It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.
—Cicero, c. 44 BC
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Quotes
Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.
—Martin Heidegger, 1949None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
—Pearl S. Buck, 1943I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BCThere are times when reality becomes too complex for oral communication. But legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world.
—Jean-Luc Godard, 1965I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.
—Roald Dahl, 1984The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851Whenever in history equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.
—Mary McCarthy, 1971Power is so apt to be insolent, and Liberty to be saucy, that they are very seldom upon good terms.
—George Savile, c. 1690Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide, wide sea!
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
—Eugene V. Debs, 1918There is a demon who puts wings on certain tales and launches them like eagles out into space.
—Alexandre Dumas, 1846It hurts to watch the fluency of a body acclimated to its shackling.
—Leslie Jamison, 2014