There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.
—Karl Kraus, 1909
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Quotes
I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
—Federico Fellini, c. 1950The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851We must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.
—John Winthrop, 1630As man disappears from sight, the land remains.
—Maori proverbOne sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1911If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
—Thomas Paine, 1778Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959History in its broadest aspect is a record of man’s migrations from one environment to another.
—Ellsworth Huntington, 1919For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
—Richard Feynman, 1986Revolutions never go backward.
—Thomas Skidmore, 1829A passion for horses, players, and gladiators seems to be the epidemic folly of the times. The child receives it in his mother’s womb; he brings it with him into the world, and in a mind so possessed, what room for science, or any generous purpose?
—Tacitus, c. 100Jesters do oft prove prophets.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1605