- 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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- 18,306 quotes and counting ...
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action age America beauty belief change character death democracy education ego error evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history humanity integrity justice 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.
Author Cloud
Adams, John • Aristotle • 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- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Most Quoted Authors
Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (8,269)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,195)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (6,025)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,241)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,922)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,497)
- “Tips for Teens,” Social Studies (1981) (4,076)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,983)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,776)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,669)
Recent Feedback
- Snyder, Timothy - On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017) | WIST on “Notes on Nationalism” (1945)
- 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]
WISTish
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The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand, and say: Father, I will take this one — the pure Truth is for You alone.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) German playwright, philosopher, dramiturg, writer
Anti-Goeze (1778)
