Comincionsi le guerre quando altri vuole,
ma non quando altri vuole si finiscono
Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
Niccolò Machiavelli, from the Florentine Histories — Istorie fiorentine (A.D. 1526).
The only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.
Polybius, as in The Histories of Polybius, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (1889), Book I, Chapter 1.
It is enough to ask somebody for his weapons without saying ‘I want to kill you with them,’ because when you have his weapons in hand, you can satisfy your desire.
Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (A.D. 1517), Book 1, Ch 44 (as translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella).
Apparently, “conspiracy stuff” is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.
Gore Vidal, “The Enemy Within,” The Observer (October 27, 2002).
It’s a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.
Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop (1919).
What if a person is sure of his identity but it isn’t his identity?
Science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr. — the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon — in the short story “Beam Us Home,” Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home (1973), p. 305.
The moral of this story is, anything you don’t understand is dangerous until you do understand it.
Science fiction author Larry Niven, “Flatlander” in Neutron Star (1968).
I learned centuries back that there is no privacy in any society crowded enough to need IDs. A law guaranteeing privacy simply insures that bugs — microphones and lenses and so forth — are that much harder to spot.
The character Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’sTime Enough for Love (1973), Prelude I.
The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right!
Larry Niven, as quoted by Arthur C. Clarke in “Meeting of the Minds: Buzz Aldrin Visits Arthur C. Clarke” by Andrew Chaikin, Space.com (February 27, 2001).
Oh, I have strong opinions, but a thousand reasoned opinions are never equal to one case of diving in and finding out. Galileo proved that and it may be the only certainty we have.
An admission by the character Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love (1973), Prelude I.