August 4
2003
- I can't die. It would ruin my image. ~ Jack La Lanne
- selected by Nanobug
2004
- We are defined by how we use our power. ~ Gerry Spence
- selected by Kalki
2005
- "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~ (born 4 August 1792)- proposed by 121a0012
2006
- If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared...
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~- proposed by Kalki
2007
- In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man’s estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~- proposed by Kalki
2008
- Throughout American history, there have been moments that call on us to meet the challenges of an uncertain world, and pay whatever price is required to secure our freedom. ~ Barack Obama
- proposed by Kalki
2009
- I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~- proposed by Kalki
2010
Suggestions
Entitle us to the Liberty of proving the Truth of the Papers, which in the Information are called false, malicious, seditious and scandalous. ~ John Peter Zenger, acquitted 4 August 1735 of slander on the grounds that what he published was true.- 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:13, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
- 2 121a0012 02:55, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
- 2 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:21, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
- 2 InvisibleSun 22:31, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 15:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
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Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number —
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you —
Ye are many — they are few.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
- 3 InvisibleSun 15:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
- 2 Zarbon 15:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) I might eventually rank this a 3 or 4, but again attempting to gain favor for one of my favorites above.
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The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us, — visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower...
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~
- 3 Kalki 12:35, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
- 3 InvisibleSun 22:31, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 15:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
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All love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~
- 3 Kalki 12:35, 1 August 2007 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
- 3 InvisibleSun 22:31, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 15:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
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I know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And that's what I ask. But they get mad at the straight line. ~ Helen Thomas
- 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 eventually
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...we seem to be more tolerant now of what I think we should not tolerate. ~ Helen Thomas
- 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 eventually
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You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun. ~ Helen Thomas
- 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 or 4 eventually
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When one of you young queens has finished, can you bring this old queen a drink? ~ Queen Elizabeth
- 2 for comedic value. Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 1 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
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I am almost glad we have been bombed. Now I feel I can look the East End in the face. ~ Queen Elizabeth
- 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
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It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art. ~ Walter Pater
- 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 eventually
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Every intellectual product must be judged from the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced. ~ Walter Pater
- 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 eventually
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Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy. To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. ~ Walter Pater
- 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 4 eventually
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What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions. ~ Walter Pater
- 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC) might rank this a 3 eventually
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I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war...That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. ~ Barack Obama
- 4 because I completely agree with Obama here. I shortened the original verse in order to correspond with the initial message, the main message of the quote. Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) though inclined toward a 3 or even a 4 eventually.
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A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.' ~ Barack Obama
- 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
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Evolution is more grounded in my experience than angels. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
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...it bothers me when I hear people say that government is the enemy. They don't understand its fundamental role. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
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But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races. ~ Barack Obama
- 2 Zarbon 04:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 13:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
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Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 05:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
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I am a prisoner of my own biography: I can't help but view the American experience through the lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who looked like me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 05:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
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When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath. When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 05:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
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We will need to understand just how we got to this place, this land of warring factions and tribal hatreds. And we will need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, a bond that will not break. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 05:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
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War might be hell and still the right thing to do. Economies could collapse despite the best-laid plans. People could work hard all their lives and still lose everything. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 and leaning toward a 4 for this one. Zarbon 05:44, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
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Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 20:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3 or even 4 eventually.
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All the money in the world won't boost student achievement if parents make no effort to instill in their children the values of hard work and delayed gratification. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 20:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
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Identities are scrambling, and then cohering in new ways. Beliefs keep slipping through the noose of predictability. Facile expectations and simple explanations are being constantly upended. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 20:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 3 or even 4.
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I was sorry to leave. Not simply because I had made so many new friends, but because in the faces of all the men and women I'd met I had recognized pieces of myself. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 20:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
- 1 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) very little context presented here; would require more information for clarity.
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The blood of slaves reminds us that our pragmatism can sometimes be moral cowardice. Lincoln, and those buried at Gettysburg, remind us that we should pursue our own absolute truths only if we acknowledge that there may be a terrible price to pay. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 04:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
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But deliberation alone could not provide the slave his freedom or cleanse America of its original sin. In the end, it was the sword that would sever his chains. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 04:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3 or eventual 4, but either trimmed of the inital "But" or extended for more context.
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For in the end laws are just words on a page — words that are sometimes malleable, opaque, as dependent on context and trust as they are in a story or poem or promise to someone, words whose meanings are subject to erosion, sometimes collapsing in the blink of an eye. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 04:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3 or eventual 4, but either trimmed of the inital "For in the end" or extended for more context.
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The very interconnectivity that increasingly binds the world together has empowered those who would tear that world down. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 01:55, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
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No person, in any culture, likes to be bullied. No person likes living in fear because his or her ideas are different. Nobody likes being poor or hungry, and nobody likes to live under an economic system in which the fruits of his or her labor go perpetually unrewarded. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 01:55, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
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I reminded the men in the audience that being a father meant more than fathering a child; that even those of us who were physically present in the home are often emotionally absent; that precisely because many of us didn't have fathers in the house we have to redouble our efforts to break the cycle; and that if we want to pass on high expectations to our children, we have to have higher expectations for ourselves. ~ Barack Obama
- 3 Zarbon 01:55, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 08:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
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