There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862
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Quotes
In every ill turn of fortune, the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy.
—Boethius, c. 520When the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
—Desmond Tutu, 1984’Tis the destroyer, or the devil, that scatters plagues about the world.
—Cotton Mather, 1693’Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables?
—Thomas Browne, 1642The drunken man is a living corpse.
—St. John Chrysostom, c. 390Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant, democracy to many.
—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.
—Brigitte Bardot, 1989I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That’s a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.
—Philip K. Dick, 1972Ah, there are no children nowadays.
—Molière, 1673Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.
—Herman Melville, 1849No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.
—Hannah Arendt, 1958There is something stirring in the way civilization gapes like a savage at the achievements of nature.
—Karl Kraus, 1909