Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995
Archive
Quotes
There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1714All the married heiresses I have known have shipwrecked.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1880What reason weaves, by passion is undone.
—Alexander Pope, 1972No nation was ever ruined by trade.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1774Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.
—Leo Tolstoy, 1893The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.
—Edward O. Wilson, 2009As he brews, so shall he drink.
—Ben Jonson, 1598The 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. 1888In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.
—Gertrude Stein, 1937If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.
—Henry James, 1884’Tis a portentous sign / When a man sweats and at the same time shivers.
—Plautus, c. 180 BCFreedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.
—Rosa Luxemburg, 1918