Archive

Quotes

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

—Margaret Mead, 1972

Let us make our own mistakes, but let us take comfort in the knowledge that they are our own mistakes.

—Tom Mboya, 1958

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.

—George W. Bush, 2005

According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.

—Edward Gibbon, c. 1794

Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.

—Sophocles, c. 441 BC

We are to go to law never to revenge, but only to repair.

—Samuel Pepys, 1661

Abstainer, n. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Water its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815

The sea serves the pirate as well as the trader.

—Prudentius, c. 405

Labor is no disgrace.

—Hesiod, c. 700 BC

Till taught by pain, / Men really know not what good water’s worth.

—Lord Byron, 1819

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

—Donald Barthelme, 1964