Archive

Quotes

Life is no way to treat an animal.

—Kurt Vonnegut, 2005

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

—Havelock Ellis, 1921

There is a vital force in rumor. Though crushed to earth, to all intents and purposes buried, it can rise again without apparent effort.

—Eleanor Robson Belmont, 1957

As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.

—Will Self, 1994

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.

—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851

I have seen the science I worshipped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

—Charles Lindbergh, 1948

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

—Dolores Ibárruri, 1936

Jesters do oft prove prophets.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1605

Friendship was given by nature to be an assistant to virtue, not a companion to vice.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 45 BC

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

—George Borrow, 1843

How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object.

—Charles Lamb, 1833

The mill will never grind with water that is past.

—Daniel McCallum, 1870

Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.

—Leslie Jamison, 2020