Quotes · Skopia

215 quotes

In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain... And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651 And with the guts of the last priest Let's wring the neck of the last king. — Denis Diderot · 1772 I think, therefore I am. — Rene Descartes · 1637 The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. — Blaise Pascal · 1662 Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love. — Adam Smith · 1759 Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made. — Immanuel Kant · 1784 All 51 quotes →

Political literature28 quotes

In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain... And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651 Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690 No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651 Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. — Benjamin Franklin · 1755 A state without some means of change is without the means of its own conservation. — Edmund Burke · 1790 Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions. — Edmund Burke · 1790 All 28 quotes →

Satire14 quotes

If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? — Voltaire · 1759 I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away? — Voltaire · 1759 Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. — Voltaire · 1759 There’s none so blind as they that won’t see. — Jonathan Swift · 1738 Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old. — Jonathan Swift · 1727 She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying. — Voltaire · 1759 All 14 quotes →

Biography11 quotes

Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place. — Samuel Johnson · 1771 I will be conquered; I will not capitulate. — Samuel Johnson · 1784 Most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things. — Samuel Johnson · 1769 All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare. — Samuel Johnson · 1778 Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. — Samuel Johnson · 1777 So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge. — Samuel Johnson · 1776 All 11 quotes →

Historical literature9 quotes

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery. — Edward Gibbon · 1781 All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance. — Edward Gibbon · 1789 Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind. — Edward Gibbon · 1776 Whoever would lie usefully should lie seldom. — Lord Hervey · 1743 The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common, quality of human nature. — Edward Gibbon · 1776 There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations in opposition to their inclination and interest. — Edward Gibbon · 1781 All 9 quotes →

Political speech6 quotes

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. — Edmund Burke · 1784 Individuals pass like shadows; but the commonwealth is fixed and stable. — Edmund Burke · 1780 Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. — Edmund Burke · 1774 There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity, — the Law of Nature and of Nations. — Edmund Burke · 1794 The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. — Edmund Burke · 1771 Taxation and representation are inseparable... Whatever is a man's own, is absolutely his own; no man hath a right to take it from him withough his consent either expressed by himself or representative; whoever attempts to do it, attempts an injury; whoever does it, commits a robbery; he throws down and destroys the distinction between liberty and slavery. — Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden · 1766

Legal writing4 quotes

All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer. — William Blackstone · 1769 That the king can do no wrong, is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution. — William Blackstone · 1765 The offense of riding or going armed, with dangerous or unusual weapons, is a crime against the public peace, by terrifying the good people of the land. — William Blackstone · 1769 In all tyrannical governments, the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty. — William Blackstone · 1769

Economic literature3 quotes

Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love. — Adam Smith · 1759 Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. — Adam Smith · 1776 People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. — Adam Smith · 1776

Scientific literature3 quotes

Moreover, in a system of two bodies mutually acting upon each other, since the differences between their centres and the common centre of gravity of both are reciprocally as the bodies, the relative motions of those bodies, whether of approaching to or of receding from that centre, will be equal junong themselves. Therefore since the changes which happen to motions are equal and directed to contrary parts. — Isaac Newton · 1687 This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being... This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler. — Isaac Newton · 1713 Errors are not in the art, but in the artificers. — Isaac Newton · 1687

Autobiography and memoir2 quotes

The abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life. — Edward Gibbon · 1794 It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. — Edward Gibbon · 1794

Feminist literature1 quote

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792

Tragic play1 quote

The more foreigners I saw, the more I loved my homeland. — Pierre-Laurent Buirette de Belloy · 1765

Travel writing1 quote

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations. — Samuel Johnson · 1773

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