The Quotes canon
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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.
American Revolutionary Period62 quotes
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787A government of laws, and not of men. — John Adams · 1775Why 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 · 1787All 62 quotes →The Renaissance53 quotes
All rising to great place is by a winding stair. — Francis Bacon · 1625Chiefly, the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands. — Francis Bacon · 1625The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears. — Francis Bacon · 1625Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. — Francis Bacon · 1625God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures. — Francis Bacon · 1625I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580All 53 quotes →Age of Enlightenment26 quotes
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made. — Immanuel Kant · 1784Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. — Benjamin Franklin · 1755In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty. — David Hume · 1741The heart of man is made to reconcile contradictions. — David Hume · 1741Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses. — John Locke · 1690The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. — David Hume · 1776All 26 quotes →Classical antiquity13 quotes
The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. — PlutarchThere is no great genius without some touch of madness. — Aristotle · 60When the candles are out all women are fair. — Plutarch · 100This gives a great field for the flatterer in friendship, who finds a wonderful base of operations in our self-love, which makes each person his own first and greatest flatterer. — Plutarch · 100Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men. — Seneca · 64Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest. — Bion of Borysthenes · 100All 13 quotes →Colonial America3 quotes
Remember that Time is Money. — Benjamin Franklin · 1748That 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 · 1731I 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 · 1766Early Christianity1 quote
A law that is not just does not seem to me to be a law. — St. Augustine · 389