The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.
Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American writer [b. Nelson Ahlgren Abraham]
(Attributed)
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-British poet, critic, playwright [Thomas Stearns Eliot]
“The Rock” (1934)
Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, there is one religion —- human religion -— but any number of faiths.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
Young India (Bulletin) (2 Oct 1930)
Some versions omit "-- human religion --". Full text.
We are all of us more or less the slaves of opinion.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“On Court-Influence” (3-10 Jan 1818) Political Essays (1819)
I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the Big One comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
American Gods, Part 2, ch. 13 [Sam] (2001)
(Source)
Books have the same enemies as poeple: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
[Les livres ont les mêmes ennemis comme les gens : le feu, l’humidité, les animaux, le temps, et leur propre contenu.]
Paul Valéry (1871-1945) French poet, critic, author, polymath
Œuvres II, “Moralités” (1941)
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) German physicist
Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971)
Whenever I meet Ukridge’s Aunt Julia I have the same curious illusion of having just committed some particularly unsavoury crime and — what is more — of having done it with swollen hands, enlarged feet, and trousers bagging at the knee on a morning when I had omitted to shave.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
Ukridge (1924)
Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
New Year’s Address to the Nation, Prague (1 Jan 1990)
Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
(Source)
Capitalism survived its crisis and went on to great successes. But the capitalism that survived and succeeded was not the capitalism of 1929.
Herb Stein (1916-1999) American economist
The Triumph of the Adaptive Society (1989)
We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) British sexologist, physician, social reformer [Henry Havelock Ellis]
The Dance of Life, Preface (1923)
If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) Lithuanian-American violinist
San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle (18 Apr 1971)
Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Time Enough for Love (1973)
But, by all thy nature’s weakness,
Hidden faults and follies known,
Be thou, in rebuking evil,
Conscious of thine own.John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American poet and abolitionist
“What the Voice Said,” st. 15, ll. 57-60 (1847)
(Source)
I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
“Work in Progress,” Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989; first published Jun 1973).
I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what’s best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we’re doing what God does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we’re participating in something truly sacred.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
Commencement Address, Marquette College (May 2001)
(Source)
Rogers used the same comment at the Middlebury College commencement.
Some days are for living. Others are for getting through.
Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990) American billionaire
The Sayings of Chairman Malcolm, “You Don’t Say?” (1978)
When man appears before the Throne of Judgment, the first question he is asked is not: “Have you believed in God?” or “Have you prayed and observed the ritual?” He is asked: “Have you dealt honorably and faithfully in all your dealings with your fellow man?”
The Talmud (AD 200-500) Collection of Jewish rabbinical writings
(Unreferenced)
The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. … Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.
John Leland (1754-1841) American Baptist minister, civil libertarian
A Chronicle of His Time in Virginia (1845)
It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
Woody Allen (b. 1935) American comedian, writer, director [b. Allan Steward Konigsberg]
“Death (A Play)”, Without Feathers (1975)
But see how many now cry out “Christ! Christ?”
Who shall be farther from him at the Judgment
Than many who, on earth, did not know Christ.Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet
The Divine Comedy, “Paradise,” 19.106 (1321) [tr. J. Ciardi (1954)]
Heaven,
I’m in Heaven
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak,
And I seem to find the happiness I seek
When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.Irving Berlin (1888-1989) American songwriter [b. Isidore Beilin]
“Cheek to Cheek,” in Top Hat (1935)
I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
Last Phase, Vol. II (written 1948, published 1958)
There is, however, no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“On the Tendency of Sects,” “The Round Table” column, The Examiner
CECIL GRAHAM: What is a cynic?
LORD DARLINGTON: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Administrivia: Tweaking WIST
I made a couple of changes to the site setup today worth noting:
First, Author collections (category archives) will now be sorted by the citation, not by the date the quote was entered in here. That should be helpful both in looking things up and in spotting potential duplicates (or inconsistent citations).
Second, I’ve added (see the top of any WIST page) an “Authors” page, which lists all the authors currently cited in WIST (along with how many quotations they have recorded here). Clicking any of the names will bring you to their quotation page. And if you hover over the names, you’ll get the more detailed biographical info about them that shows up in each quote’s citation.
This Authors page needs some further work — I wanted to have the full description as the text here, not the shorter name (which can also be seen in the Authors list in every sidebar). But it’s a step forward.
