Quotes of the day from previous years:
| TheGod to whom depth inphilosophy bring backmen’sminds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them. |
| ~George Santayana ~ |
| Today we live in asociety in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, bygovernments, by bigcorporations, byreligious groups,political groups … So I ask, in mywriting, What isreal? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticatedpeople using very sophisticated electronicmechanisms. I do not distrust theirmotives; I distrust theirpower. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating wholeuniverses, universes of themind. I ought toknow. I do the same thing. |
| ~Philip K. Dick ~ |
| We'll knowhomo superior when he comes — bydefinition. He'll be the one we won't beable toeuth. |
| ~Philip K. Dick ~ |
| It seems to me veryimportant to continue to distinguish between two evils. It may benecessary temporarily to accept a lesserevil, but one must never label a necessary evil asgood. |
| ~Margaret Mead ~ |
| TheInformation Age offers much tomankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to thechallenges it presents.But it is vital to remember thatinformation — in the sense of rawdata — is notknowledge, that knowledge is notwisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the firstessential step toall of these. |
| ~Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
| Space can bemapped and crossed and occupied without definable limit; but it can never beconquered. Whenour race has reached its ultimateachievements, and thestars themselves are scattered no more widely than the seed ofAdam, even then we shall still be likeants crawling on the face of theEarth. The ants have covered theworld, but have they conquered it — for what do their countless coloniesknow of it, or of each other? So it will be with us as we spread out from Earth, loosening the bonds of kinship andunderstanding, hearing faint and belatedrumors at second — or third — or thousandth hand of an ever dwindling fraction of the entirehuman race. Though the Earth will try to keep in touch with herchildren, in the end all theefforts of her archivists andhistorians will be defeated bytime anddistance, and the sheer bulk of material. For the numbers of distinct humansocieties ornations, when our race is twice its present age, may be far greater than the total number of all the men who have ever lived up to the present time. We have left the realm ofcomprehension in ourvain effort to grasp the scale of theuniverse; so it must ever be, sooner rather than later. |
| ~Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
| If we havelearned one thing from thehistory ofinvention anddiscovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daringprophecies seemlaughablyconservative. |
| ~Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
| You shall not, for the sake of one individual,change themeaning ofprinciple andintegrity, nor endeavour topersuade yourself or me, thatselfishness isprudence, andinsensibility ofdangersecurity forhappiness. |
| ~Jane Austen ~ in ~Pride and Prejudice ~ |
| Do not merelypractice yourart, but force your way into itssecrets; itdeserves that, for only art andscience can exaltman todivinity. |
| ~Ludwig van Beethoven ~ |
| As our own species is in the process ofproving, one cannot have superiorscience and inferiormorals. The combination is unstable andself-destroying. |
| ~Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
| The way ofwater has nobeginning and noend. Thesea is around you and within you. The sea is yourhome — before yourbirth, and after yourdeath. Ourhearts beat in the womb of theworld, our breath burns in the shadow of the deep. The sea gives, and the sea takes. Waterconnectsall things,life todeath,darkness tolight. |
| ~Avatar: The Way of Water ~ |
| Any givenman sees only a tiny portion of thetotaltruth, and very often, infact almost … perpetually, he deliberatelydeceives himself about that precious little fragment as well. |
| ~Philip K. Dick ~ |
| Theyoungman who has notwept is asavage, and theolder man who will notlaugh is afool. |
| ~George Santayana ~ |
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:
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Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. ~Mao Zedong in theLittle Red Book, published in Beijing that day.
Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors. ~Ludwig van Beethoven (Date of birth)
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones. ~William Somerset Maugham (Date of death)
The world is a king, and like a king, desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is selfish and perverse — it will not submit to the mold of flattery. ~Ludwig van Beethoven (born December 16, 1770)
The present has itsélan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature. ~V. S. Pritchett (born December 16, 1900)
The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to their changing environment. We shall disappear if we cannot adapt to an environment that now contains spaceships, computers — and thermonuclear weapons. ~Arthur C. Clarke (born 16 December 1917)
If I had know it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.Philip K. Dick
Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice; and yet everybody is content to hear. ~John Selden
Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain. ~John Selden
You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. ~Amy Carmichael
What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things. ~Margaret Mead
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment. ~George Santayana
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions. ~George Santayana
Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate. ~George Santayana
Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself. ~George Santayana
Only the dead have seen the end of war. ~George Santayana
There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me. ~Jane Austen, inPride and Prejudice
It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first. ~Jane Austen, inPride and Prejudice
Great artists are always far-seeing. They easily avoid the big stumbling blocks of fact. They rely on their own simplicity and vision. ~V. S. Pritchett
Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere. ~V. S. Pritchett
When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion. ~Philip K. Dick
Ramp hawkers were peddling “methods,” low priced sure-fire theories guaranteed to predict bottle twitches and beat the whole Minimax game. The hawkers were ignored by the hurrying throngs of people; anybody with a genuine system of prediction would be using it, not selling it. ~Philip K. Dick
In a society of criminals … the innocent man goes to jail. ~Philip K. Dick
Skill is a function of chance. It’s an intuitive best-use of chance situations. ~Philip K. Dick
| He has a broader present. But his present lies ahead, not back. Our present is related to the past. Only the past is certain, to us. To him, the future is certain. |
| ~Philip K. Dick ~ |
| He was always moving, advancing into new regions he had never seen before. A constantly unfolding panorama of sights and scenes, frozen landscapes spread out ahead. All objects were fixed. Pieces on a vast chess board through which he moved, arms folded, face calm. A detached observer who saw objects that lay ahead of him as clearly as those under foot. … Much lay ahead. The half hour was divided into an incredibly complex pattern of separate configurations. He had reached a critical region; he was about to move through worlds of intricate complexity. |
| ~Philip K. Dick ~ |
(Date of birth)
| I grew up in Baltimore and that's why I root for the Orioles. I'm very suspicious of people who move and take on a new team. You should stick with the team of your youth all the way to your grave. That shows a sense of loyalty and devotion. |
| ~Frank Deford ~ |
| There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense. |
| ~ Jane Austen inPride and Prejudice ~ |
| I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long. |
| ~Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
| It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms ofnationalism can long survive when men have seen theEarth in its true perspective as a single small globe against thestars. |
| ~Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
| We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return … The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation … the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began. |
| ~Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
| Science can destroyreligion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence ofZeus orThor — but they have few followers now. |
| ~Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
| Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal. |
| ~Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
| I'm sure theuniverse is full ofintelligentlife. It's just been too intelligent to come here. |
| ~Arthur C. Clarke ~ |
| As you get older, all those dumb clichés, they’re all true. You only have a certain amount of time left, and you should only spend it doing the things that you want to do. |
| ~Rob Reiner ~ |
| In a poignant moment, even as the country rejoiced in its new-found independence, the relatives of people he had known like Majid, Rahim and Idris had come and cried over the bones of both Hindus and Muslims that were stacked in the well of Mathurpatti. Their tears had fallen even more copiously when they had realized that they had no way of distinguishing between the bones of the Majids and the Anils. |
| ~Taslima Nasrin ~ |