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Quotes

Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

—William James, 1902

I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.

—David Hume, 1751

Give us this day our television, and an automobile, but deliver us from freedom.

—Jean-Luc Godard, 1966

Plagues are as certain as death and taxes.

—Richard Krause, 1982

What touches all shall be approved by all.

—Edward I, 1295

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837

Vox populi, vox humbug.

—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863

Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.

—Zadie Smith, 2000

One thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

A college degree is a social certificate, not a proof of competence.

—Elbert Hubbard, 1911

Without a decisive naval force, we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.

—George Washington, 1781

What is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.

—John Ruskin, 1860