Quotations by Theme
Society - Culture
"Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think."
A. E. Housman, 1859-1936
"I cannot say that I think you very generous to the Ladies, for whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to Men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over Wives."
Abigail Adams, 1744-1818
"Men should be judged not by their tint of skin, the gods they serve, the vintage they drink, nor by the way they fight, or love, or sin, but by the quality of the thought they think."
Adela Florence Nicolson, 1865-1904
"Lying is done with words and also with silence."
Adrienne Rich, 1929-
"Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events."
Adrienne Rich, 1929-
"Text-messaging or The Sun, these are perfect Orwellian ways of limiting the vocabulary and thus limiting the consciousness."
Alan Moore, 1953-
"Underneath the superficial self, which pays attention to this and that, there is another self more really us than I."
Alan Watts, 1915-1973
"There are countless studies on the negative spillover of job pressures on family life, but few on how job satisfaction enhances the quality of family life."
Albert Bandura, 1925-
"The society based on production is only productive, not creative."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him, and struggle with all our might against death without raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?"
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"I shall not, as far as I am concerned, try to pass myself off as a Christian in your presence. I share with you the same revulsion from evil. But I do not share your hope, and I continue to struggle against this universe in which children suffer and die."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don't help us, who else in the world can help us do this?"
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
"Which is better: to have Fun with Fungi or to have Idiocy with Ideology, to have Wars because of Words, to have Tomorrow's Misdeeds out of Yesterday's Miscreeds?"
Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963
"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough."
Aldous Huxley,
"To bare our souls is all we ask, to give all we have to life and the beings surrounding us. Here the nature spirits are intense and we appreciate them, make offerings to them - these nature spirits who call us here - sealing our fate with each other, celebrating our love."
Alex Grey, 1953-
"In a society that tries to standardise thinking, individuality is not highly prized."
Alex Grey, 1953-
"Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition."
Alexander Smith,
"There will be certain things in a man that have to be won, not forced; inspired, not compelled."
Alfred Whitney Griswold, 1906-1963
"A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further back - it is already so far"
Alice Meynell,
"Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder."
Alice Miller, 1923-
"Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture."
Allen Ginsberg, 1926-1997
"All education springs from some image of the future. If the image of the future held by a society is grossly inaccurate, its education system will betray its youth."
Alvin Toffler, 1928-
"Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine, were taken away."
Anaxagoras,
"A lot of people in spiritual life use the awareness of difference, and the spiritual glorification of difference, as a justification to indulge in that which is ultimately unreal."
Andrew Cohen,
"Almost all the ideas we have about being a man or being a woman are so burdened with pain, anxiety, fear and self-doubt. For many of us, the confusion around this question is excruciating."
Andrew Cohen,
"They read good books, and quote,/ but never learn a language other than the scream of rocket-burn/ Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad;/ elections, money, empire, oil and Dad."
Andrew Motion, 1952-
"Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery."
Andy Warhol, 1927-1987
"Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords - philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather."
Anna Jameson,
"And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world."
Anne Frank,
"No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism."
Annie Besant,
"Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction."
Annie Sullivan,
"The quest for riches darkens the sense of right and wrong."
Antiphanes, 408 BC-334BC
"Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity."
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1900-1944
"The children whom nobody leads by the hand are the children who know they are children."
Antonio Porchia,
"What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice."
Archibald MacLeish, 1892-1982
"The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself."
Archibald MacLeish, 1892-1982
"To see the earth as we now see it, small and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night -- brothers who see now they are truly brothers."
Archibald MacLeish,
"Piety's hard enough to take among the poor who have to practice it. A rich man's piety stinks. It's insufferable"
Archibald MacLeish,
"Man is by nature a political animal."
Aristotle, 384-322 BCE
"The state is a creation of nature and man is by nature a political animal."
Aristotle,
"To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill."
Aristotle,
"Education is the best provision for the journey to old age."
Aristotle, 384-322 BCE
"It is in justice that the ordering of society is centred."
Aristotle, 384-322 BCE
"The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit."
Aristotle,
"The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes."
Aristotle,
"I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own."
Arthur Rimbaud,
"I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain."
Arthur Rimbaud,
"Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame."
