Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943
Archive
Quotes
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
—W.H. Auden, 1957It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
—Plautus, c. 193 BCYou can’t find the soul with a scalpel.
—Gustave Flaubert, c. 1880Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.
—Henry Miller, 1945Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.
—Plato, c. 378 BCWithout doubt God is the universal moving force, but each being is moved according to the nature that God has given it. He directs angels, man, animals, brute matter, in sum all created things—but each according to its nature—and man having been created free, he is freely led. This rule is truly the eternal law and in it we must believe.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1821Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817What reason weaves, by passion is undone.
—Alexander Pope, 1972For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1879All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the state.
—Albert Camus, 1951Only the little people pay taxes.
—Leona Helmsley, 1989The whole secret of fencing consists but in two things, to give and not to receive.
—Molière, 1670