- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.Please feel free to browse and borrow.
- 16,757 quotes and counting ...
Quote Search
Authors
Topic Cloud
action age America belief books change character Christianity creation death democracy education ego evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history honesty humanity integrity justice leadership liberty life love morality perspective politics poverty power religion science society success truth virtue war wealth wisdom writing- I've been adding topics/tags since 2014, so not all quotes have been given one. Full topic list.
WISTish
- * Visual quotes (graphics, memes) only
Admin
Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (5,700)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,644)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,433)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,817)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,420)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,709)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,528)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,466)
- “Hallowed Ground” (1825) (2,974)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (2,902)
Most Quoted Authors
Author Cloud
Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 14-Oct-19 - Address to the Massachusetts legislature (9 Jan 1961) | WIST on Luke 12:48 (NIV).
- 30-Sep-19 - Chamblee54 on Poor Richard’s Almanack (1755).
- 23-Sep-19 - Chamblee54 on A Course of Popular Lectures, Lecture 3, “Of the more Important Divisions and Essential Parts of Knowledge” (1829).
- 5-Sep-19 - Erewhon, ch. 20 (1872) | WIST on 1 Timothy 6:10 (KJV).
- 4-Sep-19 - "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," sermon, National Cathedral, Washington, DC (31 Mar 1968) | WIST on Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963).
- 16-Aug-19 - Dave on About WIST.
Quotations by Powell, Colin
I’m sleeping like a baby, too — every two hours, I wake up, screaming.
Colin Powell (b. 1937) American military leader, Secretary of State
(Attributed)
Upon hearing that President Bush was "sleeping like a baby" on the eve of the Iraq war. Quoted by Hendrik Hertzberg, New Yorker (10 Feb 2003).
A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass. I remember how easy it was for my mother to snap me back into line with a simple rebuke: ‘I’m ashamed of you. You embarrassed the family.’ I would have preferred a beating to those words.
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
One of the fondest expressions around is that we can’t be the world’s policeman. […] But guess who gets called when suddenly someone needs a cop?
The First Amendment exists to insure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous. I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.
Colin Powell (b. 1937) American military leader, Secretary of State
Letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy (18 May 1999)
On a proposed flag-burning amendment. Full text.
In one generation we have moved from denying a black man service at a lunch counter to elevating one to the highest military office in the nation, and to being a serious contender for the presidency. This is a magnificent country and I am proud to be one of its sons.