Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC
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Quotes
Among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism.
—Immanuel Kant, 1781All our enemies are mortal.
—Paul Valéry, 1942Casting lots causes contentions to cease, and keeps the mighty apart.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCAny city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.
—Plato, c. 378 BCThe one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.
—Salvador Dalí, 1953This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
—Abraham Lincoln, 1861The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
—Agnes Repplier, 1929A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.
—Pliny the Elder, c. 77All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1978Time will reveal everything. It is a babbler and speaks even when not asked.
—Euripides, c. 425 BCMan has here two and a half minutes—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.
—Jean Paul, 1795The workers are the saviors of society, the redeemers of the race.
—Eugene V. Debs, 1905