If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
—Voltaire, 1764
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Quotes
He that raises a large family, does indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand…a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1786If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1954We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1887A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
—Herman Melville, 1851The best way to fill time is to waste it.
—Marguerite Duras, 1987The march of the human mind is slow.
—Edmund Burke, 1775Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them.
—Miriam Makeba, 1988There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching toward him and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.
—Elias Canetti, 1960Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995The god of music dwelleth out of doors.
—Edith M. Thomas, 1887You must not grow used to making money out of everything. One sees more people ruined than one has seen preserved by shameful gains.
—Sophocles, c. 442 BCKnowledge is an ancient error reflecting on its youth.
—Francis Picabia, 1949