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Wikiquote:Quote of the day/July 2022

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Today is Monday, November 4, 2024; it is now 17:41 (UTC)


July 1
 
I have dedicated my career to public service because I love this country and our Constitution and the rights that make us free. … It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States — but we've made it. … So as I take on this new role, I strongly believe that this is a moment in which all Americans can take great pride. We have come a long way toward perfecting our union. In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States.
And it is an honor — the honor of a lifetime — for me to have this chance to join the Court, to promote the rule of law at the highest level, and to do my part to carry our shared project of democracy and equal justice under law forward, into the future.
~ Ketanji Brown Jackson ~
 

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July 2
 
All the tasks are in themselves small, but each one has to be carried out at its proper hour, and the day has far more tasks than hours. That is well; one would not want it to be different. But if we ever think, between classroom, archives, secretariat, consulting room, meetings, and official journeys — if we ever think of the freedom we possessed and have lost, the freedom for self-chosen tasks, for unlimited, far-flung studies, we may well feel the greatest yearning for those days, and imagine that if we ever had such freedom again we would fully enjoy its pleasures and potentialities.
~ Hermann Hesse ~
in
~ The Glass Bead Game ~
 

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July 3
 
We cross our bridges when we come to them, and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
~ Tom Stoppard ~
in
~ Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead ~
 

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July 4
 
Democracy is not a tearing down; it is a building up. It is not denial of the divine right of kings; it supplements that same with the assertion of the divine right of all men. It does not destroy; it fulfills. It is the consummation of all theories of government, the spirit of which all the nations of the earth must yield. It is the great constructive course of the ages. It is the alpha and omega of man's relation to man, the beginning and the end. There is, and can be, no more doubt of the triumphs of democracy in human affairs than there is of the triumph of gravitation in the physical world. The only question is how and when. Its foundation lays hold upon eternity.
~ Calvin Coolidge ~
 

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July 5
 
I am a showman by profession … and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me.
~ P. T. Barnum ~
 

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July 6
 
As to war, I am and always was a great enemy, at the same time a warrior the greater part of my life, and were I young again, should still be a warrior while ever this country should be invaded and I lived — a Defensive war I think a righteous war to Defend my life & property & that of my family, in my own opinion, is right & justifiable in the sight of God.
An offensive war, I believe to be wrong and would therefore have nothing to do with it, having no right to meddle with another man's property, his ox or his ass, his man servant or his maid servant or anything that is his. Neither does he have a right to meddle with anything that is mine, if he does I have a right to defend it by force.
~ Daniel Morgan ~
 

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July 7
 
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
~ Robert A. Heinlein ~
 

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July 8
 
It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister. … I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them's the breaks. … I want to thank you, the British public, for the immense privilege that you have given me. And I want you to know that from now on until the new prime minister is in place, your interests will be served and the government of the country will be carried on.
~ Boris Johnson ~
 

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July 9
 
The kind of society that Japan should aim at is a society in which the efforts of people are rewarded, a society in which there is no stratification into winners and losers, and a society in which ways of working, learning, and living are diverse and multi-tracked — in other words, a society of opportunity where everyone has a chance to challenge again. If there are people who sense they are facing inequality, it is the role of politics to shed light on them.
~ Shinzō Abe ~
 

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July 10
 
The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.
~ Marcel Proust ~
 

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July 11
 
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere.
~ E. B. White ~
 

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July 12
 
There’s a built-in resistance to letting humanity be a success. Each one claims that their system is the best one for coping with inadequacy. We have to make them all obsolete. We need to find within technology that there is something we can do which is capable of taking care of everybody, and to demonstrate that this is so. That’s what geodesic domes are about and that’s what my whole life has been about.
~ Buckminster Fuller ~
 

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July 13
 
At the very outset of our hearings, we described several elements of President Trump's multipart plan to overturn the 2020 election. Our hearings have now covered all but one of those elements, an organized campaign to persuade millions of Americans of a falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen by widespread fraud; a corrupt effort to pressure Vice President Pence to refuse to count electoral votes; an effort to corrupt the US Department of Justice; efforts to pressure state election officials and legislators to change state election results; a scheme to create and submit fake electoral slates from multiple states. And today, you saw how President Trump summoned a mob to Washington for January 6th, and then knowing that that mob was armed, directed that mob to the United States Capitol. Every one of these elements of the planning for January 6th is an independently serious matter. They were all ultimately focused on overturning the election, and they all have one other thing in common.
Donald Trump participated in each, substantially and personally. He oversaw or directed the activity of those involved.
~ Liz Cheney ~
 

