March 25

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

• selected by Kalki

2005

If those who lead you say, "See, the Kingdom is in the sky", then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, "It is in the sea", then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) (Good Friday for Western Christianity, 25 March 2005)

• selected by Kalki

2006

A wiki works best where you're trying to answer a question that you can't easily pose, where there's not a natural structure that's known in advance to what you need to know. ~ Ward Cunningham (Cunningham started the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, on 25 March 1995.)

• selected by Kalki

2007

I am an Anarchist not because I believe Anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal. ~ Rudolf Rocker

• selected by Kalki

2008

Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution. One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being. ~ Rudolf Rocker

• proposed by Kalki

2009

Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity. ~ Rudolf Rocker

• proposed by Kalki

2010

We have come more and more under the dominance of mechanics and sacrificed living humanity to the dead rhythm of the machine without most of us even being conscious of the monstrosity of the procedure. Hence we frequently deal with such matters with indifference and in cold blood as if we handled dead things and not the destinies of men. ~ Rudolf Rocker

• proposed by Kalki

2011

Our whole evolution has reached a stage where nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of dependence has been greatly strengthened, for a truly free man does not like to play the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action. ~ Rudolf Rocker

• proposed by Kalki

2012

Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves. ~ A. J. P. Taylor

• proposed by bystander

2013

Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development.

~ Rudolf Rocker ~

• proposed by Kalki

2014

All social phenomena are the result of a series of various causes, in most cases so inwardly related that it is quite impossible clearly to separate one from the other. We are always dealing with the interplay of various causes which, as a rule, can be clearly recognised but cannot be calculated according to scientific methods.

~ Rudolf Rocker ~

• proposed by Kalki

2015

This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen, or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.

~ Gloria Steinem ~

• proposed by Kalki

2016

Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

~ Jesus ~

• proposed by Kalki for Good Friday 2016.

2017

Democracy says that the popular vote can take right away and once taken away the act is sanctioned and upheld by all laws, human and divine. I deny it. I say it is a wrong, however it is perpetuated. Why, mothers. What do you care how you are robbed of your babe? The question is not how it is done, the outrage is that it is done at all. No matter whether it is done by an individual or a conspiracy of many individuals in a community agreeing and concerting according to the forms of law. If the poor babe is torn from your heart, that is the unspeakable wrong. Not the manner in which it is perpetrated.

~ Owen Lovejoy ~

• proposed by Illegitimate Barrister

2018

Every process which arises from our physical being and is related to it, is an event which lies outside of our volition. Every social process, however, arises from human intentions and human goal setting and occurs within the limits of our volition. Consequently, it is not subject to the concept of natural necessity. … We are here stating no prejudiced opinion, but merely an established fact. Every result of human purposiveness is of indisputable importance for man's social existence, but we should stop regarding social processes as deterministic manifestations of a necessary course of events. Such a view can only lead to the most erroneous conclusions and contribute to a fatal confusion in our understanding of historical events.

~ Rudolf Rocker ~

• proposed by Kalki

2019

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.

~ Robert Quillen ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2020

Dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation. In Russia, the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat has not led to Socialism, but to the domination of a new bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole people. … What the Russian autocrats and their supporters fear most is that the success of libertarian Socialism in Spain might prove to their blind followers that the much vaunted "necessity of dictatorship" is nothing but one vast fraud which in Russia has led to the despotism of Stalin and is to serve today in Spain to help the counter-revolution to a victory over the revolution of the workers and the peasants.

~ Rudolf Rocker ~

• proposed by Kalki

2021

In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men’s behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction.

~ A. J. P. Taylor ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2022

Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine represents a fundamental challenge to the values and norms that have brought security and prosperity to all on the European continent. President Putin’s choice to attack Ukraine is a strategic mistake, with grave consequences also for Russia and the Russian people. We remain united and resolute in our determination to oppose Russia’s aggression, aid the government and the people of Ukraine, and defend the security of all Allies.

~ NATO ~

• proposed by Kalki; recent remarks regarding the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

2023

You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.

~ Norman Borlaug ~

• proposed by Zarbon

2024

Bangladesh, Bangladesh Where so many people are dying fast And it sure looks like a mess I've never seen such distress. Now won't you lend your hand, try to understand? Relieve the people of Bangladesh.

