Sourced and curated.

Because it's there.

George Mallory

The New York Times · 1923

★ 9.0

The customer is always right.

Marshall Field

1905

★ 9.0

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus... Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Francis Pharcellus Church

1897

★ 8.3

A government of laws, and not of men.

1775

★ 7.2

All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

1849

★ 7.2

Motto · Newspaper

Susan B. Anthony

1868

★ 7.1

If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

George Orwell

1944

★ 7.0

Our country is the world — our countrymen are all mankind.

William Lloyd Garrison

The Liberator · 1837

★ 7.0

Politics is the art of the possible.

Otto von Bismarck

1867

★ 7.0

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Henry Kissinger

1971

★ 7.0

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

New York Evening Mirror · 1845

★ 6.9

If you remember the 60's, you really weren't there.

Charles Fleischer

1982

★ 6.9

I am about Courting a Girl I have had but little Acquaintance with; how shall I come to a Knowledge of her Fawlts? and whether she has the Virtues I imagine she has? Answ. Commend her among her Female Acquaintance.

Benjamin Franklin

1732

★ 6.0

I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation.

William Lloyd Garrison

To the Public · 1831

★ 5.2

Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them.

Charles J. Sykes

1996

★ 5.2

At first it was a giant column that soon took the shape of a supramundane mushroom.

William L. Laurence

The New York Times · 1945

★ 5.1

If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture you would be pretty much left with "Let's Make a Deal."

Fran Lebowitz

The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community · 1987

★ 5.1

A great ball of fire about a mile in diameter, changing colors as it kept shooting upward, from deep purple to orange, expanding, growing bigger, rising as it was expanding, an elemental force freed from its bonds after being chained for billions of years.

William L. Laurence

The New York Times · 1945

★ 5.0

Inebriate of Air - am I - And debauchee of dew - Reeling - thro endless summer days - From inns of Molten Blue.

Emily Dickinson

1861

★ 4.5

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now...But trust me on the sunscreen.

Mary Schmich

Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young · 1997

★ 4.3

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door! Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

New York Evening Mirror · 1845

★ 3.9

That 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

1731

★ 3.8

Dissertation · Newspaper · Political literature

Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.

1765

★ 3.8

We loved with a love that was more than love.

New-York Daily Tribune · 1849

★ 3.8

The horseless vehicle is the coming wonder.

Thomas Edison

1895

★ 3.8

I have got such a bully pulpit!

Theodore Roosevelt

1909

★ 3.8

The empire writes back with a vengeance.

Salman Rushdie

1982

★ 3.8

I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.

New-York Daily Tribune · 1849

★ 3.7

Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.

Emily Dickinson

1864

★ 3.7

Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.

Ronald Reagan

1970

★ 3.7

A man has every season, while a woman has only the right to spring.

Jane Fonda

1989

★ 3.7

Obituary · Newspaper

To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.

Akira Kurosawa

The New York Times

★ 3.7

Dissertation · Newspaper · Political literature

The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible to destroy, the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing.

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right... and a desire to know-but besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded, and envied kind of knowledge. I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.

1765

★ 3.6

Dissertation · Newspaper · Political literature

In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed is the most natural and fruitful source of them...the great art of politicians lies in making them checks and balances to each other.

1765

★ 3.6

Essay · Newspaper · Political literature

James Madison

Parties · 1792

★ 3.6

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

Edward Everett

1837

★ 3.6

All the news that's fit to print.

Adolph S. Ochs

1896

★ 3.6

You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists.

Anatole France

1922

★ 3.6

Fallacies, which do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

G.K. Chesterton

1930

★ 3.6

I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is better.

Beatrice Kaufman

1937

★ 3.6

Essay · Newspaper · Political literature

The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.

George Orwell

1945

★ 3.6

If there wasn't death, I think you couldn't go on.

Stevie Smith

1969

★ 3.6

Never marry a man who hates his mother, because he'll end up hating you.

Jill Bennett

1982

★ 3.6

I'm not over-fond of animals. I am merely astounded by them.

David Attenborough

1995

★ 3.6

Obituary · Newspaper

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song.

Louis Armstrong

The New York Times

★ 3.6

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.

Herbert Asquith

1923

★ 3.5

I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I ain't a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks want to fight. Give them the guns.

Woody Guthrie

People's World · 1939

★ 3.5

Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion.

Joseph Alsop

1952

★ 3.5

Essay · Newspaper · Economic literature

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

C. Northcote Parkinson

The Economist · 1955

★ 3.5

Essay · Newspaper · Economic literature

Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.

C. Northcote Parkinson

The Economist · 1958

★ 3.5

But sport doesn’t build character....sports reveals character.

Heywood Broun

The Evening Press · 1974

★ 3.5

Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?

Michael Torke

1990

★ 3.5

A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.

Michael Kinsley

1992

★ 3.5

Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less.

John Major

1993

★ 3.5

I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin.

Leonard Cohen

Observer · 1993

★ 3.5

God of forgiveness, do not forgive those murderers of Jewish children here.

Elie Wiesel

The Times of London · 1995

★ 3.5

Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.

Naomi Klein

2003

★ 3.5

Have regrets. They are fuel.

Geoff Dyer

2010

★ 3.5