Quote of the Day for 2016-01-31

"Knowledge itself is power."

— Francis Bacon (1561-1626) "On Heresies," Sacred Meditations

Server room at the Google Data Center in Mayes County, Oklahoma (2012)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-30

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

— Mark Twain (1835-1910) The Innocents Abroad, volume 2, "Conclusion"

American Gothic by Grant Wood (1930)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-29

"Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined."

— James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) Inaugural address on assuming the presidency of The Birmingham and Midland Institute in Birmingham, England, October 6, 1884

The Truth, by Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1870)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-28

"1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

— Douglas Adams (1952-2001) "LIFE," The Salmon of Doubt

The Leader of the Luddites, hand colored etching by an anonymous artist (1812)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-27

"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased—short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed."

— Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) "Servants," And Even Now

Banksy's memorial to fellow graffiti artist, Bradley "Ozone" Chapman, who was hit by a train on January 12, 2007. It was painted on a London Underground building on Old Street near the roundabout with City Road.

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-26

"If it is only difficult, it is done; if it is impossible, we shall see."

— Charles-Alexandre de Calonne (1734-1802) Quoted by François Guizot in Biographie Universelle, volume 6

Seabee sign on Bougainville Island, during Operation Cherry Blossom (January 2, 1944) U.S. Navy Seabee Museum

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-25

"The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand."

— George Moore (1852-1933) "Balzac," Impressions and Opinions

The Rocky Horror Picture Show, dismissed by most critics when it was first released (1975). On the screen, Nell Campbell, Patricia Quinn, Tim Curry, and Richard O'Brien. On the stage at the Art Theater in Long Beach California, Mandi Wallingford, Jessika Turner, Diego Sanson and Paco Erskine (November 2012)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-24

"Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first call promising."

— Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) Enemies of Promise, part 2, chapter 13

First Steps, after Millet by Vincent Van Gogh, while at Saint-Paul Asylum (January 1890)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-23

"I am proud that I'm a politician. A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years."

— Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) Impromptu remarks before the Reciprocity Club, Washington, D.C., April 11, 1958. Quoted in the New York World-Telegram and Sun, April 12, 1958

Richard Nixon boards a helicopter on the White House grounds after resigning as president (August 9, 1974)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-22

"It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it."

— Robert Frost (1875-1963) "The Poetry of Amy Lowell," Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 1925

Erato, Muse of Poetry by Edward Poynter (1870)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-21

"Television is for appearing on, not looking at."

— Noël Coward (1899-1973) Interview with Edward R. Murrow on Person to Person, April 27, 1956

Opening sequence of The Groove Tube, which spoofed 2001: A Space Odyssey (1974)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-20

"After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse."

— Quentin Crisp (1908-1999) The Naked Civil Servant, chapter 15

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-19

"Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition—in having to put forth the best within you."

— Henry J. Kaiser (1882-1967) "How to Capture Life's Greatest Values," Reader's Digest, January 1950

Banksy's Molotov Bouquet, on a building wall along the main road in the town of Beit Sahour (December 5, 2007) Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-18

"I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety."

— Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) My Several Worlds

Illustration of the Earth as an inverse toroid that is both flat and conforms to the observations of modern science (1893)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-17

"The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'"

— Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Said to Marie Bonaparte and quoted by Ernest Jones in The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, volume 2

Portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo by Leonardo da Vinci (circa 1503-06)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-16

"Our blight is ideologies—they are the long-expected Anti-Christ!"

— Carl Jung (1875-1961) The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation

Banksy's Dove of Peace at the corner of Manger and Caritas Streets in Bethlehem (2007)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-15

"I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support."

— John Buchan (1875-1940) Speech to the The Law Society of Upper Canada, February 21, 1936

Bizarro cartoon by Dan Piraro with Phil Witte (June 2, 2007)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-14

"To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, / To a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock, / Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, / From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!"

— W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) The Mikado, act 1

Finale of act 1, at the Savoy Theater (1908)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-13

"The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations."

— David D. Friedman (1945-    ) The Machinery of Freedom, chapter 1

American tank destroyed south of Baghdad, where U.S. forces met stiff resistance while fighting their way to the airport. (April 6, 2003) Photo by Carolyn Cole for the Los Angeles Times

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-12

"The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder."

— Alan Shepard (1923-1998) When asked by a reporter what he thought about while inside the capsule atop the Redstone rocket. Quoted by Gene Kranz in Failure is Not an Option

Mercury-Redstone 3 (Freedom 7) launch, carrying Alan Shepard (May 5, 1961)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-11

"So, we'll go no more a roving / So late into the night, / Though the heart be still as loving, / And the moon be still as bright."

— Lord Byron (1788-1824) "So, We'll Go No More A Roving," Letter to Thomas Moore, February 28, 1817

Two Manhattans by Nigel Van Wieck (1989)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-10

"Why is it that in all the novels and motion picture plays the vampires and adventuresses have dark hair and black eyes, while the innocent, persecuted angels are all blondes—whereas in real life it is always the other way 'round."

— Helen Rowland (1875-1950) "Blondes," A Guide to Men

Mary Pickford as Tessibel Skinner and Jean Hersholt as Ben Letts in Tess of the Storm Country (1922)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-09

"Any woman who through the use of false hair, Spanish hair pads, make-up, false hips, steel busks, panniers, high heeled shoes, or other devices leads a subject of Her Majesty into marriage, shall be punished with the penalties of witchcraft."

— Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Edict

Lady Elizabeth Howard (circa 1600)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-08

"Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it."

— Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990) Peter's Quotations, "Originality" (page 362)

It's Only Stealing if You Get Caught by Eddie Colla (2013), after Walmart started selling unauthorized prints of his and Banksy's work.

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-07

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."

— George Santayana (1863-1952) The Life of Reason, volume 1, Introduction

Ammon Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy, and leader of the militias that occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, speaking to the media. (January 4, 2016) Photo by Rob Kerr

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-06

"No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

— H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) "Notes on Journalism," Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926

Donald Trump greets supporters at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, AL (August 21, 2015) Photo by Mark Wallheiser

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-05

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'"

— Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Attributed

Master Isaac Newton in His Garden at Woolsthorpe, in the Autumn of 1665 (circa 1856) by Robert Hannah (1812-1909)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-04

"Under capitalism man exploits man. And under Communism it is just the reverse."

— John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) A Life in Our Times

Banksy's interpretation of The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault (1819) on a wall in downtown Calais (2015)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-03

"The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos."

— Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Quoted by Stephen Jay Gould in "Jove's Thunderbolts," Natural History magazine, October 1994

Map of the world, with Jerusalem at its center. Created by Gervase of Ebstorf (circa 1234)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-02

"Many a man who falls in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl."

— Evan Esar (1899-1995) Esar's Comic Dictionary

Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio at Chasen's restaurant (June 26, 1953)

Quote of the Day for 2016-01-01

"I do not know which makes a man more conservative—to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past."

— John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) The End of Laissez-Faire, chapter 1

The Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach in Málaga by Antonio Gisbert (1888)