All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933
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Quotes
Revolutions never go backward.
—Thomas Skidmore, 1829In every man is a wild beast; most of them don’t know how to hold it back, and the majority give it full rein when they are not restrained by terror of law.
—Frederick the Great, 1759The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1888Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
—W.H. Auden, c. 1940But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
—Genesis, c. 900 BCTo know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.
—George Eliot, 1872Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.
—Robert Southey, 1809By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCThough this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
—William Shakespeare, 1603Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”
—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.
—Epictetus, c. 110Imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.
—Henry Ward Beecher, 1887