Most people who sneer at technology would starve to death if the engineering infrastructure were removed.
—Robert A. Heinlein, 1984
Archive
Quotes
Let us leave this Europe which never stops talking of Man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, at every corner of the world.
—Frantz Fanon, 1961Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
—Jane Austen, 1815The great difficulty lies in trying to transpose last night’s moment to a day which has no knowledge of it.
—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that it is too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure frankly as a test of value.
—Rebecca West, 1939Do you suppose that will change the sense of the morals, the fact that we can’t use morals as a means of judging the city because we couldn’t stand it? And that we’re changing our whole moral system to suit the fact that we’re living in a ridiculous way?
—Philip Johnson, 1965Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
—George Eliot, 1876You are dust, and to dust you shall return.
—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BCAnimals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857Secrecy lies at the very core of power.
—Elias Canetti, 1960Whenever there is excess, an ax remedies it.
—Sumerian proverbThousands have lived without love, not one without water.
—W.H. Auden, 1957The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580