Struggle Against Stupidity | The World of English

You can also download the first edition of the book with a lot of quotes about Italy by various authors from this link. Enjoy our beautiful country!

The post War and peace quotes first appeared on The World of English.

Short news about Italy

Carl William Brown — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 12:38:46 +0000

Historical news and quotes about Italy

Short news about Italy, with an explanatory video on all 20 Italian Regions Stereotypes, from the book Italy in brief by Carl William Brown, a collection of quotes, news and thoughts about Italy

The name Italy comes from the word Italia, meaning “calf land,” perhaps because the bull was a symbol of the Southern Italian tribes.
Historical News

The capital of Italy is Rome (also known as the Eternal City) and is almost 3,000 years old. It has been the capital since 1871 and is home to the Dome of St. Peter’s, the Sistine Chapel, the Coliseum, and the famous Trevi Fountain.
Historical News

By the year 2000 B.C., Italic tribes (Oscans, Umbrians, Latins) had established themselves in Italy. They were followed by the Etruscans in 800 B.C. and the Greeks, who established colonies known as Magna Graeca in southern Italy (present-day Apulia). Rome was founded in 753 B.C., and soon thereafter the Romans began conquering the peninsula.
Historical News

At its height in A.D. 117, the Roman Empire stretched from Portugal in the West to Syria in the east, and from Britain in the North to the North African deserts across the Mediterranean. It covered 2.3 million miles (two-thirds the size of the U.S.) and had a population of 120 million people. During the Middle Ages, Rome had perhaps no more than 13,000 residents.
Historical News

When McDonald’s opened in 1986 in Rome, food purists outside the restaurant gave away free spaghetti to remind people of their culinary heritage.
Italians created parmesan, provolone, mozzarella, and many other cheeses. Parmesan cheese originated in the area around
Historical News

Vatican City is the only nation in the world that can lock its own gates at night. It has its own phone company, radio, T.V. stations, money, and stamps. It even has its own army, the historic Swiss Guard.
Historical News

Parma, Italy. Italians also created many other cheeses, including gorgonzola, mozzarella, provolone, and ricotta. No one knows when the pizza was invented, but the people of Naples made it popular.
Historical News

The European Union law states that we have the free movement of companies, they have freedom of establishment. This is in fact the entire point of the whole Single Market program. One company, based anywhere inside the EU, can then sell to all 27 other countries in the EU without needing to have a permanent establishment in each of those 27. And believe me the EU isn’t going to allow someone to over turn that very basic foundation of the entire project. It’s just not going to happen. So I am perfectly free to buy any goods that are legally sold throughout Europe, provided that they can be delivered, even though they are not legal in Italy, even because in Italy only stupidity is legal.
Carl William Brown

Italian is a Romance language descended from Vulgar Latin, just like Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian, the dialect spoken by the people living during the last years of the Roman Empire. Before the Romans came, people spoke their own languages, and the mixture of these original tongues with Latin produced many of the languages and dialects that are still in use today. Italian has more Latin words than any other Romance languages, and its grammatical system remains similar to Latin. Latin is still the official language of the Vatican City in Rome. In the 1930s and 40s, Italian fascist Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) tried to eliminate foreign words from Italian. In soccer, “goal” became “meta” and Donald Duck became “Paperino.” Mickey Mouse became “Topolino” and Goofy became “Pippo.” While the ban was not permanent, the Italian names remain common.
Historical News

The world’s first operas were composed in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century. Opera reached the height of popularity in the nineteenth century, when the works of Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), and Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) became hugely popular. The late
tenor Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007) is a national celebrity, and

Claudio Monteverdi (c. 1567-1643) is regarded as the father of the modern opera.
Historical News

Venice, Italy, is one of the world’s most beautiful and unusual cities. It was founded over 1,400 years ago on a collection of muddy islands in a wide and shallow lagoon. It has been sinking into the mud for centuries and is plagued by floods.
Italy was one of the founders of the EU and is a member of the Group of Eight (G8), a forum for eight of the world’s most powerful nations.
Historical News

In Italy there are about 60 million people and we know how high is the percentage of morons on national soil. However, in China there are about 1.4 billion people and in India almost 1.3 billion. Therefore I wonder then, if more or less all the world is a small village, with how many morons should we have to come to terms on the territory of this stupid planet. It’s the same the world over, or the world is the same wherever you go!
Carl William Brown

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was an Italian-born scientist. When he argued that the Earth revolved around the Sun, the Catholic Church imprisoned Galileo in his own house. The Church issued a formal apology in 1992.
Historical News

A part of northern Italy called Val Camonica contains about 350,000 petroglyphs that were created nearly 10,000 years ago. Brescia is a famous town at 75 km from there, it is very popular for Beretta arms industry, the oldest in the world, the Garda Lake and also because Carl William Brown was born there.
Historical News

Before the Romans came, people spoke their own languages, and the mixture of these original tongues with Latin produced many of the languages and dialects that are still in use today. If you know one of the Romance languages, you can often understand bits of another. Just as members of the same family can look similar but have totally different characters. You find the same contradictions in the dialects (regional or local language differences) in Italy and in other countries. If you visit Italy, you’ll hear various accents and dialects as you travel the country. Despite the number of dialects, you may be surprised to discover that everybody understands your Italian and you understand theirs. (Italians don’t normally speak in their dialect with foreigners.)
Linguistic News

