Skip to content

Men lived like fishes; the great ones devoured the small.

— Algernon Sidney Discourses Concerning Government (1689)

Another quote →

Notes from Wikiquote

3 Fish: Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea. | 1 Fish. Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones. | William Shakespeare, Pericles, Act ii. Sc. 1.

Topics

Society

More quotes by Algernon Sidney

If his Majesty is resolved to have my head, he may make a whistle of my arse if he pleases.

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.

Discourses Concerning Government (1689)

God helps those who help themselves.

Discourses Concerning Government (1689)

This shows that liars ought to have good memories.

It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun.

Discourses Concerning Government (1689)

All Algernon Sidney quotes →

You may also like

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Algernon Sidney (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.