Quotes
Quotes about Nothing
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
"There's nothing great Nor small," has said a poet of our day, Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve And not be thrown out by the matin's bell.
O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.
Away with the cant of "Measures not men!"--the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.
A minister who moves about in society is in a position to read the signs of the times even in a festive gathering, but one who remains shut up in his office learns nothing.
In politics nothing is contemptible.
Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.
A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.
Most people I ask little from. I try to give them much, and expect nothing in return and I do very well in the bargain.
I wonder how many of the people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people. So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit. Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.
What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?
So far as business and money are concerned, a country gains nothing by a successful war, even though that war involves the acquisition of immense new provinces.
Intelligence has nothing to do with politics.
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.
It's better to waste one's youth than to do nothing with it at all.
There is nothing an economist should fear so much as applause.
What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.
It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales!
Equality of the general rules of law and conduct, however, is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty and the only equality which we can secure without destroying liberty. Not only has liberty nothing to do with any other sort of equality, but it is even bound to produce inequality in many respects. This is the necessary result and part of the justification of individual liberty: if the result of individual liberty did not demonstrate that some manners of living are more successful than others, much of the case for it would vanish.
As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.
This is the truth as I see it, my dear, Out in the wind and the rain: They who have nothing have little to fear, Nothing to lose or to gain.
There is nothing which power cannot believe of itself, when it is praised as equal to the gods. [Lat., Nihil est quod credere de se Non possit, quum laudatur dis aequa potestas.]
Nothing destroys authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power, pressed too far and relaxed too much.
I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power.
