Philologist

🇺🇸Noam Chomsky

Philosophy

atheism

b. 1928

"Spectator sports make people more passive, because you're not doing them—you're watching somebody doing them."

🇺🇸Revilo P. Oliver

Education

1908–1994

"Revilo Oliver site maintained by Kevin Alfred Strom"

Giacomo Leopardi

Literature

1798–1837

"NATURE: So flees the squirrel from the rattlesnake, and runs in its haste deliberately into the mouth of its tormentor. I am that from which thou fleest."

🇮🇹Fausto Cercignani

Literature

b. 1941

"“Studia austriaca” and “Studia theodisca"

🇺🇸Bart D. Ehrman

Religion

b. 1955

"Even though Jesus may be the only miracleworking Son of God that people know about today, there were lots of people like this in the ancient world."

🇵🇱Victor Klemperer

Education

1881–1960

"Anyone who took their Catholic faith seriously stood alongside the Jews in mutual, mortal conflict with Hitler."

Al-Zamakhshari

Religion

Mu'tazilism

1075–1144

"Arguing with them in a way that is better means using the best method of argumentation which is the method of kindness and gentleness without gruffness and harshness."

🇺🇸Sheldon Pollock

Literature

b. 1948

"There is nothing remarkable about the people in premodern South Asia having a clear and accurate conception of the spatial organization of their world."

🇬🇧J. R. R. Tolkien

Literature

Inklings

1892–1973

"I do so dearly believe that no half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly."

John Fortescue

Politics

1533–1607

"One would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally."

🇮🇹Tullio De Mauro

Politics

1932–2017

"It is not possible to fully understand modern world culture without appreciating its connection and its continuity with the heritage of classical culture."

Dorothy L. Sayers

Literature

1893–1957

"What do we find God 'doing about' this business of sin and evil?...God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead."

Edwin Abbott Abbott

Religion

1838–1926

"The very fact that a Line is visible implies that it possesses yet another Dimension."

🇫🇷Michel Bréal

Sports

1832–1915

"We must realize the extent to which it is necessary that our knowledge of language be based on history. Only history can impart to words that degree of precision which we need in order to understand them well."

Petrarch

Literature

1304–1374

"How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!"

Isaac Taylor

Literature

1829–1901

"The great Inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and decked with honors, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and oil."

🇫🇷Jean-François Lyotard

Philosophy

Continental philosophy

1924–1998

"Here is the question: is a legitimization of the social bond, a just society, feasible in terms of a paradox analogous to that of scientific activity? What would such a paradox be?"

🇺🇸Mayra Santos-Febres

Literature

b. 1966

"I was born with a particular sensitivity to words. Some people are very good with math and sports… I wasn’t but I could feel words."

🇧🇬Parteniy Zografski

Religion

1818–1876

"Our language, as it is well known, is divided into two main dialects, of which one is spoken in Bulgaria and Thrace, and the other one in Macedonia."