- 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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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (8,051)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,092)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,983)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,159)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,896)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,390)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,952)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,766)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,637)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,544)
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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
- 24-Feb-21 - "Mobs and Education," Speech, Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston (16 Dec 1860) | WIST on “The Boston Mob,” speech, Antislavery Meeting, Boston (21 Oct 1855).
- 22-Feb-21 - Letter (1860) | WIST on Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644).
- 21-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Memoirs of William Miller, quoted in Life (2 May 1955).
- 21-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Letter, unsent (1927).
- 20-Feb-21 - "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST on Remark (Winter 1927).
- 13-Feb-21 - tweet: the case of anti-cytokine therapy for Covid-19 – Med-stat.info on “The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917).
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- "Mobs and Education," Speech, Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston (16 Dec 1860) | WIST: Phillips,...
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- "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST: Einstein, Albert
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Quotations about binary
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Because one cause is bad does not make the opposing cause good.
Fay Weldon (b. 1931) English author, essayist, playwright
Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen (1984)
(Source)
In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, thus the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. […] Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
“Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship” (1964)
(Source)
Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that, if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe, say, or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.
Rick Warren (b. 1954) American Christian pastor and author
“Rick Warren on Muslims, Evangelism & Missions,” interview with Brandon A. Cox, Christian Post (2 Mar 2012)
(Source)
“There are two types of people in this world,” Pete volunteers helpfully, “those who think there are only two types of people in the world, and everybody else.” He sips his wine thoughtfully. “But the first kind don’t put it that way. They usually think in terms of the saved and the damned, with themselves sitting pretty in the lifeboat.”
Charles "Charlie" Stross (b. 1964) British writer
The Apocalypse Codex (2012)
