Sourced and curated.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton

1676

★ 7.4

Letter · Political writing

The boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never without a wave.

There cannot be salvation for any, except in the Church.

1820

★ 7.3

Letter · Religious literature

St. Cyprian

256

★ 7.3

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

Vincent van Gogh

1881

★ 7.3

Dripping water hollows out a stone, a ring is worn away by use.

Ovid

★ 7.2

If a person knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.

Seneca

★ 7.1

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

Voltaire

1768

★ 7.1

I agree with you, that in Politicks the Middle Way is none at all.

1776

★ 7.1

The due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.

George Washington

1789

★ 7.1

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

Theodore Roosevelt

1900

★ 7.1

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

1787

★ 7.1

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Franz Kafka

1904

★ 7.0

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency, but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes!

Benjamin Franklin

Letters of Benjamin Franklin · 1789

★ 7.0

The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People.

1818

★ 7.0

See many skies and seas.

Gustave Flaubert

1857

★ 7.0

Time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Hector Berlioz

1856

★ 6.9

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

Lord Acton

1887

★ 6.9

The very touch of the letter was as if you had taken me all into your arms.

Anais Nin

1932

★ 6.9

Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.

Groucho Marx

1949

★ 6.9

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke

1901

★ 6.8

Open letter · Letter

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Letter from Birmingham Jail · 1963

★ 6.5

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed.

1790

★ 6.3

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment... Inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.

1786

★ 6.2

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched... Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

1813

★ 6.2

Letter · Political writing

1816

★ 6.2

When a man spends the least possible number of movements over one definite action, that is grace.

Anton Chekhov

1899

★ 6.2

In the true marriage relation, the independence of the husband and wife is equal, the dependence mutual and their obligations reciprocal.

Lucretia Mott

1880

★ 6.1

To recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

Oscar Wilde

De Profundis · 1897

★ 6.1

Submit to me as soon as possible a draft showing... Measures already taken for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question.

Hermann Goring

1941

★ 6.0

Letter · Political speech

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

Abraham Lincoln

1864

★ 5.5

Open letter · Letter

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Letter from Birmingham Jail · 1963

★ 5.5

I can with truth assure you, I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.

George Washington

1754

★ 5.5

I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

1800

★ 5.5

One writes only half the book; the other half is with the reader.

Joseph Conrad

1897

★ 5.5

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.

Oscar Wilde

De Profundis · 1897

★ 5.5

Open letter · Letter

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

Warren Buffett

2001

★ 5.5

Woman's at best a contradiction still.

Alexander Pope

Letters of Alexander Pope · 1735

★ 5.4

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

Voltaire

1767

★ 5.4

Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.

Lord Chesterfield

1746

★ 5.3

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.... Great necessities call out great virtues.

Abigail Adams

Letter to John Adams, 1780 · 1780

★ 5.3

Every project has been found to be no better than committing the lamb to the custody of the wolf, except that one which is called a balance of power.

1789

★ 5.3

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

1798

★ 5.3

This is a free country.

James Flint

1819

★ 5.3

Taste is the feminine of genius.

Edward FitzGerald

1877

★ 5.2

I am much occupied with the investigation of physical causes. My aim in this is to show that the celestial machine is not similar to a divine animated being, but similar to a clock.

Johannes Kepler

1605

★ 5.2

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way.

John Paul Jones

1778

★ 5.2

Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.

Henry James

1883

★ 5.2

Love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet · 1929

★ 5.2

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

Vaclav Havel

1983

★ 5.2

Letter · Political writing

Speeches measured by the hour, die with the hour.

1824

★ 4.7

Cheer up—the worst is yet to come.

Mark Twain

1894

★ 4.7

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

1791

★ 4.6

One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1812

★ 4.6

Happiness is the deferred fulfillment of a prehistoric wish. That is why wealth brings so little happiness; money is not an infantile wish.

Sigmund Freud

1898

★ 4.6

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Albert Einstein

1901

★ 4.6

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

Albert Einstein

1930

★ 4.6

God is always with the strongest battalions.

Frederick the Great

1760

★ 4.5