Archive

Quotes

In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.

—Thomas Szasz, 1970

A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.

—Robert Wilson, 1991

To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

—Albert Camus, 1951

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

—Plotinus, c. 255

Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.

—Robert Southey, 1809

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

—Robertson Davies, 1985

There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.

—John Locke, 1689

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.

—Demosthenes, 349 BC

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

—Derek Walcott, 1986

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.

—Albert Einstein, 1930