You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.
Quotes about philistines (6 Quotes)
DULLARD, n. A member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life. The Dullards came in with Adam, and being both numerous and sturdy have overrun the habitable world. The secret of their power is their insensibility to blows tickle them with a bludgeon and they laugh with a platitude. The Dullards came originally from Boeotia, whence they were driven by stress of starvation, their dullness having blighted the crops. For some centuries they infested Philistia, and many of them are called Philistines to this day. In the turbulent times of the Crusades they withdrew thence and gradually overspread all Europe, occupying most of the high places in politics, art, literature, science and theology. Since a detachment of Dullards came over with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower and made a favorable report of the country, their increase by birth, immigration, and conversion has been rapid and steady. According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians. The intellectual centre of the race is somewhere about Peoria, Illinois, but the New England Dullard is the most shockingly moral.
Once that entered the piece, it ceased to be just a biographical look at a great world leader, and it became a thriller, ... It explores so many human questions about violence or peace, and what (New Yorker writer) Seymour Hersh calls 'the Samson option,' because when Samson brought down the temple on the Philistines, he brought it down on himself -- it's Israel's feeling that if it goes down, it will not go down alone.
He was the mightiest of Puritans no less than of philistines who first insisted that beauty is only skin deep.
Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears.
Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.