Archive

Quotes

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

Divine nature gave the fields; human art built the cities.

—Marcus Terentius Varro, c. 70 BC

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

—Willem de Kooning, 1949

Man 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, 1819

The home is a human institution. All human institutions are open to improvement.

—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1903

I am a living symbol of the white man’s fear.

—Winnie Mandela, 1985

Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?

—Brooks Atkinson, 1940

The enlightened man says: I am body entirely and nothing beside.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BC

There is a demon who puts wings on certain tales and launches them like eagles out into space.

—Alexandre Dumas, 1846

Time is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.

—François-René de Chateaubriand, c. 1820

Diseases, at least many of them, are like human beings. They are born, they flourish, and they die.

—David Riesman, 1937