Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943
Archive
Quotes
To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
—Walter Pater, 1873I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. War is hell.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1879I love everyone now that I have gray hair.
—Polatkin, c. 1855Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.
—Zadie Smith, 2000The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1962Today’s friend may be tomorrow’s foe.
—Sophocles, 440 BCThe law’s made to take care o’ raskills.
—George Eliot, 1860Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
—Winston Churchill, 1939Most people who sneer at technology would starve to death if the engineering infrastructure were removed.
—Robert A. Heinlein, 1984Your body is the church where nature asks to be reverenced.
—Marquis de Sade, 1797Revolutions are always verbose.
—Leon Trotsky, 1933Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896