Archive

Quotes

I used to think that everyone was just being funny. But now I don’t know. I mean, how can you tell?

—Andy Warhol, 1970

All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1890

A dog starved at his master’s gate / Predicts the ruin of the state.

—William Blake, 1807

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

—Gore Vidal, 1973

As is the face, so is the mind.

—Roman proverb

I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That’s a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.

—Philip K. Dick, 1972

It is hard when nature does not respect your intentions, and she never does exactly respect them.

—Wendell Berry, 1985

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

And to our age’s drowsy blood / Still shouts the inspiring sea.

—James Russell Lowell, 1848

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1898

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

—Galen, c. 175

Trade is a social act.

—John Stuart Mill, 1859

If there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.

—Michael Harrington, 1962