"Bakunin: Act first! The ideas will follow, and if not — well, it's progress"

Tom Stoppard Literature See all quotes by Tom Stoppard →

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“What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.”

“Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.”

“(an anguished cry): Consistency is all I ask! (low, wry rhetoric): Give us this day our daily mask.”

“All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.”

“We’re more of the blood, love and rhetoric school. Well, I’ll leave the choice to you, if there is anything to choose between them. They’re hardly divisible, sir—well, I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory—they’re all blood, you see.”

“Maidens aspiring to godheads— And vice versa—”

Resonant Thoughts

"When you have the majority of a country up to the age of 55 already voting for independence, then I think the writing's on the wall for Westminster. I think Scots of my generation and above should be …"

— Alex Salmond

Politics1954–2024

#leadership

"The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowledge, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to a…"

— Eben Moglen

Education1959

#knowledge

"It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight."

— Vladimir Nabokov

Literature1912–1977

#love

"As I grow older, I have had to discard some ideas and policies because they no longer make sense. This strikes me as entirely healthy. I would invite others to do the same."

— Bob Rae

Politics1948

#health