The sick man is the parasite of society.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889
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Quotes
Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.
—Epictetus, c. 100It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interest.
—Adam Smith, 1776The state dictates and coerces; religion teaches and persuades. The state enacts laws; religion gives commandments. The state is armed with physical force and makes use of it if need be; the force of religion is love and benevolence.
—Moses Mendelssohn, 1783Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?
—Tertullian, c. 215Dreams have always been my friend, full of information, full of warnings.
—Doris Lessing, 1994Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCThe waters are nature’s storehouse, in which she locks up her wonders.
—Izaak Walton, 1653Everyone should know nowadays the unimportance of the photographic in art—that truth, life, or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest, in essence, only through transformation, through changing into other forms than those which were merely present in appearance.
—Tennessee Williams, 1944Enemies are so stimulating.
—Katharine Hepburn, 1969Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.
—Albert Einstein, 1929You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
—Leon TrotskyWhen poets don’t know what to say and have completely given up on the play, just like a finger, they lift the machine and the spectators are satisfied.
—Antiphanes, c. 350 BC