Wikiquote:Quote of the day/December 2021

December 1

Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood. ~ Josephine Baker ~

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December 2

When tales of the cosmos are told, this period of ours may always be recalled as that in which men first came to realise what a violent universe we inhabit. ~ Nigel Calder ~

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December 3

Temperament, whether individual or collective, is not amenable to persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music — which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting, never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour; and the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage. ~ Joseph Conrad ~ in ~ The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' ~

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December 4

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. ~ Thomas Carlyle ~

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December 5

All you've got to do is own up to your ignorance honestly, and you'll find people who are eager to fill your head with information. ~ Walt Disney ~

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December 6

I do believe we've lost something. … I can't get my hand on it, but we're just not quite where we should be, as the greatest democracy in the world. And I don't know how you correct it, but I keep hoping that there will be a change in my lifetime. ~ Bob Dole ~

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December 7

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. … Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounding determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

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December 8

Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door. I had to find the passage back To the place I was before. "Relax," said the night man, "We are programmed to receive. You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!" ~ Eagles ~

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December 9

I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. I know, only too well, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would spring up all over the place, smuggled Thick Descriptions would be brought in by the lorry-load from Canada by the Mafia, blood and thick meaning would clot in the gutter as rival gangs of semiotic bootleggers slugged it out in a series of bloody shoot-outs and ambushes. Addicts would be subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings and its attendant psychic consequences would in no way diminsh, but the criminal world would benefit, and the whole fabric of civil society would be put under severe strain. Never! ~ Ernest Gellner‎‎ ~

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December 10

I would not care whether truth is pleasant or unpleasant, and in consonance with or opposed to current views. I would not mind in the least whether truth is, or is not, a blow to the glory of my country. If necessary, I shall bear in patience the ridicule and slander of friends and society for the sake of preaching truth. But still I shall seek truth, understand truth, and accept truth. This should be the firm resolve of a historian. ~ Jadunath Sarkar ~

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December 11

Fools! Do you argue, that things ancient ought, on that account, to be true and noble! Fallacies and Falsehoods there were from time immemorial, and dare you argue that because these are ancient these should prevail? In ancient times, do you think that there was not the ignorant, and the shallow minded? And why after all should you embrace so fondly a carcass of dead thoughts. Live in the present and shape the future, do not be casting lingering looks to the distant past for the past has passed away, never again to return. ~ Subramanya Bharathi ~

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December 12

Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live. ~ Gustave Flaubert ~

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December 13

We cannot make the world safe for democracy unless we also make the world safe for diversity. ~ Aga Khan IV ~

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December 14

The stars are alive and nights like these were born to be sanctified by you and me. ~ Mike Scott ~

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December 15

I had some good opportunities. I was lucky to have had the chance to do things differently. Architecture is about surprise. ~ Oscar Niemeyer ~

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December 16

As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying. ~ Arthur C. Clarke ~

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December 17

Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer. ~ Humphry Davy ~

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December 18

When I'm away from you I'm happier than ever Wish I could explain it better I wish it wasn't true. Give me a day or two To think of something clever To write myself a letter To tell me what to do. ~ Billie Eilish ~

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December 19

Show me a prison, show me a jail Show me a pris'ner whose face has grown pale And I'll show you a young man With many reasons why There but for fortune, go you or I. ~ Phil Ochs ~

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December 20

To be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. ~ Edwin Abbott Abbott ~

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December 21

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth. ~ Benjamin Disraeli ~

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December 22

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man’s critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character. ~ George Eliot ~

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December 23

I think we're at a time in American history that's probably analogous to, maybe, Rome before the first emperors, when the Republic started to fall … I think if you look at the pattern of events, if you look at the disputed election of 2000, can you imagine? In America, people are trying to recount ballots and a partisan mob is pounding on the glass and threatening the counters? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a political party which does its best to keep any representatives from another party — who've even been affiliated with another party — from getting a business job in the nation's capital? Can you imagine a political party that wants to redistrict so that its opponents can be driven out entirely? … it's a different time in America and the Republic is — this election is about a lot more than jobs. I'm not sure everybody in America sees it right now. But I see it, I feel it. ~ Wesley Clark ~

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December 24

He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. ~ Matthew Arnold ~

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December 25

He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME! Somehow or other, it came just the same! And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow, Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so? "It came without ribbons! It came without tags! "It came without packages, boxes, or bags!" And he puzzled and puzzled, till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! "Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas … perhaps … means a little bit more." ~ Dr. Seuss ~

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December 26

The fight for ideals can no longer take the form of fight between nations, because the lines of division on moral questions are within the nations themselves and intersect the political frontiers. ~ Norman Angell ~

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December 27

Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test. ~ Louis Pasteur ~

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December 28

Forgiveness is one of the key ideas in this world. Forgiveness is not just some nebulous, vague idea that one can easily dismiss. It has to do with uniting people through practical politics. Without forgiveness there is no future. ~ Desmond Tutu ~

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December 29

Winnow the chaff of a hundred creeds Beyond these systems, hollow as reeds, Turn unhorizened to where Truth leads, To be unhoused, O my soul! ~ Kuvempu ~

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December 30

I said … unprepared, unscripted, that, "I know how to fight and I know how to dance, and I'd much rather dance than fight." ... What I didn't tell everybody was I was always a better fighter than dancer. ~ Harry Reid ~

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December 31

The authoritarian impulse is reasserting itself, to challenge free people and free societies, everywhere. In our own country, from the trivial to the truly dangerous, it is the range and regularity of the untruths we see that should be cause for profound alarm, and spur to action. Add to that the by-now predictable habit of calling true things false, and false things true, and we have a recipe for disaster. As George Orwell warned, "The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." … The question of why the truth is now under such assault may well be for historians to determine. But for those who cherish American constitutional democracy, what matters is the effect on America and her people and her standing in an increasingly unstable world — made all the more unstable by these very fabrications. What matters is the daily disassembling of our democratic institutions. We are a mature democracy — it is well past time that we stop excusing or ignoring — or worse, endorsing — these attacks on the truth. For if we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost. ~ Jeff Flake ~

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