Quote of the Day for 2016-08-31

"Wall Street is the only place that people ride to work in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway."

— Warren Buffett (1930-    ) Quoted by Egbert Sukop in The Money Adventure (1998)

Crowds at Federal Hall on Wall Street during the Panic of 1907 (October 1907)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-30

"Sports is to war as pornography is to sex."

— Jonathan Haidt (1963-    ) "The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives," TED Talk (March 2008)

"Well—what the hell are you staring at?," by EMK (circa 1941-45)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-29

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and I know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing."

— Paul the Apostle (cira 5-67 CE) First letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13 (circa 53-57 CE) translation from the English Revised Version (1881)

The Siege of Acre by Dominique Papety (circa 1840)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-28

"Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail."

— Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) "Life, Art and America," The Seven Arts (February 1917)

The Tree of Forgiveness by Edward Burne Jones (1881-2) based on the story of Phyllis and Demophon

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-27

"You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn."

— John Buchan (1875-1940) "The Power-House," Blackwood's Magazine (December 1913)

Screenshot from an ITN news story of the Serbian run Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia-Hertzegovina during the Bosnian War (1992)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-26

"When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life."

— Martin Amis (1949-    ) "Kurt Vonnegut: After the Slaughterhouse," The Observer (November 3, 1985)

Emma Watson, the beneficiary of one literary empire, Photoshopped onto the prop of another (2011) Original photograph of Watson by Joel Ryan (November 12, 2010)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-25

"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable."

— Howard Zinn (1922-2010) "Terrorism Over Tripoli," Failure to Quit (1993)

Shoes from the La Belle discothèque bombing in West Berlin (April 7, 1986) Photograph by Paul Langrock

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-24

"It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul."

— William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) "Invictus," Book of Verses (1888)

A CIA employee helps U.S. evacuees up a ladder onto an Air America Bell 204B helicopter, on the apartment building roof at 22 Gia Long Street, Saigon, shortly before the city's fall (April 29, 1975) Photo by Hubert van Es

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-23

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."

— Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) "Bradbury Still Believes in Heat of 'Fahrenheit 451'," interview by Misha Berson, The Seattle Times (March 12, 1993)

Stock photo of young adults using smart phones by ViewApart

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-22

"When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of Hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay."

— Brian Aldiss (1925-    ) "Brian Aldiss, in 2015, looks back on today," The Guardian (August 18, 1971)

Albert Einstein refusing to smile for photographer Arthur Sasse on the famous physicist's 72nd birthday (March 14, 1951)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-21

"Maybe all poetry, insofar as it moves us and connects with us, is a revealing of something that the writer doesn't actually want to say but desperately needs to communicate, to be delivered of. Perhaps it's the need to keep it hidden that makes it poetic—makes it poetry."

— Ted Hughes (1930-1998) "Ted Hughes, The Art of Poetry No. 71," The Paris Review (Spring 1995)

In Bed The Kiss by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1892)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-20

"This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."

— Horace Walpole (1717-1797) Letter to Sir Horace Mann (December 31, 1769)

Charlie Chaplin in Shoulder Arms (1918)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-19

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."

— W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) "Anima Hominis" from Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1917)

Sigmund Freud's couch in his home at Berggasse 19, Vienna, Austria (1938) Photograph by Edmund Engelman

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-18

"My kisses are as light as fairy midges / That on calm evenings skim the crystal lake. / Those of your man would plough such ruts and ridges / As lumbering carts or tearing coulters make."

— Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) "Femmes Damnées" from Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) Translated by Roy Campbell in Poems of Baudelaire (1952)

Le Sommeil by Gustave Courbet (1866)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-17

"It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it was by the indulgence of one class of the people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that those who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

— George Washington (1732-1799) Letter to Moses Seixas and the "Hebrew Congregation" in Newport, Rhode Island (August 17, 1790)

Two young women in a May Day parade in New York City, carrying American flags and wearing "Abolish Child Slavery" banners in Yiddish and English (May 1, 1909)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-16

"Theories of what is true have their day. They come and go, leave their deposit in the common stock of knowledge, and are supplanted by other more convincing theories."

