Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the tablets of eternity. ~ James Anthony Froude
  • selected by Kalki, originally crediting it to Lord Acton who quoted Froude in an address "The Study Of History" (11 June 1895); an early published version of this did not include quote marks around Froude's statement which led to this long being widely attributed to Acton. The phrase has also sometimes been misquoted as: Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
2005
It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing — a somewhat unfamilar conception for the average mind. Furthermore, the equation E = mc², in which energy is put equal to mass, multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, showed that very small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy and vice versa. ~ Albert Einstein
2006
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly. ~ Albert Einstein
  • proposed by Kalki
2007
Love means to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills —
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~ (born 30 June 1911)
  • proposed by InvisibleSun
2008
Life is a jest, and all things show it,
I thought so once, and now I know it.
~ John Gay ~ (born 30 June 1685)
  • proposed by Kalki
2009
I think that I am here, on this earth,
To present a report on it, but to whom I don't know.
As if I were sent so that whatever takes place
Has meaning because it changes into memory.
~ Czesław Miłosz
  • proposed by InvisibleSun
2010
They waited, ready, for all those who would call themselves mortals,
So that they might praise, as I do, life, that is, happiness.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • proposed by InvisibleSun
2011
And space, what it is like? Is it mechanical,
Newtonian? A frozen prison?
Or the lofty space of Einstein, the relation
Between movement and movement? No reason to pretend
I know. I don't know, and if I did,
Still my imagination is a thousand years old.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • proposed by InvisibleSun
2012
I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps "Oh look at that!" Then — whoosh, and I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again... and they won't be able to forget me — ever.
~ Jim Morrison ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2013
All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.

~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2014
I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:
day draws near
another one
do what you can.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2015
Evil grows and bears fruit, which is understandable, because it has logic and probability on its side and also, of course, strength. The resistance of tiny kernels of good, to which no one grants the power of causing far-reaching consequences, is entirely mysterious, however. Such seeming nothingness not only lasts but contains within itself enormous energy which is revealed gradually.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2016
There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2017
Through all the Employments of Life
Each Neighbour abuses his Brother;
Whore and Rogue they call Husband and Wife:
All Professions be-rogue one another:
The Priest calls the Lawyer a Cheat,
The Lawyer be-knaves the Divine:
And the Statesman, because he's so great,
Thinks his Trade as honest as mine.
~ John Gay ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2018

Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.

~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2019
What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2020 
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!

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!

Suggestions

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity. ~ Albert Einstein

In honor of "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies (http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/)" Annalen der Physik. June 30, 1905, first work to show relativity
  • 3 MosheZadka 00:54, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • 3 Zhaladshar 22:47, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • 3 AllanHainey 12:57, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 121a0012 02:14, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 0 Kalki 28 June 2005 22:57 (UTC) The joke is fine, but I have never been able to establish this as an actual statement of Einstein's and have long been inclined to doubt that it is, despite it often being cited as one. If we are to commemorate the centennial of Einstein's publication, I would much prefer to use a far less dubious quotation of him, or perhaps the famous equation summing up the relations indicated by the theory: E = mc². The joke has been "quoted" by Steve Mirsky in the humorous "antigravity" section of Scientific American (September 2002). Vol. 287, Iss. 3; pg. 102 but this should hardly be taken as an authentication of the statement as actually Einstein's, as Mirsky cites the original source as being a fictional magazine: "Amazingly, the pretty girl/hot stove quote is actually the abstract from a short paper written by Einstein that appeared in the now defunct Journal of Exothermic Science and Technology (JEST, Vol. 1, No. 9; 1938)."
There is a thunderstorm rumbling where I am at, so to avoid a possible disconnect, I have just made a choice to use a more reliably genuine quote that includes "E = mc²", as it is the most famous statement of Einstein's theories. I am open to other options, but there are only about 5 hours remaining before the automated updates occur to the main page. After several sessions of extensive searching I cannot find any information that leads me to accept the above statement as a genuine quotation of Einstein, though it has often come to be cited as one. If anyone can provide reliable evidence that it is, it would be very welcome. ~ Kalki 29 June 2005 18:43 (UTC)

Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and on my arrival I was fully convinced that he understood it. ~ Chaim Weizmann, about a 1921 trans-Atlantic voyage

  • 3 121a0012 02:41, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:17, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 16:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 //Gbern3 (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

E = mc²

  • 2 Kalki 01:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC) 3 Kalki 28 June 2005 22:57 (UTC) the famous equation summing up the relations indicated by relativity theory This has now been used as part of a quote of the day, and I am no longer as inclined to use it alone.
  • 1 Zarbon 04:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 //Gbern3 (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
~ Czesław Miłosz

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:31, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 //Gbern3 (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I still think too much about the mothers
And ask what is man born of woman.
He curls himself up and protects his head
While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running,
He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit.
Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.
~ Czesław Miłosz

  • 3 InvisibleSun 08:31, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 23:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

The Russian colossus...has been underestimated by us...whenever a dozen divisions are destroyed the Russians replace them with another dozen. ~ Franz Halder (born June 30)

  • 3 and this isn't an exaggeration. Forces were replenished by more forces, lives by lives, and most importantly, soldiers by soldiers. Zarbon 06:46, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: The World at War - Page 129 by Mark Arnold-Forster - World War, 1939-1945 - 1981
  • 2 Kalki 18:20, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 16:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

This is not a promise, this is a duty which I have to carry out. ~ Serzh Sargsyan

  • 3 Zarbon 04:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
    • [Source: 2008 Presidential Elections in Armenia]
  • 1 Kalki 18:20, 27 June 2008 (UTC) No context is provided in this statement, as it exists.
  • 1 InvisibleSun 16:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 //Gbern3 (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

These pages of our history, which we are writing together, shall bear witness only to victories. ~ Serzh Sargsyan

  • 3 Zarbon 04:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
    • [Source: The Government of the Republic of Armenia official website - Speech at the February 26 rally]
  • 2 Kalki 18:20, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 16:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

All right, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these?! Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down! ~ Cave Johnson

  • 3 Alistair3900 14:37, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC) I would rate this "3" if a source was provided.

