Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.
—Albert Einstein, 1929
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Quotes
There is nothing sillier than a silly laugh.
—Catullus, c. 60 BCThe happiness of society is the end of government.
—John Adams, 1776Good men must not obey the laws too well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844There is no profit without another’s loss.
—Roman proverbMost men employ the first years of their life in making the last miserable.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
—Chinese proverbAs the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.
—Chinua Achebe, 1958Religion! 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, 1910Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1755The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.
—Wallace Stevens, 1952Of all objects that I have ever seen, there is none which affects my imagination so much as the sea or ocean. A troubled ocean, to a man who sails upon it, is, I think, the biggest object that he can see in motion, and consequently gives his imagination one of the highest kinds of pleasure that can arise from greatness.
—Joseph Addison, 1712“Work” does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.
—Marshall McLuhan, 1964