Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
—Rudy Giuliani, 1999
Archive
Quotes
The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object.
—Hannah Arendt, 1972The 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 BCNo punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
—Hannah Arendt, 1963Friendship was given by nature to be an assistant to virtue, not a companion to vice.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 45 BCIf one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it by conversation.
—Oscar Wilde, 1890Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCI never yet could make out why men are so fond of hunting; they often hurt themselves, often spoil good horses, and tear up the fields—and all for a hare or a fox or a stag that they could get more easily some other way.
—Anna Sewell, 1877It’s the end of the world every day, for someone.
—Margaret Atwood, 2000Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.
—Jacob Burckhardt, c. 1875An ape will be an ape, though clad in purple.
—Erasmus, 1511Memory is necessary for all operations of reasoning.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1658Diseases are not immutable entities but dynamic social constructions that have biographies of their own.
—Robert P. Hudson, 1983