The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908
Archive
Quotes
Keep away from physicians. It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them. They leave it to nature to cure in her own time, but they take the credit. As well as very fat fees.
—Anthony Burgess, 1964My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.
—John Quincy Adams, 1844We are to go to law never to revenge, but only to repair.
—Samuel Pepys, 1661It is better to live unknown to the law.
—Irish proverbThe real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
—B.F. Skinner, 1969No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.
—Hannah Arendt, 1958I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.
—Pierre Gassendi, 1655All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890Nature is the art of God.
—Thomas Browne, 1635I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind, and I take care of both by nourishing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance. This, I believe, you will allow to be the true philosophy of life.
—Thomas Paine, 1803The 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 BCI would delight in music, but the music is discordant.
—Xie Lingyun, c. 425