Quotes about today
page 10

“If you lived today as if it were your last, you'd buy up a box of rockets and fire them all off, wouldn't you?”

Source: Lake Wobegon Days

“We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean; the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Tree, Grass

“It is the prerogative of wizards to be grumpy. It is not, however, the prerogative of freelance consultants who are late on their rent, so instead of saying something smart, I told the woman on the phone, "Yes, ma'am. How can I help you today?”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Help

“But until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Personality

“I want you to know, my dear friend, that without you, I would not be the person I am today." He leaned in close and whispered, "I was a broken boy, and you fixed me. Thank you.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

Boy, Personality

“Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Books, Reading

“Don't let yesterday take up too much of today.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

Motivational

“Today should always be outlawed in favor of tomorrow”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

“I can't imagine a romance novel published today where the hero rapes the heroine and she falls in love with him.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Love, Imagination

“If you asked me to marry you all over again today I'd say yes, said Valentine.

And if I had only met you for the first time today, I'd ask.”

Orson Scott Card book Xenocide

Source: Xenocide

Time

“Today is declared an unscheduled holiday.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Holiday

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

As quoted in "The Ragamuffin Legacy" https://relevantmagazine.com/god/practical-faith/ragamuffin-legacy (16 April 2013), by Ben Simpson, Relevant Magazine <br class="br">1990s

World

“If you forget everything else about me, please remember this. I walked down that street and I never looked back and I love you. I love you. I love you so much that I shall hate you for ever for today.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Love, Hate, Forgetting

“Today is always here,' said Sethe. 'Tomorrow, never.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved

“… classical Arabic, being the language of the Qur'an, has not changed at all in fourteen centuries, making the writings of the early Islamic scholars as accessible today as they were then.”

Jim Al-Khalili (1962) British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster

Change

“[Professor] Frank recalled my idle remark some years ago: 'Never pass up the opportunity to have sex or appear on television.' Advice I would never give today in the age of AIDS and its television equivalent Fox News.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: Point to Point Navigation

Age, Sex, Appearance

“This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Hope

“Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Coffee

“The greatest polution problem we face today is negativity.”

Mary Kay Ash (1918–2001) Entrepreneur

Problem

“Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do,
"Where are you going today?" says Pooh:
"Well, that's very odd 'cos I was too.
Let's go together," says Pooh, says he.
"Let's go together," says Pooh.”

A.A. Milne book Now We Are Six

Source: Now We Are Six

“Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson book The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Source: The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

“I'm not even supposed to be here today.”

Kevin Smith (1970) American screenwriter, actor, film producer, public speaker and director

“therefore i live for today-
certain of finding at sunrise
guidance and strength for the way.
power for each moment of weakness,
hope for each moment of pain,
comfort for every sorrow,
sunshine and joy after rain!”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Source: Hope for Each Day: Words of Wisdom and Faith

Pain, Hope, Way, Joy

“The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria…”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night (1960)

World

“If I fret over tomorrow, I'll have little joy today.”

Lloyd Alexander book Taran Wanderer

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book IV: Taran Wanderer (1967), Chapter 17 (Llonio)

Joy

“Max-I'm not going to die today.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love you. Like that.)”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Love, Way, Horse

“I read for growth, firmly believing that what you are today and what you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.”

Twyla Tharp (1941) American choreographer

Source: The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

People, Books, Reading, Dependency

“I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Children, Secret, Literature, Thinking

“To quote the Tsalagi, you should never allow your yesterday to use up too much of today. The past is gone and tomorrow is at best a maybe. Live for this moment because it may be all you'll ever have.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Retribution

Quotes, Past

“A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do so with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Life, Understanding, Dead

“Whose is it, do you think?" I say finally.

"No telling," says Finnick. "Why don't we let Peeta claim it, since he died today?”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Thinking

“Yesterday was a memory. Tomorrow was a hope. Today was another day to live and do one's best to love”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Into the Dreaming

Love, Hope, Memory

“Ask yourself: What did I eat for breakfast today? What did I eat for dinner last night? You see how fast reality fades away?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Reality, Night

“When I lay my head on the pillow at night I can say I was a decent person today. That's when I feel beautiful.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

Beauty, Feeling, Personality, Night

“A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

Change

“Listen to this, okay? Just listen. You hear that? That's market bacon hitting the pan. Today a child is born unto us, and his name will be bacon.”