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860
"Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money."
Arthur Schopenhauer,
"To free a man from error is to give, not take away."
Arthur Schopenhauer,
"Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people."
Arthur Schopenhauer,
"Compassion is the basis of all morality."
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860
"I expect to pass through this world but once, any good thing therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature (or child), let me do it now, let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."
Attienne De Grellet,
"I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell."
Audre Lorde,
"In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction."
Audre Lorde,
"But, on the other hand, I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said about a Black person and a White person loving each other in a racist society."
Audre Lorde,
"If we are meant to "love thy neighbor as thyself," then surely we should love the world's children as our own."
Audrey Hepburn,
"It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."
Aung San Suu Kyi,
"If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.... The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind."
Ayn Rand,
"Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless."
B. F. Skinner, 1904-1990
"Life doesn't count for much unless you're willing to do your small part to leave our children – all of our children – a better world. Even if it's difficult. Even if the work seems great. Even if we don't get very far in our lifetime."
Barack Obama,
"Sexual ecstasy usually arises among dyads, or groups of two, but the ritual ecstasy of "primitives" emerged within groups generally composed of thirty or more participants. Thanks to psychology and the psychological concerns of Western culture generally, we have a rich language for describing the emotions drawing one person to another--from the most fleeting sexual attraction, to ego-dissolving love, all the way to the destructive force of obsession. What we lack is any way of describing and understanding the "love" that may exist among dozens of people at a time; and it is this kind of love that is expressed in ecstatic ritual."
Barbara Ehrenreich,
"I think I developed language skills to deal with threat. It's the girl thing to do-you know, instead of pulling out a gun."
Barbara Kruger, 1945-
"The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue."
Baruch Spinoza,
"Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself."
Baruch Spinoza,
"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
Baruch Spinoza, 1632-1677
"The difference of race is one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist; because race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance."
Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881
"We must hang together, gentlemen ... else, we shall most assuredly hang separately."
Benjamin Franklin,
"He that is of the opiniorn money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money."
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790
"Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none."
Benjamin Franklin,
"We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790
"Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes form society."
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790
"Movies, television shows, and magazines promote impulsive behavior of the most questionable kind, in the most flash-it-in-their-faces manner."
Benjamin Hoff,
"None are so empty as those who are full of themselves"
Benjamin Whichcote, 1609-1683
"The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others."
Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970
"Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery."
Bertrand Russell,
"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
Bertrand Russell,
"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
Bertrand Russell,
"We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities."
Bill Maher,
"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
Bill Vaughan,
"When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay."
Brian Aldiss, 1925-
"Education should prepare our minds to use its own powers of reason and conception rather than filling it with the accumulated misconceptions of the past."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"In America, educators punish those who actually think for themselves. There is only acceptance for popular opinion."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"There are amazingly wonderful people in all walks of life; some familiar to us and others not. Stretch yourself and really get to know people. People are in many ways one of our greatest treasures."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"Truth is not a matter of fact but a state of harmony with progress and hope. Enveloped only in its wings will we ever soar to the promise of our greater selves."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"Don't make the mistake of thinking that you have to agree with people and their beliefs to defend them from injustice."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"What advocates of any form of censorship fail to understand is that a society of free and intelligent human beings must rest upon the premise that minds be free to think about, read about and talk about society."
Butler D Shaffer,
"We preoccupy ourselves so much with changing the lives of others not out of proclaimed sentiments of selfless human charity, but out of our selfish desire to validate our own identities. There is, of course, enormous ego gratification in the exercise of power over other people, but such satisfaction is rooted in our need to have others believe and behave as we do."
Butler D Shaffer,
"Religion provides the solace for the turmoil that it creates."
Byron Danelius,
"Fear created the first gods in the world."
Caecilius Statius, 220-168 BCE
"Men have had the vanity to pretend that the whole creation was made for them, while in reality the whole creation does not suspect their existence."
Camille Flammarion, 1842-1925
"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses."
Carl Gustav Jung, 1875-1961
"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism."
Carl Gustav Jung, 1875-1961
"Economic distress will teach man, if anything can, that realities are less dangerous than fantasies, that fact-finding is more effective than fault-finding."
