The people are the foundation of the state. If the foundations are firm, the state will be tranquil.
—Classic of History, c. 400 BC
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Quotes
It is permitted to learn even from an enemy.
—Ovid, c. 8If both what is before and what is after are in this same “now,” things which happened ten thousand years ago would be simultaneous with what has happened today, and nothing would be before or after anything else.
—Aristotle, c. 330 BCI rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
—Orson Welles, 1953I have often said that if I wish to name-drop, I have only to list my ex-friends.
—Norman Podhoretz, 1999I think we are inexterminable, like flies and bedbugs.
—Robert Frost, 1959Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal.
—David Hume, 1742The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.
—Gaston Bachelard, 1960The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. We go on a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences—to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others.
—William Hazlitt, 1822I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1789Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
—H.G. Wells, 1920If anything affects your eye, you hasten to have it removed; if anything affects your mind, you postpone the cure for a year.
—Horace, 20 BCHow can we bear misfortune most easily? If we see our enemies faring worse.
—Thales of Miletus, c. 585 BC