Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.
—Blaise Pascal, 1658
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Quotes
Rewards and punishment are the lowest form of education.
—Zhuangzi, c. 286 BCBetter a thousand enemies outside the house than one inside.
—Arabic proverbIt is men who make a city, not walls or ships.
—Thucydides, 410 BCAll men recognize the right of revolution, that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1849It is so difficult not to become vain about one’s own good luck.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1963Nature contains no one constant form.
—Paul-Henri Dietrich d’Holbach, 1770What is the city but the people?
—William Shakespeare, 1608I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
—Woody Allen, 1971Energy is the power that drives every human being. It is not lost by exertion but maintained by it, for it is a faculty of the psyche.
—Germaine Greer, 1970The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
—Charles Baudelaire, 1852All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890