Ah! Freedom is a noble thing!
—John Barbour, 1375Quotes
Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always want of happiness.
—Thomas Paine, 1792Modesty is a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
—Upton Sinclair, 1935I imagine that one of the first forms of behavior, like one of the first signals, may be reduced to this: “Keep me warm.”
—Michel Serres, 1982Big head, little wit.
—French proverbWe often give our enemies the means for our own destruction.
—Aesop, c. 600 BCThose who cross the seas change their climate but not their character.
—Roman proverbOcean. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.
—Andrea Dworkin, 1983When you drink water, think of its source.
—Chinese proverbIs this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!
—Cotton Mather, 1728The worship of opinion is, at this day, the established religion of the United States.
—Harriet Martineau, 1839