About 70% of our English words come from Latin. This alone make Latin the most important language to influence English. For example, the word, promise, comes from “pro-mitto,” meaning to send before. Here are some more examples: word = verbum; canine = canis; college =collegium. I think you get the picture. Also Latin has influenced our grammar. For example, the distinction between “I” and “me” is based on cases. I equals nominative case in Latin and me equals dative, ablative and accusative cases. Even little things like the improper use of split infinitives come from Latin, since in Latin infinitives cannot be split. For example, to love is amare (one word) in Latin. So, in short, Latin continues to play a huge role.
Linguistic News

Italian is the official language of Italy and it is spoken by about 70 million people, primarily in this country. It’s the official language of San Marino as well, and one of the official languages of Switzerland, spoken mainly in Ticino and Grigioni cantons.
Linguistic News

The Italian Flag or il Tricolore is a green, white and red tricolor flag with equal panels representing the territories of the Republic of Italy. Adopted as the national flag on 1 January 1948, official colour designation under the Pantone Textile policy was established in 2003, then ratified into law in 2006.
Historical News

When I was growing up, my parents told me, “Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.” I tell my daughters, “Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.”
Thomas Friedman

Who goes to Rome a beast returns a beast.
Italian Proverb

Italy hasn’t had a government since Mussolini.
Richard Nixon

How did Italy manage to end up with no Caribbean islands at all? Christopher Columbus took the trouble to discover the

Caribbean personally before the end of the fifteenth century. Try to get a decent plate of spaghetti there now.
Calvin Trillin

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.
Bertrand Russell

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Orson Welles

If Spain goes under, Italy will come under even more scrutiny.
Mario Monti

In the Church of San Giovanni (One of the finest Renaissance churches in Italy) you can see Tintoretto’s masterpiece, “Madonna with Four Saints”. In the Church of San Giacomo you can see Botticelli’s masterpiece, “Two Saints with the Madonna”. In the Church of San Bartolomeo do not miss Tiepolo’s huge canvas, “Madonna with Twenty Three Saints”. In the chapel of San Marco, the focus of attention is Perugino’s small painting, “Madonna with just One Saint”.
George Mikes

Italy is a geographical expression.
Prince Metternich

Certainly, in Italy, nobody takes light for granted.
Barbara Steele

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
Samuel Johnson

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
Erica Jong

Internet penetration in Italy is quite low and the Berlusconi media machine controls most of what people see.
Joichi Ito

I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.
Roberto Benigni

Gli italiani sono irrimediabilmente fatti per la dittatura.
Ennio Flaiano

The ideological mix-up is a natural, exasperating and, at the same time, endearing feature in this country of fierce individualists. There are seventy-five political parties in Italy – although not all are represented in parliament. Most of these parties are very small but even the smallest can boast of a sharp and unbridgeable ideological split. There is a party which has only one single member. He is schizophrenic.
George Mikes

You have to remember that Italy is second to none, in fact, if Germany has more than 3,500 brothels, Italy has the Vatican!
Carl William Brown

Appeal to all scholars of stupidity in the world. Come to Italy, this country has the highest rate of morons of the universe, especially among political, bureaucratic, judicial, religious, intellectual, artistic, and mass media members, so it is the best place to develop your own field research.
Carl William Brown

To be a true philosopher you must study stupidity a lot, that’s why, as Doctor Samuel Johnson used to say, a man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
Carl William Brown

Italy is one of the world leading country of bureaucracy and stupidity.
Carl William Brown

Since Italy is the land of bureaucratic and political nonsense, it tries to make up for the lost chances through a complex system of confused laws and logical stupidity.
Carl William Brown

The increased presence of Muslims in Italy and in Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom.
Oriana Fallaci

Italy is doomed to disappear, it is too stupid to survive!
Carl William Brown

The most hypocritical, bootlicking, obsequious, slavelike, submissive, unfree journalists in Europe, this is Italy.
Carl William Brown

The Italians may be clever and quick-witted but they are not intellectuals. They lack wanderlust, indeed, most of them lack intellectual curiosity in every shape and form.
George Mikes

In Italy there are a lot of illegal things, since the law is illegal too.
Carl William Brown

Prices in Italy are only slightly lower than in France, which means that Italy is a very expensive country for everyone, natives, visitors and tourists.
George Mikes

Repetita iuvant. Italy, a land of great saints, poets, sailors, artists, statesmen, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals, professors, journalists, whores, gangsters, religious parasites and dickheads.
Carl William Brown

The main characteristic of English conversation is that no one ever speaks; of Italian that everyone speaks at the same time. One iron law reigns supreme in Italian conversation: the survival of the loudest.
George Mikes

In Italy we have not a Common law legal system, we have a stupid one instead!
Carl William Brown

Hotel bills are scrupulously honest all over Italy… The only case which puzzled me occured in Naples. I wondered whether they were justified in adding 230 lire for heating to my bill in early June.
George Mikes

The Cathedral of this ancient and beautiful city of ……….* is of particular interest. It is the third largest Cathedral in Italy. It is a magnificent Gothic building (not pure Gothic but pure enough for the vast majority of tourists). The Italians, in their outlandish way, like to refer to the Cathedral as Il Duomo. * Fill in the name of the city with pencil. Rub it afterwards.
George Mikes

In Italy there are many illegal things, but stupidity is the most legal of all.
Carl William Brown

Italians intellectuals are few and far between. This is not a derogatory statement; nor is it a praise… Italy can boast of a number of intellectuals – brilliant and witty. But their number is small – much smaller than in France, England or Germany. The Italians, as a nation, do not read much. Observe a rush hour crowd in London or New York on the one hand and in Rome on the other. In London and New York one person in ten will be without a paper; in Rome one in ten will have a paper. The Italians will watch the women in the bus or tram, the crowd in the street or the passing shop-windows but they do not read.
George Mikes

