Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC
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Quotes
I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCWhen the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
—Desmond Tutu, 1984Sick, 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, 1845Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1839I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1816To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe.
—Huangbo Xiyun, c. 850Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.
—Marcel Proust, c. 1922Modern life is often a mechanical oppression, and liquor is the only mechanical relief.
—Ernest Hemingway, 1935It would be madness, and inconsistency, to suppose that things which have never yet been performed can be performed without employing some hitherto untried means.
—Francis Bacon, 1620None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
—Pearl S. Buck, 1943When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
—Eugene V. Debs, 1918