opinion journalism

Leo Tolstoy

Literature

literary realism

1828–1910

"There is only one time that is important -- NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time that we have any power."

Antonio Gramsci

Philosophy

Marxist humanism

1891–1937

"To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act."

🇨🇴Gabriel García Márquez

Literature

magic realism

1927–2014

"But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love."

🇺🇸Hillary Clinton

Politics

b. 1947

"Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price."

🇫🇷André Maurois

opinion journalism

1885–1967

"Our poor bodies have strength and resources that we learn to know only when we are in the gravest situations."

Václav Havel

Literature

1920–1979

"The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it."

🇺🇸Julia Cameron

Literature

b. 1948

"Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything."

🇮🇳Chetan Bhagat

Literature

b. 1974

"But that is what life is like, uncertain, screwed at times but still fun."

🇬🇧Timothy Garton Ash

Education

b. 1955

"Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns."

"It is the deep, salty stickiness of food that intrigues me more than any other quality."

🇺🇸Rod Dreher

Literature

b. 1967

"They start with pulling down and abusing statues; they will end by doing this to people."

🇺🇸Jay McInerney

Journalism

b. 1955

"You notice for the first time that she has freckles. You didn't know they still made them."

🇵🇱Janusz Korwin-Mikke

Politics

b. 1942

"Under Hitler or Stalin a Góral could choose to produce oscypek however he preferred. Nowadays the EU official is watching him."

🇺🇸Michelle Goldberg

Politics

b. 1975

"If not in life, certainly in this administration."

Heinrich von Treitschke

Politics

Pan-Germanism

1834–1896

"God will see to it that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race."

🇺🇸David Horowitz

Politics

neoconservatism

1939–2025

"The source of the terror in Lebanon as in Iraq is to be found in the Koran and in the despotisms of the Arab Middle East."

🇷🇺Alexander Herzen

Politics

Socialism

1812–1870

"An empire that cannot distance itself from such a gruesome sin that so deeply affects its internal structure does not have the right to education, to future development and participation in history."

"It's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about."

🇬🇧Helen Fielding

Literature

b. 1958

"Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him."

🇺🇸Charles Wheelan

Economics

b. 1966

"Economics should not be accessible only to the experts. The ideas are too important and too interesting. Indeed, naked economics can even be fun."

🇺🇸Carter G. Woodson

Journalism

1875–1950

"History does not furnish a case of the elevation of a people by ignoring the thought and aspiration of the people thus served."

🇺🇸Robin Morgan

Literature

b. 1941

"Pornography is the theory, and rape the practice. And what a practice. The violation of an individual woman is the metaphor for man's forcing himself on whole nations , on nonhuman creatures , and on the planet itself ."

🇺🇸Jeannette Walls

Journalism

b. 1960

"Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential."

🇺🇸Matt Taibbi

Literature

b. 1970

"What we call right-wing and liberal media in this country are really just two different strategies of the same kind of nihilistic lizard-brain sensationalism."

🇺🇸Kinky Friedman

Music

1944–2024

"Find what you like, and let it kill you."

🇺🇸Coretta Scott King

Social Activism

1927–2006

"Coretta Scott King – slideshow by LIFE magazine"

🇺🇸Daniel Ellsberg

Politics

1931–2023

"We weren't on the wrong side. We are the wrong side."

🇺🇸Langston Hughes

Literature

Harlem Renaissance

1901–1967

"Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows,Help us to seeThat without the dust the rainbowWould not be."

🇺🇸Noam Cohen

Literature

"Before Wikileaks, or even the Internet, there were just plain leaks."

🇺🇸Bill Moyers

Politics

1934–2025

"No wonder scoundrels find refuge in patriotism; it offers them immunity from criticism."

🇫🇷Heinrich Heine

Literature

Romanticism

1860–1931

"If one has no heart, one cannot write for the masses."

🇬🇧John Gray (philosopher)

Philosophy

Analytic philosophy

b. 1948

"The most important feature of natural selection is that it is a process of drift. Evolution has no end-point or direction, so if the development of society is an evolutionary process it is one that is going nowhere."

🇵🇹Ricardo Araújo Pereira

Literature

b. 1974

"Camões was an asshole, e o Pessoa was a stupid fuck."

🇺🇸Jonathan Franzen

Literature

b. 1959

"‘I’m not the person to ask about what’s normal,’ Denise answered. ‘I’ve mainly seen normal in the rearview mirror.’"