Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.
—Laozi, c. 500 BC
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Quotes
The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
—George Santayana, 1905Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations—wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
—Edmund Burke, 1795The fear of the Lord is true wisdom, and he who hath it not can in no way penetrate the true secrets of magic.
—Abraham the Jew, c. 1400Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
—James Madison, 1794The tune I remember, could I but keep the words.
—Virgil, 38 BCNo wise man ever wished to be younger.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706What is the city but the people?
—William Shakespeare, 1608Luck is believing you’re lucky.
—William Carlos Williams, 1947Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
—Anacharsis, c. 550 BCWhy 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, 1787Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. It is the past, not the dizzy present, that is the best door to the future.
—Camille Paglia, 1992A school without grades must have been concocted by someone who was drunk on nonalcoholic wine.
—Karl Kraus, 1909