Archive

Quotes

I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.

—Lorraine Hansberry, 1965

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

—Voltaire, 1723

Every ass thinks himself worthy to stand with the king’s horses.

—Gnomologia, 1732

The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his command.

—Alexander of Tralles, c. 600

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

—Magna Carta, 1215

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

—Herman Melville, 1851

The severity of a teacher is better than the love of a father.

—Saadi, 1258

Dance tunes are always right.

—Dylan Thomas, 1936

I look for the end of the future, but it never ceases to arrive. 

—Zhuangzi, c. 325 BC

Do you suppose it possible to know democracy without knowing the people?

—Xenophon, c. 370 BC

One’s friends are divided into two classes, those one knows because one must and those one knows because one mustn’t.

—Sybil Taylor, 1922

People react to fear, not love—they don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.

—Richard Nixon, 1975

One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580