Archive

Quotes

 Do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.

—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

—Havelock Ellis, 1921

The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

—Germaine Greer, 1970

If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar, and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?

—Olive Schreiner, 1883

Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.

—William Shakespeare, 1603

Money, not morality, is the principle of commercial nations.

—Thomas Jefferson

A college degree is a social certificate, not a proof of competence.

—Elbert Hubbard, 1911

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

—Abraham Lincoln, 1861

Music is our myth of the inner life.

—Susanne K. Langer, 1942

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

—Blaise Pascal, 1658

Drink today and drown all sorrow; / You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.

—John Fletcher, 1625

Trade is a social act.

—John Stuart Mill, 1859

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

—H.L. Mencken, 1921