The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1871
Archive
Quotes
Anyone who’s never experienced the pleasure of betrayal doesn’t know what pleasure is.
—Jean Genet, 1986The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.
—André Gide, 1927A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
—Victor Hugo, 1862Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.
—Juvenal, c. 121A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.
—George Mikes, 1946What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains and studying night and day how to fly?
—William Law, 1728my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing
The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.
—Paul Valéry, 1931The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
—Aristotle, c. 330 BCDeath and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. We go on a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences—to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others.
—William Hazlitt, 1822No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860