If there are other features you’d like to see in WIST, please let me know. Future plans for the site are always listed in the “To Do” page, linked at the top.
I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I’m very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911) English playwright [William Schwenck Gilbert]
The Pirates of Penzance (1879) [music by Arthur Sullivan]
Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than minority of them — never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Grief Observed, ch. 4 (1960)
The opium of custom, whereof all drink and many go mad.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Education,” Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883)
It was a cold, disapproving gaze, such as a fastidious luncher who was not fond of caterpillars might have directed at one which he had discovered in his portion of salad …
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
The Adventures of Sally (1922)
There’s always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
Disturbing the Peace, ch. 5 “The Politics of Hope” (1986) [tr. P. Wilson (1990)]
The discussion, for the most part, was able and organized, although, like all meetings of this kind, certain statements were made as accepted truisms, which I, at least, thought were of questionable validity. One member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, argued that we could use nuclear weapons, on basis that our adversaries would use theirs against us in an attack. I thought, as I listened, of the many times I had heard the military take positions which, if wrong, had the advantage that no one would be around at the end to know.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, ch. 5 (1969)
(Source)
Originally printed in "Thirteen Days: The Story about How the World Almost Ended," McCall's (Nov 1968)
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
(Source)
I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) Lithuanian-American violinist
Life (28 Jul 1961)
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American writer
The House of the Seven Gables, ch. 20 “The Flower of Eden” (1851)
All love that has not friendship for its base
Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
“Kicking Ass” (interview), Girl About Town (13 Oct 1986)
Reprinted in Jeffrey M. Elliot (ed.), Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)
As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has — or ever will have — something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: Thoughts For All Ages
Full text.
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Journal (23 Aug 1853)
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“The Will to Believe” (1896)
A man of Cruelty is God’s enemy.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, # 303 (1732)
(Source)
He is a man of his most recent word.
William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008) American writer, editor
“The Week,” National Review (24 Aug 1965)
Of Lyndon Johnson.
Of course God will forgive me; that’s his job.
[Bien sûr, il me pardonnera; c’est son métier.]
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German poet and critic
Last Words (1856)
Quoted in German in Alfred Meißner, "Heinrich Heine. Erinnerungen," Letzte Worte auf dem Totenbett (1856). Quoted in Bros. Goncourt (ed.) Journal (23 Feb 1863). Quoted in French in Sigmund Freud, The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious (1905) [tr. J Crick (2003)].
Alt trans.: "Why, of course, he will forgive me; that's his business. [Gott wird mir verzeihen, das ist sein Beruf.]
See Catherine the Great.
Every man must give account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best reconcile to his conscience. If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise, let men be free.
John Leland (1754-1841) American Baptist minister, civil libertarian
Right of Conscience Inalienable
To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
“Ideals and Doubts,” Illinois Law Review, Vol. X (1915)
Full text.
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Letter to W. Lutoslawski (6 May 1906)
Perfection of planning is a symptom of decay. During a period of exciting discovery or progress, there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters. The time for that comes later, when all the important work has been done. Perfection, we know, is finality; and finality is death.
Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909-1993) British historian and writer
Parkinson’s Law, “Plans and Plants” (1958)
It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realize the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
Wars I Have Seen(1945)
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“The Sick Chamber,” The New Monthly Magazine (August 1830)
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
A crisis does not always apear to a policy-maker as a series of dramatic events. Usually it imposes itself as an exhausting agenda of petty choices demanding both concentration and endurance. One is forced to react to scraps of information in very limited spans of time; longing for full knowledge, one must chart a route through the murk of unknowing.
Henry Kissinger (b. 1923) German-American diplomat
Years of Upheaval, ch. 11 (1982)
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
The Federalist #47 (30 Jan 1788)
There are some things a chappie’s mind absolutely refuses to picture, and Aunt Julia singing ‘Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay’ is one of them.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
The Man with Two Left Feet (1917)
A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A manipulated population can be misused in serving any military adventure whatever. Unreliability in some areas arouses justifiable fear of unreliability in everything. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
“An Anatomy of Reticence [Anatomie jedné zdrženlivosti],” sec. 9, no. 5 (1985-04) [tr. Kohák (1986)]
(Source)
First reprinted in Cross Currents: A Yearbook of Central European Culture #5 (1986). Reprinted here in Living in Truth: twenty-two essays published on the occasion of the award of the Erasmus Prize to Václav Havel, Part 1, ch. 6 (1986).