We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things, and once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774
Archive
Quotes
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865To eat is to appropriate by destruction.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1943Sooner or later if the activity of the mind is restricted anywhere, it will cease to function even where it is allowed to be free.
—Edith Hamilton, 1930We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.
—Barbara Ehrenreich, 1991The young man must store up, the old man must use.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 63Business is other people’s money.
—Delphine de Girardin, 1852Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
—James Baldwin, 1961In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.
—Michel Foucault, 1975The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his command.
—Alexander of Tralles, c. 600The play is the tragedy “Man,” And its hero the conqueror worm.
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1843Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces.
—Voltaire, 1759If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
—Mark Twain, 1894