Archive

Quotes

Governments are not overthrown by the poor, who have no power, but by the rich—when they are insulted by their inferiors and cannot obtain justice.

—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, c. 20 BC

Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.

—Ulysses S. Grant, 1877

Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the grand climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.

—Jean Baudrillard, 1987

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.

—Susan Sontag, 1963

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

—Genesis, c. 900 BC

So many men, so many opinions.

—Terence, 161 BC

What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence, the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?

—Mary Renault, 1956

I am weary of friends, and friendships are all monsters.

—Jonathan Swift, 1710

You can put wings on a pig, but you don’t make it an eagle.

—Bill Clinton, 1996

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

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1735

Understanding is a very dull occupation.

—Gertrude Stein, 1937

We need strength, we need energy, we need quickness, and we need brain in this country to turn it around.

—Donald Trump, 2015