The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Politics69 quotes
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. — James Madison · 1787It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison · 1788All 69 quotes →Political theory49 quotes
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. — James Madison · 1787It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison · 1788Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison · 1788All 49 quotes →Human nature17 quotes
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made. — Immanuel Kant · 1784Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison · 1788As long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable. — Aldous Huxley · 1937That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. — Aldous Huxley · 1956The heart of man is made to reconcile contradictions. — David Hume · 1741All 17 quotes →Freedom16 quotes
I am condemned to be free. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1943Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. — Benjamin Franklin · 1755A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for...is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free. — John Stuart Mill · 1862Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be. — James Baldwin · 1961Liberty consists in doing what one desires. — John Stuart Mill · 1859In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty. — David Hume · 1741All 16 quotes →The human condition15 quotes
Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea. — John Stuart Mill · 1873Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us die. — Albert Camus · 1953Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them. — Jonathan Franzen · 1996Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Old and young, we are all on our last cruise. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1881All 15 quotes →Art12 quotes
Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals. — Susan Sontag · 1973Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity. — Leo Tolstoy · 1897It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of Art. — Oscar Wilde · 1891No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. — Oscar Wilde · 1891In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art which belonged to all who could behold it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1860Even the most insensitive hit song enthusiast cannot always escape the feeling that the child with a sweet tooth comes to know in the candy store. — Theodor Adorno · 1938All 12 quotes →Progress12 quotes
Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison · 1788To think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration. — George Orwell · 1946Clinging to the past is the problem. Embracing change is the solution. — Gloria Steinem · 1994It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way. — Oscar Wilde · 1891The three great elements of modern civilisation, Gunpowder, Printing and the Protestant Religion. — Thomas Carlyle · 1827Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated. — Isaiah Berlin · 1976All 12 quotes →Marriage9 quotes
It happens as with the cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house. — John Stuart Mill · 1869No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is. — John Stuart Mill · 1869He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry, "A young man not yet, an elder man not at all." — Francis Bacon · 1625The moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence, when the most fundamental of the social relations is placed under the rule of equal justice, and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal in rights and in cultivation. — John Stuart Mill · 1869Marriage is like life in this-that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1876All 9 quotes →Revolution9 quotes
What is a rebel? A man who says no. — Albert Camus · 1951All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. — Havelock Ellis · 1922Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic. — Albert Camus · 1951Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution. — Hannah Arendt · 1970A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation. — Jose Ortega y Gasset · 1930All 9 quotes →Education8 quotes
The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. — PlutarchEducation is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. — Edward Everett · 1837Why then should women be denied the benefit of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God Almighty would never have given them capacities. — Daniel Defoe · 1697Education makes us what we are. — Claude Adrien Helvetius · 1758A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. — John Maynard Keynes · 1926A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another. — John Stuart Mill · 1859All 8 quotes →Oppression of women8 quotes
So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural. — John Stuart Mill · 1869The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement. — John Stuart Mill · 1869The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. — Virginia Woolf · 1929The generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal. — John Stuart Mill · 1869If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves? — Mary Astell · 1706What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing—the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others. — John Stuart Mill · 1869All 8 quotes →Checks and balances7 quotes
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. — James Madison · 1788The defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. — James Madison · 1788An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others. — James Madison · 1788In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. — James Madison · 1788All 7 quotes →Democracy7 quotes
What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of man's ideological evolution and the universalism of Western liberal democracy. — Francis Fukuyama · 1989It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic. — James Madison · 1788We may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior. — James Madison · 1788Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. — James Madison · 1787Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. — E.M. Forster · 1938A pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. — James Madison · 1787All 7 quotes →Downsides of wealth7 quotes
Why should man be in love with his fetters, though of gold? — Francis Bacon · 1626Prosperity doth best discover Vice; But Adversity doth best discover Vertue. — Francis Bacon · 1625The more money an American accumulates the less interesting he himself becomes. — Gore Vidal · 1972Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty. — Mary Astell · 1696Among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it. — G.K. Chesterton · 1912A great fortune is a great slavery. — Seneca · 44All 7 quotes →Government7 quotes
Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison · 1788Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison · 1788A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained. — James Madison · 1788The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. — James Madison · 1788I believe that in many cases the ideal size for the unit of control and organisation lies somewhere between the individual and the modern State. I suggest, therefore, that progress lies in the growth and the recognition of semi-autonomous bodies within the State. — John Maynard Keynes · 1926All 7 quotes →History7 quotes
