The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.
—Virginia Woolf, 1921Quotes
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
—Zora Neale Hurston, 1937My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.
—Timothy Leary, 1966Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.
—Albert Einstein, 1929A brilliant boxing match, quicksilver in its motions, transpiring far more rapidly than the mind can absorb, can have the power that Emily Dickinson attributed to great poetry: you know it’s great when it takes the top of your head off.
—Joyce Carol Oates, 1987Nature contains no one constant form.
—Paul-Henri Dietrich d’Holbach, 1770Man 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, 1879Are we not ourselves nature, nature without end?
—Stanisław Lem, 1961Attacks on me will do no harm, and silent contempt is the best answer to them.
—James Monroe, 1808From the cradle to the coffin, underwear comes first.
—Bertolt Brecht, 1928As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986Men willingly believe what they wish.
—Julius Caesar, c. 50 BCTo know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968