Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.
—William Shakespeare, 1592
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Quotes
Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.
—Arthur Miller, 2001He who would have clear water should go to the fountainhead.
—Italian proverbThe law’s made to take care o’ raskills.
—George Eliot, 1860There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Hygienic law, like martial law, supersedes rights in crises.
—Samuel Hopkins Adams, 1913The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.
—Wallace Stevens, 1952Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed.
—Joan Didion, 2005I began revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.
—Fidel Castro, 1959
The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.
—John Updike, 1963From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.
—Herman Melville, 1851Pride and excess bring disaster for man.
—Xunzi, 250 BCTo do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891