No man has any natural authority over his fellow man.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762
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Quotes
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant, 1784Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832The world is wearied of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1870Keep running after a dog, and he will never bite you.
—François Rabelais, 1535Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1734Our entire history is merely the history of the waking life of man; nobody has yet considered the history of his sleeping life.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, c. 1780Big head, little wit.
—French proverbWhat are men anyway but balloons on legs, a lot of blown-up bladders?
—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort in a hospital.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1857One’s friends are divided into two classes, those one knows because one must and those one knows because one mustn’t.
—Sybil Taylor, 1922In the Middle Ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.
—Robert Runcie, 1988The first duty of a good inquisitor is to suspect especially those who seem sincere to him.
—Umberto Eco, 1980