Archive

Quotes

A dissolute and intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn-out state.

—Cicero, 44 BC

I’ve seen the future, brother; it is murder.

—Leonard Cohen, 1992

To outwit an enemy is not only just and glorious but profitable and sweet.

—Plutarch, c. 100

You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war. 

—William Randolph Hearst, 1898

What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.

—Epictetus, c. 110

Imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.

—Henry Ward Beecher, 1887

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

—Henrik Ibsen, 1882

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

—Hannah Arendt, 1963

The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.

—André Gide, 1927

In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.

—Francis Grose, 1787

A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.

—Christina Stead, 1938

Attacks on me will do no harm, and silent contempt is the best answer to them.

—James Monroe, 1808

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

—Francis Bacon, 1625