Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.
—Arthur Miller, 2001
Archive
Quotes
See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
—Robert Burton, c. 1620There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1790We want a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of engineers.
—Winston Churchill, 1948The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840As is the face, so is the mind.
—Roman proverbWhat is the city but the people?
—William Shakespeare, 1608Whatever the pace of this technological revolution may be, the direction is clear: the lower rungs of the economic ladder are being lopped off.
—Bayard Rustin, 1965I always think of nature as a great spectacle, somewhat resembling the opera.
—Bernard de Fontenelle, 1686In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
—Colette, 1944The right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing else than the right to disillusionment phrased in another way.
—Aldous Huxley, 1956Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
—Lucretius, c. 58 BCReading is learning, but applying is also learning and the more important kind of learning at that.
—Mao Zedong, 1936