The first duty of a good inquisitor is to suspect especially those who seem sincere to him.
—Umberto Eco, 1980
Archive
Quotes
I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?
—Lord Byron, 1813What one man can invent another can discover.
—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1905Luck takes the step that no one sees.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BCA real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.
—David Foster Wallace, 2000The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.
—André Gide, 1927Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962The worship of opinion is, at this day, the established religion of the United States.
—Harriet Martineau, 1839A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on nonalcoholic wine.
—Karl Kraus, 1909That which the sober man keeps in his breast, the drunken man lets out at the lips. Astute people, when they want to ascertain a man’s true character, make him drunk.
—Martin Luther, 1569Today’s city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.
—Martin Oppenheimer, 1969Two crimes undid me: a poem and a mistake.
—Ovid, 10Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1790