Epictetus
“Either you must loathe the wicked or imitate them.”
Michel de Montaigne from On Solitude
“When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.”
Desiderius Erasmus
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
Noam Chomsky
“Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.” – Dan Simmons, Hyperion
“None of us really changes over time; we only become more fully what we are. To put it another way, you do get wiser when you live for hundreds of years; but you also have more time to turn out as badly as your enemies said you might.” – Lestat, Queen of the Damned, by Anne Rice
Montaigne on History, Recordkeeping, and Storytelling
“The only good histories are those written by men who were actually in charge of affairs or who played some part in that charge, or who at least were fortunate enough to have been in charge of others of a similar kind.”
Michel de Montaigne, On Solitude
“No more duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.”
E H Chapin
“In general I ask for books which use learning not those which trim it up.”
Michel de Montaigne, On Solitude
“Honor isn’t about making the right choices. It’s about dealing with the consequences.”
Montaigne