Archive

Quotes

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

—Jane Austen, 1818

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

—Marcel Marceau, 1958

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

—John Locke, 1690

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858

It is a luxury to be understood.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

—Voltaire, c. 1732

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.

—Tertullian, c. 217

Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.

—Jean Baudrillard, c. 1987

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

—Voltaire, 1764

Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BC

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

—Molière, 1672