The stupidest and most corrupted, dangerous, useless, incompetent, unfit and inefficient politicians in Europe: this is Italy.
Carl William Brown

On Amazon with Kindle Unlimited you can read the new edition of this book, that is Aphorismi et sententiae de italia et italis: Aforismi, citazioni, battute, invettive e riflessioni sull’Italia e gli Italiani (with English Quotes) by Carl William Brown

All 20 Italian Regions Stereotypes Explained

Black Friday Day

Carl William Brown — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 09:38:55 +0000

Black Friday day new quote idea

Black Friday day falls every year on the first Friday after Thanksgiving, the day of Thanksgiving, a typical holiday in the United States and celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. In 2025, Black Friday falls on November 28, the day in which all stores offer commercial bargains and discounts, not only on clothing and gift ideas, but also on many products for the home and kitchen. Since 1952, the day after Thanksgiving has traditionally been seen in the United States, together with Cyber Monday, as the start of the Christmas shopping season and related sales, even though the term “Black Friday” has only been widely used in the past decade.

Black Friday is a scam. You should be mad they overcharge you 364 days a year.
Unknown

You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.
Bill Gates

What do Black Friday shoppers and the Thanksgiving turkey have in common? They know what it’s like to be jammed into a small place and stuffed.
Humoropedia

Make sure the clothes you buy on Black Friday take into account how fat you got on Thanksgiving.
Unknown

We live in a consumer culture, and Black Friday is like the July 4th of that culture. It might be good not to live in this culture, but it terms of what we can do to make people safer at big sales, it seems more useful to try to avoid dangerous crowd conditions.
John Seabrook

Let’s spend Thanksgiving spilling food on our clothes, and Black Friday buying new ones.
Unknown

Black Friday sale. My house. You and I. All clothes will be 100% off.
Kappit

As reported in the Forbes “Entrepreneurs” column on December 3, 2013: “Cyber Monday, the online counterpart to Black Friday, has been gaining unprecedented popularity -to the point where Cyber Sales are continuing on throughout the week.” Peter Greenberg, Travel Editor for CBS News, further advises: “If you want a real deal on Black Friday, stay away from the mall. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are all part of Cyber Week.

Sorry shoppers on Black Friday will block and tackle better than your football team on Thanksgiving.
Unknown

I thought Black Friday was when everyone puts on blackface and steals children from Wal-Mart.
Stephen Colbert

Black Friday: Because only in America, people trample others for sales exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have.
Unknown

The National Retail Federation releases figures on the sales for each Thanksgiving weekend. The Federation’s definition of “Black Friday weekend” includes Thursday, Friday, Saturday and projected spending for Sunday. The survey estimates number of shoppers, not number of people.

The length of the shopping season is not the same across all years: the date for Black Friday varies between November 23 and 29, while Christmas Eve is fixed at December 24. 2012 had the longest shopping season since 2007.

Black Friday Day 2020

My version of Black Friday is deleting all the people in my phone who sent me a “mass Thanksgiving text.”
Blake Griffin

For those of us in the financial world, Black Friday has a strong negative connotation, referring to a stock market catastrophe.
Mark Skousen

Black Friday, in reality, is a symptom of the plight that 30 years of Reaganomics has brought to working people in America. Right along with the frenzied rise of shoppers willing to fight each other at retail outlets across America, we’ve been steadily, for the last 30 years, watching the destruction of organized labor … of decent pay and wages and conditions for working people… We have Black Friday today because the wealthy elite have strangled their workers for 32 years, ever since Ronald Reagan’s election.
Thom Hartmann

Here’s hoping Black Friday doesn’t turn into Black and Blue Sunday.
SomeECards

Happy Thanksgiving to someone I’d have no problem stomping to death on Black Friday.
Unknown

Black Friday is an informal name for the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States (the fourth Thursday of November), which has been regarded as the beginning of the country’s Christmas shopping season since 1952. It is a busy shopping day and is a holiday in some states. Many people have a day off work or choose to take a day from their amount of yearly leave on Black Friday. Some people use this occasion also to make trips to see family members or friends who live in other areas or to go on vacation. Others use it to start shopping for the Christmas season. Shopping for Christmas presents is also popular on Black Friday. Many stores have special offers, high discounts and lower their prices on many goods, such as toys, clothes, food and electronic gadgets and devices.

Black Friday is not a federal holiday, but is a public holiday in some states. It is not only the day after Thanksgiving Day but also the Friday before Cyber Monday. Many people take a day of their annual leave on the day after Thanksgiving Day. Many organizations also close for the Thanksgiving weekend. Public transit systems may run on their normal schedule or may have changes. Some stores extend their opening hours on Black Friday. There can also be congestion on roads to popular shopping destinations.

Black Friday is one of the busiest shopping days in the USA. The states which have official public holidays for state government employees on “The Day After Thanksgiving” include Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

There are two popular theories as to why the day after Thanksgiving Day is called Black Friday. One theory suggests that the term originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. This usage dates to at least 1961. The wheels of vehicles in heavy traffic on the day left many black markings on the road surface, leading to the term Black Friday.

The other theory is that the term Black Friday More than twenty years later, as the phrase became more widespread, a popular explanation became that this day represented the point in the year when retailers begin to turn a profit and therefore it is related to an old way of recording business accounts. As a matter of fact losses were recorded in red ink and profits in black ink. Many businesses, particularly small businesses, started making profits prior to Christmas. Many hoped to start showing a profit, marked in black ink, on the day after Thanksgiving Day.

