Quotes · Skopia

33 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Place·San Francisco✕clear

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –– I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken · 1916

★ 9.5

Absolutely, 100% not guilty.

1994

★ 8.0

I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.

1916

★ 6.9

There are no atheists in the fox holes.

William Thomas Cummings

1943

★ 6.9

You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

1994

★ 6.9

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

1916

★ 6.7

What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired.

The Beauty Myth · 1990

★ 6.1

Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

1994

★ 6.0

I live in a rather special world. I know only one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.

1972

★ 6.0

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.

1914

★ 5.2

"Beauty" is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.

The Beauty Myth · 1990

★ 5.2

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I have a lovers quarrel with the world.

The Lesson for Today · 1941

★ 5.1

I have been one acquainted with the night.

1928

★ 3.6

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

1942

★ 3.6

A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die... Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.

1902

★ 3.5

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

The Call of the Wild · 1903

★ 3.5

Novel · Magazine

He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.

The Saturday Evening Post · 1903

★ 3.5

Speech · TED Talk

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes-including you.

2017

★ 3.5

Now no joy but lacks salt That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.

1923

★ 3.5

The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies.

1968

★ 3.5

The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences.

1996

★ 3.5

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

1939

★ 1.9

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

1907

★ 1.9

All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief.

1946

★ 1.9

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

1962

★ 1.9

There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture.

Clifford Geertz

1973

★ 1.9

The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You're one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you're two months back in the middle of March.

1934

★ 1.8

Scientific literature · Political literature

There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

Luis Walter Alvarez

1967

★ 1.8

Historical literature

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the priniples and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribbly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.

Robert McNamara

1995

★ 1.8

Film · Documentary (film)

We all make mistakes. We know we make mistakes. I don't know any military commander, who is honest, who would say he has not made a mistake. There's a wonderful phrase: "the fog of war." What "the fog of war" means is: war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.

Robert McNamara

2003

★ 1.8

I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old.

1936

★ 1.0

Military force—especially when wielded by an outside power—just cannot bring order in a country that cannot govern itself.

Robert McNamara

1995

★ 1.0

Scientific literature

Dinosaurs are a touchstone that separates the mentality of children from that of adults.

1989

★ 0.9