Pushing someone toward liberty does not set her free; taking the chains off a prisoner does not give him freedom.
—Ken Bugul, 1982
Archive
Quotes
Time robs us of all, even of memory.
—Virgil, c. 40 BCEverything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.
—Pablo Picasso, 1929Good fortune turns aside destruction by a great god.
—Instructions of Ankhsheshonqy, c. 100 BCHappy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame—to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1843Because the newer methods of treatment are good, it does not follow that the old ones were bad: for if our honorable and worshipful ancestors had not recovered from their ailments, you and I would not be here today.
—Confucius, c. 515 BCEight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.
—Slogan of the National Labor Union of the United States, 1866Physician, heal yourself: thus you help your patient too. Let his best help be to see with his own eyes the man who makes himself well.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, c. 1884There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.
—Karl Kraus, 1909To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1678When a coward sees a man he can beat, he becomes hungry for a fight.
—Chinua Achebe, 1960Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so shall you come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC