It would be madness, and inconsistency, to suppose that things which have never yet been performed can be performed without employing some hitherto untried means.
—Francis Bacon, 1620
Archive
Quotes
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
—Samuel Johnson, 1776Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.
—Pablo Picasso, 1929Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.
—Leslie Jamison, 2020The fundamental concept in social science is power, in the same sense in which energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
—Bertrand Russell, 1938Understanding is a very dull occupation.
—Gertrude Stein, 1937Man’s great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.
—Lewis Mumford, 1962There is nothing sillier than a silly laugh.
—Catullus, c. 60 BCTo safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1678I know nothing about sex, because I was always married.
—Zsa Zsa GaborDemocracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.
—Margaret Halsey, 1946They say, “We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.” Yet, not true knowledge have they of this—only belief.
—The Qur’an, c. 620Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1928