- 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… (7,644)
- 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) (5,047)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,880)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,110)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,915)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,740)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,312)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,293)
Most Quoted Authors
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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.
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- 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)].
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- 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).
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Quotations about effect
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Ignorance of remote causes disposeth men to attribute all events to the causes immediate and instrumental: for these are all the causes they perceive.
You both seem concern’d lest I have imbib’d some erroneous Opinions. Doubtless I have my Share, and when the natural Weakness and Imperfection of Human Understanding is considered, with the unavoidable Influences of Education, Custom, Books and Company, upon our Ways of thinking, I imagine a Man must have a good deal of Vanity who believes, and a good deal of Boldness who affirms, that all the Doctrines he holds, are true; and all he rejects, are false. And perhaps the same may be justly said of every Sect, Church and Society of men when they assume to themselves that Infallibility which they deny to the Popes and Councils. I think Opinions should be judg’d of by their Influences and Effects; and if a Man holds none that tend to make him less Virtuous or more vicious, it may be concluded he holds none that are dangerous; which I hope is the Case with me.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher
Letter to Josiah and Abiah Franklin (13 Apr 1738)
(Source)
If it be true, that men are miserable because they are wicked, it is likewise true, that many are wicked because they are miserable.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and critic
Aids to Reflection, “Prudential Aphorisms II” (1831 ed.)
(Source)
Human blunders, however, usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) British historian, journalist, broadcaster [Alan John Percivale Taylor]
The Origins of the Second World War, ch. 10 “The War of Nerves” (1961)
Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He fails to make his place good in the world unless he not only pays his debt but also adds something to the common wealth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
The Conduct of Life, ch. 3 “Wealth” (1860)
(Source)
Native ability without education is like a tree which bears no fruit.
Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435 – c. 356 BC) Cyrenaic philosopher, Hedonist
(Attributed)
Quoted in Edward Parsons Day, Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations (1884). Not found in original source material.
A teacher’s major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student’s grandchild.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
“Wallace Stegner and the Great Community,” What Are People For? (1990)
(Source)
Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
(Attributed)
Quoted in Henry Southgate, Things a Lady Would Like To Know, 2nd ed. (1875). But not confirmed or found in Hugo's writings.
Our deeds still travel with us from afar.
And what we have been makes us what we are.
George Eliot (1819-1880) English novelist [pseud. of Mary Ann Evans]
Middlemarch (1871-72)
You never can tell when you do an act
Just what the result will be;
But with every deed you are sowing a seed,
Though the harvest you may not see.Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) American author and poet.
“You Never Can Tell,” Custer And Other Poems (1896)
(Source)
If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
In Harijan (6 Feb 1939)
And is he dead whose glorious mind
Lifts thine on high?
To live in the hearts we leave
Is not to die!
Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) Scottish poet
“Hallowed Ground” (1825)
Every act alters the soul of the doer.
Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), German author
The Decline of the West, “Cities and Peoples” (1918-22) [tr. Atkinson (1962)]
Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Danish philosopher, theologian
Works of Love (1847)
