June 13

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. ~ Bertrand Russell

• selected by Kalki

2005

Talent perceives differences, Genius unity. ~ William Butler Yeats (born 13 June 1865)

• selected by Kalki

2006

It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know others. To all Ways there are side-tracks. If you study a Way daily, and your spirit diverges, you may think you are obeying a good way, but objectively it is not the true Way. If you are following the true Way and diverge a little, this will later become a large divergence. You must realise this. ~ Miyamoto Musashi (died 13 June 1645)

• selected by Kalki

2007

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~ William Butler Yeats ~

• proposed by Kalki

2008

So long as all is ordered for attack, and that alone, leaders will instinctively increase the number of enemies that they may give their followers something to do. ~ William Butler Yeats

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2009

A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.
~ William Butler Yeats ~

• proposed by Kalki

2010

I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.
~ William Butler Yeats ~

• proposed by Kalki

2011

All hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.
~ William Butler Yeats ~

• proposed by Kalki

2012

Gradually I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically-oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort.

~ John Forbes Nash ~

• proposed by bystander

2013

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

~ William Butler Yeats ~

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2014

Be plural, like the universe!

~ Fernando Pessoa ~

• proposed by DanielTom

2015

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers ~

• proposed by Ningauble

2016

God wills, man dreams, the work is born.

~ Fernando Pessoa ~

• proposed by Kalki

2017

A lofty morality should be tolerant, for none declare its laws but those worn out with its warfare, and they must pity sinners.

~ William Butler Yeats ~ in ~ The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats ~

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2018

I'm nothing, I'll always be nothing. I can't even wish to be something. Aside from that, I've got all the world's dreams inside me.

~ Fernando Pessoa ~

• proposed by DanielTom

2019

The worst sin — perhaps the only sin — passion can commit, is to be joyless.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers ~

• proposed by Ningauble

2020

A powerful class by terror, rhetoric, and organised sentimentality, may drive their people to war but the day draws near when they cannot keep them there.

~ William Butler Yeats ~ in ~ The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats ~

• proposed by InvisibleSun

2021

Let's be simple and calm, Like the trees and streams, And God will love us, making us Us, even as the trees are trees And the streams are streams, And will give us greenness in the spring, which is its season, And a river to go to when we end... And he'll give us nothing more, since to give us more would make us less us.

~ Fernando Pessoa ~

• proposed by Kalki

2022

Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.

~ William Butler Yeats ~

• proposed by Kalki

2023

We may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.

~ James Clerk Maxwell ~

• proposed by bystander

2024

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

~ William Butler Yeats ~

• proposed by Kalki

2025

Rank or add further suggestions…

---

---

---

We’re going to make sure that everybody knows Exxon’s profits. Why don’t you tell them what Exxon’s profits were this year — this quarter? Exxon made more money than God this year. And, by the way, nothing has changed.

• proposed by Ilovemydoodle (Not WMF, Not a sockpuppet of Antandrus, Not a paid editor of Shueisha) (talk / e-mail) 23:44, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Books … are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

• 3 Ningauble 17:46, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
• 2 Kalki 23:06, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

---

It’s time for us to wake up and face the truth, that we are a captive species on a prison planet, but the fact that we are so close to understanding the science of our imprisonment means that we are also just beginning to touch the key that locks the door, and if we are strong, if we defy and defeat the sinister forces that rule us now, we have a chance at last to unlock this place and do what we are able to do, that we are richly capable of doing, that those who love us—and they are out there, too—have hoped and sought that we should do from time immemorial. Whitley Strieber (date of birth)

• 3 bystander (talk) 20:53, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:18, 11 June 2012 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.

---

It is a great tragedy that science, this wonderful process for finding out what is true, has ceded the spiritual uplift of its central revelations: the vastness of the universe, the immensity of time, the relatedness of all life, and life’s preciousness on our tiny planet. ~ Ann Druyan (born June 13, 1949) a writer with Carl Sagan for Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980), and a creator, writer, director and executive producer for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014), in an interview with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. — "Ann Druyan Talks About Science, Religion, Wonder, Awe … and Carl Sagan". Skeptical Inquirer 27 (6). November–December 2003.

• 3 Pithy Francoln (talk) 20:05, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

---

Michael Faraday's fellow scientists . . . needed to see his ideas expressed in the language of modern physics - precise equations. [Then] James Clerk Maxwell . . . translated Faraday's experimental observations on electromagnetic fields into equations [and helped transform] human civilization from a patchwork of cities, towns and villages into an intercommunicating organism linking us at light speed to each other and to the cosmos. ~ In commemoration of the 13 June 1831 birth of James Clerk Maxwell, from the tenth episode of the science documentary television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014).

• 4 Pithy Francoln (talk) 16:33, 12 October 2016 (UTC) There are three reasons this simple quote should be displayed as the Wikiquote quote of the day: (1) It describes in a very succinct way how these two geniuses helped form the modern world by making telecommunications, computer networks and electrical equipment possible, (2) It highlights how important mathematics is to both science and to the functioning of today's worldwide society, and (3) Its voice is in the form of narrative third person, so it does a better job of expressing the relationship between Faraday and Maxwell than any single quote by either of them is likely to do.
• 1 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:42, 12 June 2017 (UTC) in the present form, but perhaps a 2 or even a 3 in a different [less clearly adapted and paraphrased] form; I am not sure of that, but it is usually a strong preference with me to use the actual original words and not paraphrased adaptations.

---

Recently there's been a resurgence of rejection of evolution - possibly one of the most concrete and indisputable discoveries of science. To the extent that we deny this, we're wandering in the darkness. ~ Ann Druyan (born June 13, 1949) a writer with Carl Sagan for Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980), and a creator, writer, director and executive producer for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014).

• 2 Pithy Francoln (talk) 04:01, 23 March 2017 (UTC) Combatting evolution denial is a worthy subject for a quote of the day, but unfortunately this quote is from a video clip which is basically a commercial for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. I'd be happy to see it on the Wikiquote main page, but I felt I needed to disclaim that it is essentially from promotional material.

---