Wikiquote

February 4

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel. ~ Jim Morrison
2005
Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation, in turn, becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on to the future. ~ Charles Lindbergh (born 4 February 1902)
2006
If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one’s outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. ~ Charles Lindbergh (born 4 February 1902)
2007
Men weren't really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill. ~ Betty Friedan
  • proposed by Fys
2008
Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player. ~ Alice Cooper (born 4 February 1948)
2009
How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life. This is our modern danger — one of the waxen wings of flight. It may cause our civilization to fall unless we act quickly to counteract it, unless we realize that human character is more important than efficiency, that education consists of more than the mere accumulation of knowledge. ~ Charles Lindbergh
2010
If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes. ~ Charles Lindbergh
2011
Getting up and criticising the other fellow because he's in and you are not seems to me a futile waste of time. Especially as you know in your heart that you would be doing more or less the same thing if you were in his place. ~ Hartley Shawcross, Baron Shawcross
2012
I grow aware of various forms of man and of myself. I am form and I am formless, I am life and I am matter, mortal and immortal. I am one and many — myself and humanity in flux. I extend a multiple of ways in experience in space. I am myself now, lying on my back in the jungle grass, passing through the ether between satellites and stars. My aging body transmits an ageless life stream. Molecular and atomic replacement change life's composition. Molecules take part in structure and in training, countless trillions of them. After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars. ~ Charles Lindbergh
2013
I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves? … As one identity, I was born in AD 1902. But as AD twentieth-century man, I am billions of years old. The life I consider as myself has existed though past eons with unbroken continuity. Individuals are custodians of the life stream — temporal manifestations of far greater being, forming from and returning to their essence like so many dreams.
~ Charles Lindbergh ~
2014
Why should we look for his errors when a brave man dies? Unless we can learn from his experience, there is no need to look for weakness. Rather, we should admire the courage and spirit in his life. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?
~ Charles Lindbergh ~
2015
In some future incarnation from our life stream, we may even understand the reason for our existence in forms of earthly life. The growing knowledge of science does not refute man's intuition of the mystical. Whether outwardly or inwardly, whether in space or in time, the farther we penetrate the unknown, the vaster and more marvelous it becomes.
~ Charles Lindbergh ~
2016
I believe we are on an irreversible trend towards more freedom and democracy, but that could change.
~ Dan Quayle ~
  • proposed by Fys
2017
I have not heard a word of respect or compassion spoken of our enemy since I came here.
It is not the willingness to kill on the part of our soldiers which most concerns me. That is an inherent part of war. It is our lack of respect for even the admirable characteristics of our enemy — for courage, for suffering, for death, for his willingness to die for his beliefs, for his companies and squadrons which go forth, one after another, to annihilation against our superior training and equipment. What is courage for us is fanaticism for him. We hold his examples of atrocity screamingly to the heavens while we cover up our own and condone them as just retribution for his acts.
~ Charles Lindbergh ~
2018
The war might stop this winter, but that is improbable. It may go on for fifty years or more. That also is improbable. The elements are too conflicting and confused to form any accurate judgment of its length. There may be a series of wars, one after another, going on indefinitely.
Possibly the world will come to its senses sooner than I expect. But, as I have often said, the environment of human life has changed more rapidly and more extensively in recent years than it has ever changed before. When environment changes, there must be a corresponding change in life. That change must be so great that it is not likely to be completed in a decade or in a generation.
~ Charles Lindbergh ~
2019
When I go onstage as Alice to this day, I play Alice to the hilt — I play him for everything he is worth, but when I’m offstage, I never think about Alice Cooper. He never occurs to me. … I walk off stage though and I turn away from the audience, I go back to being me again. Whenever I see an audience, that’s when I turn into Alice. If there was no audience there, there would be no reason to be Alice. … If I tried to be Alice Cooper all the time — I’d either be in an insane asylum or in jail or dead. Alice is just too intense, and you just can’t be Alice all the time.
~ Alice Cooper ~
2020
I recall standing on the edge of a deep valley in the Hawaiian island of Maui, thinking that the life stream is like a mountain river — springing from hidden sources, born out of the earth, touched by stars, merging, blending, evolving in the shape momentarily seen. It is molecules probing through time, found smooth-flowing, adjusted to shaped and shaping banks, roiled by rocks and tree trunks — composed again. Now it ends, apparently, at a lava brink, a precipitous fall.
Near the fall's brink, I saw death as death cannot be seen. I stared at the very end of life, and at life that forms beyond, at the fact of immortality. Dark water bent, broke, disintegrated, transformed to apparition — a tall, stately ghost soul emerged from body, and the finite individuality of the whole becomes the infinite individuality of particles. Mist drifted, disappeared in air, a vanishing of spirit. Far below in the valley, I saw another river, reincarnated from the first, its particles reorganized to form a second body. It carried the same name. It was similar in appearance. It also ended at a lava brink. Flow followed fall, and fall followed flow as I descended the mountainside. The river was mortal and immortal as life, as becoming.
~ Charles Lindbergh ~
2021
Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.
~ Charles Lindbergh ~
2022
We remain vigilant. We remain prepared.
Last night's operation took a major terrorist leader off the battlefield. And it sent a strong message to terrorists around the world: We will come after you and find you.
Once again, today, we continue our unceasing effort to keep the American people safe and to strengthen the security of our Allies and partners around the world.
I want to thank you all. And may God bless you. And may God protect our troops.
~ Joe Biden ~
  • proposed by Kalki; comments regarding a recent military operation.
2023
I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.
~ Charles Lindbergh ~
2024
All that I feared would happen has happened. We are at war all over the world, and we are unprepared for it from either a spiritual or a material standpoint. Fortunately, in spite of all that has been said, the oceans are still difficult to cross; and we have the time to adjust and prepare.
~ Charles Lindbergh ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…

Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:

  • There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience. ~ Hartley Shawcross, born February 4, 1902.

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The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive. ~ Betty Friedan, born February 4, 1921, died February 4, 2006.

Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that's a tough call. That's rebellion. ~ Alice Cooper (Vincent Damon Furnier), born February 4, 1948.

  • 3. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 23:51, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 17:21, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 23:59, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 21:49, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself. ~ Betty Friedan

  • 3 Kalki 23:00, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 23:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 04:43, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia. ~ Charles Lindbergh


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