Carl Lotus Backer, 1873-1945
"I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety."
Carol Ann Duffy, 1955-
"Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds."
Charles Caleb Colton, 1780-1832
"There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion."
Charles Caleb Colton, 1780-1832
"Children are the brightest treasures we bring forth into this world, but too large a percentage of the population continues to treat them as inconveniences and nuisances, when they're not treating them as possessions or toys."
Charles De Lint,
"The less men think, the more they talk."
Charles de Montesquieu, 1689-1755
"It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption."
Charles de Montesquieu,
"False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared."
Charles de Montesquieu,
"Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason."
Charles de Secondat, 1689-1755
"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another."
Charles Dickens, 1812-1870
"Whatever your occupation may be and however crowded our hours with affairs, do not fail to secure at least a few minutes every day for refreshment of your inner life with a bit of poetry."
Charles Elliot Norton, 1827-1908
"Phenomena of a man alone on a desert island can be explained in terms of "mass psychology" - inasmuch as the mind of no man is a unit, but is a community of mental states that influence one another."
Charles Fort, 1874-1932
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
Charles Mackay, 1814-1889
"To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind."
Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
"There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver."
Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
"Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy."
Chogyam Trungpa,
"A strange mixture of fear and joy comes with driving off from the hospital with your firstborn in the vehicle. There's a powerful sense of transition and new beginning, and yet fear as well. It's a fear closely attached to the question, "What do I do with this thing?" It's a healthy fear born out of an awareness of the fragility of new life."
Chris Seidman,
"Every great movement in the history of Western civilization from the Carolingian age to the nineteenth century has been an international movement which owed its existence and its development to the cooperation of many different peoples."
Christopher Dawson, 1889-1970
"For humanism also appeals to man as man. It seeks to liberate the universal qualities of human nature from the narrow limitations of blood and soil and class and to create a common language and a common culture in which men can realize their common humanity."
Christopher Dawson,
"The deeds of the children are a testament to the upbringing they received from their parents."
Christopher Paolini,
"Your parents they give you your life, but then try to give you their life."
Chuck Palahniuk, 1962
"Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey."
Clarence Seward Darrow,
"Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism."
Claude McKay,
"If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything."
Claude McKay, 1889-1948
"The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain."
Colin Wilson,
"Motherhood is an early retirement position. Your children do grow up."
Colleen Parro,
"What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."
Confucius, 551-479 BCE
"The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home."
Confucius, 551-479 BCE
"Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire."
Confucius, 551-479 BCE
"True freedom is the capacity for acting according to one's true character, to be altogether one's self, to be self-determined and not subject to outside coercion."
Corliss Lamont, 1902-1995
"The more I see of democracy the more I dislike it. It just brings everything down to the mere vulgar level of wages and prices, electric light and water closets, and nothing else."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"The only justice is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is just, but judgement is never just."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"One could laugh at the world better if it didn't mix tender kindliness with its brutality."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master"
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"Money is our madness, our vast collective madness."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"Men! The only animal in the world to fear."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think."
Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955
"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion."
Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving."
Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955
"So the ability to pause and to not act on that first impulse has become a crucial emotional skill in modern lives."
Daniel Goleman, 1946-
"My work comes from inner disturbances, from seeing injustices and accidents and how they affect people's lives in a tragic way."
David Guterson, 1956-
"It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom."
David Hume, 1711-1776
"The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other."
David Riesman, 1909-2002
"It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all."
Democritus,
"In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all."
Denis Diderot,
"Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it."
Denis Diderot,
"There comes a moment during which almost every girl or boy falls into melancholy; they are tormented by a vague inquietude, which rests on everything and finds nothing to calm it. They seek solitude; they weep; the silence to be found in cloister attracts them: the image of peace that seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish."
Denis Diderot,
"We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means - all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity."
Derrick Jensen,
"What this means is that corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host."
Derrick Jensen,
"What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism."
Desiderius Erasmus,
"We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less."
Diogenes, 412 BC-323BC
"The foundation of every state is the education of its youth."
Diogenes,
"I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
Diogenes,
"The trouble with the public is that there is too much of it; what we need in public is less quantity and more quality."
