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There's an experienced rebel, Time,
And in his squadrons Poverty;
There's Age that brings along with him
A terrible artillery:
And if against all these thou keep'st thy crown,
Th'usurper Death will make thee lay it down.

Thomas Flatman

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Flatman, Thomas. "The Defiance." Poems and Songs. London: Benjamin Tooke, 1674.

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If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility.

Thomas De Quincey

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De Quincey, Thomas. "On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts." Blackwood's Magazine, 1827.

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De Quincey, Thomas. On Murder, edited by Robert Morrison. Oxford University Press, 2009.

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Were I to... Take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, "In your lifetime, have you known peace?" wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in turn into his father, I would never hear the word "yes" if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years.

Rebecca West

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West, Rebecca. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia. Vol. 1, The Viking Press, 1941.

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From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

W. Somerset Maugham

Cakes and Ale

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Maugham, William Somerset. Cakes and Ale, or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard. William Heinemann/Garden City Publishing Co., 1930.

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Maugham, William Somerset. Cakes and Ale. Vintage, 2000.

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We can only pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

John Buchan

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Buchan, John. Address to the people of Canada on the coronation of George VI. 12 May 1937, Canada.

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Journalists belong in the gutter because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.

Gerald Priestland

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Priestland, Gerald. Radio broadcast in London. 19 May 1988, London, England, UK.

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The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

Also known as Clarke's Second Law

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Clarke, Arthur C. "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination." Profiles of the Future. Gollancz, 1962.

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Listen! the wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves!

Humbert Wolfe

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Wolfe, Humbert. "Autumn (Resignation)." Poems. Selections. Ernest Benn Ltd, 1926, st. 2.

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Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever.

Joseph Priestley

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Priestley, Joseph. An Essay on the First Principles of Government. London: J. Dodsley, 1768.

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Priestley, Joseph. "An Essay on the First Principles of Government." Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge University Press, 1993.

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I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.

George V

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George V. Speech in France. 13 May 1922, Terlincthun British Cemetery, Wimille, France.

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The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

John Ruskin

Fors Clavigera

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Ruskin, John. "Letter the Sixty-Ninth." Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain. London: Hazell, Watson & Viney/Kent: George Allen, 1 Sept. 1876.

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Ruskin, John. Fors Clavigera IV-VI. The Works of John Ruskin, edited by Edward Tyas Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Vol. 28, Cambridge University Press, 2010, letter 67.

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The Past is like a funeral gone by
The Future comes like an unwelcomed guest.

Edmund Gosse

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Gosse, Edmund. "May-Day." On Viol and Flute. London: Henry S. King, 1873.

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Improvements succeeded each other so rapidly, that machines which had never been finished were abandoned in the hands of their makers, because new improvements had superseded their utility.

Charles Babbage

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Original Citation

Babbage, Charles. On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. London: Charles Knight, 1832, ch. 29.

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Babbage, Charles. On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. Cambridge University Press, 2010, ch. 29.

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The mind is but a barren soil; is a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.

Joshua Reynolds

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Reynolds, Joshua. "Discourse VI." 10 Dec. 1774, Royal Academy of Arts, London, England, UK. Lecture.

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Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends.

Robert Graves

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Graves, Robert. "The Case for Xanthippe." The Crane Bag. Cassell & Company, 1969.

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In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.

Arthur James Balfour

Memorandum to Lord Curzon, August 11, 1919

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Original Citation

Balfour, Arthur James. Memorandum to Lord Curzon. 11 Aug. 1919.

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Balfour, Arthur James. Quoted in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by Anne McClintock and Aamir Mufti and Ella Shohat. University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

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The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

Wilfred Owen

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Owen, Wilfred. "Anthem for Doomed Youth." Poems. Chatto & Windus, 1920.

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Owen, Wilfred. "Anthem for Doomed Youth." The War Poems Of Wilfred Owen. Random House UK, 2018.

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We keep saying old people are square. Then when they suddenly aren't-we don't like it!

Peter Shaffer

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Shaffer, Peter. Equus. 1973, Royal National Theatre, London, England, UK, act 2, sc. 31.

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Shaffer, Peter. Equus. Scribner, 2005, act 2, sc. 31.

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In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book, or goes to an American play, or looks at an American picture or statue?... Under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy, and sell and torture?

Sydney Smith

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Smith, Sydney. "Review of Seybert's Annals of the United States." The Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1820 - May 1820.

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The opinion seems to have got abroad, that, in a few years, all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry on these measurements to another place of decimals.

James Clerk Maxwell

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Maxwell, James Clerk. Inaugural address as Cavendish professor. Oct. 1871, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, UK.

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