Archive

Quotes

A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!

—Philip Roth, 1969

What is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.

—Theodore Roosevelt, 1916

Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1938

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Without virtue, both riches and honor, to me, seem like the passing cloud.

—Confucius, c. 350 BC

The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.

—Anaïs Nin, 1935

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

—Mao Zedong, 1938

Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.

—Robert Southey, 1809

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

—Henry Fielding, 1730

If I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.

—Reggie Jackson, 1976

A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

—Victor Hugo, 1862