We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
—John Locke, 1690
Archive
Quotes
In my dreams I sleep with everybody.
—Anaïs Nin, 1933Today’s city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.
—Martin Oppenheimer, 1969You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars.
—Thomas Traherne, c. 1670Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCOne of the important requirements for learning how to cook is that you also learn how to eat.
—Julia Child, 2001An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
—Henry Clay, 1842One need merely visit the marketplace and the graveyard to determine whether a city is in both physical and metaphysical order.
—Ernst Jünger, 1977In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.
—Mark Twain, 1897The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1776If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1843Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so shall you come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838