Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. ~ Douglas Adams
  • selected by Kalki
2005
Even as the fingers of the two hands are equal, so are human beings equal to one another. No one has any right, nor any preference to claim over another. You are brothers. ~ Muhammad
  • selected by Kalki
2006
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. ~ Robert E. Howard (born 22 January 1906)
  • selected by Kalki
2007
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them. ~ Francis Bacon (born 22 January 1561)
  • proposed by InvisibleSun
2008

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
~ George Gordon, Lord Byron ~ (born 22 January 1788)

  • proposed by InvisibleSun
2009
Honor is, or should be, the place of virtue and as in nature, things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm. All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man's self, whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. ~ Francis Bacon
  • proposed by InvisibleSun
2010
Truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
~ Lord Byron in Don Juan
  • proposed by Ningauble
2011
Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon. ~ Francis Bacon
  • proposed by InvisibleSun
2012
Near this spot
Are deposited the Remains of one
Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.
This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
If inscribed over human ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
BOATSWAIN, a DOG
~ George Gordon, Lord Byron ~
  • proposed by InvisibleSun
2013
Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • proposed by InvisibleSun
2014
As a Buddhist, I was trained to be tolerant of everything except intolerance.
~ U Thant ~
  • proposed by Zarbon
2015
If I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep…
~ Lord Byron ~
in
~ Don Juan ~
  • proposed by Ningauble
2016
Man, whence is he?
Too bad to be the work of a god, too good for the work of chance.
~ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing ~
  • proposed by Zarbon
2017
Men must know that in this theater of Man's life it is reserved only for God and Angels to be lookers on.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2018
The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2019
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2020
It will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and, as it were, grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, a vulgar and degenerate kind. The second is of those who labor to extend the power and dominion of their country among men. This certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called) is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot command nature except by obeying her.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2021 
Rank or add further suggestions…

The Quote of the Day (QOTD) is a prominent feature of the Wikiquote Main Page. Thank you for submitting, reviewing, and ranking suggestions!

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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!

Suggestions

These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves. ~ Francis Bacon (born January 22, 1561)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 11:05, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 14:58, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 18:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Great Galileo was debarr'd the Sun
Because he fix'd it; and, to stop his talking,
How Earth could round the solar orbit run,
Found his own legs embargo'd from mere walking:
The man was well-nigh dead, ere men begun
To think his skull had not some need of caulking;
But now, it seems, he's right — his notion just:
No doubt a consolation to his dust.
~ George Gordon, Lord Byron ~

  • 3 InvisibleSun 11:05, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 15:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 18:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Doing good isn't [that] hard. It's just doing a lot of good that is very hard. If your aims are modest, you can accomplish an awful lot. When your aims become elevated beyond a reasonable level, you not only don't accomplish much, you can cause a great deal of damage. ~ Irving Kristol

  • 2 Zarbon 15:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 22:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work. ~ Irving Kristol

  • 3 Zarbon 15:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 22:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Patriotism springs from love of the nation’s past; nationalism arises out of the hope for the nation’s future. ~ Irving Kristol

  • 4 Zarbon 15:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 22:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

You know what they say - the sweetest word in the English language is revenge. ~ Peter Beard

  • 3 Zarbon 15:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 22:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 23:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The whole world is a scab. The point is to pick it constructively. ~ Peter Beard

  • 3 Zarbon 15:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 22:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 23:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I have never believed in war. It is a crime against humanity whether you win or lose. I just read an article in this magazine I have in my hands that one day the moon will fall on the earth, but it is my feeling that until then, we should try to make the world a better place to live in. ~ Hjalmar Schacht

  • 3 Zarbon 15:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 22:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 23:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

When is revolution legal? When it succeeds! ~ August Strindberg

  • 3 Zarbon 15:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 22:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

By aiming for the impossible, you reach the highest level of the possible. ~ August Strindberg

  • 3 Zarbon 15:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 22:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

No more of courts, of triumphs, or of arms,
No more of Valour’s force, or Beauty's charms!
The themes of vulgar lays with just disdain
I leave unsung, the flocks, the amorous swain,
The pleasures of the land, and terrors of the main.
How abject, how inglorious 'tis to lie
Grovelling in dust and darkness, when on high
Empires immense, and rolling worlds of light,
To range their heavenly scenes the muse invite!
~ Richard Blackmore

  • 3 DanielTom (talk) 23:19, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

~ John Donne ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 20:40, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
He that defers his charity 'till he is dead, is (if a man weighs it rightly) rather liberal of another man's, than of his own.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 2 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 2 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
For a man to love again where he is loved, it is the charity of publicans contracted by mutual profit and good offices; but to love a man's enemies is one of the cunningest points of the law of Christ, and an imitation of the divine nature.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to discover truth.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
The greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a tarrasse, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Our Saviour himself did first show His power to subdue ignorance, by His conference with the priests and doctors of the law, before He showed His power to subdue nature by His miracles.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
There are four classes of Idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned names — calling the first class, Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theater.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call Idols of the Market Place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theater, because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine. That is to say, between certain empty dogmas, and the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are found in nature.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
I could not be true and constant to the argument I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond others; but yet not more willing than to have others go beyond me again: which may the better appear by this, that I have propounded my opinions naked and unarmed, not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men's judgments by confutations.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
A wise man will make more opportunities, than he finds.
~ Francis Bacon ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:53, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
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