Love is giving something you haven’t got to someone who doesn’t exist.
—Jacques Lacan
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Quotes
The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1776Being thus arrived in good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stale earth, their proper element.
—William Bradford, 1630As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.
—David Sedaris, 1997Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.
—Jacob Burckhardt, c. 1875Everybody says it; and what everybody says must be true.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1844Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with the necessities.
—John Lothrop Motley, 1858Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1845Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.
—Alvin Toffler, 1970The brain is an unreliable organ, it is monstrously great, monstrously developed. Swollen, like a goiter.
—Aleksandr Blok, c. 1920They say, “We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.” Yet, not true knowledge have they of this—only belief.
—The Qur’an, c. 620See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
—Robert Burton, c. 1620