Archive

Quotes

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

—John Berger, 1984

We should always presume the disease to be curable until its own nature proves it otherwise.

—Peter Mere Latham, c. 1845

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

—Rosa Luxemburg, 1918

The history of the land has been written very largely in water.

—John Hodgdon Bradley Jr., 1935

Guard more faithfully the secret which is confided to you than the money which is entrusted to your care.

—Isocrates, c. 370 BC

Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, 1531

I came upon no wine, / So wonderful as thirst.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1923

What one man can invent another can discover.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1905

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.

—Erich Fromm, 1947

The fox knows lots of tricks, the hedgehog only one—but it’s a winner.

—Archilochus, c. 650 BC

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton, 1887

Some nights are like honey—and some like wine—and some like wormwood.

—L.M. Montgomery, 1927

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought.

—Henri Poincaré, 1903