Archive

Quotes

Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.

—Jacob Burckhardt, c. 1875

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

—Mao Zedong, 1938

Ocean. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them.

—Miriam Makeba, 1988

To teach is to learn twice over.

—Joseph Joubert, c. 1805

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

—Erica Jong, 1973

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

—André Breton, 1937

When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”

—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911

I have seen the science I worshipped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

—Charles Lindbergh, 1948

I am not Athenian or Greek but a citizen of the world.

—Socrates, c. 420 BC

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.

—Woody Allen, 1979

We are to go to law never to revenge, but only to repair.

—Samuel Pepys, 1661

The law looks at no one’s face.

—Gabriel Okara, 1964