Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant, 1784
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Quotes
Men are merriest when they are from home.
—William Shakespeare, 1599All 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, 1977To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.
—Fernando Pessoa, c. 1935I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
—Albert Camus, 1957Better a thousand enemies outside the house than one inside.
—Arabic proverbWhat mighty contests rise from trivial things.
—Alexander Pope, 1712Too many people have decided to do without generosity in order to practice charity.
—Albert Camus, 1956Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.
—Horace Walpole, 1745An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1746In every man is a wild beast; most of them don’t know how to hold it back, and the majority give it full rein when they are not restrained by terror of law.
—Frederick the Great, 1759It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to regard them merely as so much muscle or physical power.
—Pope Leo XIII, 1891Does anybody really want to attend to cities other than to flee, fleece, privatize, butcher, or decimate them?
—Jane Holtz Kay, 1992