The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
—H.L. Mencken, 1921
Archive
Quotes
If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.
—David Sedaris, 2004Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1916Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
—Czeslaw Milosz, 1946Attend to earth,
for it is to earth that kings are truly wedded.
Do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.
—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BCTime robs us of all, even of memory.
—Virgil, c. 40 BCEven members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330Disease is not of the body but of the place.
—Latin proverbInventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
—Rose Macaulay, 1925What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
—Henry Adams, 1907Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.
—Jane Austen, 1811