wondermill

If you want to graphically display a random list of your posts with their featured image in the side bar, then this is the plugin for you. This plugin allows you to set the category IDs (or all categories) you want to pull the random posts from, the number of random posts to display, the maximum width and height of the featured image thumbnail, the widget title, and the colors of the surrounding box.

Random Posts with Thumbnails

Puts a list of clickable random posts with their featured image in your sidebar as a widget, this list is customizable.

unalignedcoder

Stray Random Quotes helps you collect and display random quotes everywhere on your blog. The plugin is so flexible that it can be used to display random words of all sorts: taglines, “leave a response” messages, footer or header sections etc. 
The main features:
<ul>
<li>As many widgets as you need, each with its individual set of options, to display one or more quotes from all or some categories, randomly or in sequence, with or without AJAX, etc.</li>
<li>AJAX automation so a reader of the blog can get another quote without reloading the page.</li>
<li>Optional automatic rotation of the quotes within a given interval of seconds.</li>
<li>Multiuser ready (contributors to the blog can access a limited version of the plugin, adding and managing their own sets of quotes)</li>
<li>Shortcodes that can be used to add one quote or series of quotes to your posts and pages. The shortcodes come with a set of individual options as well and, if needed, they can be extended to apply everywhere on the blog, allowing random words for the tagline, the category names, the post titles etc.</li>
<li>Template tags to add one or more quotes — random words in general — directly to the template pages. Template tags support many variables as well.</li>
<li>A Settings page to customize the appearance of the quotes with little or no knowledge of HTML.</li>
<li>A easy to use management page where even thousands of quotes can be handled easily, with bulk actions to change category, delete quotes and toggle visibility of many quotes at a time.</li>
<li>A bookmarklet to create quotes on the fly as you browse the web and find text worth quoting.</li>
<li>A help page where everything you need to know is explained.</li>
</ul>
See <a href="http://code.italyisfalling.com/cool-things-you-can-do-with-stray-random-quotes/" rel="nofollow ugc">more cool things you can do with Stray Random Quotes</a>.
<h3>Credits</h3>
<ul>
<li>For Multi-widget functionality, <a href="http://wp.gdragon.info/2008/07/06/create-multi-instances-widget/" rel="nofollow ugc">Millian’s tutorial</a></li>
<li>For help in developing user-end AJAX functionality, <a href="http://www.matrixagents.org" rel="nofollow ugc">AgentSmith</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Localization</h3>
<ul>
<li>German, thanks to Markus Griesbach</li>
<li>Chinese, thanks to WGMking</li>
<li>Croatian, thanks to <a href="http://www.atrium.hr/" rel="nofollow ugc">Rajic</a></li>
<li>Danish, thanks to <a href="http://wordpress.blogos.dk/" rel="nofollow ugc">Georg</a></li>
</ul>
Actually, these translations are not updated to the latest version. 
I am looking for new localizers, all languages welcome!
Please note: the best way to submit new or updated translations is to include a direct link to the localization files in a comment to <a href="http://code.italyisfalling.com/stray-random-quotes#comments" rel="nofollow ugc">this post</a>. This way the files are made available to the users sooner, and without waiting for a new release.
Please note: If you want to create a localized copy of Stray Random Quotes, consider skipping the help page and translate the rest. This will save you quite some time. The help page has a lot of text.

Stray Random Quotes

Display and rotate random quotes and words everywhere on your blog. Easy to custom and manage. Multiuser. Ajax enabled.

Random Posts with Thumbnails vs Stray Random Quotes