Quote of the Day for 2016-06-30

"Every nation is selfish and every nation considers its selfishness sacred."

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) "Letter to an American" (1944)

A Union Jack flies next to European Union flags at the European Commission in Brussels for a visit by British Prime Minister David Cameron (January 29, 2016) Protograph by Laurent DuBrule

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-29

"Think not the bigotry of another is any excuse for your own."

— John Wesley (1703-1791) "A Caution Against Bigotry," Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)

Poster advertising a counter protest, which devolved into a melee in Sacramento, California (June 26, 2016)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-28

"Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power."

— Josh Marshall (1969-    ) "I Was Finally Able," Talking Points Memo (January 17, 2006)

Interior of the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, after housing refugees of Hurricane Katrina "in lawless squalor" (September 2, 2005) Photograph by James Nielsen

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-27

"I have Immortal longings in me."

— William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Antony and Cleopatra, act 4, scene 2 (circa 1607)

Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse (1896)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-26

"Nationalism does nothing but teach you how to hate people that you never met."

— Doug Stanhope (1967-    ) No Refunds, recorded at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York City (March 12, 2007)

Donald Trump holding a bible while speaking at a Faith and Freedom Coalition forum in Des Moines, Iowa (September 19, 2015) Photograph by Brian C. Frank

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-25

"Virginity, virginity, when you leave me, where do you go? / I am gone and never come back to you. / I never return."

— Sappho (circa 630-570 BCE) Fragment

The Vestal Virgin Tuccia by Giovanni Battista Moroni (circa 1555)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-24

"Very occasionally, if you really pay attention, life doesn’t suck."

— Joss Whedon (1964-    ) "It's Shakespeare's Fault," liner notes to Once More, With Feeling (2002)

Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Chris Evans as Captain America, Joss Whedon as The Director, and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, on the set of The Avengers (2011)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-23

"One does not attend this movie; one enlists in it."

— Murray Kempton (1917-1997) "Serpents on the Nile," a review of The Ten Commandments (1956)

Lobby card for The Ten Commandments, with Charleton Heston as Moses (1956)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-22

"What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow; this is the whole law. All the rest is a commentary to this law."

— Hillel the Elder (circa 110-10 BCE) Quoted in the Talmud, "Tractate Shabbat," chapter 2

La Justice by Bernard d'Agesci

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-21

"It has been long and justly remarked, that folly has ever sought alliance with beauty."

— Frances Burney (1752-1840) Evelina, volume 1, letter vi (1778)

Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart from The House of Mirth (2000) posing in a tableau vivant as Jean-Antoine Watteau’s Ceres (Summer) (circa 1717)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-20

"Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?"

— Roger Ebert (1942-2013) Review of Talk Radio in the Chicago Sun-Times (December 21, 1988)

Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) getting his mouth taped by trainer Angelo Dundee during the weigh-in before his boxing match with Doug Jones (March 1963) Photograph by George Silk

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-19, Father's Day

"The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them."

— Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Freedom Versus Authority in Education," lecture at the Harvard Union (May 16, 1924)

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, on the Sistine Chapel ceiling (circa 1512) Photograph by Jörg Bittner Unna

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-18

"He who wonders discovers that this is in itself a wonder."

— M.C. Escher (1898-1972) The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher (1959)

Illustration for The Terrible Adventures of Scholastica (1931)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-17

"I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul."

— James Joyce (1882-1941) "Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages," a lecture at Università Popolare, Trieste, Austria-Hungary (April 27, 1907)

An unidentified Magdalene Laundry in Ireland (circa 1900)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-16

"You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose."

— Mario Cuomo (1932-2015) Quoted by Fred Barnes in "Meet Mario the Moderate," The New Republic (April 8, 1985)

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton walking away from his airplane as they head to a campaign rally at Amway Arena in Orlando, Florida (October 20, 2008) Photograph by Joe Raedle

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-15

"People don't ever seem to realise that doing what's right's no guarantee against misfortune."

