All that we know is nothing can be known.
—Lord Byron, 1812
Archive
Quotes
The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of a gun.
—P.G. Wodehouse, 1929If there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.
—Michael Harrington, 1962To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.
—Jean Genet, 1949This is not a clash between civilizations. It is a clash about civilization.
—Tony Blair, 2006Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.
—Pablo Picasso, 1929To be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it.
—John Ruskin, 1850A functioning police state needs no police.
—William S. Burroughs, 1959The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
—Hunter S. Thompson, 1971In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
—Colette, 1944It’s the end of the world every day, for someone.
—Margaret Atwood, 2000The more laws, the more lawbreakers.
—Tao Te Ching, c. 500 BC