Quotes · Skopia

186 quotes

I came, I saw, I conquered. — Julius Caesar · 46 BC Hope is a waking dream. — Aristotle · 240 One soul dwelling in two bodies. — Aristotle Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous. — Pericles · 430 BC It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. — Charles Dickens · 1859 Old to grow, but ever learning. — Solon · 119 All 186 quotes →

Political literature12 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 · 1852 Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. — Karl Marx · 1852 If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 1973 Freedom is always freedom for the one who thinks differently. — Rosa Luxemburg · 1919 It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil. — Hannah Arendt · 1963 It is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves. — C.L.R. James · 1938 All 12 quotes →

Biography8 quotes

I came, I saw, I conquered. — Julius Caesar · 46 BC One soul dwelling in two bodies. — Aristotle The die is cast. — Julius Caesar · 49 BC Learning is an ornament in prosperity, and a refuge in adversity. — Aristotle Let them hate, so long as they fear. — Caligula Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you. — Suetonius · 52 All 8 quotes →

Economic literature7 quotes

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation...That incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942 Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942 Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942 In one important sense, Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942 Marxism is essentially a product of the bourgeois mind. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942 Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942 All 7 quotes →

Political speech6 quotes

We are lovers of beauty without extravagance, and lovers of wisdom without unmanliness. Wealth is to us is not mere material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real degradation to make no effort to overcome. — Pericles · 430 BC But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it. — Pericles · 430 BC Our constitution is named a democracy, because it is in the hands not of the few but of the many. But our laws secure equal justice for all in their private disputes, and our public opinion welcomes and honors talent in every branch of achievement, not for any sectional reason but on grounds of excellence alone. And as we give free play to all in our public life, so we care the same spirit into our daily relations with one another... Open and friendly in our private intercourse, in our public acts we keep strictly within the control of law. We acknowledge the restraint of authority, and to the laws, more especially to those which offer protection to the oppressed and those unwritten ordinances whose transgression brings admitted shame. — Pericles · 430 BC Fix your eyes on the greatness of Athens as you have it before you day by day, fall in love with her, and when you feel her great, remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action... So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all memorials, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes by. For the whole earth is the memorial of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives. — Pericles · 430 BC We secure our friends not by accepting favors, but by doing them. — Pericles · 430 BC For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial. — Pericles · 430 BC

Feminist literature4 quotes

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons hitherto brought forward in explanation of this fact has seemed adequate. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949 When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949 To tell the truth, one is not born a genius: one becomes a genius. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949 It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949

Philosophical literature4 quotes

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1832 The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1832 Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition... The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949 The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body. — Michel Foucault · 1975

Autobiography and memoir3 quotes

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish. — Julius Caesar · 49 BC Gaul as a whole is divided into three parts. — Julius Caesar · 49 BC Loneliness is an aspect of the land. All things in the plain are isolate; there is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man. To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun. — N. Scott Momaday · 1967

Religious literature1 quote

Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones. — Sigmund Freud · 1939

Scientific literature1 quote

As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice-there is no standard higher than the the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists. — Thomas Kuhn · 1962

Sociology1 quote

Where torture has been long applied we find that it is developed to grades of incredible horror. — William Graham Sumner · 1906

Travel writing1 quote

The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire. — Bernard De Voto · 1943

War1 quote

The wars fought by human beings are stimulated as a rule primarily by the same instincts as the voracity of the sea slug. — Edmund Wilson · 1962

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