October 7 Quotations

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003

One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over... ~ Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

selected by Nanobug

2004

Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves. ~ U Thant

selected by Kalki

2005

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ~ Niels Bohr (born 7 October 1885)

proposed by Kalki

2006

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature. ~ Niels Bohr

proposed by Kalki

2007

We depend on our words ... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character ... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly. ~ Niels Bohr

proposed by Kalki

2008

Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us. ~ Steven Erikson

proposed by Zarbon

2009

I am doing it
the it I am doing is
the I that is doing it
the I that is doing it is
the it I am doing
it is doing the I that am doing it
I am being done by the it I am doing
it is doing it
~ Ronald David Laing ~

proposed by Kalki

2010 : Rank or add further suggestions…
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Ranking system:

4 : Excellent - should definitely be used.

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.

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Suggestions

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." ~ Edgar Allan Poe (death date)

3 Kalki 23:31, 6 October 2005 (UTC) When good quotes by someone have been found, I generally prefer to to use them on birth dates rather than death dates, though Poe's death date seems one good case for an exception. Though I have some desire to see this used, as it does refer to the act of quotation, there are many other passages of Poe I would prefer, including "Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?" - even though this is very similar to another line from the same poem that has already been used.
1 Zarbon 04:05, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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I'll be back. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger (became governor that day)

4 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 23:09, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
1 Kalki 11:49, 6 October 2007 (UTC) ~~2 Kalki 23:31, 6 October 2005 (UTC)~~ I think this could be used in some context in the future, but don't feel an urgency to use it at this time... I'm sure it will be back...
1 Zarbon 04:05, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
1 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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When I was on my way to the podium a gentleman stopped me and said I was as good a politician as I was an actor. What a cheap shot. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger (became governor that day)

2 Kalki 11:49, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
1 Zarbon 04:05, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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This is a page of glory in our history, which has never been written and is never to be written.... ~ Heinrich Himmler (born October 7)

3 Zarbon 04:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
1 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
1 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear. ~ Heinrich Himmler (born October 7)

4 because fear has always been a powerful weapon. The spreading of fear allows for the highest amount of respect to be given, a respect dominated strongly by the will to survive. A very similar quotation is said by Darth Maul in Star Wars and is one of my favorites. Both in fiction and history, this ideology is powerful and enigmatic. Zarbon 04:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
- SOURCE: Visions of Reality - A Study of Abnormal Perception and Behavior By Alberto Rivas -Psychology - 2007 - Page 162
1 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
1 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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An army that waits is soon an army at war with itself. ~ Steven Erikson

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
2 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal's shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched before one now stretched before him. ~ Steven Erikson

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
3 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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They call war peace, they call tyranny liberty. On which side of the shadow you stand decides a word's meaning. Words are the weapons used by those who see others with contempt. ~ Steven Erikson

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4, but I would extend it:

The Letheri are masters at corrupting words, their meanings. They call war peace, they call tyranny liberty. On which side of the shadow you stand decides a word's meaning. Words are the weapons used by those who see others with contempt. A contempt which only deepens when they how those others are deceived and made into fools because they choose to believe. Because in their naivety they thought the meaning of a word was fixed, immune to abuse.

3 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don't want to learn it themselves. ~ Vladimir Putin

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
2 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain. ~ Vladimir Putin

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
2 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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...we also need to build our home and make it strong and well protected. We see, after all, what is going on in the world. The Comrade Wolf knows who to eat, as the saying goes. It knows who to eat and is not about to listen to anyone. ~ Vladimir Putin

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
2 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world. ~ Ronald David Laing

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
2 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love. ~ Ronald David Laing

2 Zarbon 05:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
3 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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Creative people who can't help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane. ~ Ronald David Laing

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC) but this needs sourcing and I would prefer it to be extended for context, and I probably won't have time to seek this myself today ~ Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
3 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons. ~ Desmond Tutu

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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You don't choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them. ~ Desmond Tutu

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
2 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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God has such a deep reverence for our freedom that he'd rather let us freely go to Hell than be compelled to go to Heaven. ~ Desmond Tutu

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
3 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ~ Desmond Tutu

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
3 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low. ~ Desmond Tutu

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
3 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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We who advocate peace are becoming an irrelevance when we speak peace. The government speaks rubber bullets, live bullets, tear gas, police dogs, detention, and death. ~ Desmond Tutu

2 Zarbon 05:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
2 Kalki 19:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 23:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

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Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin. and people die. ~ Steven Erikson

3 Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context. ~ Steven Erikson

3 Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this? ~ Steven Erikson

3 Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC) with a VERY strong lean toward 4.

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The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based. ~ Niels Bohr

3 Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections. ~ Niels Bohr

3 Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them. ~ Niels Bohr

3 Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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The requirement of the present, the failure of the past, is the same: to provide a thoroughly self-conscious and self-critical human account of man. ~ Ronald David Laing

3 Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.

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One may think there is a gate to go through
and look a long time for it
without finding it
One may find it and
it may not open
If it opens one may be through it
As one goes through it
one sees that the gate one went through
was the self that went through it
no one went through a gate
there was no gate to go through
no one ever found a gate
no one ever realized there was never a gate
~ Ronald David Laing ~

3 Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.

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Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.s if possible.
From the moment of birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father, and their parents and their parents before them, have been. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities, and on the whole this enterprise is successful. ~ Ronald David Laing

3 Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.

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Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years. ~ Ronald David Laing

3 Kalki 20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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Quoternity