Of what use for us is a man who, although he has long practiced philosophy, has never upset anyone?

Diogenes of sinope on Plato, according to themistius

The superstition that we must drive from the Earth is that which, making a tyrant of God, invites men to become tyrants.

Voltaire in On Superstition

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

T.S. Eliot in Tradition and the Individual talent

What’s the difference between a king and a poor man if they would both end the same bundle of white bones.

Zhuangzi

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

Carl sagan (Note: There are variations on this quote that long predate Sagan’s)

You live off the crumbs that fall from the festive table of my genius.

Kurban Said in Ali and Nino [Not so much wisdom as a wicked burn]

To roam Giddily and be everywhere, but at home, Such freedom doth a banishment become.

John donne in a Poetic letter to rowland woodward

Lions are not the slaves of those who feed them, it is the feeders, rather, who are the lion’s slaves. For fear is the mark of a slave, and wild beasts make men fearful.

Diogenes the cynic