Quote of the Day for 2015-10-31

"In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients."

— Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) The Manufacture of Madness

Witchcraft at Salem Village, illustration from Pioneers in the Settlement of America (1876)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-30

"The measure of a man's real character, it has been said, is what he would do if he knew it would never be found out."

— Thomas Tapper (1864-1958) The Music Life and How to Succeed in It

Thomas Babington Macaulay (April 1856) to whom this quote of often mis-attributed.

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-29

"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."

— Carl Jung (1875-1961) "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious," lecture given at an Eranos conference in 1935.

Infrared image of the Helix Nebula (February 27, 2007)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-28

"Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better."

— Richard Hooker (1554-1600) Quoted by Samuel Johnson in the preface to A Dictionary of the English Language

The Barack Obama "Hope" poster by Shepard Fairey (2008)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-27

"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

— Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "The Triumph of Stupidity," May 10, 1933

Screenshot of Bill O'Reilly from an infamous out-take of Inside Edition. (circa 1991)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-26

"The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors."

— Henri Becque (1837-1899) Conferenes, Notes, Poems, Letters

Mildred and Richard Loving in Washington, D.C. on January 9, 1965, before their case, Loving vs. Virginia, had reached the Supreme Court. (Photograph: Bettmann/CORBIS)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-25

"Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest form of cowardice."

— Holbrook Jackson (1874-1948) Platitudes in the Making

Burning comic books in Binghamton, NY (1948) during the comic book scare.

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-24

"He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things."

— George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633-1695) Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections

George B. McClellan, Major General in the Union Army, who built the Army of the Potomac, but was so over cautious that he accomplished nothing in the Eastern Theater of the U.S. Civil War. (Photograph by Matthew Brady, 1861)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-23

"She [the Catholic Church] thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts."

— Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) "Ranke's History of the Popes," The Edinburgh Review, October 1840

Battle of Domažlice between Hussites and Crusaders; Jena Codex, 15th century.

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-22

"No other man-made device since the shields and lances of the ancient knights fulfills a man's ego like an automobile."

— Sir William Rootes (1894-1964) Quoted on the BBC-TV show Who Said That?, January 14, 1958

Illustration by Michał Dziekan

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-21

"The best careers advice given to the young ... is 'Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.'"

— Katharine Whitehorn (1926-    ) "The Ten-Hour Week is Here to Stay," The Observer, January 19, 1975

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the co-founders of Apple (circa 1976)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-20

"A man's idee in a card game is war—crool, devastatin', an' pitiless. A lady's idee iv it is a combynation iv larceny, embezzlement, an' burglary."

— Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936) "On the Game of Cards," Mr. Dooley on Making a Will

Judy Holliday and Broderick Crawford in the gin/rummy scene from Born Yesterday (1950).

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-19

"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are all embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate."

— Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Freedom in Society," Harper's Monthly Magazine, March 1926

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher wave to photographers after their arrival in Camp David on December, 22 1984. (UPI/AFP/GettyImages)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-18

"If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers."

— Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-1890) Les Guêpes, volume 6, January 1849

Mug shot of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted of murdering his three daughters by arson, and executed at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville on February 17, 2004. Subsequent investigations concluded his trial and rejected appeals were a gross miscarriage of justice.

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-17

"Every crowd has a silver lining."

— "Modernized Maxims," Profitable Advertising, July 1908

Article in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper about the second museum in New York City opened by P.T. Barnum, and to whom the above quote is often mis-attributed. (September 30, 1865)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-16

"The working of great administrations is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self-interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought."

— Giorgio de Santillana (1902-1974) The Crime of Galileo

Political cartoon by John Cameron, mocking President Lincoln and his cabinet. Published by Currier and Ives. (c. 1864)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-15

"What right have the Americans to be forecasting our weather?"

— John B. Harris, letter to The Times of London in response to news of weather satellites launched by the United States. July 18, 1963, page 11

Robert Fitzroy, British naval officer and father of modern weather forecasting.

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-14

"Boys will be boys—and so will a lot of middle-aged men."

— Kin (F. McKinney) Hubbard (1868-1930) Attributed

Elvis Presley's visit with Richard Nixon in the White House Oval Office, December 21, 1970 (Photo by Oliver Atkins)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-13

"Destroy him as you will, the bourgeois always bounces up. Execute him, expropriate him, starve him out en masse, and he reappears in your children."

— Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) Quoted in The Observer, March 7, 1937

Banksy piece in the South Bronx, October 21, 2013

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-12

"And 'tis remarkable that they
Talk most, who have the least to say."

— Matthew Prior (1664-1721) Alma: or, The Progress of the Mind, canto II

Donald Trump does his signature "You're fired!" gesture during a campaign speech in June 2015. (Photo by Dominick Reuter)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-11

"Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it."

— Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) The Conquest of Happiness

Glenn Close as Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-10

"If you wou'd not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth reading,
Or do things worth the writing."

— Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Poor Richard's Almanack, 1738

Ernest Hemingway writing at a desk while on safari in Africa,1953. (Photo courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Library.)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-09

"I've been told that nobody sings the word 'hunger' like I do."

— Billie Holiday (1915-1959) Lady Sings the Blues, chapter 22

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-08

"I kno plenty ov folks who are so kondem kontrary, that if they should fall into the river, they would insist upon floating up stream."

— Josh Billings (1818-1885) Affurisms: "Phish Bawls"

Fred Phelps (center), infamous leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, being creatively photobombed (circa 2006)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-07

"When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him Vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him Sportsman."

— Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970) "The Vandal and the Sportsman," The Great Chain of Life

Dr. Walter Palmer, dentist and avid big game hunter from Minnesota, who is accused of killing a protected lion named Cecil, in Zimbabwe in June 2015.

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-06

"It is not miserable to be blind; it is miserable to be incapable of enduring blindness."

— John Milton (1608-1674) The Second Defense of the People of England, page 32

Hope by George Frederic Watts (1886)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-05

"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother."

— Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) Women and the New Race

Cover of the Birth Control Review for November 1923, from The American Birth Control League, the precursor to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-04

"It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes."

— Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," The Chameleon, December 1894, Page 2

Tracey Walter as Miller and Emilio Estevez as Otto, in Alex Cox’s Repo Man (1984)

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-03

"We must be on our guard against giving interpretations [of scripture] which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers."

— Saint Augustine (354-430) The Catholic Encyclopedia's terse distillation of De Genesi ad Litteram, volume 1, chapter 19, paragraph 39

Greeting card by Dan Regan for the Shoebox division of Hallmark.

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-02

"Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand stout country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse."

— William Hazlitt (1778-1830) "On Prejudice," Sketches and Essays

Provenance of this image is unknown. If anyone knows its origin, please contact me and I will give proper credit.

Quote of the Day for 2015-10-01

"Autobiography—that unrivalled vehicle for telling the truth about other people."

— Philip Guedalla (1889-1944) "Biographers and Their Victims," Debate with A.G. Gardiner at The London School of Economics, June 1923

For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington by Donald Regan, White House Chief of Staff under Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1987.