Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995
Archive
Quotes
Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938Sex: in America, an obsession; in other parts of the world, a fact.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
—Erich Fromm, 1947If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1513In the country gossip is a pastime; in the city it is a warfare.
—W.M.L. Jay, 1870We are to go to law never to revenge, but only to repair.
—Samuel Pepys, 1661Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth but not its twin.
—Barbara Kingsolver, 1990If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don’t teach him to subtract—teach him to deduct.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1981One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
—Virginia Woolf, 1929No one wins a quarrel by quarreling.
—German proverbIf you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.
—David Sedaris, 2004For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
—Herman Melville, 1851