Black Friday Day crowd and shoppers

In the United Kingdom, on the contrary the term “Black Friday” originated within the Police and NHS to refer to the Friday before Christmas. It is the day when emergency services activate contingency plans to cope with the increase in workload due to many people going out drinking on the last Friday before Christmas. Contingencies can include setting up mobile field hospitals near City Centre nightspots.

The term has then been adopted outside those services to refer to the evening and night of the Friday immediately before Christmas, and would now be considered a mainstream term and not simply as jargon of the emergency services. The year 2014 marked the introduction of this event in Bolivia, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, Finland, France, Ireland, Lebanon, Nigeria, South Africa and Sweden.

In order to organize well your shopping you should research the Thanksgiving and Black Friday deals in advance, because you have to consider that the shops are very crowded in these days. Make an itinerary and a shopping plan: be sure to check when each store opens. This may determine the order of the stores that you visit. Best Buy, which typically draws a crowd that waits for the doors to open, will be open at 5 p.m. Thursday. You could also make a night or weekend out of it, or you can also create a map of your itinerary, planning where to park and so on.

Don’t forget about Santa: Santa will usually be available to take photos and meet children in the center atrium of most of the common hyper stores from this day, and every day until Dec. 24. Photo packages are also available for purchase. Bring your family: The adventure of Black Friday does not need to be rushed or stressful, and above all you must pay great attention and be careful, in fact despite frequent attempts to control the crowds of shoppers, minor injuries are common among the crowds, usually as a result of being pushed or thrown to the ground in small stampedes, while most injuries remain minor, serious injuries and even deliberate violence have taken place on some Black Fridays.

In 2008, a crowd of approximately 2,000 shoppers in Valley Stream, New York, waited outside for the 5:00am opening of the local Walmart. As opening time approached, the crowd grew anxious and when the doors were opened the crowd pushed forward, breaking the door down, a 34-year-old employee was trampled to death. The shoppers did not appear concerned with the victim’s fate, expressing refusal to halt their stampede when other employees attempted to intervene and help the injured employee, complaining that they had been waiting in the cold and were not willing to wait any longer.

Black Friday Day 2020 by English Culture

Shoppers had begun assembling as early as 9:00 PM the evening before. Even when police arrived and attempted to render aid to the injured man, shoppers continued to pour in, shoving and pushing the officers as they made their way into the store. Several other people incurred minor injuries, including a pregnant woman who had to be taken to the hospital. The incident may be the first case of a death occurring during Black Friday sales; according to the National Retail Federation, “We are not aware of any other circumstances where a retail employee has died working on the day after Thanksgiving.”

Most major retailers open very early (and more recently during overnight hours) and offer promotional sales. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but California and some other states observe “The Day After Thanksgiving” as a holiday for state government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday such as Columbus Day. Many non-retail employees and schools have both Thanksgiving and the following Friday off, which, along with the following regular weekend, makes it a four-day weekend, thereby increasing the number of potential shoppers.

It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005, although news reports, which at that time were inaccurate, have described it as the busiest shopping day of the year for a much longer period of time. Similar stories resurface year upon year at this time, portraying hysteria and shortage of stock, creating a state of positive feedback.

Black Friday is a shopping day for a combination of reasons. As the first day after the last major holiday before Christmas, it marks the unofficial beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Additionally, many employers give their employees the day off as part of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. In order to take advantage of this, virtually all retailers in the country, big and small, offer various sales including limited amounts of doorbuster/doorcrasher/doorsmasher items to entice traffic. Recent years have seen retailers extend beyond normal hours in order to maintain an edge or to simply keep up with the competition.

Such hours may include opening as early as 12:00 am or remaining open overnight on Thanksgiving Day and beginning sale prices at midnight. In 2010, Toys ‘R’ Us began their Black Friday sales at 10:00 pm on Thanksgiving Day and further upped the ante by offering free boxes of Crayola crayons and coloring books for as long as supplies lasted. Other retailers began Black Friday sales early Thanksgiving morning and ran them through as late as 11:00 pm Friday evening. Forever 21 went in the opposite direction, opening at normal hours on Friday, and running late sales until 2:00 am Saturday morning. Historically, it was common for Black Friday sales to extend throughout the following weekend. However, this practice has largely disappeared in recent years, perhaps because of an effort by retailers to create a greater sense of urgency.

Black Friday in the good old days

In Canada the large population centers on Lake Ontario and the Lower Mainland in Canada have always attracted cross-border shopping into the US states, and as Black Friday became more popular in the US, Canadians often flocked to the US because of their lower prices and a stronger Canadian dollar. After 2001, many were traveling for the deals across the border. Starting in 2008 and 2009, due to the parity of the Canadian dollar compared with the American dollar, several major Canadian retailers ran Black Friday deals of their own to discourage shoppers from leaving Canada.

The year 2012 saw the biggest Black Friday to date in Canada, as Canadian retailers embraced it in an attempt to keep shoppers from travelling across the border. Before the advent of Black Friday in Canada, the most comparable holiday was Boxing Day in terms of retailer impact and consumerism. Black Fridays in the US seem to provide deeper or more extreme price cuts than Canadian retailers, even for the same international retailer. In recent years, Black Friday has been promoted in Australia too, so a lot of stores run Black Friday promotions both in-store and online retailers throughout the whole country.

