Archive

Quotes

All of life is a foreign country.

—Jack Kerouac, 1949

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

—Confucius, c. 500 BC

I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.

—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962

I do desire we may be better strangers.

—William Shakespeare, 1600

To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.

—Fernando Pessoa, c. 1935

This is not a clash between civilizations. It is a clash about civilization.

—Tony Blair, 2006

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

—E.B. White, 1958

Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.

—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746

Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.

—Albert Einstein, 1929

Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”

—Evelyn Waugh, 1938

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

—Oscar Wilde, 1887

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

—Denis Diderot, 1774