- 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.
- 18,072 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 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.
WISTish
- * Visual quotes (graphics, memes) only
Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (8,062)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,093)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,985)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,160)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,896)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,407)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,955)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,766)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,640)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,544)
Most Quoted Authors
Author Cloud
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).
Recent Trackbacks
- "Mobs and Education," Speech, Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston (16 Dec 1860) | WIST: Phillips,...
- Letter (1860) | WIST: Andrew, John A.
- "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST: Einstein, Albert
- "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST: Einstein, Albert
- "What I Believe," Forum and Century (Oct 1930) | WIST: Einstein, Albert
Quotations about environment
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
I did not hate them: I was indifferent to them. My crime was far worse because I was not an anti-Semite. … My conscience was progressively calloused and blunted. Of course, one’s conscience does not just cease to exist overnight; it is slowly eroded over the years, eaten away day by day, anesthetized by a multiplicity of little crimes. … As the Nazi environment enveloped us, its evils grew invisible — because we were part of them.
Albert Speer 1905-1981) German architect, government official, author, war criminal
Interview by Eric Norden, Playboy (Jun 1971)
(Source)
We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
Speech, House of Commons (28 Oct 1943)
(Source)
During the debate over rebuilding the House of Commons, which had been destroyed during a German bombing.
The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home.
William Temple (1881-1944) English Anglican archbishop, teacher, preacher
The Hope of a New World (1940)
Man is a complex being who makes deserts bloom and lakes die.
G. B. Stern (1890-1973) British writer [Gladys Bronwyn Stern]
(Attributed)
Also attributed (unsourced) to Gil Stern, Gil Scott-Heron, and Lawrence Peter.
Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Island (1962)
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ch. 1 “Life” (1912)
(Source)
