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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (5,843)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,691)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,479)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,837)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,544)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,737)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,725)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,582)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,027)
- “Hallowed Ground” (1825) (2,991)
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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.
Recent Feedback
- 24-Feb-20 - "Pushkin and Pugachev [Пушкин и Пугачев]" (1937) | WIST on (Attributed).
- 22-Feb-20 - Defending Health Freedom: from informed-consent to implied consent – Nature of Healing on Letter to Henry L. Sprague (26 Jan 1900).
- 12-Feb-20 - "What I Believe," The Nation (16 Jul 1938) | WIST on Letter to Bp. Mandell Creighton (3 Apr 1887).
- 12-Feb-20 - "Equality," The Spectator (27 Aug 1943) | WIST on “On Slavery and Democracy” (fragment) (1858?).
- 3-Feb-20 - "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," lecture, Library Association Bournemouth Conference (29 Apr - 2 May 1952) | WIST on 1 Corinthians 13:11 [KJV].
- 29-Jan-20 - Dave on Authors.
Quotations about size
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The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say “When!”
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
Very Good, Jeeves (1930)
(Source)
We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.
Henry Kissinger (b. 1923) German-American diplomat
“The Viet Nam Negotiations,” Foreign Affairs (Jan 1969)
(Source)
Sometimes paraphrased as "A conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla army wins if he does not lose."
Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral, ch. 24 “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates” (1597)
She fitted into my biggest armchair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight about the hips that season.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
Very Good, Jeeves (1930)
