There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580
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Quotes
I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1902The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
—Joseph Conrad, 1899Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always want of happiness.
—Thomas Paine, 1792The art of invention grows young with the things invented.
—Francis Bacon, 1605Anyone who’s never experienced the pleasure of betrayal doesn’t know what pleasure is.
—Jean Genet, 1986An unjust law is no law at all.
—Saint Augustine, 395A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.
—Jane Austen, 1816The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1871Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, c. 1940I’ve got some shit I’m conservative about and some shit I’m liberal about. Crime—I’m conservative. Prostitution—I’m liberal.
—Chris Rock, 2008