“Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.”

British Telecom advertisement (1993), part of which was used in Pink Floyd's Keep Talking (1994) and Talkin' Hawkin'<nowiki/> (2014)
Context: For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

Source: Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady

Reported in Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), p. 221.

Essay 3, Aphorism 14
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

"Credo" (1991); also in Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! : Collected Essays, 1934-1998 (1999), p. 360
1990s

Speech at the unveiling of a bust of the late Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Macdonald at Westminster Abbey (16 November 1892), reported in The Times (17 November 1892), p. 9. Leo McKinstry, Rosebery: Statesman in Turmoil (John Murray, 2006), p. 120.