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.
Dystopian fiction6 quotes
Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from. — Margaret Atwood · 1985When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that. — Margaret Atwood · 1985But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. — Margaret Atwood · 1985Don't let the bastards grind you down. — Margaret Atwood · 1985But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot. — Margaret Atwood · 1985What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. — Margaret Atwood · 1985Economic literature6 quotes
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1977It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. — Laurence J. Peter · 1969These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1955Sociology4 quotes
It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958Believe it or not-and I know that most people do not-violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence. — Steven Pinker · 2011These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958Folk music3 quotes
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in — Leonard Cohen · 1992Now, maybe there's a God above
As for me all I've ever learned from love
Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
But it's not a cry that you're hear tonight
It's not some pilgrim who claims to have seen the light
No, it's a cold and it's a very broken Hallelujah — Leonard Cohen · 1984Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours? — Gordon Lightfoot · 1976Rock music3 quotes
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot,
With a pink hotel,
A boutique, and a swinging hot spot. — Joni Mitchell · 1970It's better to burn out
Than to fade away. — Neil Young · 1978We are stardust,
We are golden,
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden. — Joni Mitchell · 1969Commencement address2 quotes
I wish people could realize all their dreams and wealth and fame so that they could see that it’s not where you’re going to find your sense of completion. — Jim Carrey · 2014The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder. — Glenn Gould · 1982Philosophical literature2 quotes
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. — Laurence J. Peter · 1969The medium is the message. — Marshall McLuhan · 1964Autobiography and memoir1 quote
My life has been a quest for knowledge and understanding, and I am nowhere near having achieved that. And it doesn’t bother me in the least. — Alex Trebek · 2020Folk1 quote
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly — Joni Mitchell · 1971Folk rock1 quote
Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours? — Gordon Lightfoot · 1976Hip hop1 quote
You only live once, that's the motto nigga YOLO — Drake · 2011Political literature1 quote
The march of social progress is like a long and straggling parade, with the seers and prophets at its head and a smug minority bringing up the rear. — Pierre Berton · 1968Political speech1 quote
The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt. — John Philpot Curran · 1816Pop1 quote
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly — Joni Mitchell · 1971Pop music1 quote
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight. — Bruce Cockburn · 1984Satire1 quote
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it. — Stephen Leacock · 1924Scientific literature1 quote
The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget. — William Osler · 1904