- 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.
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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (6,538)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,791)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,678)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,867)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,794)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,899)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,807)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,658)
- “Hallowed Ground” (1825) (3,055)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,053)
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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
- 20-May-20 - Introduction to the Art of Thinking, ch. 1, "Friendship" (1761) | WIST on John 15:13 (KJV).
- 18-May-20 - Chamblee54 on Clouds, ll. 998-999 (423 BC) [tr. Athenian Soc. (1912)].
- 18-May-20 - Chamblee54 on Mills E. Godwin, Governor of Virginia (Dec 1966).
- 11-May-20 - Chamblee54 on “Indian Summer,” Enough Rope (1926).
- 1-May-20 - Quoted in The Observer (17 Mar 1985) | WIST on Robert J. Hanlon, “Hanlon’s Razor,” Murphy’s Law, Book Two (ed. A. Bloch) (1980).
- 1-May-20 - Grow, Grow – Traditional Iconoclast on Midrash Rabba, Bereshit 10:6.
Quotations by Reagan, Ronald
I always throw my golf club in the direction I’m going.
Ronald Reagan (1911-2006) US President (1981-89), politician, actor
(Attributed)Quoted by C. Matthews, Hardball: How Politics Is Played -- Told by One Who Knows the Game, ch. 6 (1988)
My belief has always been … that wherever in this land any individual’s Constitutional rights are being unjustly denied, it is the obligation of the federal government — at point of bayonet if necessary — to restore that individual’s Constitutional rights.
Ronald Reagan (1911-2006) US President (1981-89), politician, actor
News conference, Washington (17 May 1983)
It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they died, they gave up two lives — the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for their county, for us. All we can do is remember.
Ronald Reagan (1911-2006) US President (1981-89), politician, actor
Remarks at Veteran’s Day ceremony, Arlington National Cemetery (11 Nov. 1985)
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
Ronald Reagan (1911-2006) US President (1981-89), politician, actor
Remarks, business conference, Los Angeles (2 Mar 1977)
Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way.
Ronald Reagan (1911-2006) US President (1981-89), politician, actor
Speech (10 Aug 1988)
On signing a bill providing restitution to Japanese-Americans who had been put in internment camps during World War II. He originally spoke the words as an Army Captain in December 1945 at a "United America Day" rally for the posthumous awarding of the Distinguished Service Cross to Sgt. Kazuo Masuda.
