Search

Topics

Quotes

“I was searching for something a little more than a dashing metaphor, a good deal less than a cultural map: and for those purposes the two cultures is about right.”

C. P. Snow book The Two Cultures

Source: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), P. 10

“And just when you’d think [humans] were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they occasionally showed more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“Those who see in National Socialism nothing more than a political movement know scarcely anything of it. It is more even than a religion: it is the will to create mankind anew.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Voice of Destruction (1940), p. 246

“The Kantian philosophy is no more than at best a half-secularized version of such a theocratic ethics, with “Reason” in the place of God. This does not amount to much more than a change of names.”

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

“Liberalism and its Discontents,” p. 20.
Outside Ethics (2005)

“A skilful leech is better far
Than half an hundred men of war,
So he appear'd; and by his skill,
No less than dint of sword, cou'd kill.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

“A community conceived only as the arithmetical sum of its component individuals; a community is, in fact, no more than this once it ceases to be attached to any principle higher than the individuals.”

René Guénon (1886–1951) French metaphysician

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 96

“If consciousness is, as some inhuman thinker has said, nothing more than a flash of light between two eternities of darkness, then there is nothing more execrable than existence.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), I : The Man of Flesh and Bone

“Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

9 May 1830
Table Talk (1821–1834)

“Something indefinite is always worse than something definite, a strong fear that doesn't last very long is easier than one that's nebulous but doesn't go away.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

“There is stud "Khrenovskoy" in my former constituency and that stud is older than all of the United States, older than America. Naturally, that's why we have archaic views.”

Dmitry Rogozin (1963) Russian diplomat

Галерея – городской еженедельник полезной информации, стр.6 http://www.infovoronezh.ru/pdf/254.pdf (Gallery – city weekly) Dec. 23-29, 2009, p. 6 <br class="br">Original: В моем бывшем избирательном округе есть конезавод «Хреновской», – конезавод старше, чем все США, чем Америка как таковая. Естественно, поэтому у нас взгляды архаичнее.

“According to Cato the Elder, Scipio Africanus was wont to say that he was never less at leisure than when at leisure, nor less alone than when alone.”
P. Scipionem [...] dicere solitum scripsit Cato [...] numquam se minus otiosum esse, quam cum otiosus; nec minus solum, quam cum solus esset.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book III, section 1
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)

“Proposition 15. The diameter of the sun has, to the diameter of the earth a ratio greater than that which 19 has to 3, but less than that which 43 has to 6.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

p, 125
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon (c. 250 BC)
Variant: Proposition 10. The sun has to the moon a ratio greater than that which 5832 has to 1, but less than that which 8000 has to 1.

“If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) edited by Tryon Edwards.

“It’s unbelievable that after more than 30 years in the game, pummeling a guy with his loafer will be my legacy. But I guess it's better than having no legacy at all.”

Mike Milbury (1952) American ice hockey player

[proicehockey.about.com/od/musicfilmcardstrivia/a/04_hockey_quote_2.htm, About.com, Fitzpatrick, Jamie, 2004 Hockey Quotes of the Year, 2006-12-20]
On himself

“As it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion; it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 79 (18 December 1750)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

“There are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it in butter; but this is the sort of thing (as the proverb indicates) we overlook: there are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.”

J. L. Austin book How to Do Things with Words

John Langshaw Austin, Marina Sbisà (1975) How to Do Things with Words. p. 48.

“We must respect our own dignity as rational beings and thus diminish the power of fraud. It is better to be free than be a slave, better to know than to be ignorant.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Eminent Indians (1947)
Context: We must respect our own dignity as rational beings and thus diminish the power of fraud. It is better to be free than be a slave, better to know than to be ignorant. It is reason that helps us to reject what is falsely taught and believed about God, that He is a detective officer or a capricious despot or a glorified schoolmaster. It is essential that we should subject religious beliefs to the scrutiny of reason.

“A dark object seen against a bright background will appear smaller than it is. A light object will look larger when it is seen against a background darker than itself.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IV Perspective of Disappearance

“The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Future and Past
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy