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Quotes

The life of a sailor is very unhealthy.

—Francis Galton, 1883

He who travels by sea is nothing but a worm on a piece of wood, a trifle in the midst of a powerful creation. The waters play about with him at will, and no one but God can help him.

—Muhammad as-Saffar, 1846

The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.

—Mario Puzo, 2001

Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.

—Ulysses S. Grant, 1877

What is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

The happiness of society is the end of government.

—John Adams, 1776

Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise.

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

An irreligious man is not one who denies the gods of the majority, but one who applies to the gods the opinions of the majority. For what most men say about the gods are not ideas derived from sensation, but false opinions, according to which the greatest evils come to the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good from the gods.

—Epicurus, c. 250 BC

Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.

—Blaise Pascal, 1658

Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying.

—Barbara Ehrenreich, 2008

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry to equanimity, receptivity, and peace is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal center of energy.

—William James, 1902

Machines seem to sense that I am afraid of them. It makes them hostile.

—Sharyn McCrumb, 1990

I am dying with the help of too many physicians.

—Alexander the Great, c. 323 BC