— Felix Adler (1851-1933) The Religion of Duty, chapter 10 (1905)

Alchemical illustration from Opus Medico-Chymicum, in the "Basilica Philosophica" section, by Johann Daniel Mylius (1618)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-15

"The sword was given for this, that none need live a slave."

— Lucan (39-65 CE) Pharsalia, book 4, line 579 (61 CE) as translated by J.D. Duff

Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, Fort Lincoln, District of Columbia (circa 1863) Photo by William Morris Smith

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-14

"The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave."

— Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) Some Mistakes of Moses, chapter 3 (1879)

"Moment of Joy" cover by Jack Hunter for The New Yorker (July 8 & 15, 2013) after the Supreme Court ruled against DOMA and Proposition 8 (June 26, 2013)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-13

"First silence. Then denial. Then support of the insupportable. Then vilification of the dissenters. The pattern is as old as time."

— Andrew Sullivan (1963-    ) "Torture and Conservatism," The Daily Dish blog at The Atlantic (July 11, 2006)

David Garrick as Richard III by William Hogarth (1745)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-12

"It is easier to make war than make peace."

— Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) "Speech on Peace" in Verdun during the Paris Peace Conference (July 20, 1919) as quoted in Les Annales Politiques et Littéraires (July 21, 1919)

The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, 15 May 1648 by Gerard ter Borch (1648) which was a large part of the Peace of Westphalia

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-11

"I guess I'm just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws."

— S.J. Perelman (1904-1979) "Captain Future, Block That Kick!," The New Yorker (January 20, 1940)

Ernest Thesiger (as Doctor Pretorius) and Colin Clive (as Henry Frankenstein) in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-10

"Jesus said the meek would inherit the earth, but so far all we've gotten is Minnesota and North Dakota."

— Garrison Keillor (1942-    ) "When I'm 64," Salon.com (August 9, 2006)

Saying Grace by Norman Rockwell (November 24, 1951)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-09

"Half light, half shade, / She stood, a sight to make an old man young."

— Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) "The Gardener's Daughter," Poems: In Two Volumes, volume 2 (1842)

Marlene Dietrich as Amy Jolly in Morocco (1930)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-08

"Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk, / speak to me Babel, that I may strive to assemble / of all these syllables a single word / before the purpose of speech is gone."

— Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) "This Image or Another," The Nation (December 28, 1932)

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-07

"That same Man that renneth awaie, Maie again fight, an other daie."

— Demosthenes (384–322 BCE) Quoted by Plutarch in Moralia (cira 100 CE), which was translated into Latin by Erasmus in Apophthegmatum (1539), which in turn was partially translated into English by Nicholas Udall in Apophthegmes (1542)

"The Tale of Sir Robin" title card from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-06

"Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument, which shall endure until the sun grows cold."

— Georg Fabricius (1516-1571) in praise of Georgius Agricola in De Re Metallica (1566) as translated by Herbert and Lou Hoover (1912)

Marilyn Monroe (circa 1950) Photograph by L. J. Willinger

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-05

"Before Man goes to the stars he should learn how to live on Earth."

— Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) "Time Quarry," chapter 39, Galaxy Science Fiction magazine (December 1950)

Soviet propaganda poster, In the Name of Peace by Irakli Toidze (1959)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-04

"The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference."

— Ian Kershaw (1943-    ) Popular opinion and political dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-1945 (1983)

Triumph of Death by Felix Nussbaum (1944)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-03

"I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others."

— James Baldwin (1924-1987) "In Search of a Majority," address delivered at Kalamazoo College (February 1960)

Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law by Rembrandt (1659)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-02

"Instinct and study; love and hate; / Audacity—reverence. These must mate, / And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart, / To wrestle with the angel—Art."

— Herman Melville (1819-1891) "Art," Timoleon, Etc. (1891)

Jacob Wrestling With the Angel by Alexandre-Louis Leloir (1865)

Quote of the Day for 2016-08-01

"We do not know the truth. But sometimes we get a glimpse of the shadow of the truth. And where there is a shadow, somewhere there must be light."

— Eric Mervyn Lindsay (1907-1974) Quoted in The Irish Astronomical Journal (1975)

Hubble Space Telescope image of the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula (January 7, 2015)