1936

Who built the Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?... Where, the evening that the wall of China was finished Did the masons go?

Burnt Norton · 1936

★ 6.9

Poem · Political literature

Bertolt Brecht

Questions from a Worker Who Reads · 1936

★ 6.8

Novel · Southern gothic

You can't understand it. You would have to be born there.

William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom! · 1936

★ 6.3

O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

Langston Hughes

1936

★ 5.5

They are unanimous in their hatred for me-and I welcome their hatred.

There is no such thing as justice-in or out of court.

1936

★ 5.5

Interview

Clarence Darrow

1936

★ 5.3

The true conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.

1936

★ 5.3

What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one.

Gone with the Wind · 1936

★ 4.5

Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.

Burnt Norton · 1936

★ 4.5

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

1936

★ 4.5

Outside the Kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other…God and history will remember your judgment.

Haile Selassie I

1936

★ 4.5

Essay · Political literature

When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.

George Orwell

Shooting an Elephant · 1936

★ 3.9

Academic journal · Scientific literature

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

Albert Einstein

1936

★ 3.8

Academic journal · Scientific literature

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking.

Albert Einstein

1936

★ 3.8

Human kind Cannot bear very much reality.

Burnt Norton · 1936

★ 3.7

At the still point, there the dance is.

1936

★ 3.7

Chastity—the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions.

Aldous Huxley

1936

★ 3.6

Essay · Magazine

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

1936

★ 3.6

Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for 'tis the only thing in this world that lasts...'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for—worth dying for.

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

Gone with the Wind · 1936

★ 3.6

Speech

Dolores Ibarruri

1936

★ 3.6

Radio broadcast · Speech

They shall not pass.

Dolores Ibarruri

1936

★ 3.6

Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

1936

★ 3.6

Poem · Epic poem

Carl Sandburg

1936

★ 3.5

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

W.H. Auden

1936

★ 3.5

Speech

No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.

Ellen Glasgow

1936

★ 3.5

Don't sell the steak; sell the sizzle. It is the sizzle that sells the steak and not the cow, although the cow is, of course, mighty important.

Elmer Wheeler

1936

★ 3.5

Philosophical literature

The significance of man is that he is that part of the universe that asks the question, What is the significance of Man? He alone can stand apart imaginatively and, regarding himself and the universe in their eternal aspects, pronounce a judgement. The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.

Carl Becker

1936

★ 3.4

Poem · Epic poem

The people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.

Carl Sandburg

1936

★ 3.4

I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.

Gone with the Wind · 1936

★ 2.9

Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.

Gone with the Wind · 1936

★ 2.2

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

Langston Hughes

1936

★ 2.0

Essay

After love, book collecting is the most exhilarating sport of all.

A.S.W. Rosenbach

A Book Hunter's Holiday · 1936

★ 1.9

Scientific literature

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it... An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul.

Max Planck

1936

★ 1.8

The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.

Dale Carnegie

How to Win Friends and Influence People · 1936

★ 1.2