Archive

Quotes

In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.

—Thomas Szasz, 1970

Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, or a bull?

—Aristophanes, 423 BC

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.

—Demosthenes, 349 BC

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

—Tertullian, c. 200

There 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, 1965

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.

—Gaston Bachelard, 1960

Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.

—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

—Derek Walcott, 1986

The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.

—John Locke, 1689

To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

—Albert Camus, 1951

Men willingly believe what they wish.

—Julius Caesar, c. 50 BC