Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
—Alexander Hamilton, 1787
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Quotes
I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1855I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool than I am.
—Alice James, 1889It seems to me that we all look at nature too much and live with her too little.
—Oscar Wilde, 1897They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.
—Martin Luther, c. 1530Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
—Robert Wilson, 1991Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897Fear has a smell, as love does.
—Margaret Atwood, 1972At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
—Colette, 1944Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the grand climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.
—Jean Baudrillard, 1987He who treats another human being as divine thereby assigns to himself the relative status of a child or an animal.
—E. R. Dodds, 1951