Analogy Archive

History's greatest analogies.

"Discovery consists in seeing an analogy which nobody had seen before." — Arthur Koestler

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"What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" — Langston Hughes ("Harlem," Montage of a Dream Deferred, 1951)

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"The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim." — Edsger W. Dijkstra (EWD898, "The Threats to Computing Science," 1984)

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@davidsenra "Men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony." — Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince, 1532)

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@george__mack "I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter." — Blaise Pascal (Provincial Letters, 1657)

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@dickiebush "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." — Toni Morrison (speech to the Ohio Arts Council, 1981)

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"You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I'll rise." — Maya Angelou ("Still I Rise," And Still I Rise, 1978)

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@Nicolascole77 "The report of my death was an exaggeration." — Mark Twain (New York Journal, 1897)

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@LeilaHormozi "I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." — Nelson Mandela (Long Walk to Freedom, 1994)

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"Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children." — Black Elk (Black Elk Speaks, as told through John G. Neihardt, 1932)

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"A journey of a thousand li starts beneath one's feet." — Laozi (Tao Te Ching, ch. 64, c. 4th century BC)

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@foundmyfitness "Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness." — Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby (Liverpool College address, 1873)

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"Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire." — Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb, Antifragile, 2012)

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@toyinomotoso "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." — Simone Weil (letter to Joë Bousquet, 1942)

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"Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down." — Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon, 1977; spoken by the character Guitar)

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"A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales." — Marie Curie (quoted in Eve Curie, Madame Curie, 1937)

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"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." — Francis Bacon (Essays, "Of Studies," 1625 edition)

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"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." — John Donne (Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII, 1624)

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@stevemagness "There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others." — Martha Graham (to Agnes de Mille, 1940s)

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@kwharrison13 "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" — Upton Sinclair (I, Candidate for Governor, 1935)

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@vkhosla @joinBunkerhill "Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." — Goethe (Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, 1829)