One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Quotes
Man is a troublesome animal and therefore is not very manageable.
—Plato, c. 349 BCPower is so apt to be insolent, and Liberty to be saucy, that they are very seldom upon good terms.
—George Savile, c. 1690No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.
—Woodrow Wilson, 1915Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.
—Samuel Johnson, 1771A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
—Amiri Baraka, 1962Time’s ruins build eternity’s mansions.
—James Joyce, 1922All law is of necessity defective in the beginning.
—Han Yu, c. 800A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
—George Eliot, 1876The fundamental concept in social science is power, in the same sense in which energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
—Bertrand Russell, 1938We 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, 1690The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 500 BCLuck, in the great game of war, is undoubtedly lord of all.
—Arthur Griffiths, 1899