All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1655
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Quotes
Too many people have decided to do without generosity in order to practice charity.
—Albert Camus, 1956What harm is there in getting knowledge and learning, were it from a sot, a pot, a fool, a winter mitten, or an old slipper?
—François Rabelais, 1533I will never again command an army in America if we must carry along paid spies. I will banish myself to some foreign country first.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.
—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BCThe history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty, and death of public opinion.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1902Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
—Denis Diderot, 1774All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1978Mammon, n. The god of the world’s leading religion. His chief temple is in the holy city of New York.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1911If you steal, do not steal too much at a time. You may be arrested. Steal cleverly, little by little.
—Mobutu Sese Seko, 1991Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
—Iris Murdoch, 1974One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
—Elbert Hubbard, 1911The things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist.
—Ernest Hemingway, 1929