Sourced and curated.

Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from.

You only live once, that's the motto nigga YOLO

The Handmaid's Tale · 1985

★ 5.6

Hip hop

Drake

The Motto · 2011

★ 5.6

Novel

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.

Surfacing · 1972

★ 5.5

Margaret Millar

1942

★ 5.2

Speech · Political speech

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

1816

★ 5.1

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but that is the way to bet.

Hugh Keough

1919

★ 5.1

Economic literature

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.

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.

1977

★ 5.1

Sociology · Economic literature

The Affluent Society · 1958

★ 4.4

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

The Handmaid's Tale · 1985

★ 3.9

But 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.

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

The Handmaid's Tale · 1985

★ 3.8

Sociology · Economic literature

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

The Affluent Society · 1958

★ 3.6

Speech

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget.

1902

★ 3.5

Scientific literature

The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder.

1904

★ 3.5

Speech · Commencement address

Glenn Gould

1982

★ 3.5

Essay

Trickle-down theory—the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.

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.

1992

★ 3.5

Speech · Commencement address

Jim Carrey

2014

★ 3.5

Poem

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

John McCrae

In Flanders Fields · 1915

★ 3.5

Essay · Satire

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

Stephen Leacock

1924

★ 3.5

Song · Folk rock · Folk music

Does any one know where the love of God goes When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

Gordon Lightfoot

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald · 1976

★ 2.8

Don't let the bastards grind you down.

The Handmaid's Tale · 1985

★ 2.3

But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive but there's less of you.

The Handmaid's Tale · 1985

★ 2.2

Novel

Surfacing · 1972

★ 2.1

What 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.

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.

The Handmaid's Tale · 1985

★ 2.1

Poem

It's better to burn out Than to fade away.

Variation on the Word Sleep · 1980

★ 2.0

Song · Rock music

Neil Young

My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) · 1978

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

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

2020

★ 1.9

Sociology · Economic literature

These 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.

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.

The Affluent Society · 1958

★ 1.9

Magazine

Charlotte Whitton

1963

★ 1.9

Poem

To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

John McCrae

In Flanders Fields · 1915

★ 1.8

Economic literature

One 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.

The young physician starts life with twenty drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for twenty diseases.

1955

★ 1.8

We need spring. We need it desperately and, usually, we need it before God is willing to give it to us.

1950

★ 0.9

Peter John Gzowski

1979

★ 0.9

Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature-subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today... The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.