English

Explore 7518 quotes originally in English

Sort

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

There are no other quotes by this person in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Statement Type

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

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

Citation text copied to clipboard.

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

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Statement Type

Language

Time

Authentication Score 2

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

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

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

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

Current citation text copied to clipboard.

We are all of us, men and women both, the creatures of culture: We do and feel what our societies want us to do and feel, and the demands that they put upon us are not always either very consistent or very precisely correlated with biology.

Diana Trilling

There are no other quotes by this person in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Genre

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Trilling, Diana. "Female Biology in a Male Culture." The Saturday Review, 10 Oct. 1970.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

When…we fear science, we really fear ourselves. Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.

John C. Polanyi

There are no other quotes by this person in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Speaker

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 2

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Polanyi, John C. Nobel banquet speech. 10 Dec. 1986, Stockholm, Sweden.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

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

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Genre

Language

Time

Authentication Score 2

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

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

Citation text copied to clipboard.

You can't get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that.

Gerald Brenan

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 1

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Brenan, Gerald. Times Literary Supplement. 28 Nov. 1986.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace, not so much because of what it has done, but because of the excuses it has provided us for our failures.

J. William Fulbright

Quoted in Observer

More information about this quote

Topic

Speaker

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 1

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Fulbright, James William. "Sayings of the Year." Observer, 21 Dec. 1958.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

Norman Mailer

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Genre

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Mailer, Norman. The Presidential Papers. Bantam Books, 1964, preface.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction.

Stephen Jay Gould

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Gould, Stephen Jay. Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. Harmony Books, 1996, pt. 4, ch. 14.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

We all make mistakes. We know we make mistakes. I don't know any military commander, who is honest, who would say he has not made a mistake. There's a wonderful phrase: "the fog of war." What "the fog of war" means is: war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.

Robert McNamara

Watch The Fog of War at Amazon Watch The Fog of War at Amazon

More information about this quote

Topic

Speaker

Source

Medium

Genre

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

The Fog of War. Directed by Errol Morris, RadicalMedia/SenArt Films, 2003.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach.

Henry Beston

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Genre

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

Beston, Henry. The Outermost House. Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1928, ch. 3.

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

Beston, Henry. The Outermost House. Holt Paperbacks, 2003, ch. 3.

Current citation text copied to clipboard.

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

There are no other quotes from this source in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 0

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

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

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

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

Current citation text copied to clipboard.

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

John Buchan

There are no other quotes by this person in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Genre

Language

Time

Authentication Score 2

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

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

Citation text copied to clipboard.

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

Gerald Priestland

There are no other quotes by this person in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Speaker

Source

Language

Time

Authentication Score 1

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

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

Citation text copied to clipboard.

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

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

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

Citation text copied to clipboard.

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

Humbert Wolfe

There are no other quotes by this person in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 1

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

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

Citation text copied to clipboard.

Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.

George C. Marshall

There are no other quotes by this person in the Bon Mots database.

Read this speech at oecd.org

More information about this quote

Topic

Speaker

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 2

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Marshall, George Catlett. Address announcing the Marshall Plan. 5 June 1947, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

The works of art, by being publicly exhibited and offered for sale, are becoming articles of trade, following as such the unreasoning laws of markets and fashion; and public and even private patronage is swayed by their tyrannical influence.

Albert, Prince Consort

There are no other quotes by this person in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Speaker

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 2

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Prince Albert, Consort. "At the Dinner of the Royal Academy." 3 May 1851, Royal Academy of Arts, London, England, UK.

Citation text copied to clipboard.

And the sun sank again on the grand Australian bush-the nurse and tutor of eccentric minds, the home of the weird, and of much that is different from things in other lands.

Henry Lawson

There are no other quotes by this person in the Bon Mots database.

The Bush Undertaker

There are no other quotes from this source in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Original Citation

Lawson, Henry. "The Bush Undertaker." The Antipodean, 1892.

Original citation text copied to clipboard.

Current Citation

Lawson, Henry. "The Bush Undertaker." The Penguin Henry Lawson Short Stories. Penguin Books, 1986.

Current citation text copied to clipboard.

There is only one success, he said to himself-to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Christopher Morley

There are no other quotes by this person in the Bon Mots database.

More information about this quote

Topic

Author

Source

Medium

Language

Time

Authentication Score 3

More information on Authentication Score coming soon.

Citation

Morley, Christopher. Where the Blue Begins. William Heinemann/Doubleday, 1922, ch. 8.

Citation text copied to clipboard.