Wikiquote:Quote of the day/December 2025

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Today is Saturday, August 22, 2026; it is now 01:13 (UTC)

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December 1

We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

~ Tom Stoppard ~
in
~ Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead ~

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December 2

To have a great capital is not so necessary as to know how to manage a small one, and never to be without a little.

~ William Cooper ~

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December 3

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of despair.

~ Joseph Conrad ~

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December 4

Kings are in the moral order what monsters are in the physical. Courts are the workshops of crimes, the lair of tyrants. The history of kings is the martyrology of nations.

~ Henri Grégoire ~

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December 5

The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.

~ Werner Heisenberg ~

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December 6

I am obsessed with architecture. It is true, I am restless, trying to find myself as an architect, and how best to contribute in this world filled with contradiction, disparity, and inequality, even passion and opportunity.

~ Frank Gehry ~

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December 7

It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.
These are, unfortunately, leading themes of history.

~ Noam Chomsky ~

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December 8

Regard the child, regard the animal,
Welcome strangers, but study daily things,
Knowing that heaven and hell surround us,
But this, this which we say before we're sorry,
This which we live behind our unseen faces,
Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither
Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished,
For we are incomplete and know no future,
And we are howling or dancing out our souls
In beating syllables before the curtain:
We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.

~ Delmore Schwartz ~

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December 9

Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual.

~ Ernest Gellner ~

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December 10

IMMORTAL is an ample word
When what we need is by,
But when it leaves us for a time,
’T is a necessity.

Of heaven above the firmest proof
We fundamental know,
Except for its marauding hand,
It had been heaven below.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

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December 11

Practised in acts of despotism and cruelty, we become callous to the dictates of humanity and all the finer feelings of the soul. Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes. Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment, if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds; and in such an infernal school are to be educated our future legislators and rulers. The laws of impartial Providence may even by such means as these avenge upon our posterity the injury done to a set of wretches whom our injustice hath debased to a level with the brute creation.

~ George Mason ~

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December 12

We should have known better after the first war.

~ Gerd von Rundstedt ~

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December 13

God would never be cruel enough to create a cyclone as terrible as that Argonne battle. Only man would ever think of doing an awful thing like that. It looked like "the abomination of desolation" must look like. And all through the long night those big guns flashed and growled just like the lightning and the thunder when it storms in the mountains at home.
And, oh my, we had to pass the wounded. And some of them were on stretchers going back to the dressing stations, and some of them were lying around, moaning and twitching. And the dead were all along the road. And it was wet and cold. And it all made me think of the Bible and the story of the Anti-Christ and Armageddon.
And I'm telling you the little log cabin in Wolf Valley in old Tennessee seemed a long long way off.

~ Alvin C. York ~

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December 14

You're trying to make sense
of something that you just don't see
You're trying to make sense now
and you know you once held the key
But that was the river
this is the sea.

~ Mike Scott ~

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December 15

The great ideas are always emerging, to be available to all men and women. And one hope of our lives is the communication of these truths.

~ Muriel Rukeyser ~

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December 16

As you get older, all those dumb clichés, they’re all true. You only have a certain amount of time left, and you should only spend it doing the things that you want to do.

~ Rob Reiner ~

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December 17

You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don’t believe and who don’t seek the faith. I start by saying — and this is the fundamental thing — that God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience.

~ Pope Francis ~

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December 18

I don't know what I'm crying for
I don't think I could love you more
It might not be long, but baby, I
I'll love you 'til the day that I die
'Til the day that I die
'Til the light leaves my eyes
'Til the day that I die.

~ Billie Eilish ~

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December 19

Time takes her toll and the memory fades
but his glory is broken, in the magic that he made.
Reality is ruined; it's the freeing from the fear
The drama is distorted, to what they want to hear
Swimming in their sorrow, in the twisting of a tear
As they wait for a new thrill parade.

~ Phil Ochs ~

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December 20

Corruption is a tree, whose branches are
Of an immeasurable length: they spread
Ev'rywhere; and the dew that drops from thence
Hath infected some chairs and stools of authority.

~ John Fletcher ~

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December 21

Art is at least in part a way of collecting information about the universe.

~ Rebecca West ~

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December 22

You don't become a saint until you lead a good life whether in Tibet or Italy or America. … You can’t become a saint by taking dope, stealing your friends’ typewriters, giving girls chancres, not supporting your wife and children, and then reading St. John of the Cross. All of that, when it’s happened before, has typified the collapse of civilization … and today the social fabric is falling apart so fast, it makes your head swim.

~ Kenneth Rexroth ~

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December 23

Ultimately, your generation will have the decisive voice. You will determine whether rage or reason guides the United States in the struggle to come. You will choose whether we are known for revenge or compassion. You will choose whether we, too, will kill in the name of God, or whether in His Name, we can find a higher civilization and a better means of settling our differences.
And this is not a new choice, not for your generation — it is a choice that many others have faced throughout history. Only now, we can hope that with your help and engagement we can find a new answer.

~ Wesley Clark ~

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December 24

Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves, and to prevent our getting the notion of a paramount right reason.

~ Matthew Arnold ~

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December 25

I think the destiny of all men is not to sit in the rubble of their own making but to reach out for an ultimate perfection which is to be had. At the moment, it is a dream. But as of the moment we clasp hands with our neighbor, we build the first span to bridge the gap between the young and the old. At this hour, it’s a wish. But we have it within our power to make it a reality. If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.

~ Rod Serling ~

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December 26

Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences.

~ Steve Allen ~

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December 27

There is a thin line between genius and insanity.
I have erased this line.

~ Oscar Levant ~

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December 28

“	The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.	”
—Mortimer Adler

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December 29

“	War taken at the best is a frightful scourge to the human race; but because it is so the wisdom of ages has surrounded it with strict laws and usages, and has required formalities to be observed which shall act as a curb upon the wild passions of man, to prevent that scourge from being let loose unless under circumstances of full deliberation and from absolute necessity. You have dispensed with all these precautions.	”
—William Ewart Gladstone

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December 30

“	I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, very famous, and very unhappy.	”
—Brigitte Bardot

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December 31

“	When you are dying, at least in my limited experience, you start remembering everything. Images come in flashes — people and places and stray conversations — and refuse to stop. … My son knows that I am a writer and that I write about our planet. Since I've been sick, I remind him a lot, so that he will know that I was not just a sick person. … I let the memories come and go. So many of them are from my childhood that I feel as if I'm watching myself and my kids grow up at the same time. Sometimes I trick myself into thinking I'll remember this forever, I'll remember this when I'm dead. Obviously, I won't. But since I don't know what death is like and there's no one to tell me what comes after it, I'll keep pretending. I will keep trying to remember.	”
—Tatiana Schlossberg

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Today is Saturday, August 22, 2026; it is now 01:13 (UTC)