The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
James Madison38 quotes
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 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 · 1788The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. — James Madison · 1788All 38 quotes →Michel de Montaigne32 quotes
I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580It happens as with the cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580The easy, gentle and sloping path…is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580All 32 quotes →John Stuart Mill30 quotes
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. — John Stuart Mill · 1859A 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 · 1862Human 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 · 1873We 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 · 1859The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the cause of half their errors. — 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 · 1859All 30 quotes →Ralph Waldo Emerson28 quotes
Always do what you are afraid to do. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841Men are what their mothers made them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1860Our chief want in life is, somebody who shall make us do what we can. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1860Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1838All 28 quotes →Francis Bacon27 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 · 1625Hope is a good Break-fast, but it is a bad Supper. — Francis Bacon · 1625All 27 quotes →Alexander Hamilton24 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 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 · 1787The 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 · 1787Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787The vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788All 24 quotes →Oscar Wilde16 quotes
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. — Oscar Wilde · 1891To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. — Oscar Wilde · 1891It is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority. — Oscar Wilde · 1891It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of Art. — Oscar Wilde · 1891All 16 quotes →Bertrand Russell13 quotes
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. — Bertrand Russell · 1928The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. — Bertrand Russell · 1932Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. — Bertrand Russell · 1928It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. — Bertrand Russell · 1928Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. — Bertrand Russell · 1950Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. — Bertrand Russell · 1950All 13 quotes →George Orwell12 quotes
Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. — George Orwell · 1946To think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration. — George Orwell · 1946When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. — George Orwell · 1936In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. — George Orwell · 1946Good prose is like a windowpane. — George Orwell · 1946When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder—one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy... The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved. — George Orwell · 1946All 12 quotes →Susan Sontag11 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 · 1973Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism-victimless collecting, as it were... In a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments. — Susan Sontag · 1974Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. — Susan Sontag · 1966Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style-but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not... The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful. — Susan Sontag · 1964The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak. — Susan Sontag · 1964So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful. — Susan Sontag · 1977All 11 quotes →David Hume10 quotes
In contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest. — David Hume · 1741In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty. — David Hume · 1741The heart of man is made to reconcile contradictions. — David Hume · 1741The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. — David Hume · 1776Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them. — David Hume · 1758A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty. — David Hume · 1758All 10 quotes →Albert Camus9 quotes
What is a rebel? A man who says no. — Albert Camus · 1951There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. — Albert Camus · 1942Knowing 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 · 1953Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic. — Albert Camus · 1951The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. — Albert Camus · 1942Integrity has no need of rules. — Albert Camus · 1942All 9 quotes →Joan Didion9 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 · 1968We tell ourselves stories in order to live. — Joan Didion · 1979Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs. — Joan Didion · 1961To 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 · 1961To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. — Joan Didion · 1961When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. — Joan Didion · 1965All 9 quotes →Jonathan Swift9 quotes
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. — Jonathan Swift · 1745Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old. — Jonathan Swift · 1727When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. — Jonathan Swift · 1711We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. — Jonathan Swift · 1711There is nothing in this World constant, but Inconstancy. — Jonathan Swift · 1711Laws are like Cobwebs, which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through. — Jonathan Swift · 1711All 9 quotes →Robert Louis Stevenson8 quotes
Old and young, we are all on our last cruise. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1881Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1877Marriage is like life in this-that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1876The cruellest lies are often told in silence. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1881It is better to be a fool than to be dead. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1881To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1881All 8 quotes →Thomas Babington Macaulay8 quotes
Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them, like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value: and the precious particles are generally combined with the baser in such a manner that the separation is a task of the utmost difficulty. — Thomas Babington Macaulay · 1828The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm. — Thomas Babington Macaulay · 1828As civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines... In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems. — Thomas Babington Macaulay · 1825With the dead there is no rivalry. In the dead there is no change. Plato is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long. No difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet. — Thomas Babington Macaulay · 1837The history of England is emphatically the history of progress. — Thomas Babington Macaulay · 1835She thoroughly understands, what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts. — Thomas Babington Macaulay · 1840All 8 quotes →Aldous Huxley7 quotes
As 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 end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced. — Aldous Huxley · 1937Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. — Aldous Huxley · 1929Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. — Aldous Huxley · 1950Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. — Aldous Huxley · 1937All 7 quotes →G.K. Chesterton7 quotes
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. — G.K. Chesterton · 1908Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either. — G.K. Chesterton · 1926The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. — G.K. Chesterton · 1910Among 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 · 1912Our civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. — G.K. Chesterton · 1909Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. — G.K. Chesterton · 1901All 7 quotes →James Baldwin7 quotes
Freedom 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 · 1961Money, 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 · 1961Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. They must, they have no other models. — James Baldwin · 1960Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. — James Baldwin · 1960My life, my real life, was in danger, and not from anything other people might do but from the hatred I carried in my own heart. — James Baldwin · 1955It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story. It is a story which otherwise has yet to be told and which no American is prepared to hear. — James Baldwin · 1951All 7 quotes →Virginia Woolf7 quotes
Why are women…so much more interesting to men than men are to women? — Virginia Woolf · 1929There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. — Virginia Woolf · 1929The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. — Virginia Woolf · 1929This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room. — Virginia Woolf · 1929It is the masculine values that prevail... This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room. — Virginia Woolf · 1929The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. — Virginia Woolf · 1929All 7 quotes →W.H. Auden7 quotes
Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind. — W.H. Auden · 1962Young 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 · 1973Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. — W.H. Auden · 1973It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ. — W.H. Auden · 1962The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident. — W.H. Auden · 1973Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods. — W.H. Auden · 1962All 7 quotes →George Santayana6 quotes
Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome. — George Santayana · 1910Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself. — George Santayana · 1910The Bible is literature, not dogma. — George Santayana · 1910There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. — George Santayana · 1922Only the dead have seen the end of war. — George Santayana · 1922My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests. — George Santayana · 1922Jeremy Bentham6 quotes
A 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 · 1789All punishment is mischief: all punishment in itself is evil. — Jeremy Bentham · 1789Every law is contrary to liberty. — Jeremy Bentham · 1832Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion, and the surest of all guards against improbity. — Jeremy Bentham · 1832As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, because it is impossible to tell where it ends. — Jeremy Bentham · 1832I do really take it for an indisputable truth, and a truth that is one of the corner stones of political science—the more strictly we are watched, the better we behave. — Jeremy Bentham · 1797John Locke6 quotes
Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses. — John Locke · 1690Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight; and men may be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth. — John Locke · 1690All men are liable to error, and most men are in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it. — John Locke · 1690New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. — John Locke · 1690Reason 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 · 1690Albert Einstein5 quotes
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. — Albert Einstein · 1930In order to be content men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers. — Albert Einstein · 1940The pursuit of scientific truth, detached from the practical interests of everyday life, ought to be treated as sacred by every government. — Albert Einstein · 1934A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. — Albert Einstein · 1930Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury—to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind. — Albert Einstein · 1931Benjamin Franklin5 quotes
Remember that Time is Money. — Benjamin Franklin · 1748Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. — Benjamin Franklin · 1755That 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 · 1766The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions. For life is a kind of chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effects of prudence or the want of it. — Benjamin Franklin · 1786H.L. Mencken5 quotes
Puritanism—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. — H.L. Mencken · 1949Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed. — H.L. Mencken · 1922Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. — H.L. Mencken · 1922There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong. — H.L. Mencken · 1917The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. — H.L. Mencken · 1919Plutarch5 quotes
The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. — PlutarchWhen 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 · 100He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach. — PlutarchThe very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education. — Plutarch · 100William Hazlitt5 quotes
By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves. — William Hazlitt · 1827A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. — William Hazlitt · 1839Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality. — William Hazlitt · 1823The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. — William Hazlitt · 1819Comedy naturally wears itself out-destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. — William Hazlitt · 1817E.M. Forster4 quotes
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. — E.M. Forster · 1938It is not that the Englishman can't feel—it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks—his pipe might fall out if he did. — E.M. Forster · 1920Two 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 · 1938The 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 · 1944