Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
—Mao Zedong, 1938Quotes
In times of pestilence, gaiety and joyousness are most profitable.
—Jacme d’Agramont, 1348Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
—John F. Kennedy, 1962When poets don’t know what to say and have completely given up on the play, just like a finger, they lift the machine and the spectators are satisfied.
—Antiphanes, c. 350 BCIt is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
—Plautus, c. 193 BCOne of the things men should most strive to do is win a good reputation and see that no one questions it.
—Juan Manuel, 1335We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things, and once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with the necessities.
—John Lothrop Motley, 1858The body says what words cannot.
—Martha Graham, 1985The future...something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
—C.S. Lewis, 1941As matron and mistress will differ in temper and tone, so will the friend be distinct from the faithless parasite.
—Horace, c. 20 BCHonesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.
—Patricia Highsmith, 1960