Archive

Quotes

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.

—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. 

—Abraham Lincoln

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

Drive out nature with a pitchfork, and she will always come back. 

—Horace, c. 25 BC

Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.

—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BC

Misfortune, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

’Tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1600

Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man.

—Henry George, 1879

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

—Bertrand Russell, 1961

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 severity of a teacher is better than the love of a father.

—Saadi, 1258

It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.

—Plautus, c. 193 BC