Quotes of the day from previous years:
- 2004
- There’s a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost, that the ship has sailed, and that only a fool would continue. The truth is, I’ve always been a fool. ~ Albert Finney as "Ed Bloom" in Big Fish
- 2005
- I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life. ~ Timothy Leary (born 22 October 1920)
- 2006
- All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility. ~ Doris Lessing (born 22 October 1919)
- 2007
- Think for yourself and question authority. ~ Timothy Leary
- 2008
- I often observed to my brother, You see now how little nature requires to be satisfied. Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things; And I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatsoever state he is. This consists in a full resignation to the will of Providence; and a resigned soul finds pleasure in a path strewed with briars and thorns. ~ Daniel Boone
- 2009
- If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people. ~ Timothy Leary
- 2010
- 2011
- I've opened the way for others to make fortunes, but a fortune for myself was not what I was after. ~ Daniel Boone
- 2012
| To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist. The old distinction between artists and scientists must vanish. Every time we teach a child correct usage of an external symbol, we must spend as much time teaching him how to fission and reassemble external grammar to communicate the internal. |
| ~ Timothy Leary ~ |
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this:
"You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society." |
| ~ Doris Lessing ~ |
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
| We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. … You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we’ll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind. |
| ~ Doris Lessing ~ |
- 2021
- proposed by Kalki; in regard to opening day of major adaptation of Herbert's novel.
- 2022
- 2023
- 2024
- Rank or add further suggestions…
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:
- I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. If you see it, black and white people, both sides look to see the differences, they don't look at what they have together. Men and women, and old and young, and so on. And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it. ~ Doris Lessing (recent Nobel Prize winner for Literature)
The Quote of the Day (QOTD) is a prominent feature of the Wikiquote Main Page. Thank you for submitting, reviewing, and ranking suggestions!
- Ranking system
- 4 : Excellent – should definitely be used. (This is the utmost ranking and should be used by any editor for only one quote at a time for each date.)
- 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.
- An averaging of the rankings provided to each suggestion produces it’s general ranking in considerations for selection of Quote of the Day. The selections made are usually chosen from the top ranked options existing on the page, but the provision of highly ranked late additions, especially in regard to special events (most commonly in regard to the deaths of famous people, or other major social or physical occurrences), always remain an option for final selections.
- Thank you for participating!
My advice to people today is as follows: If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out. ~ Timothy Leary
You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind. ~ Timothy Leary (date of birth)
- 3 Kalki 23:58, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
- 3 InvisibleSun 22:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 05:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Parents should leave books lying around marked "forbidden" if they want their children to read. ~ Doris Lessing (born October 22, 1919)
- 3 InvisibleSun 22:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 20:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 22:21, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
- 3 Zarbon 05:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better. ~ Doris Lessing
- 3 InvisibleSun 22:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 22:21, 21 October 2006 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
- 1 Zarbon 05:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Really valuable books have been allowed to go out of print. In the old days, the publishers knew that these difficult books, the books that appeal only to a minority, were very productive in the long run. Because they're probably the books that will be read in the next generation. It's heart-breaking how often I have to say when I'm giving talks, "This book is out of print. This book is out of print." It's a roll call of dead books. ~ Doris Lessing
- 3 InvisibleSun 22:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 05:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 20:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
War among nations is a natural reaction to the absence of peace. ~ Chika Sylva-Olejeme
- 2 Zarbon 17:48, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
- 1 Kalki 20:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
- 0 because it is unsourced. - InvisibleSun 20:22, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Laughter is Humanity's mechanism to escape suffering. ~ Deepak Chopra
Focus on the quality of life. Add life to your years and then years will be added to your life. ~ Deepak Chopra
- 2 Zarbon 17:48, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 20:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
- 0 because it is unsourced. - InvisibleSun 20:22, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are related of me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man. ~ Daniel Boone
- 3 Kalki 22:58, 22 October 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4
- 1 Zarbon 12:33, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
| We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the twenty-first century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art. |
| ~ Timothy Leary ~ |
| The language of God is not English or Latin; the language of God is cellular and molecular. |
| ~ Timothy Leary ~ |
| Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. |
| ~ Timothy Leary ~ |
| Sometimes I pick up a book and I say: Well, so you've written it first, have you? Good for you. O.K., then I won't have to write it. |
| ~ Doris Lessing ~ |
| Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so. |
| ~ Doris Lessing ~ |
| None of you ask for anything — except everything, but just for so long as you need it. |
| ~ Doris Lessing ~ |
| What no wife of a writer can ever understand, no matter if she lives with him for twenty years, is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window. |
| ~ Burton Rascoe ~ |
| It is the quality and intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, aimless mediocrities about him. What the dream is, matters not at all — it may be a dream of sainthood, kingship, love, art, asceticism or sensual pleasure — so long as it is fully expressed with all the resources of self. |
| ~ Burton Rascoe ~ |
