It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to regard them merely as so much muscle or physical power.
—Pope Leo XIII, 1891
Archive
Quotes
They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.
—Martin Luther, c. 1530Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890Conjecturing a Climate
Of unsuspended Suns –
Adds poignancy to Winter
I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.
—Groucho Marx, 1959There is a city in which you find everything you desire—handsome people, pleasures, ornaments of every kind—all that the natural person craves. However, you cannot find a single wise person there.
—Rumi, c. 1250Every ass thinks himself worthy to stand with the king’s horses.
—Gnomologia, 1732A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.
—Pliny the Elder, c. 77Refrigerators and television sets, or even rockets sent to the moon, do not change man into God.
—Czesław Miłosz, 1960There is much difference between imitating a good man, and counterfeiting him.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1738The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
—Albert Einstein, 1936Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
—Herman Melville, 1851Oil dependency is not just an economic attachment but appears as a kind of cognitive compulsion.
—Peter Hitchcock, 2010