Quote of the Day for 2016-03-31

"He's just your father, man—he's as full of shit as anybody."

— Ron Shelton (1945-    ) Bull Durham (1988)

George W., George H. W., and Robin Bush (1953)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-30

"A bird does not sing because he has an answer. / He sings because he has a song."

— Joan Walsh Anglund (1926-    ) "A Bird Does Not Sing," A Cup of Sun (1967)

Bob Dylan at Columbia Records recording studio A in New York City (1963)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-29

"We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters."

— Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) Castle Rackrent, preface (1800)

Portrait of Humphrey Davy by Thomas Lawrence (c. 1821)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-28

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood."

— Marie Curie (1867-1934) Quoted in Maria Skłodowska-Curie: Centenary Lectures (1967)

Soviet students studying for exams in the late 1960's

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-27 Easter Sunday

"Many Christians don't want to hear this, but the reality is that there are lots of other explanations for what happened to Jesus that are more probable than the explanation that he was raised from the dead. None of these explanations is very probable, but they are more probable, just looking at the matter historically, than the explanation of the resurrection."

— Bart D. Ehrman (1955-    ) Jesus, Interrupted, chapter 5 (2009)

Christ's Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection by Alexander Ivanov (1835)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-26

"Without mathematics, we are blind."

— Alain Badiou (1937-    ) Short Treatise on Transient Ontology (1998)

The Golden Ratio in the Parthenon

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-25

"Even today—in blithe disregard of his actual philosophy—Smith is generally regarded as a conservative economist, whereas in fact, he was more avowedly hostile to the motives of businessmen than most New Deal economists."

— Robert Heilbroner (1919-2005) The Worldly Philosophers, chapter 3

The Author of the Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith) by John Kay (1790)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-24

"There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. It's slow, tedious, inconclusive, it's hard to tell good guys from bad guys—it's everything that a normal hour of Star Trek is not."

— Kim Stanley Robinson (1952-    ) Interview in Locus magazine, September 1997

Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) in the Star Trek episode: The City on the Edge of Forever (April 6, 1967) Trapped on Earth in the 1930's, they're constructing "a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bear skins" aka vacuum tubes

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-23

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."

— Henry Kissinger (1923-    ) Quoted in the Washington Post, December 23, 1973

Ali Shallal al-Qaisi being tortured in Abu Ghraib Prison by CIA interrogators (2003)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-22

"Never Write an Advertisement Which You Wouldn't Want Your Own Family To Read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by."

— David Ogilvy (1911-1999) Confessions of an Advertising Man, chapter 5

Print advertisement for Listerine, continuing a long tradition of deceptive claims (1958)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-21

"For a ballad's a thing you expect to find lies in."

— Samuel Lover (1797-1868) "Paddy Blake's Echo"

Adele Astaire and her brother Fred in a promotional picture for Lady, Be Good (1926)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-20

"Like any thinking person, I should like to think there was—I don't care whose or which—some God. Not out of fear: death is a lark; it's life that stings. But if there were some God, then I'd exist in his imagination, like Antigone in Sophocles'. I'd have no complications, no confusions, no waste parts or misplaced elements and then, oh, Henry, then I'd make some sense. I'd be a queen in Arcady and not an animal in chaos. How, from where we started, did we ever reach this Christmas?"

— James Goldman (1927-1998) The Lion in Winter, act 2, scene 1

Theater poster by Wiesław Grzegorczyk for a production of Antigone at the People's Theater in Krakow, Poland (1998)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-19

"That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue."

— John Hancock (1737-1793) Speech in Boston on the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1774

Four panels from "Point the Finger" by Robert Crumb, HUP Comics #3 (1989) Satyricon

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-18

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."

— Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) "Notes on the Next War," Esquire magazine, September 1935

Benito Mussolini delivering a speech in Rome (1935) His war with Ethiopia started the same year

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-17

"I have been a stranger in a strange land."

— Moses (c. 1391-1271 BCE) Book of Exodus, chapter 2, verse 22

Jack Nicholson in The Passenger (1975)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-16

"The die is cast."

— Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) While crossing the Rubicon river and thus commencing the Great Roman Civil War. Quoted by Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars, "Julius Caesar," paragraph 32 (121 CE)

Donald Trump announcing his candidacy to the 2016 US presidential election at the Trump Tower in Manhattan (June 16, 2015) Photograph by Brendan McDermid for Reuters

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-15

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

— Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Letter to Jost Winteler, 1901

Pope Benedict XVI blessing the crowd in St. Peter’s Square (October 10, 2012)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-14

"Whereas 'false stories' can be told anywhere and at any time, myths must not be recited except during a period of sacred time (usually in autum or winter, and only at night)."

— Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) Myth and Reality

Meadow Elves by Nils Blommér (1850)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-13

"I cannot think the disputes and jealousies of Heaven are tried and settled by the swords of earth."

— James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) The Nemesis of Faith, "Letter II"

The Battle Between the Israelites and Amalekites (Exodus 17:8-13) Illustration from Figures de la Bible, by Gerard Hoet (1728)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-12

"Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak–and speak in such a way that people will remember it."

– Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Letter to Leopold Mozart, July 4, 1781

Jean Jaurès Speaking at the Tribune of the Chamber of Deputies by Jean Veber (1903)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-11

"I can't die but once."

— Harriet Tubman (1822-1913) Quoted in The Freedmen's Record, March 1865

Murder in Mississippi by Normal Rockwell. Illustration for the "Southern Justice" article in Look magazine (June 29, 1965)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-10

"Taxation and representation are inseparable … for whatever is a man's own, is absolutely his own; no man hath a right to take it from him without his consent, either expressed by himself or representative; whoever attempts to do it, attempts an injury; whoever does it, commits a robbery, he throws down and destroys the distinction between liberty and slavery."

— Charles Pratt, 1st Earl of Camden (1714-1794) Speech in the House of Lords on the Declaratory Bill of the Sovereignty of Great Britain over the Colonies, March 7, 1766

Political cartoon designed and distributed in London by Benjamin Franklin as part of his campaign to repeal the Stamp Act (circa 1766) Artist and engraver are unknown

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-09

"Taxes are what we pay for civilized society."

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) Dissenting opinion in Compania General De Tabacos De Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue (275 U.S. 87), November 21, 1927

The Tribute Money by Titian (1516)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-08

"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form."

— William Inge (1860-1954) "The Idea of Progress," Romanes Lecture (1920)

Preparing hog carcasses for hair removal in the Chicago Meatpacking district (1890)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-07

"In truth, poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell."

— Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) "The Waverley Novels," The National Review, April 1858

The Uprising by Honoré Daumier (1860)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-06

"A man has only one escape from his old self: to see a different self—in the mirror of some woman's eyes."

— Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987) The Women, act 1, scene 3

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt (1907)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-05

"We shall be judged by what we do, not by how we felt while we were doing it."

— Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980) Review of Jean-Paul Sartre's play The Condemned of Altona

Autographed lobby card for the film, with Sophia Loren and Maximilian Schell (1962)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-04

"We prove what we want to prove, and the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove."

— Alain (1868-1951) Système des Beaux-Arts, Forward

Second International Eugenics Conference logo (1921)

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-03

"What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction; a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery."

— Henry L. Benning (1814-1875) Speech before the Virginia Secession Convention, February 18, 1861

Slaves of General Thomas F. Drayton (1862) Photograph by Henry P. Moore

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-02

"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."

— H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) Notes On Democracy, part 2, chapter 4

Donald Trump speaking to a rally at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, AL (Aug 21, 2015) Photo by Mark Wallheiser

Quote of the Day for 2016-03-01

"The grand tune is the only thing in music that the great public really understands."

— Thomas Beecham (1879-1961) Quoted by H. Procter-Gregg in Sir Thomas Beecham, Conductor and Impresario

Madonna photoshoot by Tom Munro for L'Uomo Vogue (May-June 2014)