— William McFee (1881-1966) Casuals of the Sea, book 2, chapter 6 (1916)

The crew of Black Hawk helicopter Super 6-4 a month before the Battle of Mogadishu; from left: Winn Mahuron, Tommy Field, Bill Cleveland, Ray Frank, and Mike Durant (September 1993) Photograph by Army Ranger Phil Lepre

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-14

"Contradiction is the essence of the universe."

— Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) "A Nova Poesia Portuguesa no Seu Aspecto Psicológico," A Águia (September 1912)

Engraving of a Wyvern as an Ouroboros from De Lapide Philosophico by Lucas Jennis (1625)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-13

"For someone like me, it is a very strange habit to write in a diary. Not only that I have never written before, but it strikes me that later neither I, nor anyone else, will care for the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl."

— Anne Frank (1929-1944) The Diary of a Young Girl, June 20, 1942 (1947)

Bronze sculpture of Anne Frank by Sara Pons Arnal (2001) near the corner of Travessia de Sant Antoni and Plaça d'Anna Frank in Barcelona (Photograph by Enfo)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-12

"Art hath an enemy call'd ignorance."

— Ben Jonson (1572-1637) Every Man out of His Humour, act 1, scene 1 (1598)

Man in a Polyester Suit by Robert Mapplethorpe (1980)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-11

"He who inflicts a vile and unjust harm by using the power and the force with which he is invested, does not conquer; the true victory is to have on one's side Right naked and entire."

— Luís de Camões (1524-1580) Os Lusíadas, canto 10, stanza 58 (1572)

An unknown protester facing down a column of tanks on Chang'an Avenue near the Beijing Hotel, during the Tiananmen Square Protests (June 5, 1989) Photograph by Jeff Widener

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-10

"As I see it, the sole motivating factor behind the death penalty is vengeance, not justice, and I firmly believe that a government that forbids killing among its citizens should not be in the business of killing people itself."

— Larry Flynt (1942-    ) "Don't Execute the Man Who Paralyzed Me," The Hollywood Reporter (October 17, 2013)

Electric Chair at Sing Sing by William van der Weyde (circa 1900)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-09

"The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior. If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose. All I'm saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness."

— Scott Adams (1957-    ) "Pegs and Holes," Scott Adams' Blog (June 15, 2011)

John Goodman as Walter Sobchak in the "Mark it Zero" scene from The Big Lebowski (1998)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-08

"Be careful what you swallow. Chew!"

— Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) Commencement address at Buena Vista University. Quoted in Time magazine (June 12, 1995)

Aimee Semple McPherson (left) leading a service during the annual Four Square Gospel Church Convention at the Angelus Temple in Echo Park (1942) Photo source: Los Angeles Examiner

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-07

"It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory."

— Thomas Mann (1875-1955) "The War and the Future," Order of the Day (1942)

Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix (1830)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-06

"Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass."

— Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?," Berlinische Monatsschrift (December 1784)

Illustration for the Women's March on Versailles by an unknown artist (1789)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-05

"The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be."

— Robert Fulghum (1937-    ) It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It (1988)

Pastorale by Rupert Bunny (1893)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-04

"One thing we know about incentives is you can't incent a dead person. No matter what we do, Hawthorne will not produce any more works, [even if] we can give him all the money in the world."

— Lawrence Lessig (1961-    ) Debate with Jack Valenti on "The Future of Intellectual Property on the Internet" at Harvard University Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society (October 1, 2000)

Stereoscopic portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne (circa 1860-1865)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-03

"Before the civil war commenced, the United States of America were colonies, and we should not forget that such communities do not cease to be colonies because they are independent."

— Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) Speech in the House of Commons (February 5, 1863)

Alma Parens (The Motherland) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1883)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-02

"War is merely the continuation of politics by other means."

— Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) On War, chapter 1, section 24 (1832)

The Second of May 1808 in Madrid by Francisco Goya (1814)

Quote of the Day for 2016-06-01

"Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education."

— Paul Erdős (1913-1996) Quoted by Paul Hoffman in "The Man Who Loves Only Numbers," The Atlantic (November 1987)

Banky's Videographer at 402 Main St. (corner of 4th St.), Park City, Utah (2010)