Archive

Quotes

Scandal begins where the police leave off.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.

—Susanne K. Langer, 1962

A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on nonalcoholic wine.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

The state dictates and coerces; religion teaches and persuades. The state enacts laws; religion gives commandments. The state is armed with physical force and makes use of it if need be; the force of religion is love and benevolence.

—Moses Mendelssohn, 1783

I am a living symbol of the white man’s fear.

—Winnie Mandela, 1985

As matron and mistress will differ in temper and tone, so will the friend be distinct from the faithless parasite.

—Horace, c. 20 BC

There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.

—George Eliot, 1872

I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.

—Jack Kerouac, 1957

Men argue, nature acts.

—Voltaire, 1764

Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous. 

—Pierre Boulez, 1989

No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

There is no small pleasure in sweet water.

—Ovid, c. 10