Since the start of the 21st century, there have been attempts by great online commercial groups with origins in the United States such as Amazon to introduce a retail “Black Friday” everywhere and in 2013 Asda (a subsidiary of the American firm Walmart) announced its “Walmart’s Black Friday by ASDA” campaign promoting the American concept of a retail “Black Friday” in the UK and Europe as well. Some online and in-store companies have adopted the American-style Black Friday sale day, although others appear skeptical, with one 2013 comment piece in the trade publication Retail Week labelling it “simply an Americanism, which doesn’t translate very well.”

In 2014, more UK-based retailers adopted the Black Friday marketing scheme than ever. Among them were ao.com, very.co.uk, John Lewis and Argos, who all offered discounted prices to entice Christmas shoppers. During Black Friday sales in 2014, police forces were called to stores across Britain to deal with crowd control issues, assaults, threatening customers and traffic issues. Black Friday appears to be growing in popularity year on year in the UK and all through European countries where the sales are quickly increasing and mostly internet retailers have used the event as an occasion to attract new customers with discounts, but bricks and mortar stores have already begun to adapt the shopping event.

In Mexico and other South American countries like Brasil, Black Friday was the inspiration for the government and retailing industry to create an annual weekend of discounts and extended credit terms, El Buen Fin, meaning “the good weekend” in Spanish. El Buen Fin has been in existence since 2011 and takes place on November in the weekend prior to the Monday in which the Mexican Revolution holiday is pushed from its original date of November 20, as a result of the measure taken by the government of pushing certain holidays to the Monday of their week in order to avoid the workers and students to make a ”larger” weekend (for example, not attending in a Friday after a Thursday holiday, thus making a 4-day weekend).

On this weekend, major retailers extend their store hours and offer special promotions, including extended credit terms and price promotions. The popularity of Black Friday is also increasing in India. The reason for this is the growing number of e-commerce websites. The big e-commerce retailers in India are trying to emulate the concept of shopping festivals from the United States like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Some websites offer information about day-after-Thanksgiving specials up to a month in advance. The text listings of items and prices are usually accompanied by pictures of the actual ad circulars. These are either leaked by insiders or intentionally released by large retailers to give consumers insight and allow them time to plan.In recent years, some retailers (including Walmart, Target, OfficeMax, Big Lots, and Staples) have claimed that the advertisements they send in advance of Black Friday and the prices included in those advertisements are copyrighted and are trade secrets.

In South Africa, Austria and Switzerland, Black Friday Sale is a joint sales initiative by hundreds of online vendors – among them Zalando, Disney Store, Galeria Kaufhof and Sony. Over its first 24-hour run on November 28, 2013, more than 1.2 million people visited the site, making it the single largest online shopping event in German-speaking countries. There has been growing interest for black Friday in Poland as well.

The counterpart of Black Friday in China is Singles’ Day or Guanggun Jie, literally: “Single Sticks’ Holiday” that is an entertainment festival famous among young Mainland Chinese people, to celebrate the fact that they are proud of being single. The date, November 11th (11/11), is chosen because the number “1” resembles an individual that is alone. This festival has become the largest offline and online shopping day in the world, with sales in Alibaba’s sites Tmall and Taobao at US$5.8 billion in 2013, US$9.3 billion in 2014, US$14.3 billion in 2015, US$17.8 billion in 2016, and over US$25.4 billion in 2017. JD.com also achieved a sales record of US$19.1 billion in 2017, while Lazada drums up US$123 million. During the festival, Alibaba set a world record for payment transactions, with its mobile wallet app Alipay processing 256,000 payment transactions per second, in 2017. A total of 1.48 billion transactions were processed by Alipay in the entire 24 hours, with delivery orders through Cainiao (Alibaba’s logistics affiliate) reaching close to 700 million, breaking 2016’s record.

Black friday is both the day after Thanksgiving and also the day before Cyber Monday. The term Cyber Monday, a neologism invented in 2005 by the National Retail Federation’s division Shop.org, refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday based on a trend that retailers began to recognize in 2003 and 2004. Retailers noticed that many consumers, who were too busy to shop over the Thanksgiving weekend or did not find what they were looking for, shopped for bargains online that Monday from home or work. In 2010, Hitwise reported that: Thanksgiving weekend offered a strong start, especially as Black Friday sales continued to grow in popularity.

For the 2nd consecutive year, Black Friday was the highest day for retail traffic during the holiday season, followed by Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. The highest year-over-year increases in visits took place on Cyber Monday and Black Friday with growth of 16% and 13%, respectively. In 2013, Cyber Monday online sales grew by 18% over the previous year, hitting a record $1.73 billion, with an average order value of $128. In 2014, Cyber Monday was the busiest day of the year with sales exceeding $2 billion in desktop online spending, up 17% from the previous year.

You can also read:

Thanksgiving Day Story

Thanksgiving’s Weirdest Secrets

Shopping coolest stores

Full entertainment

Bonfire Night Celebrations

The post Black Friday Day first appeared on The World of English.

Guy Fawkes Day

Carl William Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 10:33:44 +0000

Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain.This article talks about its origin, celebrations, tradition and customs. Guy Fawkes Day is not a public holiday. Businesses have normal opening hours. A firework display to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Bonfire Night.

Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes and some friends, a group of provincial English Catholics, tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder and assasinate the Protestant King James I of England and replace him with a Catholic head of state; like many people (in the past as well as now!) they didn’t like the government.

The attempt failed and Guy Fawkes was caught and arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London, and months later the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure, in fact the parliament had said that every year on November 5th people should remember the Gunpowder Plot, that is the day when Members of Parliament were saved from a horrible death.

