One of the things men should most strive to do is win a good reputation and see that no one questions it.
—Juan Manuel, 1335
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Quotes
The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
—Rudy Giuliani, 1999The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
—Agnes Repplier, 1929As usual, what we call “progress” is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.
—Havelock Ellis, 1914Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
—William James, 1902Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?
—Tertullian, c. 215The art of invention grows young with the things invented.
—Francis Bacon, 1605Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995Secrets define us, they mark us, they set us apart from all the others. The secrets which we preserve provide a key to who we are, deep down.
—Nuruddin Farah, 1998The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.
—Joshua Slocum, 1900It’s the educated barbarian who is the worst: he knows what to destroy.
—Helen MacInnes, 1963A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
—Amiri Baraka, 1962