Archive

Quotes

He makes his cook his merit, and the world visits his dinners and not him.

—Molière, 1666

In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance.

—Phillis Wheatley, 1774

A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1732

Night affords the most convenient shade for works of darkness.

—John Taylor, 1750

People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.

—Bayard Rustin, 1986

When you name yourself, you always name another.

—Bertolt Brecht, 1926

An ugly sight, a man who’s afraid. 

—Jean Anouilh, 1944

Pride and excess bring disaster for man.

—Xunzi, 250 BC

Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.

—Zadie Smith, 2000

All people have the common desire to be elevated in honor, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.

—Mencius, c. 330 BC

Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1839

Let us leave this Europe which never stops talking of Man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, at every corner of the world.

—Frantz Fanon, 1961

Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

—John Camden Hotten, 1859