There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.
—Karl Kraus, 1909Quotes
Journalists belong in the gutter, because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.
—Gerald Priestland, 1988Never trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.
—Lucretius, c. 60 BCI drink for the thirst to come.
—François Rabelais, 1535The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.
—John Updike, 1963Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
—Lucretius, c. 58 BCTo lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1949To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.
—Quintus Fabius Maximus, c. 203 BCWhat sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
—Joseph Addison, 1711I’ve got some shit I’m conservative about and some shit I’m liberal about. Crime—I’m conservative. Prostitution—I’m liberal.
—Chris Rock, 2008The mind is not, I know, a highway but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open.
—Margaret Fuller, 1844Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
—Pablo Neruda, 1924Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.
—Louis Brandeis, 1928