It isn't pleasant to surrender to the hegemony of a nation which is still wild and primitive, and to concede the absolute superiority of its customs and institutions, science and technology, literature and art. Must one sacrifice so much in the name of the unity of mankind? ~ Czesław Miłosz

  • 3 bystander (talk) 03:43, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
  • 2 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC) 3 ♞☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 01:38, 29 June 2012 (UTC) with a lean toward 4with a lean toward 3 - but presently prefer many other quotes by Miłosz and John Gay
  • 3 //Gbern3 (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
I hate the man who builds his name
On ruins of another's fame.
Thus prudes, by characters o'erthrown,
Imagine that they raise their own.
Thus Scribblers, covetous of praise,
Think slander can transplant the bays.
~ John Gay ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
A Wolf eats sheep but now and then;
Ten thousands are devour'd by men.
An open foe may prove a curse,
but a pretend friend is worse.
~ John Gay ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
In beauty faults conspicuous grow;
The smallest speck is seen on snow.
~ John Gay ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Give me, kind Heaven, a private station,
A mind serene for contemplation:
Title and profit I resign;
The post of honour shall be mine.
~ John Gay ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets.
~ John Gay ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who’ve no retreat.
~ John Gay ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Youth's the season made for joys,
Love is then our duty.
~ John Gay ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Love, then, hath every bliss in store;
'Tis friendship, and 'tis something more.
Each other every wish they give;
Not to know love is not to live.
~ John Gay ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
So comes a reckoning when the banquet's o'er,—
The dreadful reckoning, and men smile no more.
~ John Gay ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
By outward show let's not be cheated;
An ass should like an ass be treated.
~ John Gay ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons
But pure and generous words were forbidden
Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one
Considered himself as a lost man.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Never has there been a close study of how necessary to a man are the experiences which we clumsily call aesthetic. Such experiences are associated with works of art for only an insignificant number of individuals. The majority find pleasure of an aesthetic nature in the mere fact of their existence within the stream of life. In the cities, the eye meets colorful store displays, the diversity of human types. Looking at passers-by, one can guess from their faces the story of their lives.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
A purely physiological study of one particular passer-by in preference to another is meaningless. If one penetrates into the minds of these people, one discovers utter nonsense. They are totally unaware of the fact that nothing is their own, that everything is part of their historical formation — their occupations, their clothes, their gestures and expressions, their beliefs and ideas. They are the force of inertia personified, victims of the delusion that each individual exists as a self.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
We have come by easy stages to a lack of a common system of thought that could unite the peasant cutting his hay, the student poring over formal logic, and the mechanic working in an automobile factory. Out of this lack arises the painful sense of detachment or abstraction that oppresses the "creators of culture."
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained. It is like a system of bridges built over chasms. One can travel boldly ahead over these bridges, ignoring the chasms. It is forbidden to look down into them; but that, alas, does not alter the fact that they exist.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
The pressure of an all-powerful totalitarian state creates an emotional tension in its citizens that determines their acts. When people are divided into "loyalists" and "criminals" a premium is placed on every type of conformist, coward, and hireling; whereas among the "criminals" one finds a singularly high percentage of people who are direct, sincere, and true to themselves.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Whoever saw, as many did, a whole city reduced to rubble — kilometers of streets on which there remained no trace of life, not even a cat, not even a homeless dog — emerged with a rather ironic attitude toward descriptions of the hell of the big city by contemporary poets, descriptions of the hell in their own souls. A real "wasteland" is much more terrible than any imaginary one. Whoever has not dwelt in the midst of horror and dread cannot know how strongly a witness and participant protests against himself, against his own neglect and egoism. Destruction and suffering are the school of social thought..
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church
lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore call one man, anyone on earth,
not me — after all I have some decency —
and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Under various names, I have praised only you, rivers!
You are milk and honey and love and death and dance.
From a spring in hidden grottoes, seeping from mossy rocks,
Where a goddess pours live water from a pitcher,
At clear streams in the meadow, where rills murmur underground,
Your race and my race begin, and amazement, and quick passage.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Leaves glowing in the sun, zealous hum of bumblebees,
From afar, from somewhere beyond the river, echoes of lingering voices
And the unhurried sounds of a hammer gave joy not only to me.
Before the five senses were opened, and earlier than any beginning
They waited, ready, for all those who would call themselves mortals,
So that they might praise, as I do, life, that is, happiness.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors.

The features of my face melt like a wax doll in the fire. And who can consent to see in the mirror the mere face of man?

~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
We are a poor people, much afflicted.
We camped under various stars,
Where you dip water with a cup from a muddy river
And slice your bread with a pocketknife.
This is a place accepted, not chosen.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
I pass a volcanic park, lie down at a spring,
Not knowing how to express what is always and everywhere:
The earth I cling to is so solid
Under my breast and belly that I feel grateful
For every pebble, and I don't know whether
It is my pulse or the earth's that I hear...
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)


This article is issued from Wikiquote. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.