If a king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.
—Mencius, c. 330 BC
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Quotes
Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
—Alexander Hamilton, 1787Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
—William Shakespeare, 1603In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.
—Novalis, c. 1798Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1790The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, / And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
—Abraham Cowley, 1656Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.
—Juvenal, c. 121The mere existence of nuclear weapons by the thousands is an incontrovertible sign of human insanity.
—Isaac Asimov, 1988I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.
—John Paul Jones, 1778I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in intoxication.
—Walt Whitman, 1842Everybody says it; and what everybody says must be true.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1844He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
—Francis Bacon, 1625There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.
—Francis Bacon, 1625