Archive

Quotes

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

—E.B. White, 1977

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

—G.C. Lichtenberg, c. 1780

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

—George Orwell, 1944

He laughs best who laughs last.

—French proverb

In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

—Herodotus, 440 BC

Water is the first principle of everything.

—Thales of Miletus, c. 600 BC

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.

—Zora Neale Hurston, 1937

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of getting drunk.

—Samuel Johnson, 1779

A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.

—Samuel Johnson, 1773

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774

The misfortune of the man of color is having been enslaved. The misfortune and inhumanity of the white man are having killed man somewhere.

—Frantz Fanon, 1952

If I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.

—Reggie Jackson, 1976

All revolutions devour their own children.

—Ernst Röhm, 1933