The money we have is the means to liberty; that which we pursue is the means to slavery.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, c. 1770
Archive
Quotes
A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all other living creatures.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 64I am a friend of the workingman, and I would rather be his friend than be one.
—Clarence Darrow, 1932A jest breaks no bones.
—Samuel Johnson, 1781Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
—Agnes Repplier, 1916Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
—James Baldwin, 1961The fear of war is worse than war itself.
—Seneca, c. 50I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.
—John Ruskin, 1860For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1879I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.
—John F. Kennedy, 1960The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their elders and copying one another.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sightseeing.”
—Daniel Boorstin, 1961Water is the readiest means of making friends with nature.
—Ludwig Feuerbach, 1841