On no other stage are the scenes shifted with a swiftness so like magic as on the great stage of history when once the hour strikes.
—Edward Bellamy, 1888
Archive
Quotes
Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevist forever.
—Vladimir Lenin, 1923Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
—W.H. Auden, c. 1940I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.
—Herman Melville, 1853It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.
—Quintus Fabius Maximus, c. 203 BCIt is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
—Frederick Douglass, 1852In 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, 1759Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943I cannot live without books, but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1815The only justification of rebellion is success.
—Thomas B. Reed, 1878How sweet it is to have people point and say, “There he is.”
—Persius, c. 60