I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool than I am.
—Alice James, 1889
Archive
Quotes
The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
—Frank Zappa, 1989If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay in solid cash—the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.
—Aldous Huxley, 1926Every tooth in a man’s head is more valuable than a diamond.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another’s net.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
—Winston Churchill, 1945If there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.
—Michael Harrington, 1962Doctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.
—William Saroyan, 1943True friendship withstands time, distance, and silence.
—Isabel Allende, 2000The day unravels what the night has woven.
—Walter Benjamin, 1929I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?
—Lord Byron, 1813Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.
—Ulysses S. Grant, 1877