It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing—that’s the Lord’s test.
—Mahalia Jackson, 1966
Archive
Quotes
Where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
—George Santayana, c. 1905Good men must not obey the laws too well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the grand climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.
—Jean Baudrillard, 1987Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing—the rest is mere sheep herding.
—Ezra Pound, 1934Trade is a social act.
—John Stuart Mill, 1859Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe—though we didn’t know it at the time.
—Susan Sontag, 1973The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941Repetition is the mother of education.
—Jean Paul, 1807Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
—John F. Kennedy, 1962We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them.
—Evelyn Waugh, 1963Despotism achieves great things illegally; democracy doesn’t even take the trouble to achieve small things legally.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1831It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
—Frederick Douglass, 1852