Quotes of the day from previous years:
- 2003
- The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. ~ George Eliot
- 2004
- If I want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure. There must merely be the silent observation of a fact. ~ J. Krishnamurti
- 2005
- The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru (born 14 November 1889)
- 2006
- Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
- 2007
- A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru (date of birth)
- 2008
- To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be in good physical condition. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
- 2009
- Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. ~ Herman Melville in Moby-Dick ~ (published that day in the United States in 1851; but first published on October 18 in England).
- 2010
- The world of today has achieved much, but for all its declared love for humanity, it has based itself far more on hatred and violence than on the virtues that make one human. War is the negation of truth and humanity. War may be unavoidable sometimes, but its progeny are terrible to contemplate. Not mere killing, for man must die, but the deliberate and persistent propagation of hatred and falsehood, which gradually become the normal habits of the people. It is dangerous and harmful to be guided in our life's course by hatreds and aversions, for they are wasteful of energy and limit and twist the mind and prevent it from perceiving truth. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
- 2011
- Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit. It is never a narrowing of the mind or a restriction of the human spirit or the country's spirit. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
- 2012
- 2013
| Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.
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| ~ Jawaharlal Nehru ~
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- 2014
| Even if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, so Voltaire said … Perhaps that is true, and indeed the mind of man has always been fashioning some such mental image or conception which grew with the mind's growth. But there is something also in the reverse proposition: even if God exist, it may be desirable not to look up to Him or to rely upon Him. Too much dependence on supernatural forces may lead, and has often led, to loss of self-reliance in man, and to a blunting of his capacity and creative ability. And yet some faith seems necessary in things of the spirit which are beyond the scope of our physical world, some reliance on moral, spiritual, and idealistic conceptions, or else we have no anchorage, no objectives or purpose in life. Whether we believe in God or not, it is impossible not to believe in something, whether we call it a creative life-giving force, or vital energy inherent in matter which gives it its capacity for self-movement and change and growth, or by some other name, something that is as real, though elusive, as life is real when contrasted with death.
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| ~ Jawaharlal Nehru ~
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- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
| We talk about a secular state in India. It is perhaps not very easy even to find a good word in Hindi for "secular". Some people think it means something opposed to religion. That obviously is not correct. What it means is that it is state which honours all faiths equally and gives them equal opportunities; that, as a state, it does not allow itself to be attached to one faith or religion, which then becomes the state religion.
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| ~ Jawaharlal Nehru ~
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- 2019
- 2020
We are, the great spiritual writers insist, most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from that transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao.
What I now realize, from my study of the different religious traditions, is that a disciplined attempt to go beyond the ego brings about a state of ecstasy. Indeed, it is in itself ekstasis. Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, or self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.
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| ~ Karen Armstrong ~
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- 2021
- 2022
| The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology. Compassion was the litmus test for the prophets of Israel, for the rabbis of the Talmud, for Jesus, for Paul, and for Muhammad, not to mention Confucius, Lao-tsu, the Buddha, or the sages of the Upanishads.
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| ~ Karen Armstrong ~
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- 2023
- 2024
- Rank or add further suggestions…
- Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD
| Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment, we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
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| ~ Jawaharlal Nehru ~
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- Used 14 August 2015, in relation to anniversary celebrations of the independence of India, proposed (originally, on this date) by Nvvchar
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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It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails, when you're trying to make a plan work. ~ Condoleezza Rice, born this day
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. ~ P. J. O'Rourke (born 14 November 1947)
- 3 Kalki 16:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
- 2 Zarbon 06:18, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
- 3 InvisibleSun 21:16, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
- 4 because history remains a stagnant reminder of the past, imperfect and perfect, a cognitive construct that can never be erased, especially not by trying to conceal the truth. Zarbon 05:19, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 00:17, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
* 3 Kalki 15:17, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
- 3 InvisibleSun 21:16, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
| When Adam Smith was being incomprehensible, he didn't have the luxury of brief, snappy technical terms as a shorthand for incoherence.
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| ~ P. J. O'Rourke ~
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| I say that religion isn’t about believing things. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.
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| ~ Karen Armstrong ~
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| Human beings are the only animals who have the capacity to envisage something that is not present or something that does not yet exist but which is merely possible. The imagination has thus been the cause of our major achievements in science and technology as well as in art and religion.
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| ~ Karen Armstrong ~
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| All truly creative thought is in some sense intuitive; it demands a leap forward into the dark world of uncreated reality. Seen in this way, intuition is not the abdication of reason but rather reason speeded up, encapsulated in an instant, so that a solution appears without the usual laborious logical preparations. A creative genius comes back from this undiscovered country like ones of the the heroes of antiquity, who has wrested something back from the gods and brought it to mankind. It is possible, perhaps, to see religious inspiration in a similar way.
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| ~ Karen Armstrong ~
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