We can study bacteria, but we can also be studied just like bacteria.
Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of Roscosmos (2018-2022), as quoted in “Dmitry Rogozin: Aliens Could Have Visited Earth, Russia Investigating UFOs,” Newsweek (June 13, 2022).
Men were only made into “men” with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally “a man” any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.
Wyndham Lewis, “Call Yourself a Man!,” The Art of Being Ruled (1926).
“A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females —
“‘Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch football. Don’t eat hamburgers. This is not good for you.’ The message is too feminine: ‘Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.’”
Democratic Party strategist James Carville, explaining to the New York Times why the Democratic Party is losing the male African-American vote.
A period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the Declaration of Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient Constitution; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending in a sweep toward still greater energy; and already a child could calculate the result of a few more such returns.
Henry Adams, A History of the United States of America During the First Administration of James Madison(1890), Vol. II, Ch. VI: Meeting of the Twelfth Congress; 1921 edition, p. 123.
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
H. L. Mencken, Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 40.
Truth does not do as much good in the world as the semblance of truth does evil.
François de La Rochefoucauld, 2nd Duke of La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Maxims (1665), no. 67 (Leonard Tancock, trans.)
You can’t imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.
Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (1842). The same passage in D. J. Hogarth’s translation: “ As things are now, the world has grown stupid to a degree that passes belief.”
“Go and see with how little wisdom this world is governed.”
John Adams, in a letter to John Quincy Adams (received June 3, 1794), advising of a diplomatic position opening up. See Phyllis Lee Levin, The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams (2015), first page.
Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
Edgard Varèse, as quoted by Martha Graham, Dance Observer, Volumes 24-27 (1957), p. 5.
More individualistic countries are also richer, more innovative, and more economically productive.
Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (2020).