Quotes
Welcome to this online version of our flesh and blood, grey limestone gothic, green, leafy, quadrangled University. – UChicago admissions website
Modern invention has been a great leveller. A machine may operate far more quickly than a political or economic measure to abolish privilege and wipe out the distinctions of class or finance. – Ivor Brown, The Heart of England
There’s more to gain by economic gains than by geopolitical gains. – Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat
The kind of advice we give literally can’t be bought, because anyone qualified to give it is already rich. – YC website
We were born to need each other, but we still haven’t learned how to live with each other. – Rainer Werner Fassbinder
The only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best. – Donald Hall, Poetry and Ambition
If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies. – Albert Einstein
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. – Elie Wiesel
Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring. – Marilyn Monroe
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. This is the writer’s radar, and all great writers have had it. – Ernest Hemingway
Change breaks the brittle. – Jan Houtema
If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance. – George Bernard Shaw
Science moves with a spirit characterized by youthful arrogance and the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty. – James Watson
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running. – African proverb
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it. – Voltaire
Simultaneously reifying and challenging hegemonic codes of race, class, gender and regional or national identity, his characters explore the complex and changing postmodern cultural landscape. – Robert Bennett, English professor at Montana State, announcing a panel discussion about Brad Pitt
When someone blunders, we say that he makes a misstep. It is clear that all the: ills of mankind, tragic misfortunes that fill our history books, political blunders, failures of great leaders; arise merely from the lack of skill in dancing. - Molière
Yesterday I found out what doughnuts are for. You put them on doughbolts. They hold dough airplanes together. For kids, they make erector sets out of playdough. – Stephen Wright
Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very;” your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. – Mark Twain
Easy reading is damn hard writing. – Nathaniel Hawthorne