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July 14
 
What the world thought made little difference. Rembrandt had to paint. Whether he painted well or badly didn’t matter; painting was the stuff that held him together as a man. The chief value of art, Vincent, lies in the expression it gives to the artist. Rembrandt fulfilled what he knew to be his life purpose; that justified him. Even if his work had been worthless, he would have been a thousand times more successful than if he had put down his desire and become the richest merchant in Amsterdam.
~ Irving Stone ~
 

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July 15
 
A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished.
~ Rembrandt ~
 

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July 16
 
The song the carrousel was playing was "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." It was playing it very jazzy and funny. All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them.
~ J. D. Salinger ~
in
~ The Catcher in the Rye ~
 

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July 17
 
We have an obligation to one another, responsibilities and trusts. That does not mean we must be pigeons, that we must be exploited. But it does mean that we should look out for one another when and as much as we can; and that we have a personal responsibility for our behavior; and that our behavior has consequences of a very real and profound nature. We are not powerless. We have tremendous potential for good or ill. How we choose to use that power is up to us; but first we must choose to use it. We're told every day, "You can't change the world." But the world is changing every day. Only question is … who's doing it? You or somebody else?
~ J. Michael Straczynski ~
 

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July 18
 
Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded.
In the political order we have established there will regular, open and free elections, at all levels of government — central, provincial and municipal. There shall also be a social order which respects completely the culture, language and religious rights of all sections of our society and the fundamental rights of the individual.
The task at hand on will not be easy. But you have mandated us to change South Africa from a country in which the majority lived with little hope, to one in which they can live and work with dignity, with a sense of self-esteem and confidence in the future.
~ Nelson Mandela ~
 

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July 19
 

There's no chance for us
It's all decided for us
This world has only one sweet moment
Set aside for us.

Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to live forever?
Who dares to love forever
Oh, when love must die?

~ Brian May ~
 

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July 20
 
I cannot seek paths so harsh or so savage that Love does not always come along discoursing with me and I with him.
~ Petrarch ~
 

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July 21
 
All words, in every language, are metaphors.
~ Marshall McLuhan ~
 

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July 22
 
Since the beginning of the war, Russia has launched more than 3,000 different cruise missiles over Ukraine, but to destroy someone's family, you don't even need a missile, a small fragment is enough. … I appeal to you on behalf of all the dead. On behalf of people who have lost arms and legs. And on behalf of people who are still alive and well. On behalf of those who are fighting and those who are waiting in the rear for the return of their relatives from the front. I'm asking for something now that I never wanted to ask for. I am asking you for weapons! Weapons not for waging war on someone else's land, but to protect our home and the right to wake up in it alive. I am asking you for anti-aircraft defense — so that rockets do not kill children in their strollers. So that they do not destroy children's rooms and entire families.
~ Olena Zelenska ~
 

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July 23
 
Donald Trump wasn’t looking for the right answer legally or the right answer factually. He was looking for a way to remain in office. … In our hearing tonight, you saw an American president faced with a stark, unmistakable choice between right and wrong. There was no ambiguity, no nuance. Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our Constitutional order. There is no way to excuse that behavior. It was indefensible.
And every American must consider this: Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?
~ Liz Cheney ~
 

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July 24
 

Be warm, enjoy the season, lift your head,
Exquisite in the pulse of tainted blood,
That shivering glory not to be despised.

Take your delight in momentariness,
Walk between dark and dark — a shining space
With the grave’s narrowness, though not its peace.

~ Robert Graves ~
 

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July 25
 
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.
~ Eric Hoffer ~
 

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July 26
 
It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
~ Carl Jung ~
 

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July 27
 
What a life, you wear it like propriety
What a life, you do it like you really mean it
What a life, I watch it like a scary movie
What a life, what a life, what a life.
~ Juliana Hatfield ~
 

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July 28
 
The deep desire to inspire people, to take an active part in the life of the country … attracts our best people to political life … We should all do something to right the wrongs that we see and not just complain about them. We owe that to our country.
~ Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis ~
 

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July 29
 

Now I understand what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen
They did not know how,
Perhaps they'll listen now.

For they could not love you,
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight, on that starry starry night
You took your life as lovers often do,
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

~ Don McLean ~
 

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July 30
 
It doesn't hurt me.
Do you want to feel how it feels?
Do you want to know that it doesn't hurt me?
Do you want to hear about the deal that I'm making?
You, it's you and me.
And if I only could,
I'd make a deal with God,
And I'd get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
Be running up that building.
~ Kate Bush ~
 

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July 31
 
If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you'd find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.
I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I've outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they're most likely to be killed by sexual partners. … So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he's a woman — and, as I've said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones — then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.
~ J. K. Rowling ~
 

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Today is Monday, November 4, 2024; it is now 17:41 (UTC)