Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
—Samuel Johnson, 1751Quotes
The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175All of life is a foreign country.
—Jack Kerouac, 1949Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.
—Margaret Mead, 1972Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.
—The Upanishads, c. 800 BCOther nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.
—Voltaire, 1764A 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, 1946In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.
—Francis Grose, 1787The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L.P. Hartley, 1953Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.
—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.
—Francis Bacon, 1625