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day of the year From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium
Quotes of the day from previous years:
The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men’s minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them. |
~ George Santayana ~ |
Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups … So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. |
~ Philip K. Dick ~ |
We'll know homo superior when he comes — by definition. He'll be the one we won't be able to euth. |
~ Philip K. Dick ~ |
It seems to me very important to continue to distinguish between two evils. It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good. |
~ Margaret Mead ~ |
The Information Age offers much to mankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to the challenges it presents. But it is vital to remember that information — in the sense of raw data — is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these. |
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
Space can be mapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never be conquered. When our race has reached its ultimate achievements, and the stars themselves are scattered no more widely than the seed of Adam, even then we shall still be like ants crawling on the face of the Earth. The ants have covered the world, but have they conquered it — for what do their countless colonies know of it, or of each other? So it will be with us as we spread out from Earth, loosening the bonds of kinship and understanding, hearing faint and belated rumors at second — or third — or thousandth hand of an ever dwindling fraction of the entire human race. Though the Earth will try to keep in touch with her children, in the end all the efforts of her archivists and historians will be defeated by time and distance, and the sheer bulk of material. For the numbers of distinct human societies or nations, when our race is twice its present age, may be far greater than the total number of all the men who have ever lived up to the present time. We have left the realm of comprehension in our vain effort to grasp the scale of the universe; so it must ever be, sooner rather than later. |
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative. |
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness. |
~ Jane Austen ~ in ~ Pride and Prejudice ~ |
Do not merely practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; it deserves that, for only art and science can exalt man to divinity. |
~ Ludwig van Beethoven ~ |
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 ~ |
The way of water has no beginning and no end. The sea is around you and within you. The sea is your home — before your birth, and after your death. Our hearts beat in the womb of the world, our breath burns in the shadow of the deep. The sea gives, and the sea takes. Water connects all things, life to death, darkness to light. |
~ Avatar: The Way of Water ~ |
Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost … perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that precious little fragment as well. |
~ Philip K. Dick ~ |
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:
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Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. ~ Mao Zedong in the Little Red Book, published in Beijing that day.
Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven (Date of birth)
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones. ~ William Somerset Maugham (Date of death)
The world is a king, and like a king, desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is selfish and perverse — it will not submit to the mold of flattery. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven (born December 16, 1770)
The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature. ~ V. S. Pritchett (born December 16, 1900)
The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to their changing environment. We shall disappear if we cannot adapt to an environment that now contains spaceships, computers — and thermonuclear weapons. ~ Arthur C. Clarke (born 16 December 1917)
If I had know it was harmless, I would have killed it myself. Philip K. Dick
Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice; and yet everybody is content to hear. ~ John Selden
Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain. ~ John Selden
You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. ~ Amy Carmichael
What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things. ~ Margaret Mead
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment. ~ George Santayana
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions. ~ George Santayana
Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate. ~ George Santayana
Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself. ~ George Santayana
Only the dead have seen the end of war. ~ George Santayana
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool. ~ George Santayana
There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me. ~ Jane Austen, in Pride and Prejudice
It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first. ~ Jane Austen, in Pride and Prejudice
Great artists are always far-seeing. They easily avoid the big stumbling blocks of fact. They rely on their own simplicity and vision. ~ V. S. Pritchett
Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere. ~ V. S. Pritchett
When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion. ~ Philip K. Dick
Ramp hawkers were peddling “methods,” low priced sure-fire theories guaranteed to predict bottle twitches and beat the whole Minimax game. The hawkers were ignored by the hurrying throngs of people; anybody with a genuine system of prediction would be using it, not selling it. ~ Philip K. Dick
In a society of criminals … the innocent man goes to jail. ~ Philip K. Dick
Skill is a function of chance. It’s an intuitive best-use of chance situations. ~ Philip K. Dick
He has a broader present. But his present lies ahead, not back. Our present is related to the past. Only the past is certain, to us. To him, the future is certain. |
~ Philip K. Dick ~ |
He was always moving, advancing into new regions he had never seen before. A constantly unfolding panorama of sights and scenes, frozen landscapes spread out ahead. All objects were fixed. Pieces on a vast chess board through which he moved, arms folded, face calm. A detached observer who saw objects that lay ahead of him as clearly as those under foot. … Much lay ahead. The half hour was divided into an incredibly complex pattern of separate configurations. He had reached a critical region; he was about to move through worlds of intricate complexity. |
~ Philip K. Dick ~ |
(Date of birth)
I grew up in Baltimore and that's why I root for the Orioles. I'm very suspicious of people who move and take on a new team. You should stick with the team of your youth all the way to your grave. That shows a sense of loyalty and devotion. |
~ Frank Deford ~ |
There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense. |
~ Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice ~ |
I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long. |
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars. |
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return … The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation … the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began. |
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor — but they have few followers now. |
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal. |
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here. |
~ Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
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