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. — Karl Marx · 1852That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. — Aldous Huxley · 1956Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind. — W.H. Auden · 1962The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians. — William Ralph Inge · 1948The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. — Oscar Wilde · 1891History is the essence of innumerable Biographies. — Thomas Carlyle · 1830All 7 quotes →Law7 quotes
A government of laws, and not of men. — John Adams · 1775Integrity has no need of rules. — Albert Camus · 1942Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in. — William Shenstone · 1764A law that is not just does not seem to me to be a law. — St. Augustine · 389Every law is contrary to liberty. — Jeremy Bentham · 1832Laws are like Cobwebs, which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through. — Jonathan Swift · 1711All 7 quotes →Man and animals7 quotes
The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. — David Hume · 1776Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? — David Foster Wallace · 2004Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest. — Bion of Borysthenes · 100They that deny a God destroy a man's nobility, for certainly man is of a kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. — Francis Bacon · 1625A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? — Jeremy Bentham · 1789The ape, vilest of beasts, how like to us. — Quintus Ennius · 45 BCAll 7 quotes →Personal growth7 quotes
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise, they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a. M. Of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. — Joan Didion · 1968Virtue shuns ease as a companion... It demands a rough and thorny path. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Prosperity doth best discover Vice; But Adversity doth best discover Vertue. — Francis Bacon · 1625Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1831Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them-the one, in fact, which is not a mask. — W.H. Auden · 1973Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. — Leo Tolstoy · 1900All 7 quotes →Political faction7 quotes
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. — James Madison · 1787By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. — James Madison · 1787The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. — James Madison · 1787The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. — James Madison · 1787Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. — James Madison · 1788The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. — James Madison · 1787All 7 quotes →Reason7 quotes
All that is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation. — Charles Baudelaire · 1863Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either. — G.K. Chesterton · 1926Opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, tho' obscure, regions of philosophy. — David Hume · 1757Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties. — John Locke · 1690There are very few lovers of truth for truth-sake, even among those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it, loves not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end. — John Locke · 1690Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1928All 7 quotes →Books6 quotes
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. — Francis Bacon · 1625Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1881After love, book collecting is the most exhilarating sport of all. — A.S.W. Rosenbach · 1936All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time. — John Ruskin · 1864The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves. — E.M. Forster · 1944Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered. — W.H. Auden · 1962Capitalism6 quotes
Remember that Time is Money. — Benjamin Franklin · 1748There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down. — David Ricardo · 1822Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. — Edward Abbey · 1984When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals... The love of money as a possession—as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life—will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. — John Maynard Keynes · 1930Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past. — Theodor Adorno · 1959Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits. — David Ricardo · 1822Freedom of speech and expression6 quotes
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. — John Stuart Mill · 1859An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer. — John Stuart Mill · 1859That if all Printers were determin’d not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed. — Benjamin Franklin · 1731If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. — John Stuart Mill · 1859You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him. — John Morley · 1874The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. — John Stuart Mill · 1859Legal theory6 quotes
The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. — George Orwell · 1945Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood. — James Madison · 1788The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figure-the figure of "The Reasonable Man.".... He is an ideal, a standard, the embodiment of all those qualities which we demand of the good citizen. — A.P. Herbert · 1935Life6 quotes
Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more. — Christopher Hitchens · 2007To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Living is my job and my art. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580There is no love of life without despair of life. — Albert Camus · 1937The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use you make of them. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1881Poverty6 quotes
It would be hard to find a single instance of a direct assault by positive effort upon poverty, vice, and misery which has not either failed or, if it has not failed directly and entirely, has not entailed other evils greater than the one which it removed. — William Graham Sumner · 1881Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did. — James Baldwin · 1961Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. — James Baldwin · 1960I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. — Benjamin Franklin · 1766It's no disgrace t'be poor, but it might as well be. — Frank McKinney Hubbard · 1911There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Science6 quotes
Science is a cemetery of dead ideas. — Miguel de Unamuno · 1913In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." — Stephen Jay Gould · 1983The pursuit of scientific truth, detached from the practical interests of everyday life, ought to be treated as sacred by every government. — Albert Einstein · 1934Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods. — W.H. Auden · 1962Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club. — T.H. Huxley · 1880The priest persuades humble people to endure their hard lot; the politician urges them to rebel against it; and the scientist thinks of a method that does away with the hard lot altogether. — Max Perutz · 1989American politics5 quotes
The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? — James Madison · 1787The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. — James Madison · 1788The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. — James Madison · 1787As the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788Authenticity5 quotes
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others. — Francis Bacon · 1625To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home. — Joan Didion · 1961Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. — Oscar Wilde · 1891