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day of the year From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium
Quotes of the day from previous years:
I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that I understand. And these two certainties — my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle — I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions? |
~ Albert Camus ~ |
In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing. |
~ Albert Camus ~ |
A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously. |
~ Albert Camus ~ |
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. |
~ Marie Curie ~ |
Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. |
~ Marie Curie ~ |
All the final answers were given in the beginning. They stand shining, above and beyond us, but they are always there to be seen. They may be too bright for us, they may be too clear for us. Well then, we must clarify our own eyes. Our task is to grow out until we reach them. |
~ R. A. Lafferty ~ |
One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. |
~ Albert Camus ~ |
This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up. This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. |
~ Albert Camus ~ |
In this growing there are no really new things or new situation. There are only things growing out right, or things growing out deformed or shriveled. |
~ R. A. Lafferty ~ |
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its beauty. Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our world. If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity. |
~ Marie Curie ~ |
Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. |
~ Albert Camus ~ |
"I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men. |
~ Albert Camus ~ |
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:
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The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn. ~ The Rebel by Albert Camus, born that day.
Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live. ~ Albert Camus
You stand in front of a million doors,
Each one holds a million more. ~ Kate Bush ~ (2005: international release date of her first album in 12 yrs)
Wrong Prong, Bong Gong. ~ R. A. Lafferty
Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws. ~ Leon Trotsky (born November 7)
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies. ~ Leon Trotsky (born November 7)
You may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested in you. ~ Leon Trotsky (born November 7)
I write as clearly as I am able to. I sometimes tackle ideas and notions that are relatively complex, and it is very difficult to be sure that I am conveying them in the best way. Anyone who goes beyond cliche phrases and cliche ideas will have this trouble. ~ R. A. Lafferty (born 7 November 1914)
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. ~ R. A. Lafferty
True love is that we should hate whatever interferes with our vision of the high and the lowly. ~ R. A. Lafferty
Listen now to a series of sayings that always come hard to brave people. Our own great movement will grow with its own impetus wherever it is not blighted. We will break up persons of blight and centers of blight. But often, and this will be the hard part for all of you to understand, we will warn and advise before we kill. And quite often we will not kill at all. Try to understand this.. ~ R. A. Lafferty
Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. ~ Albert Camus
Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing. ~ Albert Camus
There are no easy choices. The way ahead will be very hard … But hard is not hopeless. ~ David Petraeus
If you have come with high expectations of anything, you have come to the wrong place. ~ R. A. Lafferty
Science has suffered in having her name applied to mechanics, an ugly step-child of hers. Matter herself is a humiliation to the serious. We cannot make it vanish forever, but can make it seem to. For my purpose that is even better. All matter can be modified as long as it is kept subjective. Let us keep it so. ~ R. A. Lafferty
An excess of science will leave none of us alive. ~ R. A. Lafferty
Be not nervous. In a very little while you will either be a member or you will not be. ~ R. A. Lafferty
There are no rules. We do whatever seems the most fun. ~ R. A. Lafferty
We ourselves become the bridges out over the interval that is the world and time. It is a daring thing to fling ourselves out over that void that is black and scarlet below and green and gold above. A bridge does not abandon its first shore when it grows out in spans towards the further one. ~ R. A. Lafferty
The devils stroll the earth again and infect with the red sickness. They must, at all cost to themselves, destroy the growing tendrils before such can touch the other side. For, whenever one least growing creeper touches across the interval, that means the extinction of a devil. It is a thing to be tested. ~ R. A. Lafferty
One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done. ~ Marie Curie
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas. ~ Marie Curie
I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries. ~ Marie Curie
What better way to find the true age of the Earth than with the uranium atom? If you knew what fraction of the uranium in a rock had turned into lead, you could calculate how much time had passed since the rock was formed. ~ In commemoration of the 7 November 1867 birth of Marie Curie, trailblazing researcher on radioactivity and the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, from the seventh episode of the science documentary television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014).
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