- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
WIST currently holds 19,765 quotations by 3,077 authors. Please feel free to browse and borrow.
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Quote Search
Authors
Author Cloud
Aristotle • Asimov, Isaac • 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 • Homer • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Martial • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Sophocles • Tolkien, J.R.R. • Twain, Mark • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Most Quoted Authors
Topic Cloud
action age America author beauty belief change character courage death democracy education ego error evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history human nature humanity integrity liberty life love morality perspective politics power 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.
Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (10,352)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,708)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (6,277)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,678)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,970)
- “Tips for Teens,” Social Studies (1981) (4,876)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (4,651)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,637)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (4,292)
- Republic, Book 1, 347c (4,278)
Recent Feedback
- More quotes by Cicero, Marcus Tullius on The Problems of Philosophy, ch. 2 “The Existence of Matter” (1912)
- More quotes by Cicero, Marcus Tullius on Discourse on Method [Discours de la méthode], Part 2 (1637) [tr. Cottingham, Stoothoff (1985)]
- More quotes by Cicero, Marcus Tullius on The Imitation of Christ, Book 3, ch. 12, sec. 2 (c. 1418)
- More quotes by Cicero, Marcus Tullius on Heauton Timoroumenos [The Self-Tormentor], Act 4, sc. 5, l. 48 (l. 796)
- om on “Reflections on Monogamy,” Prejudices (1919-27)
- More quotes by Bullock, Christopher on Letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy (13 Nov 1789)
- More quotes by Aristotle on The Iliad [Ἰλιάς], Book 9, l. 63ff (9.63-64) [Nestor] (c. 750 BC) [tr. Pope (1715-20)]
- More quotes by Ingersoll, Robert Green on Inaugural Address (20 Jan 1961) [with Ted Sorensen]
- More quotes by Ingersoll, Robert Green on Speech, Republican National Convention (7 Jun 1916)
- More quotes by Ingersoll, Robert Green on “In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire,” Memorial Day address, Keene, New Hampshire (30 May 1884)
Quotations about person
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: “What are you going through?” It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labelled “unfortunate,” but as a man, exactly as we are, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction.
Simone Weil (1909-1943) French philosopher
“Studies with a View to the Love of God” (Apr 1942), Waiting for God [Awaiting God; Attente De Dieu] (1950)
(Source)
A person, an individual being, has a thousand ways of conveying his feelings and thoughts. He is riches without end, he is a world in which we can always discover something new. A crowd, on the other hand, reduces the individuality of the person; a man in a crowd limits himself to a few forms of elementary behavior. The forms through which a crowd can express its yearnings are extraordinarily meager and continually repeat themselves: the demonstration, the strike, the rally, the barricades. That is why you can write a novel about a man, but about a crowd — never.
Ryszard Kapuściński (1932-2007) Polish journalist, photographer, poet, author
Shah of Shahs, Part 3 “The Dead Flame” (1982)
(Source)
The man is nothing, the work all!
[L’homme n’est rien, l’oeuvre tout!]
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French writer, novelist
Letter to George Sand (Dec 1875)
Original French. Arthur Conan Doyle misquoted this in "The Red-Headed League" as "L'homme c'est rien -- l'oeuvre c'est tout."
Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. Our cases recognize “the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” Our precedents “have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter.” These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.
Anthony Kennedy (b. 1936) US Supreme Court Justice
Planned Parenthood v. Casey (91-744), 505 U.S. 833 (29 Jun 1992) [Majority Opinion]
(Source)
Citations removed.
THE SERGEANT: When men and women pick one another up for just a bit of fun, they find they’ve picked up more than they bargained for, because men and women have a top story as well as a ground floor, and you can’t have the one without the other.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Too True to Be Good, Act 3 (1932)
(Source)
Feminism: The radical notion that women are people.
Marie Shear (1940-2017) American writer and feminist activist
“Media Watch: Celebrating Women’s Words,” New Directions for Women (May/Jun 1986)
(Source)
Often misattributed to Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler, A Feminist Dictionary (1985), which was the subject of Shear's review.
I think that’s all anybody wants. To belong. To be people.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Friday [Friday Jones] (1982)
A transition from an author’s book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
The Rambler, #14 (5 May 1750)
(Source)
In good conversation, parties don’t speak to the words, but to the meanings of each other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Social Aims,” lecture, Boston (4 Dec 1864), Letters and Social Aims (1875)
In nature there’s no blemish but the mind;
None can be called deformed but the unkind.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Twelfth Night, Act 3, sc. 4, l. 386ff [Antonio] (1601)
(Source)
It is manifestly possible to be a good citizen without possessing the goodness that constitutes a good man.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Politics [Πολιτικά], Book 3, ch. 4 / 1276b.34 [tr. Rackham (1932)]
(Source)
Alternate translations:
- "It is quite possible that a citizen, though good as such, should not possess the excellence which characterizes a the good man." [tr. Bolland (1877)]
- "The good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man." [tr. Jowett (1885)]
- "An excellent citizen does not possess that virtue which constitutes a good man." [tr. Ellis (1912)]
- "That it is possible for a citizen to be excellent yet not possess the virtue in accordance with which he is an excellent man, therefore, is evident." [tr. Lord (1984)]
