An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
—Henry Clay, 1842
Archive
Quotes
I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.
—Terence, 163 BCOne machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
—Elbert Hubbard, 1911In most cases men willingly believe what they wish.
—Julius Caesar, 52 BCWhen the physician said to him, “You have lived to be an old man,” he said, “That is because I never employed you as my physician.”
—Pausanias, c. 450 BCThose who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
—John F. Kennedy, 1962Speak without regard for the consequences, and it is too late for silence when disaster strikes.
—Huan Kuan, 81 BCIf you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330No one’s serious at seventeen.
—Arthur Rimbaud, 1870Revolutions are always verbose.
—Leon Trotsky, 1933There is a sickness among tyrants: they cannot trust their friends.
—Aeschylus, c. 458 BCA Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
—Federico Fellini, c. 1950