Quotes of the day from previous years:
- 2004
- A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
- 2005
- We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing: set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased, it's just like old times. ~ "Sir Humphrey" on European unity, in the comedy series Yes, Minister
- celebrating the start of the British EU presidency on July 1, 2005
- proposed by AllanHainey
- 2006
- Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (born 1 July 1742)
- 2007
- It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (date of birth)
- 2008
- We're on a mission from God. ~ Elwood J. Blues, in The Blues Brothers
- 2009
- There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; the truths of fact are contingent and their opposites are possible. ~ Gottfried Leibniz (born 1 July 1646)
- 2010
- A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
- 2011
- The truth is too simple: one must always get there by a complicated route. ~ George Sand
- 2012
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
- proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
- 2021
- 2022
- proposed by Kalki; after her recent swearing in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
- 2023
- 2024
- 2025
- Rank or add further suggestions…
Ranking system:
- 4 : Excellent - should definitely be used.
- 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.
Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting. ~ Gottfried Leibniz (date of birth)
- 2 Kalki 30 June 2005 21:03 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
- 2 Zarbon 04:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
- 2 InvisibleSun 21:28, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now when it's worked so well? ~ "Sir Humphrey" in Yes, Minister
As head of a military structure I am responsible for the realization of military issues. If you want to have everlasting peace, you must be ready for war. ~ Seyran Ohanyan (born July 1)
- 4 because sometimes peace can only be won through war, and better yet, sometimes fire must be fought with fire. Zarbon 04:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
- Source: "Information About Blitzkrieg Is Groundless" Published on April 19, 2006
- 2 InvisibleSun 21:28, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 00:44, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
It takes as much time and trouble to pull down a falsehood as to build up a truth. ~ Peter Mere Latham
Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents. ~ Peter Mere Latham
I don't consider myself a racist, I don't hate other peoples, but I certainly want to preserve my own. And I think that's true of all people. ~ David Duke
- 3 and I agree with this. I believe that all races should be preserved and kept pure. That is what will always keep them culturally brilliant. This is also a nice way of going against interracial marriage, which I am strongly against. Zarbon 06:19, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
- 0 InvisibleSun 21:28, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
- 0 Kalki 00:44, 1 July 2008 (UTC) I was briefly going to rank this a 1, as conceivably usable, in some fashion, but there is just no way I'd actually consider it Wikiquote QOTD material, and am simply being honest about that. ~ Kalki 01:04, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
- 0: I can't conceive of any reason Wikiquote should promote this kind of sentiment. Hydrangeans (talk) 21:48, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
Art is a demonstration of which nature is the proof. ~ George Sand (born July 1, 1804)
All of us who have time and money to spare, travel — that is to say, we flee; since surely it is not so much a question of travelling as of getting away? Which of us has not some sorrow to dull, or some yoke to cast off? ~ George Sand
I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one. ~ George Sand
Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence. Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek. ~ George Sand
The business of art is to enlarge and correct the heart and to lift our ideals out of the ugly and the mean through love of the ideal … The business of art is to appeal to the soul. ~ Florence Earle Coates (born 1 July 1850)
Maeterlinck says that compared with ordinary truths mystic truths have strange privileges—they can neither age nor die. Beauty is eternal and ugliness, thank God, is ephemeral. Can there be any question as to which should attract the poet? ~ Florence Earle Coates (born 1 July 1850)
They live indeed—the dead by whose example we are upward led. ~ Florence Earle Coates (born 1 July 1850)
| The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, "bread-bread-fame" or "fame-fame-bread." |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points "born" and "died" farther away from one another... The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills they should be, and this method is for the philosophers. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy — at least until we have become as clever as they are. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever.... Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later. |
| ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg ~ |
| Woman must save her self. I would not risk my salvation to any man. |
| ~ Eliza R. Snow ~ |
- 3 Hydrangeans (talk) 21:50, 3 November 2024 (UTC) For clarity, this date is suggested because this is the day on which Snow said the quote. Hydrangeans (talk) 21:51, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