Within a few decades Gunpowder Treason Day, as it was known, became the predominant English state commemoration, but as it carried strong Protestant religious overtones it also became a focus for anti-Catholic sentiment. Puritans delivered sermons regarding the perceived dangers of popery, while during increasingly raucous celebrations common folk burnt effigies of popular hate-figures, such as the pope. Towards the end of the 18th century reports appear of children begging for money with effigies of Guy Fawkes and 5 November gradually became known as Guy Fawkes Day.

Towns such as Lewes and Guildford were in the 19th century scenes of increasingly violent class-based confrontations, fostering traditions those towns celebrate still, albeit peaceably. In the 1850s changing attitudes resulted in the toning down of much of the day’s anti-Catholic rhetoric, and the Observance of 5th November Act was repealed in 1859. Eventually the violence was dealt with, and by the 20th century Guy Fawkes Day had become an enjoyable social commemoration, although lacking much of its original focus. The present-day Guy Fawkes Night is usually celebrated at large organised events, centred on a bonfire and extravagant firework displays.

Settlers exported Guy Fawkes Night to overseas colonies, including some in North America, where it was known as Pope Day. Those festivities died out with the onset of the American Revolution. Claims that Guy Fawkes Night was a Protestant replacement for older customs like Samhain are disputed, although another old celebration, Halloween, has lately increased in popularity, and according to some writers, may threaten the continued observance of 5 November.

The Gunpowder Plot conspirators

Little is known about the earliest celebrations. In settlements such as Carlisle, Norwich and Nottingham, corporations provided music and artillery salutes. Canterbury celebrated 5 November 1607 with 106 pounds of gunpowder and 14 pounds of match, and three years later food and drink was provided for local dignitaries, as well as music, explosions and a parade by the local militia. Even less is known of how the occasion was first commemorated by the general public, although records indicate that in the Protestant stronghold of Dorchester a sermon was read, the church bells rung, and bonfires and fireworks lit.

Organised entertainments also became popular in the late 19th century, and 20th-century pyrotechnic manufacturers renamed Guy Fawkes Day as Firework Night. Sales of fireworks dwindled somewhat during the First World War, but resumed in the following peace. At the start of the Second World War celebrations were again suspended, resuming in November 1945. For many families, Guy Fawkes Night became a domestic celebration, and children often congregated on street corners, or standing outside railway stations accompanied by their own figures effigy of Guy Fawkes made of soks and straw and dressed in old clothes. Collecting money was a popular reason for their creation, the children taking their effigy from door to door, or displaying it on street corners, while saying “Penny for the guy”.

However they were mainly built to go on the bonfire, itself sometimes comprising wood stolen from other pyres; “an acceptable convention” that helped bolster another November tradition, Mischief Night. Rival gangs competed to see who could build the largest, sometimes even burning the wood collected by their opponents; in 1954 the Yorkshire Post reported on fires late in September, a situation that forced the authorities to remove latent piles of wood for safety reasons.

Lately, however, the custom of begging for a “penny for the Guy” has almost completely disappeared. In contrast, some older customs still survive; in Ottery St Mary men chase each other through the streets with lit tar barrels, and since 1679 Lewes has been the setting of some of England’s most extravagant 5 November celebrations, the Lewes Bonfire. Generally, modern 5 November celebrations are run by local charities and other organisations, with paid admission and controlled access, anyway Guy Fawkes’ Day is finally declining, having lost its connection with politics and religion. But we have heard that many times before.

The Fifth of November

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England’s overthrow.
But, by God’s providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James’s sake!
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

English Folk Verse (c.1870)

Perhaps most widely known in America from its use in the movie V for Vendetta, versions of the above poem have been wide spread in England for centuries. They celebrate the foiling of (Catholic) Guy Fawkes’s attempt to blow up (Protestant controlled) England’s House of Parliament on November 5th, 1605. Known variously as Guy Fawkes Day, Gunpowder Treason Day, and Fireworks Night, the November 5th celebrations in some time periods included the burning of the Pope or Guy Fawkes in effigy. This traditional verse exists in a large number of variations and the above version has been constructed to give a flavor for the major themes that appear in them. Several of the reference books on the subject cite even earlier sources.

Guy Fawkes also inspired the mask that V wears in the movie V for Vendetta, a dystopian political thriller directed by James McTeigue and written by The Wachowski Brothers, based on the 1988 DC/Vertigo Comics that were initially a British graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd published in black and white as an ongoing serial in the short-lived UK anthology Warrior, and only after morphed into a ten-issue limited series published by DC Comics.

In modern society in general, this mask has become a symbol of anarchism, revolution, and civil disobedience, for example, demonstrators in Egypt and at Occupy Wall Street in New York City wore the iconic mask to show their disapproval of the government.

Within the graphic novel, the mask is a powerful symbol: it communicates the wearer’s allegiance to the spirit of Guy Fawkes, the man who tried and failed to blow up the Houses of Parliament in the 16th century and his opposition to the Norsefire government that controls England. One important element of the mask’s power as a symbol is its anonymity: anyone can wear the mask and embody the spirit of rebellion.

We see this first-hand in the graphic novel, as in the final chapters, Evey Hammond dons V’s mask and “becomes” V. In the end, then, the Guy Fawkes mask represents symbols at their most powerful: they can transform individual, flawed people into something more powerful and create movements.

You can also read:

Guy Fawkes Story

The post Guy Fawkes Day first appeared on The World of English.