Bryan Lee O'Malley (1979) Artist

Source: Scott Pilgrim, Volume 3: Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness

“Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.”

Ayn Rand book The Romantic Manifesto

The Romantic Manifesto (1969)

Future, Fight

“Leo frowned at the giant's spire. "Can't we blow it up or something?"
"Without me, you do not have the power," Hera said. "You might as well try to destroy a mountain."
"Done that once today," Jason said.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Mountain

“I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Feeling, Thinking

“The time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us today…

… some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
Context: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we're always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war, by the American people.

Silence, Betrayal, Time, Night

“If you were to turn into a snake tomorrow and begin devouring Humans, and from the same mouth you devoured Humans, you cried out to me 'I love you!', would I still be able to say 'I love you' the same way I do today?”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Love, Way

“Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person i want to be? Is today the day I die?”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Bird, Personality

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Sad, Deep, Happy, Depressing

“It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Beauty, Bird, Singing

“No matter how you feel today, get up, dress up & show up”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Feeling

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Dr. Seuss book Happy Birthday to You!

Variant: There is no one alive who
is Youer than You!
Source: Happy Birthday to You!

Life, Good Morning, Heart Touching, Powerful

“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Hope, Dreams, Hope, Courage

“For the yesterdays and todays, and the tomorrows I can hardly wait for - Thank you.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

Waiting

“Today might not be so good. But tomorrow, you got another chance to get it right.”

David Baldacci book Absolute Power

Source: Absolute Power

Chance

“Today each of you is the object of the other’s reading, one reads in the other the unwritten story.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Reading

“I believe that more people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.”

Nancy Reagan (1921–2016) actress and first lady of the United States

Death, People, Penalty

“Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you've got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don't start, you never get a chance.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Poke the Box

Chance

“I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Life

“Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed home and thought of here? Where should we be today?”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Home, Thinking

“If you don't feel as close to God today as you did yesterday, who moved?”

Chris Heimerdinger (1963) American writer

Source: Feathered Serpent, Part 1

God, Feeling

“I came to the Greeks early, and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Men, Soul

“we have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Truth

“Today we have discovered the word that could not be said. "I”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Source: Anthem

“CONJUGATE THIS:
I cut class, you cut class, he, she, it cuts class. We cut class, they cut class. We all cut class. I cannot say this in Spanish because I did not go to Spanish today.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

“Today's worries are yesterday's fears and tomorrow's stories.”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

Fear

“Gray day. Everything is gray. I watch. But nothing moves today.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“Today he wore a burnt-orange shirt, black pants, and a tie that looked like a street fight at the south end of the color wheel.”

Kathy Reichs book Monday Mourning

Source: Monday Mourning

Color, Fight

“I'll be here tomorrow
If I can make it through today.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

“But I believe good things happen everyday. I believe good things happen even when bad things happen. And I believe on a happy day like today, we can still feel a little sad. And that's life, isn't it?”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Life, Sadness, Feeling, Happiness

“The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

Happiness

“You live your life today,
Not tomorrow,
and certainly not yesterday.”

John Grisham (1955) American lawyer, politician, and author

Life

“If you start today to do the right thing, you are already a success even if it doesn’t show yet.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Success

“I have come here to thank personally each Member of the Congress who labored so long and so valiantly to make this occasion come true today, and to make this bill a reality. I cannot mention all their names, for it would take much too long, but my gratitude; and that of this Nation; belongs to the 89th Congress. We are indebted, too, to the vision of the late beloved President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and to the support given to this measure by the then Attorney General and now Senator, Robert F. Kennedy. In the final days of consideration, this bill had no more able champion than the present Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, who, with New York's own "Manny" Celler, and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Congressman Feighan of Ohio, and Senator Mansfield and Senator Dirksen constituting the leadership of the Senate, and Senator Javits, helped to guide this bill to passage, along with the help of the Members sitting in front of me today.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)

Support, Reality, Help, Personality

“It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared, — a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope, — it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring care s. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy checks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook today,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb.”