Don Marquis,
"An effective counter to the endless succession of zealotry and fanaticism from one generation to the next, with its consequent ill effects on freedom of expression, thought, scientific inquiry, and behavior, would be to institute an age of consent for religious indoctrination."
Donald Henry Gudehus, 1939-
"The history of religion can be compared to a layer cake -- a mountain of layers of stale dogma, interspaced with the congealed blood of its victims, and overlaid with a sweetened opiate to make itself appealing to the gullible."
Donald Henry Gudehus,
"Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn't have anything to do with it."
Dr. Haim Ginott,
"I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision, we shall discover a new and unbearable disturbance of the modern peace, or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television - of that I am quite sure."
E.B. White,
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Edmund Burke, 1729-1797
"The function of intellect is to provide a means of modifying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare."
Edward Thorndike, 1874-1949
"There is a destiny that makes us brothers;/ None goes his way alone; /All that we send into the lives of others/ Comes back into our own."
Edwin Markham, 1852-1940
"The crest and crowning of all good/Life’s final star, is Brotherhood."
Edwin Markham, 1852-1940
"Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them."
Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915
"Responsibility is the price of freedom."
Elbert Hubbard,
"Formal religion was organized for slaves: it offered them consolation which earth did not provide."
Elbert Hubbard,
"When certain unmarried men, who had lost their capacity to sin, sat indoors, breathing bad air, and passed resolutions about what was right and what wrong, making rules for the guidance of the people, instead of trusting to the natural, happy instincts of the individual, they ushered in the Dark Ages. These are the gentlemen who blocked human evolution absolutely for a thousand years."
Elbert Hubbard,
"Often we can help each other most by leaving each other alone; at other times we need the hand-grasp and the word of cheer."
Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915
"I think isolation is one of the greatest problems, an ever-growing obstacle to political solidarity."
Elfriede Jelinek, 1946-
"I didn't fully realize it at the time, but the goal of my life was profoundly molded by this experience - to help produce, in the next generation, more Mother Teresas and less Hitlers."
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, 1926-2004
"Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it."
Emile Cioran, 1911-1995
"Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves."
Emile Cioran, 1911-1995
"I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years past been working to undo the botched job your God has made."
Emma Goldman, 1869-1940
"Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open."
Emma Goldman, 1869-1940
"Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began. There is but one way out of this blunder: Man must break his fetters which have chained him to the gates of heaven and hell, so that he can begin to fashion out of his reawakened and illumined consciousness a new world upon earth."
Emma Goldman,
"Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society."
Emma Goldman,
"Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant."
Epictetus,
"It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it."
Epictetus,
"If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another."
Epicurus, ca. 341-270 BCE
"Justice... is a kind of contract not to harm or be harmed."
Epicurus, 341 BC-271
"The pride that at present pervades the world is the claim that one is a member of a chosen group – be it a nation, race, church or party. No other attitude has so impaired the oneness of the human species and contributed so much to the savage strife of our time."
Eric Hoffer, 1902-1983
"Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves."
Eric Hoffer,
"To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance."
Eric Hoffer,
"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business."
Eric Hoffer, 1902-83
"Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless."
Eric Hoffer,
"It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words."
Eric Hoffer,
"It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men."
Eric Hoffer,
"Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind."
Eric Hoffer,
"Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something."
Eric Hoffer,
"To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance."
Eric Hoffer,
"There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other."
Eric Hoffer,
"Thus blind faith is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves; insatiable desire a substitute for hope; accumulation a substitute for growth; fervent hustling a substitute for purposeful action; and pride a substitute for unattainable self-respect."
Eric Hoffer, 1902-1983
"It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate."
Eric Hoffer,
"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
"Authority is not a quality one person "has," in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him."
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
"A vast sector of modern advertising... does not appeal to reason but to emotion; like any other kind of hypnoid suggestion, it tries to impress its objects emotionally and then make them submit intellectually."
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
"Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?""
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
"Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death."
Erik Erikson, 1902-1994
"In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it."
Ernst Fischer,
"Believing as we do in growth, and in a new generation, both of those who create and those who enjoy, we call all young people together, and as young people, who carry the future with us, we want to wrest freedom for our actions and our lives from the older, more comfortably established forces."
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1880-1938
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