The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended—and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.
—Robert Frost, 1939
Archive
Quotes
Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.
—Charles de Gaulle, 1963Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1944Man is a troublesome animal and therefore is not very manageable.
—Plato, c. 349 BCDoing research on the web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
—Roger Ebert, 1998Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.
—Plato, c. 378 BCI rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
—Orson Welles, 1953Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1916Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.
—Julie Burchill, 1986Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.
—Edward O. Wilson, 2009Too often, where we need water we find guns.
—Ban Ki-moon, 2008