Dagobert von Gerhardt (1831–1910) German writer

To the ancients the hearth was sacred; beside the hearth they erected their lares and household-gods. Let us also hold the hearth sacred, where the conscientious German housewife slowly sacrifices her life, to keep the home comfortable, the table well supplied, and the family healthy."
"von Gerhardt, using the pen-name Gerhard von Amyntor in", A Commentary to the Book of Life. Quote taken from August Bebel, Woman and Socialism, Chapter X. Marriage as a Means of Support.

Love, Life, Death, God

“This essential coalition between royal military power and often dubious supernatural authority anticipated a similar alliance between the scientists and mathematical games theorists with the higher agents of government today, and was subject to similar corruptions, miscalculations, and hallucinations.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

pg 176
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), Technics and Human Development (1967)

Game, Mathematics

“When the ceremony ended Anne and I stayed on the field to greet friends, many of whom had traveled to share the ceremony with us. In one respect it was a difficult day at the end of a difficult month. But in the broader view of life, it was a magical evening at the end of an incredible journey we shared. We walked back over to the quarters we would move out of a few days later, and found friends in the yard and almost every room. At one point I saw Mike Hall, Charlie Flynn, Shawn Lowery, and Casey Welch standing in the fading summer light. I thought of my father, of my first day at West Point, and of our cold Christmas Eve flight over Afghanistan seven months before. The final words of my last speech in uniform, spoken just an hour before were repeated in my mind: "If I had it to do over again, I'd do some things in my career differently, but not many. I believed in people, and I still believe in them. I trusted and I still trust. I cared and I still care. I wouldn't have it any other way… To the young leaders of today and tomorrow, it's a great life. Thank you."”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Closing words, p. 394
My Share Of The Task (2013)

Life, People, Way, Travel

“Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible. But I told the grand jury today and I say to you now that at no time did I ask anyone to lie, to hide or destroy evidence or to take any other unlawful action.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Televised address on August 17, 1998 CNN transcript http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/08/17/speech/transcript.html <br class="br">1990s

Lie, Failure, Time, Parting

“Think back a minute to the definition of a rentier: someone who uses their control over something that already exists in order to increase their own wealth. The feudal lord of medieval times did that by building a tollgate along a road and making everybody who passed by pay. Today’s tech giants are doing basically the same thing, but transposed to the digital highway.”

Rutger Bregman (1988) Dutch journalist, writer and historian

"No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there"

Thinking, Time, Wealth

“This is the great day. This is the greatest event in all the history of the human race, up to this time. That is — today is New Year's Day of the Year One. If we don't change the calendar, historians will do so. The human race — this is our change, our puberty rite, bar mitzvah, confirmation, from the change of our infancy into adulthood for the human race. And we're going to go on out, not only to the Moon, to the stars; we're going to spread. I don't know that the United States is going to do it; I hope so. I have — I'm an American myself; I want it to be done by us. But in any case, the human race is going to do it, it's utterly inevitable: we're going to spread through the entire universe.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

In a live interview with Walter Cronkite of CBS News, on the day of the first moonwalk (20 July 1969)
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, Volume I (1907–1949): Learning Curve (2010)

Hope, History, Star, Universe

“Immaterial labor has become hegemonic in qualitative terms and has imposed a tendency on other forms of labor and society itself. Immaterial labor, in other words, is today in the same position that industrial labor was 150 years ago, when it accounted for only a small fraction of global production and was concentrated in a small part of the world but nonetheless exerted hegemony over all other forms of production. Just as in that pgase all forms of labor and society itself had to industrialize, today, labor and society have to informationalize, become intelligent, become communicative, become affective.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

109
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

World, Intelligence, Communication, Parting

““Where is it written that one should only care about big things? I fought for big things, long ago… for issues, principles, a country. Where are all of them now?”
The steely gray eyes were narrow and sad when next he looked up at Gordon. “I found out something, you know. I discovered that the big things don’t love you back. They take and take, and never give in return. They’ll drain your blood, your soul, if you let them, and never let go.
“I lost my wife, my son, while away battling for big things. They needed me, but I had to go off trying to save the world.” Powhatan snorted at the last phrase. “Today I fight for my people, for my farm—for smaller things—things I can hold.””

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 9 (p. 229; see also p. 305)

Love, People, World, Sadness

“Europe is as fearful of Islam today as she has been in the past. She now knows that the strength of Islam (which in the past expressed that of the Arabs) has been reborn and has appeared in a new form: Arab nationalism.”

Michel Aflaq book On the Way of Resurrection

On the Way of Resurrection (1943)

Fear, Appearance, Past

“The love of simplicity, precision and clarity, is totally Western. Today's rational plastic form does not come from the Mediterranean or the Orient; it comes from the North [of France]. The North, younger, quicker less subtle, has seen straight to the heart of the new problem of construction that is posed by modern life.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote from: 'Actualités, Fernand Léger', in 'Varietés nr. 1', 1928, pp. 523-524
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Love, Life, Problem, Heart

“Women must not merely imitate men. Women have more to give than performing any job in society like neutered robots. Those who talk today of rousing the 'consciousness' of women contribute an idea of real importance. It was such a grievous mistake to leave out women. For whence can come love, compassion and understanding if not out of the relations of men and women and of them to their children?”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

Source: The Tamarisk Tree (1975), Ch. XIV

Love, Women, Men, Children

“Even today, I can not say with certainty whether he himself believed in his words or whether he was knowingly deceiving those around him to urge him to keep to the end.”

Dietrich von Choltitz (1894–1966) German general

About Adolf Hitler.

“The now famous slogan 'keep calm and carry on' poster from 1939 was designed as a motivational poster for people living in cities expecting to be bombed by the Nazis. But the UK wasn't just 'keeping calm': we had taken a stand like no other country in the world and declared war on a barbaric regime which was a global threat to peace and security. Today, as we wait to hear news from Manchester following the slaughter and maiming of innocent children, we have people calling for us to do nothing. But it's not the same 'carry on' as in 1939: they want us to accept terror attacks as a part of life we should now accept. Well, I don't accept it. How many people are we going to sacrifice on the alter (sic) of political correctness before we build up the courage to confront what most people will happily admit to their friends and family: that we are facing a continuing threat from radical Islam which hashtags and tea lights will not stop?”

Jane Collins (1962) British politician

Jane Collins MEP responds to terror attacks in Manchester http://jane-collins.org/news.php?id=79. Item on official website (May 23, 2017).

Life, War, Children, People

“Of asphodel, that greeny flower,

::like a buttercup

::::upon its branching stem —

save that's green and wooden —

::I come, my sweet,

::::to sing to you.

We lived long together,

::a life filled,

::::if you will,

with flowers. So that

::I was cheered

::::when I first came to know

that there were flowers also

::in hell.

::::Today

I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers

::that we both loved,

::::even to this poor

colorless thing —

::I saw it

::::when I was a child —

little prized among the living

::but the dead see,

::::asking among themselves:

What do I remember

::that was shaped

::::as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
::with tears.
::::Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
::though too weak a wash of crimson
::::colors it
to make it wholly credible.
::There is something
::::something urgent
I have to say to you
::and you alone
::::but it must wait
while I drink in
::the joy of your approach,
::::perhaps for the last time.
And so
::with fear in my heart
::::I drag it out
and keep on talking
::for I dare not stop.”

William Carlos Williams book Journey to Love

Journey to Love (1955), Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

Love, Life, Fear, Color

“Bucky: "So I was watching TV today, and there was the most stupidest show on."
Rob: "You don't say. Offended you, did it?"
Bucky: "Yes… Yes. 'Offended.' That's exactly what it did. It said we evolved from monkeys! Well, lemme tell ya something, Bucky Katt don't come from no monkey!"
Rob: "No. No you don't. Cats actually come from a tiny, less developed, rat-like creature."
Bucky: "Wha… Hu… Fe… Shu…"
Satchel: "Ohhhh-ho-ho! Burn! Look out! Cat on fire! Uncle monkey's lookin' pretty good now, eh, Ratboy? Ha Ha Ha!"”

