Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the grand climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.
—Jean Baudrillard, 1987
Archive
Quotes
The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
—Empedocles, c. 450 BCIn life our absent friend is far away: / But death may bring our friend exceeding near.
—Christina Rossetti, 1881To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1678The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1871Those who are awake have a world that is one and common, but each of those who are asleep turns aside into his own particular world.
—Heraclitus, c. 500 BCMemories are hunting horns
whose noise dies away in the wind.
The fact is certain because it is impossible.
—Tertullian, c. 200What is the city but the people?
—William Shakespeare, 1608Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces.
—Voltaire, 1759One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.
—Karl Kraus, 1909For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
—Herman Melville, 1851