Archive

Quotes

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.

—John Paul Jones, 1778

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1947

In psychoanalysis nothing is true except the exaggerations.

—Theodor Adorno, 1951

All art is a revolt against man’s fate.

—André Malraux, 1951

Nature resolves everything into its component elements, but annihilates nothing.

—Lucretius, c. 57 BC

The severity of a teacher is better than the love of a father.

—Saadi, 1258

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1955

Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one’s own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live.

—Anatole Broyard, 1989

It was funny how I could feel all alone and under surveillance at the same time.

—Cory Doctorow, 2013

Family! Thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.

—August Strindberg, 1886

The world is made of the very stuff of the body.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961

Better a thousand enemies outside the house than one inside.

—Arabic proverb

We must confess that at present the rich predominate, but the future will be for the virtuous and ingenious.

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688