The people are the foundation of the state. If the foundations are firm, the state will be tranquil.
—Classic of History, c. 400 BC
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Quotes
All art is a revolt against man’s fate.
—André Malraux, 1951Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1790Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.
—Karl Kraus, 1909Emigration is easy, but immigration is something else. To flee, yes; but to be accepted?
—Victoria Wolff, 1943Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
—Saint Augustine, c. 400When arms speak, the laws are silent.
—Cicero, 52 BCOne need merely visit the marketplace and the graveyard to determine whether a city is in both physical and metaphysical order.
—Ernst Jünger, 1977Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain there would be no life.
—John Updike, 1989Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1776The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1888Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
—Czeslaw Milosz, 1946