Darby Conley (1970) American cartoonist

Strip October 13, 2004
Daily strip circa 2000
Bucky Katt, Dialogue

Cats

“That experiment prefigured today’s rap “artists,” who are entirely dependent on promoters, arrangers, and sound technicians, and create no music themselves.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Powerful Song, Man" by Jeffrey Tucker, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, August 1997, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1997aug-00009,

Music, Dependency

“In most of the old colonial world, the struggle for independence is coming to an end. Even in areas behind the Curtain, that which Jefferson called "the disease of liberty" still appears to be infectious. With the passing of ancient empires, today less than 2 percent of the world's population lives in territories officially termed "dependent." As this effort for independence, inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, now approaches a successful close, a great new effort — for interdependence — is transforming the world about us. And the spirit of that new effort is the same spirit which gave birth to the American Constitution. That spirit is today most clearly seen across the Atlantic Ocean. The nations of Western Europe, long divided by feuds far more bitter than any which existed among the 13 colonies, are today joining together, seeking, as our forefathers sought, to find freedom in diversity and in unity, strength.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address at Independence Hall

World, Disease, Birth, Effort

“The plain fact is that many of the reputations which today occupy the poetic limelight are such as would crumble immediately if poetry such as Empson's, with its passion, logic, and formal beauty, were to become widely known.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

John Wain "Ambiguous Gifts", in The Penguin New Writing no. 40 (1950); cited from John Lehmann and Roy Fuller (eds.) The Penguin New Writing 1940-1950: An Anthology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) p. 492.
Criticism

Beauty, Passion

“Now the battle for Canadian independence does have to be fought again, but against a new form of servitude. Our struggle today is different from that of the colonial peoples, fighting against national enslavement imposed upon them by the armed forces of foreign imperialists. We are threatened with complete national enslavement to a foreign power, but that power is not, at least not yet, imposing its control by the force of arms. Canada is being sold into United States control by "her own" ruling class; the parasitic, speculative, Canadian manipulators of stock market deals, politics and governmental concessions, who are enriching themselves by trading the national future of Canada for junior partnerships in the United States monopolies.”

Tim Buck (1891–1973) Canadian politician

Thirty Years – 1922-1952 The Story of the Communist Movement in Canada

People, Future, Fight, Partnership

“I was a bookish kid. I spent long hours in the library reading everything I could find, histories, biographies, science fiction, fantasy, mysteries. I was curious about the world and there’s no better way to find things out than through the pages of a book. Even today if some kid asks me what’s the first step to take to become a doctor, I answer, “Read, read, read.””

Sanjay Gupta (1969) journalist, medical correspondent, neurosurgeon

Finding My Path in Life (2011)

Books, World, Way, History

“Like proselytization, desecrating and demolishing the temples of non-Muslims is also central to Islam…. India too suffered terribly as thousands of Hindu temples and sacred edifices disappeared in northern India by the time of Sikandar Lodi and Babur. Will Durant rightly laments in the Story of Civilization that "We can never know from looking at India today, what grandeur and beauty it once possessed". In Delhi, after the demolition of twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples, the materials of which were utilized to construct the Quwwat-ul-Islam masjid, it was after 700 years that the Birla Mandir could be constructed in 1930s. Sita Ram Goel has brought out two excellent volumes on Hindu Temples: What happened to them. These informative volumes give a list of Hindu shrines and their history of destruction in the medieval period on the basis of Muslim evidence itself. This of course does not cover all the shrines razed. Muslims broke temples recklessly. Those held in special veneration by Hindus like the ones at Somnath, Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura, were special targets of Muslims, and whenever the Hindus could manage to rebuild their shrines at these places, they were again destroyed by Muslim rulers. From the time of Mahmud of Ghazni who destroyed the temples at Somnath and Mathura to Babur who struck at Ayodhya to Aurangzeb who razed the temples at Kashi Mathura and Somnath, the story is repeated again and again.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Beauty, History, Suffering, Time

“Father, father
We don't need to escalate.
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate.
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today.”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

What's Going On.
Song lyrics, What's Going On (1971)
Variant: Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying.
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying.
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today.

