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Quotes

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.

—John F. Kennedy, 1960

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

—St. Jerome, 395

I have seen the science I worshipped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

—Charles Lindbergh, 1948

The period of a [Persian] boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and he is taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth.

—Herodotus, c. 440 BC

From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.

—Herman Melville, 1851

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

Diseases are not immutable entities but dynamic social constructions that have biographies of their own.

—Robert P. Hudson, 1983

When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”

—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911

Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.

—Anaïs Nin, 1939

People react to fear, not love—they don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.

—Richard Nixon, 1975

Once suspicion is aroused, everything feeds it.

—Amelia Edith Barr, 1885

Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches?

—Henry Ward Beecher, 1862

There is a kind of revolution of so general a character that it changes the mental tastes as well as the fortunes of the world.

—La Rochefoucauld, 1665