Quotes

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

—Amiri Baraka, 1962

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

—Samuel Johnson, 1773

Words pay no debts.

—William Shakespeare, 1601

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

—Horace, c. 8 BC

Avoid the law—the first loss is generally the least.

—Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, 1844

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton, 1887

As usual, what we call “progress” is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.

—Havelock Ellis, 1914

Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one’s own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live.

—Anatole Broyard, 1989

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969

A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!

—Philip Roth, 1969

The things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist.

—Ernest Hemingway, 1929

Without music life would be a mistake.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889

I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do.

—Phyllis Diller, 1981

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