- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
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- 18,083 quotes and counting ...
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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (8,075)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,102)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,987)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,169)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,899)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,428)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,957)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,767)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,642)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,548)
Most Quoted Authors
Author Cloud
Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterfield (Lord) • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Cicero, Marcus Tullius • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • 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
- Phillips, Wendell - "Mobs and Education," Speech, Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston (16 Dec 1860) | WIST on “The Boston Mob,” speech, Antislavery Meeting, Boston (21 Oct 1855)
- Andrew, John A. - Letter (1860) | WIST on Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644)
- Einstein, Albert - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Memoirs of William Miller, quoted in Life (2 May 1955)
- Einstein, Albert - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Letter, unsent (1927)
- Einstein, Albert - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Remark (Winter 1927)
- Opinion: The hazards of medicine by tweet: the case of anti-cytokine therapy for Covid-19 – Med-stat.info on “The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917)
- MEDIKI • Opinion: The hazards of medicine by tweet: the case of anti-cytokine therapy for Covid-19 on “The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917)
- The hazard of publishing research findings via Twitter - Healthy First on “The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917)
- What Does The Bible Say About Politics? - Glorynewstvonline on Republic, Book 1, 347c
- The hazard of publishing research findings via Twitter - STAT | Health Wellness Journal on “The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917)
Quotations by Will, George F.
The business of America is not business. Neither is it war. The business of America is justice, and securing the blessings of liberty.
George Will (b. 1941) American political commentator
“A Land Fit for Heroes,” closing words, Time (11 Mar 1991)
Conservatives know the world is a dark and forbidding place where most new knowledge is false, most improvements for the worse, the battle is not to the strong, nor riches to men of understanding, and an unscrupulous Providence consigns innocents to suffering.
George Will (b. 1941) American political commentator
“The Cubs and Conservatism” (21 Mar 1974), Bunts (1998)
(Source)
Will is, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, describing the origin of his conservatism in his being a fan of the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.
George Will (b. 1941) American political commentator
(Attributed)
Greed is envy with its sleeves rolled up.
George Will (b. 1941) American political commentator
(Attributed)
A politician’s words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.
George Will (b. 1941) American political commentator
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted in Richard Reeves, A Ford, Not a Lincoln, ch. 1 (1975). Will is commenting about a statement made by Ronald Reagan in Harper's Magazine (Mar 1975)
They define themselves in terms of what they oppose.
George Will (b. 1941) American political commentator
Newsweek (30 Sep 1974)
On conservatives.
