We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.
—Tennessee Williams, 1953
Archive
Quotes
Hoping for new friendship from old enemies is / Like expecting to find a rose in a furnace.
—Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani, 1612Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
—Robert Wilson, 1991A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.
—George Mikes, 1946Man is a troublesome animal and therefore is not very manageable.
—Plato, c. 349 BCDrunkenness is the very sepulcher / Of man’s wit and his discretion.
—Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1390My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968It hurts to watch the fluency of a body acclimated to its shackling.
—Leslie Jamison, 2014For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
—Charles Baudelaire, c. 1865History is a people’s memory, and without a memory man is demoted to the level of the lower animals.
—Malcolm X, 1964People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.
—James Baldwin, 1953Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.
—Plato, c. 375 BCA joke is at most a temporary rebellion against virtue, and its aim is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.
—George Orwell, 1945