Archive

Quotes

Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.

—Jacob Burckhardt, c. 1875

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.

—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

—Florence King, 1989

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

Rewards and punishment are the lowest form of education.

—Zhuangzi, c. 286 BC

Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

—Alfred Hitchcock, 1962

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

—David Foster Wallace, 2000

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. 

—Abraham Lincoln

Words pay no debts.

—William Shakespeare, 1601

Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Laughter hath only a scornful tickling.

—Philip Sidney, 1582

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

It is hell to belong to a suppressed minority.

—Claude McKay, 1937