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Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Moving Words

The BBC's Moving Words online campaign to find the world's favourite quotation is drawing to a close: "Famous people taking part included the Dalai Lama who chose an extract from Shantideva, an eighth century Buddhist monk. Crime writer PD James selected lines from Hamlet and Dr Michio Kaku, a physicist and inventor of String Field theory, was inspired by Albert Einstein."

Hari Kunzru's nomination: "The law locks up the man or woman/ who steals the goose from off the common/ but lets the greater villain loose/ who steals the common from the goose." (Anon).

Nominations have flooded in from people in more than 100 countries. Their selections have now been whittled down to a shortlist of ten:

Mahatma Gandhi : An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
The Dalai Lama: You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.
Woody Allen : To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
Sir Isaac Newton: If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
Saint Augustine: It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Gospel of Luke: And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
Lao Tzu: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
The US Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
William Shakespeare: As You Like It
Nelson Mandela: If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

(Other notable inclusions from around the world can be found here.)

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