QOTD category archive

Shannon Purser:

You never think about someone dressing up as you for Halloween.

Robert van Gulik:

. . . just enough is better than too little.

van Gulik, Robert, The Chinese Maze Murders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 103.

Neil Dudgeon, in the voice of Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby:

That is a sense of community, Jones. One goes mad, they all go mad.

June Whitfield, in the voice of Jane Marple:

I’m afraid that, after observing human nature as long as I have done, one gets not to expect much from it.

Werner Herzog:

I am fascinated by the idea that our civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

Kerry Greenwood, in the voice Tom Ventura:

I remember being bored. It was nice. I didn’t appreciate it at the time.

Greenwood, Kerry, Murder in the Dark (Scottsdale, AZ: Poisoned Pen Press, 2009), p. 5

Peter Ustinov:

Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

Alexis de Tocqueville:

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

Dick Cavett:

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.

Keri Smith:

In order to be who you are as a human being, you need to be willing to upset people.

Kenneth L. Pike:

Nobody is as good as he thinks he is.

Chris Hedges:

The relationship between those who are constantly watched and tracked and those who watch and track them is the relationship between masters and slaves.

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E. B. White:

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

Abba Eban:

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

Paul Theroux:

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.

Lionel Shriver:

Reality doesn’t have to be plausible. Reality can be as preposterous as it pleases.

Thomas Sowell:

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

Kerry Greenwood:

Mrs. West said to Phyrne, “I’ve decided on my costume, Miss Fisher. . . . Circe. She was a sorceress in the old days, that’s what Jack said.”

“She turned men into pigs,” said Phyrne. “Not a long journey in some cases.”

Greenwood, Kerry, Death by Water (Scottsdale, AZ: Poisoned Pen Press, 2010), p. 159.

Henry David Thoreau:

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Patrick Stewart, in the voice of Captain Jean-Luc Picard:

To instantly tranform a society with new technology would be harmful . . . destructive.

Afterthought:

I suspect that, when Picard uttered those words, he did not expect them to become manifest on Earth four centuries before he said them.