Quotes about mobbing, power and management.

Carl William Brown — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 11:32:32 +0000

Quotes about mobbing

Quotes about mobbing, power and management. Some ideas about power, management, school and the practice of bullying and mobbing some collegues at work place or on the Internet. There are also some quotes that can suggest the ways you can protect yourself.

Be circumspect how you offend schollers, for knowe, a serpent tooth bites not so ill, as dooth a schollers angrie quill.
John Florio

St. Michael’s Shield of Truth Prayer. St. Michael, you are our defender and safeguard against evil. Place your Shield of Truth over us and defend us in the battle which Satan wages against truth. Help us to seethe righteous path of Holy Love.Clarify our choices between good and evil by placing us always behind your Shield of Truth. Amen.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

I realized that bullying never has to do with you. It’s the bully who’s insecure.
Shay Mitchell

I allowed myself to be bullied because I was scared and didn’t know how to defend myself. I was bullied until I prevented a new student from being bullied. By standing up for him, I learned to stand up for myself.
Jackie Chan

Wisdom overcomes fortune.
Decimus Junius Juvenalis

Cyberbullying is poised to turn into the biggest online concern, already affecting up to 35% of all children.
Dr. Martyn Wild

Never underestimate the enemy, above all if he is a stupid one.
Carl William Brown

Once I was adviced never to trust a pretty face. Well, and what should I do when a meet a shithead?
Carl William Brown

Do not do what you would undo if caught.
Leah Arendt

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: ‘The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.’ In these words, he epitomized the history of the human race.
Bertrand Russell

Often, the right path is the one that may be hardest for you to follow. But the hard path is also the one that will make you grow as a human being.
Karen Mueller Coombs

If bullies actually believe that somebody loves them and believes in them, they will love themselves, they will become better people, and many will even become saviors to the bullied.
Dan Pearce

Unless and until our society recognizes cyberbullying for what it is, the suffering of thousands of silent victims will continue.
Anna Maria Chávez

Every thought we think is creating our future.
Louise L. Hay

You must try to make the most of all that comes but also don’t forget to learn a lot of all that goes.
Carl William Brown

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King Jr

I have come to regard the law courts not as a cathedral but rather as a casino.
Richard Ingrams

Courage is the most important of virtues because, without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.
Maya Angelou

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy

One man can make a difference, and every man should try.
John F. Kennedy

We’re just honest working men that have been pushed so far and so hard that we can’t keep it up any longer.
Frances O’Rourke

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell

We explain when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you do not stoop to their level. Our motto is when they go low, you go high.
Michelle Obama

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell

Power is not a means; it is an end… The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
George Orwell

Nemo me impune lacessit. (No one harms me with impunity.)
Motto – Order of the Thistle

“If everyone is in agreement to condemn someone accused, release him, for he must be innocent.”.
Talmudic Principle

It isn’t the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it’s the troubles that cause the rebels.
Carl Oglesby

Management doesn’t seem to understand the importance of the human factor.
King Charles III

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
Albert Einstein

He who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world.
Thomas Hughes

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
Elie Wiesel

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Elie Wiesel

I would rather be a little nobody than to be an evil somebody.
Abraham Lincoln

People say sticks and stones may break your bones, but names can never hurt you, but that’s not true. Words can hurt. They hurt me. Things were said to me that I still haven’t forgotten.
Demi Lovato

Cyberbullies can hide behind a mask of namelessness online and do not need direct physical admittance to their victims to do unimaginable harm.
Anna Maria Chávez

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time
when we fail to protest.
Elie Wiesel

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Steven Biko

If you’re insulting people on the internet, you must be ugly on the inside.
Phil Lester

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
Desmond Tutu

What if the kid you bullied at school, grew up, and turned out to be the only surgeon who could save your life?
Lynette Mather

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.
Cesar Chavez

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.
Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm

We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will.
You do your worst–and we will do our best.
Sir Winston Churchill

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with
the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
William Hazlitt

The superior person understands rightness; the inferior person understands profit.
Confucius

Nothing strengthens authority as much as silence.
Leonardo da Vinci

People might not get all that they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all that they get.
Frederick Douglass

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Frederick Douglass

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
Peter Drucker

Never undervalue the enemies, especially if they are stupid. Carl William Brown

We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right.
Mahatma Gandhi

There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s needs, but not for everyone’s greed.
Mahatma Gandhi

In the old days all you needed was a handshake. Nowadays you need forty lawyers.
Jimmy Hoffa

The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
Rosa Parks

If you let a bully come in your front yard, he’ll be on your porch the next day and the day after that
he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.
Lyndon Baines Johnson

Goods produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard to decency should be
regarded as contraband and not allowed to pollute the channels of international commerce.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.
William Shakespear

“Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
William Shakespeare

All truth passes through 3 stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer

There is no readier way for a man to bring his own worth into question than by endeavoring to detract from the worth of other men.”
John Tillotson

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essense of inhumanity.
George Bernard Shaw

Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
Seneca

Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.
Napoleon Hill

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship.
Louisa May Alcott

The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.
Georges Bidault

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes,
and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
Francis Quarles

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.
Lily Tomlin

Long is the way And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
John Milton

What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.
Lao Tzu

Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Oscar Wilde

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King Jr

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
Joseph Addison

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
Louis D. Brandeis

Great inspirational quotes and aphorisms

The post Quotes about mobbing, power and management. first appeared on The World of English.

