I 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, 1953Quotes
Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; it is destiny which makes them prudent.
—Voltaire, 1764The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. I think that the worst thing you could say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever. After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death.
—Woody Allen, 1975Who draws his sword against his prince must throw away the scabbard.
—James Howell, 1659In the country gossip is a pastime; in the city it is a warfare.
—W.M.L. Jay, 1870Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.
—William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out.
—Arthur Koestler, 1967Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944Suffering has its limit, but fears are endless.
—Pliny the Younger, c. 108By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.
—Confucius, c. 500 BCThe world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851The only equals are those who are equally rich.
—Burundian proverb