Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
—Agnes Repplier, 1916
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Quotes
Our entire history is merely the history of the waking life of man; nobody has yet considered the history of his sleeping life.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, c. 1780Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921The freedom or immunity from coercion in matters religious, which is the endowment of persons as individuals, is also to be recognized as their right when they act in community. Religious communities are a requirement of the social nature both of man and of religion itself.
—Pope Paul VI, 1965Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.
—Emma Goldman, 1910The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better, only the god knows.
—Socrates, 399 BCJests and scoffs do lessen majesty and greatness and should be far from great personages and men of wisdom.
—Henry Peacham, 1622He who laugheth too much, hath the nature of a fool; he that laugheth not at all, hath the nature of an old cat.
—Thomas Fuller, 1732Are we not ourselves nature, nature without end?
—Stanisław Lem, 1961If there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.
—Michael Harrington, 1962No man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.
—Maria Edgeworth, 1809Nature never jests.
—Albrecht von Haller, 1751There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1714