QOTD category archive

Walter Bagehot:

An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.

Richard Stallman:

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

Franz Kafta:

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

Charles Caleb Colton, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.

Rebecca West:

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

Thomas Paine, via PoliticalProf:

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Jim Bouton, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many players on the field?

John Mortimer, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.

Wernher von Braun, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions.

Eric Hoffer, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword and blood.

Kingsley Amis, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.

Leonardo da Vinci, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

We know well that mistakes are more easily detected in the works of others than in one’s own.

Charles de Lint, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

As far as I’m concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary.

Thomas Jefferson, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.

Clare Booth Luce, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable.

Harold Stassen, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Whoever kindles the flames of intolerance is lighting a fire underneath his own home.

Napoleon Bonaparte:

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

John Maynard Keynes:

If I owe you a pound, I have a problem; but if I owe you a million, the problem is yours.

Walter Reuther:

If you’re not big enough to lose, you’re not big enough to win.

Eugene Debs:

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.