Fate leads the willing and drags along those who hang back.
—Cleanthes, c. 250 BC
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Quotes
A brilliant boxing match, quicksilver in its motions, transpiring far more rapidly than the mind can absorb, can have the power that Emily Dickinson attributed to great poetry: you know it’s great when it takes the top of your head off.
—Joyce Carol Oates, 1987I have always been of the mind that in a democracy, manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie knife.
—James Russell Lowell, 1873Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
—Mao Zedong, 1938I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.
—Nicharchus, c. 90The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.
—Edward O. Wilson, 2009One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
—E.B. White, 1977Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer.
—William Cecil, Lord Burghley, c. 1555All law is of necessity defective in the beginning.
—Han Yu, c. 800The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
—Laurence Sterne, 1760Knowledge itself is power.
—Francis Bacon, 1597It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Doing research on the web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
—Roger Ebert, 1998