Archive

Quotes

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

—Francis Bacon, 1615

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

—Mitch Hedberg, 1999

Wherever commerce prevails there will be an inequality of wealth, and wherever the latter does a simplicity of manners must decline.

—James Madison, 1783

Rivalry adds so much to the charms of one’s conquests.

—Louisa May Alcott, 1866

The sole business of a seaman onshore who has to go to sea again is to take as much pleasure as he can.

—Leigh Hunt, 1820

The slander of some people is as great a recommendation as the praise of others.

—Henry Fielding, 1730

Strangers are an endangered species.

—Adrienne Rich, 1980

I have often been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.

—Thucydides, c. 404 BC

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

—Ian Dury, 1977

The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive. 

—Samuel Butler, c. 1888

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1755

Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!

—Cotton Mather, 1728