The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws.
—Tacitus, c. 110
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Quotes
The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970You can’t find the soul with a scalpel.
—Gustave Flaubert, c. 1880God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out.
—Arthur Koestler, 1967Years are nothing to me—they should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to consider them? In the world of wild nature, time is measured by seasons only—the bird does not know how old it is—the rose tree does not count its birthdays!
—Marie Corelli, 1911Industrialism is the religion with “the machine” as the god going to answer all the prayers. Communism and capitalism were just competing sects.
—Dora Russell, 1983Doing research on the web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
—Roger Ebert, 1998Like a broken gong be still, be silent. Know the stillness of freedom where there is no more striving.
—Siddhartha Gautama, c. 500 BCOne of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
—E.B. White, 1958Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
—Herman Melville, 1851An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865Little folks become their little fate.
—Horace, c. 20 BCWhat a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621