- 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.
- 18,234 quotes and counting ...
Quote Search
Authors
Topic Cloud
action age America author beauty belief change character death democracy education ego error evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history humanity integrity leadership liberty life love morality perspective politics power pride progress reality religion science society success truth virtue war wealth wisdom writing- I've been adding topics since 2014, so not all quotes have been given one. Full topic list.
WISTish
- * Visual quotes (graphics, memes) only
Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (8,209)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,172)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (6,011)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,215)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,918)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,482)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,971)
- “Tips for Teens,” Social Studies (1981) (3,969)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,776)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,659)
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 • Sophocles • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- Dave on Notice to email subscribers
- Nina on Notice to email subscribers
- ~~Admin - Notice to email subscribers | WIST on Subscribe/Feeds
- France, Anatole - (Spurious) | WIST on A Writer’s Notebook (1949)
- Dave on The Odyssey [Ὀδύσσεια], Book 6, l. 180ff [Odysseus to Nausicaa] (c. 700 BC) [tr. Rieu (1946)]
- Richard McBroom on “What I Believe,” Forum and Century (Oct 1930)
- Marcus Aurelius - (Spurious) | WIST on Meditations, Book 2, #11 [tr. Gill (2014)]
- Richard McBroom on “What I Believe,” Forum and Century (Oct 1930)
- Elizabeth II - Address to the Nation (5 Apr 2020) | WIST on “We’ll Meet Again” (1939) [with Hughie Charles]
- Pratchett, Terry - The Last Hero (2001) | WIST on Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #3366 (1732)
Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
(Spurious)
Usually attributed to Holmes (or Abraham Lincoln, or John Stuart Mill), but actually first raised in legal commentary by Zechariah Chafee, "Freedom of Speech in Wartime", 32 Harvard Law Review 932, 957 (Jun 1919):Each side takes the position of the man who was arrested for swinging his arms and hitting another in the nose, and asked the judge if he did not have a right to swing his arms in a free country. “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”
There are earlier versions in non-legal contexts dating back decades earlier, often in arguments for Temperance and Prohibition. See here for more background.
Variants:
- "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins."
- "The right to swing my arms in any direction ends where your nose begins."
- "My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins."