Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
—Samuel Johnson, 1751Quotes
To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
—William Hazlitt, 1823I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1940Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.
—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746It’s good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for a while their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.
—Maya Angelou, 2011Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
—Denis Diderot, 1774The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L.P. Hartley, 1953The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
—Theodor Adorno, 1951In 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, 1787To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.
—Fernando Pessoa, c. 1935Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.
—Albert Einstein, 1929Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
—George W. Bush, 2004I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.
—Terence, 163 BC