Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men's souls to joy. ~ Jack Kerouac in On The Road
  • selected by Kalki
2005
Variety's the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavour.
~ William Cowper (born 15 November 1731 (O.S.), but actually 26 November by modern Gregorian reckoning.)
  • proposed by Kalki
2006
He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater (born 15 November 1741)
  • proposed by UDScott
2007
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.
~ Marianne Moore~ (born 15 November 1887)
  • proposed by UDScott
2008
Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater
  • proposed by Kalki
2009
Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas. ~ Erwin Rommel
  • proposed by Kalki
2010
A phrase begins life as a literary expression; its felicity leads to its lazy repetition; and repetition soon establishes it as a legal formula, undiscriminatingly used to express different and sometimes contradictory ideas. ~ Felix Frankfurter
  • proposed by Kalki
2011
We need not think alike to love alike. ~ Ferenc Dávid (died 15 November 1579, date of birth unknown )
  • proposed by Zarbon
2012
Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
~ Felix Frankfurter ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2013
I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me — so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.
~ Georgia O'Keeffe ~
  • proposed by bystander
2014
You are not male or female, but a plan
deep-set within the heart of man.
~ Marianne Moore ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2015
Peace for Paris
~ Jean Jullien ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2016
There is no greater mindlessness and absurdity than to force conscience and the spirit with external power, when only their creator has authority for them.
~ Ferenc Dávid ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2017
In wartime Shanghai I saw so many horrors … Civilised life is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is, we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.
~ J. G. Ballard ~
  • proposed by bystander
2018
Let none turn over books, or roam the stars in quest of God, who sees him not in man.
~ Johann Kaspar Lavater ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2019
Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed: nature never pretends.
~ Johann Kaspar Lavater ~
  • 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

Wherever it has been established that it is shameful to be involved with sexual relationships with men, that is due to evil on the part of the rulers, and to cowardice on the part of the governed. ~ Plato.

—This unsigned comment is by MosheZadka (talk • contribs) .
  • 2 ~ UDScott 13:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 18:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

If freedom is to be saved and enlarged, poverty must be ended. There is no other solution. ~ Aneurin Bevan (born November 15, 1897)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 18:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

There is something behind the throne greater than the King himself. ~ William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (born 15 November 1708)

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! ~ William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest. ~ William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

The prudent see only the difficulties, the bold only the advantages, of a great enterprise; the hero sees both; diminishes the former and makes the latter preponderate, and so conquers. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way. ~ Franklin Pierce Adams (born 15 November 1881)

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them. ~ Felix Frankfurter (born 15 November 1882)

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 bystander (talk) 05:43, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

On the question you ask depends the answer you get. ~ Felix Frankfurter

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 4 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I know I cannot paint a flower. I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time. ~ Georgia O'Keeffe (born 15 November 1887)

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity. ~ Marianne Moore

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

The power of the visible
is the invisible; as even where
no tree of freedom grows,
so-called brute courage knows.
~ Marianne Moore ~

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

In a man to man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine. ~ Erwin Rommel (born 15 November 1891)

  • 1 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 22:05, 14 November 2014 (UTC) 2 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 4 because I believe in this strongly. The man who has the extra shotgun shell or pistol bullet shall be the one left standing. Zarbon 16:58, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility. ~ Erwin Rommel

  • 3 Kalki 13:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 06:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier. ~ Curtis LeMay

  • 3 Zarbon 05:57, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 16:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 20:40, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind being called tough, because in this racket it's tough guys who lead the survivors. ~ Curtis LeMay

  • 3 Zarbon 05:57, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself. ~ Marianne Moore

  • 2 Zarbon 05:57, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 16:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:40, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Man must first live before he can live abundantly. ~ Aneurin Bevan

  • 2 Zarbon 06:08, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 16:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:40, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Antiquary 21:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Neither the sword of popes, nor the cross, nor the image of death — nothing will halt the march of truth. ~ Ferenc Dávid

  • 3 Kalki (talk · contributions) 01:09, 13 November 2011 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4
I define Inner Space as an imaginary realm in which on the one hand the outer world of reality, and on the other the inner world of the mind meet and merge. Now, in the landscapes of the surrealist painters, for example, one sees the regions of Inner Space; and increasingly I believe that we will encounter in film and literature scenes which are neither solely realistic nor fantastic. In a sense, it will be a movement in the interzone between both spheres.
~ J. G. Ballard ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:15, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
The uneasy marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an increasingly surreal world. More and more, we see that the events of our own times make sense in terms of surrealism rather than any other view — whether the grim facts of the death-camps, Hiroshima and Viet Nam, or our far more ambiguous unease at organ transplant surgery and the extra-uterine foetus, the confusions of the media landscape with its emphasis on the glossy, lurid and bizarre, its hunger for the irrational and sensational. The art of Salvador Dalí, an extreme metaphor at a time when only the extreme will do, constitutes a body of prophecy about ourselves unequaled in accuracy since Freud's "Civilization And Its Discontents".
~ J. G. Ballard ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:15, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense.
~ J. G. Ballard ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:15, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
~ J. G. Ballard ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 00:15, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint.
~ Johann Kaspar Lavater ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?
~ Johann Kaspar Lavater ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Happy the heart to whom God has given enough strength and courage to suffer for Him, to find happiness in simplicity and the happiness of others.
~ Johann Kaspar Lavater ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity.
~ Johann Kaspar Lavater ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 10:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)


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