Archive

Quotes

These useless men ought to be cut up and served at a banquet. I really believe that athletes have less intelligence than swine.

—Dio Chrysostom, c. 95

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

—Henry Kissinger, 1977

I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.

—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1807

If I see something sagging, dragging, or bagging, I’m going to go have the stuff tucked or plucked.

—Dolly Parton, 2003

Man is a troublesome animal and therefore is not very manageable.

—Plato, c. 349 BC

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

—Michelangelo Antonioni, 1967

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

—Confucius, c. 500 BC

Happiness, whether in business or private life, leaves very little trace in history.

—Fernand Braudel, 1979

If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.

—William Hazlitt, 1823

‘Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.

—Emma Goldman, 1910

Traveling is like gambling: it is ever connected with winning and losing, and generally where least expected we receive more or less than we hoped for.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1797

If law and justice do not attain their ends, the people will be unable to move hand or foot.

—Confucius, c. 500