Essay Quotes Flashcards
Calvin Coolidge on Education
•”Education will not [take the place of persistence]: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press on’ has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race.”
Albert Einstein on Human Nature
•”Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.”
Samuel Beckett: Miscellaneous
- “We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.” (Human nature? Disintegration)
- “What do I know of man’s destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.”
- “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.”
- “There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.”
- “The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops.”
Oscar Wilde on Democracy, Government, and Power
- “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.”
- “Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”
Camille Paglia on Education
•”Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. It is the past, not the dizzy present, that is the best door to the future.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
- “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
- “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps perpetuate it.”
- “The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.”
- “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
- “Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve.”
- “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Voltaire on Government and Power
- “As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.”
- “It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”
- “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
- “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
Julius Caesar on Human Nature
- “Men willingly believe what they wish.”
* “As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.”
Virgil (classical Roman port)
- “Who asks whether the enemy were defeated by strategy or valor?”
- “Evil is nourished and grows by concealment.”
Frank Kafka on human nature
“There are questions we could not get past if we were not set fee from them by our very nature.”
Winston Churchill on progress and work
- “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”
- “Without victory there is no survival.”
Napoleon Bonaparte on human nature
- “Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self-interest.”
- “A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything.”
- “Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.”
Jean-Paul Sartre on human nature and the value of progress
- “Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.”
- “I hate victims who respect their executioners.”
- “All human actions are equivalent… and all are on principle doomed to failure.”
- “Hell is other people.” (From the play No Exit)
Albert Einstein
German-born theoretical physicist
Calvin Coolidge
30th U.S. President, advocate for small government.
Samuel Beckett
Irish-born avant-gard writer, highly minimalist, known for bleak outlook.
Oscar Wilde
Irish writer and prominent aesthete
Albert Einstein on Intellectual Endeavors/Technology and Society
•”Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.”
Oscar Wilde on Human Nature
•”The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing.”
Camille Paglia
Modern-day American author, professor, “dissident feminist”
Camille Paglia on Art
•”Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which do much art and intellect now flow.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
American pastor, leader in African-American Civil Rights Movement
Voltaire
French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, advocate of civil liberties
Julius Caesar
Roman general, statesman, author of Latin prose
Virgil
Classical Roman poet
Frank Kafka
20th-century existentialist fiction writer, author of The Trial and Metamorphosis
Winston Churchill
Led the U.K. during WWII
Napoleon Bonaparte
French military and political leader during the French Revolution
Jean-Paul Sartre
20th century French existentialist writer/philosopher
John F. Kennedy
35th President
JFK on human virtues
- “Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.”
* “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.”
Theodore Roosevelt
26th U.S. President
Theodore Roosevelt on altruism and human virtues
“Far and away the best prize that life can offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
Woodrow Wilson
28th U.S. President, leading intellectual of the Progressive era.
Woodrow Wilson on government
“No nation is for to sit in judgment upon any other nation.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
19th century American transcendentalist author, proponent of individualism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson on human virtues/ human nature.
- “It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.”
- “Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self.”
Daniel Webster
Leading American statesman during Antebellum period
Daniel Webster on just government
- “Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.”
- “A mass of men equals a mass of opinions.”
- “Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.”
Tom Stoppard
20th Century playwright renowned for use of humor.
Tom Stoppard on life
“Life is a gamble, at terrible odds—if it was a bet, you wouldn’t take it.”
Sinclair Lewis
20th Century American novelist, author of Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis on human virtues
“Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.”
Thomas Jefferson
3rd U.S. President, author of Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson on just government
“The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.”
Florence Nightingale
English nurse, came to prominence tending to soldiers during Crimean War
Florence Nightingale on altruism and human virtue
- “I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.”
- “How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.”
- “The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, then narrow narrower.”
Virginia Woolf
20th century English modernist writer, author of To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf on human nature
“Really, I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.”
Socrates
Ancient Greek philosopher, teacher of Pluto
Socrates on human virtues/nature
- “Life contains but two tragedies. One is to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.”
- “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”
- “From the deepest desires often comes the deadliest hate.”
Socrates on justice/citezenship
- “I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”
- “Nothing is to be preferred before justice.”
- “Let him that would move the world, first move himself.”
John Locke
17th century English philosopher influential in the Enlightenment
John Locke on human nature
•”The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
Thomas Hobbes
17th century English Philosopher
Thomas Hobbes on life and human nature
- “Leisure is the mother of Philosophy.”
* “The life of man: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Henry David Thoreau
Transcendentalist writer, author of Walden
Henry David Thoreau on human life/nature/virtues
- “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
- “Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.”
- “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. now put the foundations under them.”
Immanuel Kant
18th century German philosopher
Immanuel Kant on human virtues
- “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.”
- “Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.”
Gertrude Stein
A ante-grade American writer who lives as an expatriate on Francw
Gertrude Stein on money
•”Money is always there, but the pockets change.”
Mohammad Gandhi
Political and spiritual leader of Indian Independence Movement
Mohammad Gandhi on life
- “There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”
* “God comes to the hungry in the form of food.”
Mohammad Gandhi on just government
- “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.”
- “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”
William Shakespeaee
16th century poet, playwright, and actor
William Shakespeare from The Taming of the Shrew
“There’s small choice in rotten apples.”
William Shakespeare from Sonnet 102
“Sweets grown common lose their dear delight.”
William Shakespeare from King Lear
“The worst is not, so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’”
William Shakespeare from Hamlet
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”
