Archive

Quotes

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of these two has the grander view?

—Victor Hugo, 1862

Spit not in the well; you may have to drink its water.

—French proverb

Dread attends the unknown.

—Nadine Gordimer, 1998

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

—Anatole France, 1881

Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.

—Anthony Doerr, 2006

If not us, who? If not now, when?

—Czech slogan, 1989

What man was ever content with one crime?

—Juvenal, c. 125

Cheating is more honorable than stealing. 

—German proverb

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

—Erich Fromm, 1941

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.

—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

—Paddy Chayefsky, 1976

There is a time to battle against nature, and a time to obey her. True wisdom lies in making the right choice.

—Arthur C. Clarke, 1979

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence, and they think they have seen something.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843