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Quotes

Most authors seek fame, but I seek for justice—a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess.

—Davy Crockett, 1834

Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes names as it changes in direction.

—Dante Alighieri, c. 1315

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

He who treats another human being as divine thereby assigns to himself the relative status of a child or an animal.

—E. R. Dodds, 1951

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

—Epictetus, c. 100

I won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God.

—Madonna, c. 1985

A woman’s greatest glory is to be little talked about by men, whether for good or ill.

—Pericles, c. 450 BC

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

—Petrarch, 1337

And what will history say of me a thousand years hence?

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 59 BC

I am sick and tired of publicity. I want no more of it. It puts me in a bad light. I just want to be forgotten.

—Al Capone, 1929

What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.

—Erasmus, 1515

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.

—Cato the Elder, c. 184 BC

Avoid the talk of men. For talk is mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Talk never wholly dies away when many people voice her: even talk is in some ways divine.

—Hesiod, c. 700 BC