Pride and excess bring disaster for man.
—Xunzi, 250 BC
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Quotes
I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That’s a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.
—Philip K. Dick, 1972Good fortune is light as a feather, but nobody knows how to hold it up. Misfortune is heavy as the earth, but nobody knows how to stay out of its way.
—Zhuangzi, c. 300 BCWhat sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
—Joseph Addison, 1711The various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.
—Edward Gibbon, 1776The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
—Edward VIII, 1957God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out.
—Arthur Koestler, 1967The universe is an object of thought at least as much as it is a means of satisfying needs.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1962People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
—Edmund Burke, 1790Man’s great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.
—Lewis Mumford, 1962The law is far, the fist is near.
—Korean proverbSuffering has its limit, but fears are endless.
—Pliny the Younger, c. 108Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.
—Voltaire, 1764