~ George Harrison ~

• proposed by ᘙ; in regard of Bengali Genocide Remembrance Day, a national day observed on 25 March in Bangladesh to commemorate the victims of the Bengali genocide of 1971.

2025

Rank or add further suggestions…

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This planet is haunted by us; the other occupants just evade boredom by filling our skies and seas with monsters. ~ John Keel

• 2 Zarbon 04:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
• 2 Kalki 00:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
• 2 InvisibleSun 23:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

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In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution. ~ Béla Bartók

• 3 Zarbon 04:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
• 2 Kalki (talk · contributions) 18:14, 22 March 2011 (UTC) 3 Kalki 00:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4. I still like this much, but have made a tactical reduction in favor of of at least one other for this year.
• 3 InvisibleSun 23:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

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I have lived in the United States and I know the might of their industrial complex. The United States is a sleeping giant and I am afraid that our attack has awakened it. ~ Chuichi Nagumo

• 3 Zarbon 04:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
• 2 Kalki 00:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
• 2 InvisibleSun 23:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
• – Attribution may be apocryphal. Does the cited secondary source cite the original? If so, it might solve the attribution of a similar statement Isoroku Yamamoto ~ Ningauble 23:11, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

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The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long. ~ A. J. P. Taylor

• 3 Zarbon 04:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
• 2 Kalki 00:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
• 3 InvisibleSun 23:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

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Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it. ~ Gloria Steinem‎‎

• 3 Kalki (talk · contributions) 15:08, 25 February 2010 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.

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Does it follow, therefore, that it is right to enslave a man simply because he is inferior? This, to me, is a most abhorrent doctrine. It would place the weak everywhere at the mercy of the strong. It would place the poor at the mercy of the rich. It would place those who are deficient in intellect at the mercy of those that are gifted in mental endowment.

~ Rep. Owen Lovejoy (R–IL) ~

• 3.25. Lovejoy died on this date. – Illegitimate Barrister, 19:51, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

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The equality of the human race is the pivot upon which our government rests and resolves.

~ Rep. Owen Lovejoy (R–IL) ~

• 3. Lovejoy died on this date. – Illegitimate Barrister, 19:56, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

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Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no Utopia of a perfect social order, as it has so often been called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human living conditions, which are always straining after higher forms of expression, and to which for this reason one can assign no definite terminus nor set any fixed goal. The worst crime of any type of state is just that it always tries to force the rich diversity of social life into definite forms and adjust it to one particular form, which allows for no wider outlook and regards the previously exciting status as finished. The stronger its supporters feel themselves, the more completely they succeed in bringing every field of social life into their service, the more crippling is their influence on the operation of all creative cultural forces, the more unwholesomely does it affect the intellectual and social development of any particular epoch.

~ Rudolf Rocker ~

• 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:32, 25 March 2017 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.

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And the students at the university Asleep at night quite peacefully The soldiers came and shot them in their beds And terror took the dorm awakening shrieks of dread And silent frozen forms and pillows drenched in red Bangladesh, Bangladesh Bangladesh, Bangladesh When the sun sinks in the west Die a million people of the Bangladesh.

~ Joan Baez ~

• 3. Bengali Genocide Remembrance Day is a national day observed on 25 March in Bangladesh to commemorate the victims of the Bengali genocide of 1971. --ᘙ (talk) 11:41, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

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Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pak[istan] dominated government and to lessen any deservedly negative international public relations impact against them. Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy, (...) But we have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which unfortunately the overworked term genocide is applicable, is purely an internal matter of a sovereign state. Private Americans have expressed disgust. We, as professional civil servants, express our dissent with current policy and fervently hope that our true and lasting interests here can be defined and our policies redirected.

~ Archer Blood ~

• 3. Bengali Genocide Remembrance Day is a national day observed on 25 March in Bangladesh to commemorate the victims of the Bengali genocide of 1971. --ᘙ (talk) 11:41, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

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Nothing is more clear, or easily documented, than the systematic campaign of terror—and its genocidal consequences—launched by the Pakistan army on the night of March 25th... America’s heavy support of Islamabad is nothing short of complicity in the human and political tragedy of East Bengal.

~ Edward Kennedy ~

• 3 (about the 1971 Bangladesh genocide) ᘙ (talk) 11:17, 9 December 2022 (UTC)