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Quotes

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

—Confucius, c. 500 BC

All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.

—Blaise Pascal, c. 1655

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

—Hebrews, c. 60

There is no foreign land; it is the traveler only that is foreign.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883

To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

—William Hazlitt, 1823

Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

No man has any natural authority over his fellow man.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762

Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.

—Albert Einstein, 1929

A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.

—George Mikes, 1946

All of life is a foreign country.

—Jack Kerouac, 1949

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

—Evelyn Waugh, 1938

Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them.

—Miriam Makeba, 1988

Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.

—Horace Walpole, 1745