Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC
Archive
Quotes
Someone will remember us
I say
even in another time.
Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations—wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
—Edmund Burke, 1795Rivalry is the whetstone of talent.
—Roman proverbCan we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?
—Tertullian, c. 215It is not right for a ruler who has the nation in his charge, a man with so much on his mind, to sleep all night.
—Homer, c. 750 BCIt is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.
—Lewis Strauss, 1954Sex: in America, an obsession; in other parts of the world, a fact.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962Seamen are the nearest to death and the furthest from God.
—Thomas Fuller, 1732Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?
—Brooks Atkinson, 1940What harm is there in getting knowledge and learning, were it from a sot, a pot, a fool, a winter mitten, or an old slipper?
—François Rabelais, 1533If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
—Thomas Paine, 1778What is the hardest task in the world? To think.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841