100 splendid quotes

Carl William Brown — Mon, 26 May 2025 12:04:25 +0000

100 splendid quotes

100 splendid quotes, a selection of 100 great aphorisms by famous authors, philosophers and artists through the centuries to help everyone create better thoughts and achieve good actions; edited for the World of English blog by Carl William Brown, a sincere literary avenger. (Find out more about him on Amazon).

Awareness and stupidity are unfortunately two sides of the same coin, just like life and death, laughter and tears, comedy and tragedy, wealth and poverty, peace and war; but with these coins it is very difficult, if not impossible, to play heads or tails and tempt fate.
Carl William Brown

Excellence withers without an adversary.
Seneca

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
William Shakespeare

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The contradiction of capitalism is that it creates wealth while increasing poverty.
Karl Marx

I hate victims that respect their executioners.
Jean Paul Sartre

Focus on knowledge, live authentically, challenge limits, and align your soul with truth.
Socrates

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.
Epicurus

A snake can change its skin but not its disposition.
Persian proverb

Stupidity generally serves both those who do not think much and those who think too much and badly.
Carl William Brown

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God’s name is Abraxas.”
Hermann Hesse

No man is good by chance. Virtue is something which must be learned.
Seneca

When your education limit your imagination, it is called indoctrination.
Richard Feynman

We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.
Heinrich Heine

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present: each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.
William James

Excellence is achieved through repeated effort, guided by reason and effort.
Aristotle

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Mark Twain

Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom.
Marie von Ebner

The quickest way to end a war is to loose it.
George Orwell

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
Rumi

The wise don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.
Benjamin Franklin

If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.
Epictetus

A person hears only what he understand or better what he believe to understand.
Carl William Brown

Good and ethic power should be the ability to do good for othes, otherwise power in itself is just only stupidity.
Carl William Brown

If you want to reach a large audience, appeal to idiots.
Arthur Schopenhauer

There is no greater good than knowledge.
Plato

Even a writer of aphorisms, if he does not know the philosophical secret of the right measure, will only contribute to the miserable prolixity of stupidity.
Carl William Brown

The highest for of love is the love of wisdom.
Plato

Those who tell the stories also rule society.
Plato

Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.
Sadi of Shiraz

One must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself.
Marcel Proust

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.
H.L. Mencken

The community should share property and family to create unity.
Plato

Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
Otto von Bismarck

Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.
Carl G. Jung

It is to difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
jean Jacques Rousseau

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
Voltaire

The body is the prison of the soul.
Plato

Love is silence, and it has no past or future.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is frightful that people who are so ignorant have so much influence.
George Orwell

In a war of Ego, the loser always wins.
Buddha

Make a habit of two things – to help, or at least, to do no harm.
Hippocrates

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.
John Lennon

Knowledge is the food of the soul.
Plato

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ten beggars can sleep on one rug, but two kings feel uncomfortable in one country.
Saadi

An intellectual is a person who has found a thing that is more interesting than sex.
Aldous Huxley

We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.
Heinrich Heine

Happiness is not achieved by pursuing pleasure but by embracing purpose.
Epictetus

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.
Benjamin Franklin

Let your actions align with your words.
Epictetus

What I advice you to do is not to be unhappy before the crisis comes.
Seneca

The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.
Marcus Aurelius

Better a civil or a world war, even a nuclear one, than having to put up with the stupidity of those who govern this planet, the shithole toilet of the universe.
Carl William Brown

The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
John Milton

The mind can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.
Marcus Aurelius

Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.
René Descartes

The purpose of education is to empower individuals to think critically.
John Locke

For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.
Arthur Schopenhauer

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?
John Stuart Mill

Wickedness is paid for in the next world, but stupidity in this one.
Arthur Schopenhauer

I have never believed that man’s freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius

A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.
Gilles Deleuze

Not to be absolutely certain is one of the essential things in rationality.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts that respond to problems.
Gilles Deleuze

Chi pensa non crede, chi crede non pensa.
Arthur Shopenhauer

Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
Vicktor Frankl

The essence of evil is its refusal to think.
Hannah Arendt

To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.
Plutarch

True philosophy begins where pleasure ends and discipline begins.
Plato

A corrupt state teaches its youth obedicence, not virtue.
Lucis Annaeus Seneca

I swear to you, gentlemen, that being too conscious is a disease, a real, absolute disease.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

I swear to you, gentlemen, that being too conscious is a disease, a real, absolute disease.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.
Blaise Pascal

Once upon a time, watching some American films, we said that our people were coming, today at most we can only say that the idiots are coming.
Carl William Brown

The common people are always seduced by appearance and success.
Niccolò Macchiavelli

To accuse others for one’s own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.
Epictetus

The superior man always thinks of virtue, the common man thinks of comfort.
Confucius

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
George Bernard Shaw

The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.
Epictetus

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Aldous Huxley

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
Epictetus

Books weigh a lot: and yet, those who feed on them and put them in their bodies, live among the clouds.
Luigi Pirandello

A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Often injustice lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.
Marcus Aurelius

Since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show.
William Shakespeare

Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.
Leonardo da Vinci

Humanity does not need artificial intelligence if imbecility still dominates deep within its nature.
Carl William Brown

Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.
Franz Kafka

All war is a crime against humanity.
Leo Tolstoy

Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.
Socrates

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
Bertrand Russell

By all means marry: if you get a good wife or husband, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad wife or husband, you’ll become a philosopher.
Socrates

If you wish to be rich, do not add to your money, but subtruct from your desires.
Epicurus

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
Arthur Schopenhauer

To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.
Jean-Paul Sartre

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