; in regard of his recent death.

2024

I have a mistress, for perfections rare In every eye, but in my thoughts most fair. Like tapers on the altar shine her eyes; Her breath is the perfume of sacrifice; And wheresoe’er my fancy would begin, Still her perfection lets religion in. We sit and talk, and kiss away the hours As chastely as the morning dews kiss flowers: I touch her, like my beads, with devout care, And come unto my courtship as my prayer.

~ Thomas Randolph ~

• posting by Ficaia

2025

Rank or add further suggestions…

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I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week. ~ Mario Cuomo

• 3 because actions speak louder than words. Zarbon 02:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
• 2 Kalki 15:33, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
• 2 InvisibleSun 22:26, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

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Let's turn inflation over to the post office. That'll slow it down. ~ Morris Udall

• 2 for comedic value. Zarbon 02:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
• 2 Kalki 15:33, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
• 2 InvisibleSun 22:26, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

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Everything has been said but not everyone has said it. ~ Morris Udall

• 2 Zarbon 02:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
• 2 Kalki 15:33, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
• 0. This quote is unsourced. When I tried to source it, I came up with several variants and several people to whom it was attributed. Perhaps it would be better, then, to pass on this one for now. - InvisibleSun 22:26, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Udall, as quoted by Harry Reid, in remarks in the US Senate (14 June 2001), published in the Congressional Record, Vol. 147, No. 83; I don’t know of any definite attributions other than Udall. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 17:16, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

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A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on. ~ William McFee

• 3 Kalki (talk · contributions) 16:03, 11 June 2010 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

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Most of us have achieved levels of affluence and comfort unthought of two generations ago. We've never had it so good, most of us. Nor have we ever complained so bitterly about our problems. The closed circle of materialism is clear to us now — aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit. All around us we have seen success in the world's terms become ultimate and desperate failure.

~ Mario Cuomo ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 04:44, 13 June 2016 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.

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Saint Francis, Buddha, Muhammad, Maimonides — all spoke the truth when they said the only way to serve yourself is to serve others; and that Aristotle was right, before them, when he said the only way to assure yourself happiness is to learn to give happiness.

~ Mario Cuomo ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 04:44, 13 June 2016 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4

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How simple it seems now. We thought the Sermon on the Mount was a nice allegory and nothing more. What we didn't understand until we got to be a little older was that it was the whole answer, the whole truth. That the way — the only way — to succeed and to be happy is to learn those rules so basic that a shepherd's son could teach them to an ignorant flock without notes or formulae.

~ Mario Cuomo ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 04:44, 13 June 2016 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

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I can offer you no final truths, complete and unchallengeable. But it's possible this one effort will provoke other efforts — both in support and contradiction of my position — that will help all of us understand our differences and perhaps even discover some basic agreement. In the end, I'm convinced we will all benefit if suspicion is replaced by discussion, innuendo by dialogue; if the emphasis in our debate turns from a search for talismanic criteria and neat but simplistic answers to an honest — more intelligent — attempt at describing the role religion has in our public affairs, and the limits placed on that role. And if we do it right — if we're not afraid of the truth even when the truth is complex — this debate, by clarification, can bring relief to untold numbers of confused — even anguished — Catholics, as well as to many others who want only to make our already great democracy even stronger than it is.

~ Mario Cuomo ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 04:44, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

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Almost all Americans accept some religious values as a part of our public life. We are a religious people, many of us descended from ancestors who came here expressly to live their religious faith free from coercion or repression. But we are also a people of many religions, with no established church, who hold different beliefs on many matters. Our public morality, then — the moral standards we maintain for everyone, not just the ones we insist on in our private lives — depends on a consensus view of right and wrong. The values derived from religious belief will not — and should not — be accepted as part of the public morality unless they are shared by the pluralistic community at large, by consensus. That those values happen to be religious values does not deny them acceptability as a part of this consensus. But it does not require their acceptability, either.

~ Mario Cuomo ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 04:44, 13 June 2016 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

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