Time & Presence

In those holy fields. Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nail'd For our advantage on the bitter cross.

William Shakespeare First Folio & Sonnets

In America the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs forever and ever.

Oscar Wilde De Profundis & Essays

I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake.

Mark Twain Notebooks & Autobiography

I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked; for I was, at that time, an eager scholar of ethics, and had tasted the sweets of solitude and stoicism, and I found something profane in the hours of amusing gossip into which she drew me...

Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First and Second Series

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

Henry David Thoreau Walden

Conversion in the sense of self-purification, self-realization, is the crying need of the hour. That, however, is not what is meant by proselytising. To those who would convert India, might it not be said, ‘physician heal thyself’?

Mahatma Gandhi The Story of My Experiments with Truth

Coloured communities would like to see coloured representatives. That is not racism, that is how nature works.

Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom

When people show you who they are, believe them, the first time. Not the 29th time!

Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings & Essays

Einstein's groundbreaking equation E=mc², initially presented as m = L/c² in his 1905 paper, reveals the profound relationship between energy released and the corresponding decrease in mass.

Albert Einstein Ideas and Opinions

Once upon a time, we soared into the Solar System. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was 'Apollo' really about?

Carl Sagan Cosmos & Pale Blue Dot

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

Rabindranath Tagore Gitanjali & Stray Birds

A truth is to be known always, to be uttered sometimes.

Kahlil Gibran The Prophet

I've begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world ... Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theories Amor Mundi.

Hannah Arendt The Human Condition

The present enshrines the past—and in the past all history has been made by men.

Simone de Beauvoir The Ethics of Ambiguity

The popular conception of a philosopher as one who combines universal learning with the direction of human conduct was more nearly satisfied by Bertrand Russell than by any other philosopher of our time.

Bertrand Russell The Conquest of Happiness

A spurious axiom of the first class is: Whatever is, is somewhere and sometime.

Immanuel Kant Critique of Practical Reason

The next idea of the Aryans is the freedom of women. It is in the Aryan literature that we find women in ancient times taking the same share as men, and in no other literature of the world.

Swami Vivekananda Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.

Sun Tzu The Art of War

O tempora! O mores! • Variant: O the times! O, the customs!

Cicero De Officiis & Tusculan Disputations

There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.

Augustine of Hippo Confessions

FEU. Dieu d'Abraham, Dieu d'Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et savants. Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.

Blaise Pascal Pensées

The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes Titus or Marcus Aurelius; the people is often Nero, and never Marcus Aurelius.

Marcus Aurelius Meditations

Volat ambiguis Mobilis alis hora. The swift hour flies on double wings.

Seneca Moral Letters to Lucilius

You will know that the divine is so great and of such a nature that it sees and hears everything at once, is present everywhere, and is concerned with everything.

Socrates Apology (via Plato)

We need to use every argument we can to fight against anyone who does away with knowledge, understanding and intelligence but at the same time asserts anything at all about anything.

Plato The Republic & Dialogues

[I]t is impossible for motion to subsist without place, and void, and time.

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics