Before the earth could become an industrial garbage can, it had first to become a research laboratory.
—Theodore Roszak, 1972
Archive
Quotes
Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevist forever.
—Vladimir Lenin, 1923See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
—Robert Burton, c. 1620Refrigerators and television sets, or even rockets sent to the moon, do not change man into God.
—Czesław Miłosz, 1960For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
—Herman Melville, 1851When arms speak, the laws are silent.
—Cicero, 52 BCWhen one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down diversions wherever they are offered.
—Alice Hegan Rice, 1917The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1957The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967Shamelessness is the shame of being without shame.
—Mencius, c. 290 BCThe greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended—and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.
—Robert Frost, 1939It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.
—Cicero, c. 44 BCIf we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.
—Henry James, 1884