Archive

Quotes

A broken friendship may be soldered but will never be sound.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732

Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it—have not prophesied that the world would wake up to find its throat cut in consequence.

—James Russell Lowell, 1884

Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”

—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790

The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his command.

—Alexander of Tralles, c. 600

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence university education.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

—Thomas Hobbes, 1679

Educate people without religion and you make them but clever devils.

—Arthur Wellesley, c. 1830

It’s frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself… it seems unfair. You can’t assume the responsibility for everything you do—or don’t do.

—Simone de Beauvoir, 1966

It’s the educated barbarian who is the worst: he knows what to destroy.

—Helen MacInnes, 1963

The land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.

—The Bible

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BC

But look, our seas are what we make of them, full of fish or not, opaque or transparent, red or black, high or smooth, narrow or bankless—and we are ourselves sea, sand, coral, seaweed, beaches, tides, swimmers, children, waves.

—Hélène Cixous, 1976

The human working stock is of interest only insofar as it is profitable.

—Simone de Beauvoir, 1970