Love, Hate, War, Way

“We will continue to be in the phone market not as defined by today's market leaders, but by what it is that we can uniquely do in what is the most ultimate mobile device.”

Satya Nadella (1967) CEO of Microsoft appointed on 4 February 2014

Microsoft's Surface Phone Could Be The Ultimate Mobile Device http://forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/11/24/microsoft-surface-phone-rumor-leak-ceo-satya-nadella in Forbes (24 November 2016)

“Dr. Cleland was among the first to see project management strategically as well as tactically, at the center of organizational competencies… It's hard to believe, but there was a time when it was new and unfamiliar. Dr. Cleland was a driving force behind the adoption of project management as a professional competency, and is a key contributor to the success of all organizations that use professional project management standards and methodologies today.”

Gregory Balestrero (1947) American industrial engineer

Balestrero cited in: G.R. Boyet & M. Maguire Kelly (2010) PMI Pays Tribute to Dr. David I. Cleland for a Lifetime of Achievement to Project Management and the Profession http://www.pmi.org/About-Us/Press-Releases/PMI-Pays-Tribute-to-Dr-David-I-Cleland.aspx. at pmi.org. 13 July 2010. <br class="br">2010s

Time, Success

“The Christian is today the villain. It is his morality which is regarded as degenerate and perverted and twisted, and the pervert is regarded as the misunderstood, sensitive soul. I can spend hours citing various modern writers who play variations of that theme.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Homosexuality (n. d.)

Soul

“Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day. America will be of no avail to them. Their generals will be of no avail to them. The last of their generals has been forgotten. Allah has made him disappear. He's over. Gone is that Sharon, behind whose back they would hide and find shelter, and with whom they would feel relatively secure. Today they have frail leaders, who don't even know where our Lord placed them. Allah willing, we will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains.”

Khaled Mashal (1956) Palestinian terrorist

Address at the Al-Murabit Mosque in Damascus (2006)

Feeling

“These Jew-treks, as I called them, were carried out in the most elegant way…. I can tell you today that I saw two bodies on the whole route, they were old Jews - it's clear, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. And were no eggs broken when much larger contingents of Germans marched from the East after 1945?”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Argentina Audiotapes (1957)

Way

“But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness—each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked—each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.”

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) British historian

Christianity, Diplomacy and War (1953), p. 43.

“One of the exciting things about today is [that] people are not, for the most part (…) even in their spiritual domain, they're not satisfied necessarily with just an internal revelatory spiritual experience anymore. Most people that I meet are hooked up in such a way that it only is really deeply meaningful to them unless it actually starts to transform how they move and experience… their contribution to life.”

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

Wake Up San Francisco event (2015) <br class="br">Source: Alanis Morissette - Wake Up San Francisco with Adyashanti & Tami Simon - YouTube (starts at 11:43) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr_ClddVgJs

Life, People, Way, Parting

“In his discussion on slavery Aristotle said that when the shuttle wove by itself and the plectrum played by itself chief workmen would not need helpers nor masters slaves. At the time he wrote, he believed that he was establishing the eternal validity of slavery; but for us today he was in reality justifying the existence of the machine. Work, it is true, is the constant form of man's interaction with his environment, if by work one means the sum total of exertions necessary to maintain life; and the lack of work usually means an impairment of function and a breakdown in organic relationship that leads to substitute forms of work, such as invalidism and neurosis. But work in the form of unwilling drudgery or of that sedentary routine which… the Athenians so properly despised—work in these forms is the true province of machines. Instead of reducing human beings to work-mechanisms, we can now transfer the main part of burden to automatic machines. This potentially… is perhaps the largest justification of the mechanical developments of the last thousand years.”

Lewis Mumford book Technics and Civilization

Source: Technics and Civilization (1934), Ch. 6, sct. 4

Life, Reality, Time, Parting

Quotes about today page 10

Quotes about today
page 10