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August 5

From Wikiquote

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. ~ Edsger Dijkstra
2004
Your strength is but an accident arising from the weakness of others. ~ Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness
2005
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. ~ Mohandas Gandhi
2006
Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread... ~ Conrad Aiken (born 5 August 1889)
2007
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. ~ Guy de Maupassant (born 5 August 1850)
2008
Those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force — they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (recent death)
2009
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
~ Wendell Berry ~
2010
'Tis true, my form is something odd
but blaming me, is blaming God,
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.
~ Joseph Merrick ~ (born 5 August 1862)
2011
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. ~ Wendell Berry
2012
I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children; whose work serves the earth he lives on and from and with, and is therefore pleasurable and meaningful and unending; whose rewards are not deferred until "retirement," but arrive daily and seasonally out of the details of the life of their place; whose goal is the continuance of the life of the world, which for a while animates and contains them, and which they know they can never compass with their understanding or desire.
~ Wendell Berry ~
2013

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

~ Wendell Berry ~
2014
If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.
~ Wendell Berry ~
2015
A small but brilliant advance made today by someone’s awareness may for the moment reach a very small audience, but insofar as it’s valid and beautiful, it will make its way and become part of the whole world of consciousness.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
2016
I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It’s simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
2017
We rub the darkness from our eyes,
And face our thousand devious secret mornings …
And do not see how the pale mist, slowly ascending,
Shaped by the sun, shines like a white-robed dreamer
Compassionate over our towers bending.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
2018
I have said repeatedly that as poetry is the highest speech of man, it can not only accept and contain, but in the end express best everything in the world, or in himself, that he discovers. It will absorb and transmute, as it always has done, and glorify, all that we can know. This has always been, and always will be, poetry’s office.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
2019
I am the one who passed unnoticed before you,
Invisible, in a cloud of secret pain.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
2020
Wars have never made peace or preserved it or fostered its ideals. To have peace you must make peace with your enemy. To make peace only with your friends is to avoid the issue, and to permit a great principle to become absurd. Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.
~ Wendell Berry ~
2021
I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul ... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.
~ Neil Armstrong ~
2022
Some question why Americans should return to the Moon. "After all," they say "we have already been there." I find that mystifying. It would be as if 16th century monarchs proclaimed that "we need not go to the New World, we have already been there." Or as if President Thomas Jefferson announced in 1803 that Americans "need not go west of the Mississippi, the Lewis and Clark Expedition has already been there." Americans have visited and examined 6 locations on Luna, varying in size from a suburban lot to a small township. That leaves more than 14 million square miles yet to explore.
~ Neil Armstrong ~
2023
It is very important that the world sees: a fair and honest end to Russian aggression will benefit everyone in the world. Everyone! Liberating Ukrainian land from the occupiers means restoring full respect for international law and the UN Charter. Eliminating all threats created by Russia to Ukrainian and global security means returning peace to international relations and stability to global life.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
  • proposed by Kalki; remarks on the continuing war in Ukraine.
2024
A century hence, 2000 may be viewed as quite a primitive period in human history. It's something to hope for. ... I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer — born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow. As an engineer, I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.
~ Neil Armstrong ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…

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

  • Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. ~ Wendell Berry
  • If I could reach from pole to pole
    or grasp the ocean with a span,
    I would be measured by the soul
    The mind's the standard of the Man.
    ~ Isaac Watts ~
    (poem often used by Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man", who was born this day)

The Quote of the Day (QOTD) is a prominent feature of the Wikiquote Main Page. Thank you for submitting, reviewing, and ranking suggestions!

Ranking system
4 : Excellent – should definitely be used. (This is the utmost ranking and should be used by any editor for only one quote at a time for each date.)
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.
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.
Thank you for participating!

Suggestions

[edit]

Blond hair and breasts, that's how I got started. I couldn't act. All I had was blond hair and a body men liked. The reason I got ahead is that I was lucky and met the right men. ~ Marilyn Monroe, found dead in her apartment that day

Separate we come, and separate we go, and this be it known, is all that we know. ~ Conrad Aiken (born 5 August 1889)

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. ~ Neil Armstrong

  • 3 ~ DanielTom (talk) 01:47, 27 July 2013 (UTC) (or a variant); better to use this on July 21, otherwise it might be confusing to readers. ~ DanielTom (talk) 09:54, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 10:16, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
Each gleaming point of light is like a seed
Dilating swiftly to coiling fires.
Each cloud becomes a rapidly dimming face,
Each hurrying face records its strange desires.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
Weave, weave, weave, you streaks of rain!
I am dissolved and woven again...
Thousands of faces rise and vanish before me.
Thousands of voices weave in the rain.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
My veins are afire with music,
Her eyes have kissed me, my body is turned to light;
I shall dream to her secret heart tonight...
~ Conrad Aiken ~
I bound her to me in all soft ways,
I bound her to me in a net of days,
Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word.
How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you?
There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened.
Again I loved, and love itself was darkened.
Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days.
The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent.
The doors of night are closed. We go our ways.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
Two lovers move in the crowd like a link of music,
We press upon them, we hold them, and let them pass;
A chord of music strikes us and straight we tremble;
We tremble like wind-blown grass.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
I'll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, but nevertheless, it was a diversion.
~ Neil Armstrong ~
It is true that we were cautious in our planning. There were many uncertainties about how well our Lunar module systems and our Pressure suit and backpack would match the engineering predictions in the hostile lunar environment. We were operating in a near perfect vacuum with the temperature well above 200 degrees Fahrenheit with the local gravity only one sixth that of Earth. That combination cannot be duplicated here on Earth, but we tried as best we could to test our equipment for those conditions.
~ Neil Armstrong ~
It's a great honor and privilege for us to be here representing not only the United States but men of peace of all nations, and with interests and the curiosity and with the vision for the future.
~ Neil Armstrong ~
  • 2 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:33, 4 August 2022 (UTC); for this date — I am more inclined to prefer it for July 20, and perhaps even there not until the 60th anniversary of the first moon landing in 2029.
Space has not changed but technology has, in many cases, improved dramatically. A good example is digital technology where today's cell phones are far more powerful than the computers on the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module that we used to navigate to the moon and operate all the spacecraft control systems.
~ Neil Armstrong ~
I remember on the trip home on Apollo 11 it suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
~ Neil Armstrong ~



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