A quotation from Christopher Marlowe

FAUSTUS: Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
   And burnt the topless towers of Ilium —
   Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. —
      [They kiss]
   Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! —
   Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
      [They kiss again]
   Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
   And all is dross that is not Helena.

Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (1564-1593) English dramatist and poet
The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Act 5, sc. 1 (sc. 13), l. 1358ff (1594; 1604 “A” text)

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A quotation from Montaigne

Our understanding is conducted solely by means of the word: anyone who falsifies it betrays public society. It is the only tool by which we communicate our wishes and our thoughts; it is our soul’s interpreter: if we lack that, we can no longer hold together; we can no longer know each other. When words deceive us, it breaks all intercourse and loosens the bonds of our polity.
 
[Nostre intelligence se conduisant par la seule voye de la parolle, celuy qui la faulse, trahit la societé publique. C’est le seul util, par le moyen duquel se communiquent noz volontez & noz pensees : c’est le truchement de nostre ame : s’il nous faut, nous ne nous tenons plus, nous ne nous entreconnoissons plus. S’il nous trompe, il rompt tout nostre commerce, & dissoult toutes les liaisons de nostre police.]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 2, ch. 18 (2.18), “Of Giving the Lie [Du Démentir]” (1578–79) [tr. Screech (1987)]

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A quotation from Douglas Adams

   “Oh, all right,” said the old man. “Here’s a prayer for you. Got a pencil?”
   “Yes,” said Arthur.
   “It goes like this. Let’s see now: ‘Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.’ That’s it. It’s what you say silently inside yourself anyway, so you may as well have it out in the open.”
   “Hmmmm,” said Arthur. “Well, thank you –”
   “There’s another prayer that goes with it that’s very important,” continued the old man, “so you’d better jot this down, too.”
   “Okay.”
   “It goes, ‘Lord, lord, lord …’ It’s best to put that bit in, just in case. You can never be too sure. ‘Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. Amen.’ And that’s it. Most of the trouble people get into in life comes form leaving out that last part.”

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humorist, screenwriter
Hitchhiker’s Guide No. 5, Mostly Harmless, ch. 9 (1992)

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A quotation from Norman F. Dixon

The values communicated by status-insecure parents are such that their children learn to put personal success and the acquisition of power above all else. They are taught to judge people for their usefulness rather than their likableness. Their friends, and even future marriage partners, are selected and used in the service of personal advancement; love and affection take second place to knowing the right people. They are taught to eschew weaknesses and passivity, to respect authority, and to despise those who have not made the socio-economic grade. Success is equated with social esteem and material advantage, rather than with more spiritual values.

Norman F. Dixon (1922-2013) British cognitive psychologist, author, military engineer
On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Part 2, ch. 22 “Authoritarianism” (1976)

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A quotation from Marcus Aurelius

Our anger and annoyance are more detrimental to us than the things themselves which anger or annoy us.
 
[Ὄγδοον, ὅσῳ χαλεπώτερα ἐπιφέρουσιν αἱ ὀργαὶ καὶ λῦπαι αἱ ἐπὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις, ἤπερ αὐτά ἐστιν ἐφ’ οἷς ὀργιζόμεθα καὶ λυπούμεθα.]

Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) Roman emperor (161-180), Stoic philosopher
Meditations [To Himself; Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν], Book 11, ch. 18 (11.18) (AD 161-180) [tr. Staniforth (1964)]

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A quotation from Bertrand Russell

I have known some pacifists who wished history taught without reference to wars, and thought that children should be kept as long as possible ignorant of the cruelty in the world. But I cannot praise the “fugitive and cloistered virtue” that depends upon absence of knowledge. As soon as history is taught at all, it should be taught truthfully. If true history contradicts any moral we wish to teach, our moral must be wrong, and we had better abandon it. I quite admit that many people, including some of the most virtuous, find facts inconvenient, but that is due to a certain feebleness in their virtue. A truly robust morality can only be strengthened by the fullest knowledge of what really happens in the world.

Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Education and the Good Life, Part 2, ch. 11 “Affection and Sympathy” (1926)

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A quotation from The Bible

   Samuel told the people who were asking him for a king everything that the Lord had said to him. “This is how your king will treat you,” Samuel explained.
   “He will make soldiers of your sons; some of them will serve in his war chariots, others in his cavalry, and others will run before his chariots. He will make some of them officers in charge of a thousand men, and others in charge of fifty men. Your sons will have to plow his fields, harvest his crops, and make his weapons and the equipment for his chariots.
   “Your daughters will have to make perfumes for him and work as his cooks and his bakers.
   “He will take your best fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his officials. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your grapes for his court officers and other officials. He will take your servants and your best cattle and donkeys, and make them work for him. He will take a tenth of your flocks. And you yourselves will become his slaves.
   “When that time comes, you will complain bitterly because of your king, whom you yourselves chose, but the Lord will not listen to your complaints.”
   The people paid no attention to Samuel, but said, “No! We want a king.”

The Bible (The Old Testament) (14th - 2nd C BC) Judeo-Christian sacred scripture [Tanakh, Hebrew Bible], incl. the Apocrypha (Deuterocanonicals)
Book 9: 1 Samuel 8:10ff (1 Sam 8:10-19) [GNT (1992 ed.)]

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A quotation from Montesquieu

There need not be much integrity for a monarchical or despotic government to maintain or sustain itself. The force of the laws in the one, and the prince’s ever-raised arm in the other, can rule or contain the whole. But in a popular state there must be an additional spring, which is VIRTUE.
 
[Il ne faut pas beaucoup de probité, pour qu’un gouvernement monarchique, ou un gouvernement despotique, se maintiennent ou se soutiennent. La force des loix dans l’un, le bras du prince toujours levé dans l’autre, reglent ou contiennent tout. Mais, dans un état populaire, il faut un ressort de plus, qui est la VERTU.]

Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Spirit of Laws [The Spirit of the Laws; De l’esprit des lois], Book 3, ch. 3 (3.3) (1748) [tr. Cohler/Miller/Stone (1989)]

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A quotation from Jean Kerr

I do have a compulsion to read in out-of-the-way places, and it is often a blessing; on the other hand, it sometimes comes between me and what I tell the children is “my work.” As a matter of fact, I will read anything rather than work. And I don’t mean interesting things like the yellow section of the telephone book or the enclosures that come with the Bloomingdale bill about McKettrick classics in sizes 12 to 20, blue, brown, or navy @ 12.95 (by the way, did you know that colored facial tissue is now on sale at the unbelievably low price of 7.85 a carton? ). The truth is that, rather than put a word on paper, I will spend a whole half hour reading the label on a milk-of-magnesia bottle. “Philips’ Milk of Magnesia,” I read with the absolute absorption of someone just stumbling on Congreve, “is prepared only by the Charles H. Philips Co., division of Sterling Drug, Inc. Not to be used when abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, or other symptoms of appendicitis are present, etc.”

Jean Kerr (1922-2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
Essay (1957), “Introduction,” Please Don’t Eat the Daisies

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A quotation from Wendell Berry

People who live at the lower ends of watersheds cannot be isolationists — or not for long. Pretty soon they will notice that water flows, and that will set them to thinking about the people upstream who either do or do not send down their silt and pollutants and garbage. Thinking about the people upstream out to cause further thinking about the people downstream. Such pondering on the facts of gravity and the fluidity of water shows us that the golden rule speaks to a condition of absolute interdependency and obligation. People who live on rivers — or, in fact, anywhere in a watershed — might rephrase the rule in this way: Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Essay (1997), “Watershed and Commonwealth,” Citizenship Papers (2003)

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A quotation from Robert Ingersoll

And yet I am held responsible for my belief. Then why does not God give me the evidence? They say he has. In what? In an inspired book. But I do not understand it as they do. Must I be false to my understanding? They say: “When you come to die you will be sorry if you do not.” Will I be sorry when I come to die that I did not live a hypocrite? Will I be sorry that I did not say I was a Christian when I was not? Will the fact that I was honest put a thorn in the pillow of death? Cannot God forgive me for being honest? They say that when he was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for differing from him on the subject of the Trinity.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1884-01-20), “Orthodoxy,” Tabor Opera House, Denver, Colorado

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