- 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.
- 17,783 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 justice leadership liberty life love morality perspective politics power pride progress religion science society success truth virtue war wealth wisdom writing- I've been adding topics/tags since 2014, so not all quotes have been given one. Full topic list.
WISTish
- * Visual quotes (graphics, memes) only
Admin
Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,639)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,950)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,901)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,046)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,879)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,101)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,913)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,740)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,310)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,291)
Most Quoted Authors
Author Cloud
Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • 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
- 9-Nov-20 - "On Education," Address on installation as rector, University of St Andrews, Scotland (1 Feb 1867) | WIST on Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967).
- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Democracy in America, 1.14 (1835) [tr. Reeve and Bowen (1862)].
- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden (2002).
- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Annual Message to Congress (6 Jan 1941).
- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on (Attributed) (1862).
- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Kansas City Star (7 May 1918).
-
Quotations about compensation
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.
To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest. … The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.
Alfred Adler (1870-1937) Austrian psychologist
The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler, ch. 3, sec 3 (1956) [ed. Ansbacher]
There are many attempts to pass a law in states just requesting a limit of buying one gun a month, and it doesn’t pass. People are like, “What about Christmas?” I mean, one gun a month. If you started when you were 18, by the time you were 60 that’s over a thousand guns. I don’t care how small your penis is, that should be enough guns.
William "Bill" Maher (b. 1956) American comedian, political commentator, critic, television host.
Be More Cynical (2000)
Tell me what you brag about and I’ll tell you what you lack.
Other Authors and Sources
Spanish proverb
Why do men with little souls have to have big weapons?
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Friday [Friday Jones] (1982)
Don’t make excuses — make good!
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American writer, businessman, philosopher
A Thousand and One Epigrams (1911)
