A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.
—Christina Stead, 1938
Archive
Quotes
Animals are good to think with.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1962We do not suffer by accident.
—Jane Austen, 1813What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968One’s body, hair, and skin are a gift from one’s parents—do not dare to allow them to be harmed.
—Classic of Filial Piety, c. 200 BCResearch is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.
—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942Children and fools cannot lie.
—John Heywood, 1546Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1849We never are definitely right; we can only be sure we are wrong.
—Richard P. Feynman, 1965Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?
—Alfred Hitchcock, 1962Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.
—Emma Goldman, 1910Happiness is a warm puppy.
—Charles Schulz, 1971