A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.
—David Foster Wallace, 2000
Archive
Quotes
Divine nature gave the fields; human art built the cities.
—Marcus Terentius Varro, c. 70 BCDemocracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.
—Willem de Kooning, 1949Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
—William Hazlitt, 1819The home is a human institution. All human institutions are open to improvement.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1903I am a living symbol of the white man’s fear.
—Winnie Mandela, 1985Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?
—Brooks Atkinson, 1940The enlightened man says: I am body entirely and nothing beside.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.
—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BCThere is a demon who puts wings on certain tales and launches them like eagles out into space.
—Alexandre Dumas, 1846Time is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.
—François-René de Chateaubriand, c. 1820Diseases, at least many of them, are like human beings. They are born, they flourish, and they die.
—David Riesman, 1937