Quote of the Day for 2016-04-30

"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection."

— Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) Science and Hypothesis, Introduction (1902)

Flying Spaghetti Monster & Raptor Jesus by Firell (2012)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-29

"Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants—the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare from becoming a mere lower-class brawl."

— Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) The Carpet People, chapter 16 (1971)

British soldiers marching into Colesberg, South Africa during the Second Boer War (December 31, 1901)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-28

"The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion."

— Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) "Lectures on Education" delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1855) "What Knowledge is of Most Worth," The Westminster Review (July 1859)

Frontispiece by F. Curtus Bon for Almagestum Novum by Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1651)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-27

"We don't have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds."

— Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) The Diary of Anaïs Nin, February 1932

A Forró Party in Lapa, Rio de Janeiro by Johanna Thomé de Souza (March 12, 2013)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-26

"The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue."

— Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) Speech during the Protestant Council of the City of New York banquet at the Astor Hotel after accepting its Family of Man award (October 28, 1964)

Screenshot from the season 25 episode of The Simpsons, Four Regrettings and a Funeral (November 3, 2013)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-25

"Do you really think one can be truly loving when one is short of bread?"

— Antoine François Prévost (1697-1763) Manon Lescaut, part 1 (1731)

Harald Paulsen and Roma Bahn from act 2 of The Threepenny Opera in Berlin (1928)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-24

"Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God."

— Epistle of James, chapter 1, verses 19-20

While Captain America mourns Sharon Carter, the Hulk has other plans (November 11, 2013) PVP by Scott R. Kurtz

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-23

"To the end, it may be a government of laws and not of men."

— John Adams (1735-1826) Constitution of Massachusetts, part 1, article 30 (1780)

Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney during a farewell ceremony for Rumsfeld at the Pentagon (December 15, 2006) Photograph by Stefan Zaklin

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-22

"Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom. … For through doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth."

— Peter Abelard (1079-1142) Sic et Non, Prologue (1120)

Abelard and his Pupil Heloise by Edmund Leighton (1882)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-21

"Every human being grows up inside a sheath of custom, which enfolds it as the swathing clothes enfold the infant."

— Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) "Custom," The Fortnightly Review, July 1, 1888

Lili Elbe by Gerda Wegener (c. 1928)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-20

"The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself."

— Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) "In Praise of Dissent," The New York Times Book Review (December 16, 1956)

Mug shot of Ezra Pound after his surrender to the U.S. Military in northwestern Italy (May 26, 1945)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-19

"That worst evil of long dictatorships: the loss of all political experience."

— James Cameron (1911-1985) "Spain Under Franco," News Chronicle, March 3, 1954

A Moscow woman rests her bag on a discarded symbol of Communism (Nov 1, 1990) Photo by Alexander Nemenov

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-18

"Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense."

— Thornton Wilder (1897-7975) Our Town, act 3 (1938)

Daughters of Revolution by Grant Wood (1932)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-17

"It is in human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion."

— Anatole France (1844-1924) "Le Petit Bonhomme," La Nouvelle Revue (1883) Le Livre de Mon Ami (1885)

Blill Clinton hugs Monica Lewinsky at a Democratic Party fundraising event in Washington, D.C. (October 23, 1996) Photograph by Dirck Halstead

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-16

"The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known."

— Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Notebooks, "Morals"

The HAL-9000 computer being interviewed in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-15

"People never want to be told anything they do not believe already."

— James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) The Cream of the Jest, chapter 13 (1917)

Donald Trump at CPAC in Washington, D.C. (2011) Photo by Gage Skidmore, remix by Max Fleishman for The Daily Dot

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-14

"Out of the frying pan into the fire."

— Tertullian (c. 155-240 CE) De Carne Christi, chapter 6 (c. 203-206 CE)

A Roman Lime Kiln by Sébastien Bourdon (1637)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-13

"There's nothing more pornographic than glorifying war."

— Tom Clancy (1947-2013) Quoted by Jamie Allen in "Tom Clancy, General Chuck Horner Return to Desert Storm" for CNN (May 12, 1999)

The Green Berets movie poster art by Frank McCarthy (1968)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-12

"Through [Pennsylvania Station] one entered the city like a god. Perhaps it was really too much. One scuttles in now like a rat."

— Vincent Scully (1920-    ) American Architecture and Urbanism (1969)

Pennsylvania Station concourse from the southeast (April 24, 1962, 1:43 PM) Photograph by Cervin Robinson

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-11

"O, Paddy dear, and did you hear / The news that's going round? / The shamrock is forbid by laws / To grow on Irish ground."

— "The Wearing of the Green," Irish folk song lamenting the aftermath of the Rebellion of 1798

"Battle of Ross" by George Cruikshank, illustration for History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 (1845)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-10

"It's people like [Alma Mahler] who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."

— Tom Lehrer (1928-    ) Introduction to "Alma," That Was the Year That Was (1965)

Alma Mahler, Vienna (1909)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-09

"You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it."

— Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007) Everything Is Under Control, Introduction (1998)

Pride and Prejudice meets The X-Files mashup from Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton (2014)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-08

"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."

— Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) "A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind" (1707)

Dick Cheney listening to another speaker during the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, DC (June 2, 2008) Photograph by Saul Loeb

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-07

"I desire the things which will destroy me in the end."

— Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)

The First Kiss by William Adolphe Bouguereau (c. 1873)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-06

"I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."

— Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) Up from Slavery, chapter 11 (1901)

Elsheba Khan, at the grave of her son in Arlington National Cemetery (Section 60, grave 8441) Photograph by Platon for The New Yorker (September 29, 2008)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-05

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."

— Plato (c. 428-348 BCE) Phaedo, chapter 115 (c. 348 BCE)

CEOs of the seven largest tobacco companies being sworn in at a congressional hearing on the regulation of tobacco products (April 14, 1994) Minutes after this photograph was taken, each of them would lie under oath that nicotine was not addictive. Left to right, Donald Johnston (American Tobacco), Thomas Sandefur (Brown and Williamson), Edward Horrigan (Liggett Group), Andrew Tisch (Lorillard), Joseph Taddeo (US Tobacco), James Johnston (RJ Reynolds), and William Campbell (Philip Morris)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-04

"There's no place like home."

— Hesiod (c. 750-650 BCE) The Works and Days, line 365 (c. 700 BCE)

Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale, Terry as Toto, and Billie Burke as Glinda, the Good Witch, from The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-03

"It is right to be content with what we have, but never with what we are."

— James Mackintosh (1765-1832) Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh (1835)

Donald Trump arrives at the Miss Universe Pageant at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas (December 19, 2012) Photograph by David Becker

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-02

"The charity of the Gospel must extend to all religions and the French hospitality to all people."

— Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) Les Vœux d’un Solitaire (1790)

Members of Femen protesting a rally of Marine Le Pen's National Front party in Paris (May 1, 2015) Photograph by Thomas Samson

Quote of the Day for 2016-04-01

"But that poetry should be as pervious as oratory, and plainness her special ornament, were the plain way to barbarism."

— George Chapman (1559-1634) Ovid's Banquet of Sense, preface (1595)

Troilus and Criseyde, Liber II (c. 1385), page 501 from The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer by William Morris, illustration by Edward Burne-Jones (1896)