It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
—Dolores Ibárruri, 1936
Archive
Quotes
A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.
—David Foster Wallace, 2000These 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. 95Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.
—Margaret Mead, 1972We all have a contract with the public—in us they see themselves, or what they would like to be.
—Clark Gable, 1935My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.
—Frederick the Great, c. 1770A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.
—Jane Austen, 1815A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977With the dead there is no rivalry.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1839Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
—Erica Jong, 1973Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.
—Carl Sandburg, 1959More and more I like to take a train. I understand why the French prefer it to automobiling—it is so much more sociable, and of course these days so much more of an adventure, and the irregularity of its regularity is fascinating.
—Gertrude Stein, 1943