Trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay.
—Oliver Goldsmith, 1770
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Quotes
Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
—Samuel Johnson, 1751Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.
—Blaise Pascal, 1658In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.
—V.S. Pritchett, 1968Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.
—Alvin Toffler, 1970All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1849Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1640Some to the common pulpits, and cry out / “Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”
—William Shakespeare, c. 1599I have seen the science I worshipped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.
—Charles Lindbergh, 1948Travel 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, 1989Refrigerators and television sets, or even rockets sent to the moon, do not change man into God.
—Czesław Miłosz, 1960The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
—Empedocles, c. 450 BC