Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838
Archive
Quotes
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
—Arthur C. Clarke, 1973It is a greater advantage to be honestly educated than honorably born.
—Erasmus, 1518These useless men ought to be cut up and served at a banquet. I really believe that athletes have less intelligence than swine.
—Dio Chrysostom, c. 95I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.
—Nicharchus, c. 90I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.
—Antonio Porchia, 1943From the cradle to the coffin, underwear comes first.
—Bertolt Brecht, 1928Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.
—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665The true mission of American sports is to prepare young men for war.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower, c. 1952Water its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.
—Alvin Toffler, 1970