Democracy cannot be static. Whatever is static is dead.
—Eleanor Roosevelt, 1942
Archive
Quotes
Profit is profit even in Mecca.
—Nigerian proverbWhat, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.
—Robert Burton, 1621A dog starved at his master’s gate / Predicts the ruin of the state.
—William Blake, 1807One man’s loss is another man’s profit.
—Michel de Montaigne, c. 1580Like a broken gong be still, be silent. Know the stillness of freedom where there is no more striving.
—Siddhartha Gautama, c. 500 BCIt is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth.
—James Hutton, 1795Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
—G.C. Lichtenberg, c. 1780Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.
—Epictetus, c. 100We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them.
—Evelyn Waugh, 1963Man is a troublesome animal and therefore is not very manageable.
—Plato, c. 349 BCA brilliant boxing match, quicksilver in its motions, transpiring far more rapidly than the mind can absorb, can have the power that Emily Dickinson attributed to great poetry: you know it’s great when it takes the top of your head off.
—Joyce Carol Oates, 1987