Quote of the Day for 2015-12-31

"Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power."

— Joan Didion (1934-     ) "7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38," Slouching Towards Bethlehem, "The Howard Hughes Underground," The Saturday Evening Post, August 23, 1967

Howard Hughes, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, and Grover Whalen in a ticker tape parade, celebrating Mr. Hughes' record-breaking flight around the world in 3 days, 19 hours, 14 minutes, and 10 seconds (July 15, 1938)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-30

"There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies."

— Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Radio broadcast (March 21, 1943)

Migrant Mother, Florence Owens Thompson, nursing her baby. Photograph by Dorothea Lange (Feb/Mar 1936)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-29

"Intimacies between women go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending up in small talk without loss of esteem."

— Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) The Death of the Heart, part 2, chapter 1

The Letter by Vittorio Reggianini

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-28

"It is not every question that deserves an answer."

— Publilius Syrus (1st century BCE) Sententiae, #581

Sam Lowry (Johnathan Pryce), about to get an answer from the Executive Decision Maker in Brazil (1985)

Quote of the day for 2015-12-27

"The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend of both parties tactfully intervenes."

— G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) "The Skeptic as a Critic," The Forum, February 1929

Political cartoon by Henri Meyer, which depicts, among other things, the tensions between Great Britain and Germany while carving up China. Published in Le Petit Journal Sunday supplement (January 16, 1898)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-26

"Interest does not tie nations together; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them."

— Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) Speech at the Southern Commercial Congress in Mobile, Alabama, October 27, 1913

People on line around a spontaneous memorial of snow covered flowers and candles in front of the French embassy in Moscow, waiting to sign books of condolences to the French people (November 15, 2015 — Photograph by Stolbovsky)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-25

"Who is the father of the Babe, fair maid? No, no, thou needst not answer, an Angel came to thee in a dream; it is enough, say no more. To thee and thy love child bring gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, to thee and thy Babe we bend the knee."

— Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) "A Word About Job," The Philistine, April 1897

William-Adolphe Bouguereau's Song of the Angels on the Subway by Alexey Kondakov (2015)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-24

"Man has his will,—but woman has her way."

— Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," The Atlantic Monthly, December 1857

Smile for the Camera by Brianna Garcia (2006)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-23

"This intelligence-testing business reminds me of the way they used to weigh hogs in Texas. They would get a long plank, put it over a cross-bar, and somehow tie the hog on one end of the plank. They'd search all around till they found a stone that would balance the weight of the hog and they'd put that on the other end of the plank. Then they'd guess the weight of the stone."

— John Dewey (1859-1952) Quoted by Dorothy Canfield Fisher in Vermont Tradition

Carrie Buck and her mother Emma at the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. Photograph taken by A.H. Estabrook the day before the Buck v. Bell trial began in Virginia. (November 17, 1924)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-22

"She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not to find God."

— Alice Walker (1944-    ) The Color Purple, "Dear Nettie," page 165

Joliet Jake (John Belushi) "sees the light" while Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) looks on, in The Blues Bothers (1980)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-21

"I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones."

— William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Julius Caesar, act 3, scene 2

Marlon Brando as Marc Antony (1953)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-20

"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."

— Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "The Goal of Human Existence," NBC Radio broadcast for United Jewish Appeal, April 11, 1943, Einstein Archive 28-587

Portrait of Steve Jobs by Marco Grob for Time magazine (2010)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-19

"No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute."

— Paul Gallico (1897-1976) Quoted in The New York Times, January 14, 1962

Portrait of Winston Churchill by Yousuf Karsh (December 30, 1941)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-18

"Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival."

— W.R. Inge (1860-1954) "Democracy and the Future," The Atlantic Monthly, March 1922

George W. Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln during his infamous Mission Accomplished speech (May 1, 2003)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-17

"Mistrust first impulses, they are nearly always good."

— Casimir, Count of Montrond (1768-1843) Quoted by Rees Howell Gronow in Recollections and Anecdotes

Kevin Dillon as Cpl. Mel Avakian in A Midnight Clear (1992)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-16

"It needs more skill than I can tell / To play the second fiddle well."

— C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) The Salt-Cellars

Left to right: Tyrone Power, Edna May Oliver, Sonja Henie, and Rudy Vallee in a publicity still from Second Fiddle (1939)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-15

"New and stirring things are belittled, because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises, 'Why then are you not taking part in them?'"

— H.G. Wells (1866-1946) The World of William Clissold, volume 2

Front cover of Heather has Two Mommies (originally published in 1989—image source)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-14

"I used to be Snow White—but I drifted."

— Mae West (1892-1980) Interview in Life magazine, April 18, 1969

In the foreground, Marguerite Clark as Snow White and Creighton Hale as Prince Florimond (1916)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-13

"We are none of us infallible—not even the youngest of us."

— William Hepworth Thompson (1810-1886) Quoted by G.W.E. Russell in Collections and Recollections

The Street is in Play by Banksy, (18 Allen St., near Canal St., Chinatown, Manhattan, NYC—Oct 1, 2013)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-12

"There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some are wounded and some men never leave the country. … Life is unfair."

— John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) Press Conference, March 21, 1962

Secretary of War Newton D. Baker (blindfolded) draws the first number in a nationwide lottery to determine the order of drafting men for the military. (June 27, 1918)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-11

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work…I want to achieve it through not dying."

— Woody Allen (1935-    ) Quoted by Eric Lax in On Being Funny

Death and Boris Grushenko (Woody Allen) in Love and Death (1975)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-10

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other."

— Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) The Passionate State of Mind

Jiggs and Dorothy Lamour on the set of Her Jungle Love (1938)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-09

"It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks."

— Tacitus (c.55-c.120) Histories, book 1, chapter 1

Senator Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn during the Army-McCarthy hearings (1954)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-08

"You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus."

— Mark Twain (1835-1910) Mark Twain's Notebook

Print advertisement for Hut Weber by Serviceplan Group (2008)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-07

"An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted."

— Arthur Miller (1915-2005) "The Year it Came Apart," New York magazine, Dec 30, 1974 / Jan 6, 1975

Flower Power, George Harris inserting flowers into the of rifles of National Guardsmen during the March on The Pentagon (October 21, 1967)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-06

"Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promises only; pain we obey."

— Marcel Proust (1871-1922) Remembrance of Things Past, "Cities of the Plain"

The Scream by Edvard Munch (1893)

Quote of the day for 2015-12-05

"Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects."

— Will Rogers (1879-1935) "From Nuts to Soup," The New York Times, August 31, 1924

George W. Bush winks while delivering the State of the Union address in Washington DC (January 28, 2008) and Sarah Palin winks during the vice presidential debate at Washington University in St Louis, MO (October 3, 2008)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-04

"It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do."

— Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) "On Being Idle," Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, Home Chimes, January 31, 1885

Dolce Farniente (Sweet Idleness) by Rupert Bunny (circa 1890)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-03

"An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it."

— Don Marquis (1878-1937) The Sun Dial column (c. 1918), The Evening Sun

The Garden of Eden With the Fall of Man by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1617)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-02

"Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who, when their turn comes, will manufacture professors."

— Simone Weil (1909-1943) The Need for Roots, part 2, chapter 1

Lecture hall full of students and their MacBooks at the University of Missouri, School of Journalism (circa 2012)

Quote of the Day for 2015-12-01

"We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death."

— Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) "Passages from Hawthorne's Note-Books," The Atlantic Monthly, January 1866

Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle by Arnold Böcklin (1872)