There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.
—Karl Kraus, 1909
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Quotes
It is very foolish to attack one’s enemy openly if one can injure him in secret.
—Giambattista Giraldi, 1543Words pay no debts.
—William Shakespeare, 1601Many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea. It is down there that the sea folk live.
—Hans Christian Andersen, 1837Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal, 1981We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.
—Ida M. Tarbell, 1904A machine is a slave that neither brings nor bears degradation.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844Attacks on me will do no harm, and silent contempt is the best answer to them.
—James Monroe, 1808Friends are ourselves.
—John Donne, 1603The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
—Joseph Conrad, 1899God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.
—Pablo Picasso, 1964The misfortune of the man of color is having been enslaved. The misfortune and inhumanity of the white man are having killed man somewhere.
—Frantz Fanon, 1952We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is, at most, time’s carcass.
—Karl Marx, 1847