Archive

Quotes

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.

—Bayard Rustin, 1986

I have been a stranger here in my own land all my life.

—Sophocles, c. 441 BC

Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.

—Arnold Toynbee, 1948

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

—Frank Zappa, 1989

New things are always ugly.

—Willa Cather, 1921

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

—Amiri Baraka, 1962

Friendship is not possible between two women, one of whom is very well dressed.

—Laurie Colwin, 1978

The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.

—Susanne K. Langer, 1962

Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1911

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

—Margaret Mead, 1972

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

—Tertullian, c. 200