People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.
—James Baldwin, 1953
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Quotes
Fortune resists half-hearted prayers.
—Ovid, 8Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.
—Ulysses S. Grant, 1877If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.
—Samuel Beckett, 1951If the heavens were all parchment, and the trees of the forest all pens, and every human being were a scribe, it would still be impossible to record all that I have learned from my teachers.
—Jochanan ben Zakkai, c. 75The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sightseeing.”
—Daniel Boorstin, 1961What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1850If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.
—Martial, c. 86The various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.
—Edward Gibbon, 1776Oligopoly, plutocracy, kleptocracy: All things that are good for a shareholder.
—James J. Cramer, 2006In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.
—Francis Grose, 1787Egypt was the mother of magicians.
—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200Animals are good to think with.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1962