“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass
Men think about women. Women think about what men think about them.
Peter Ustinov
“I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That’s why I’m trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning.”
― Stephen Chbosky
“It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”
― Noam Chomsky
“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.”
― Oscar Wilde
“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
― Vincent van Gogh
“You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons
“After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Adding Machine: Selected Essays
@edgarblythe,
William Morris used to say that it is very difficult to judge who are the best people to take charge of children, but it is certain that the parents are the very worst.
Bernard Shaw.
“I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
“I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live.”
― Sylvia Plath
“I hate a Roman named Status Quo!" he said to me. "Stuff your eyes with wonder," he said, "live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that," he said, "shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.”
― Ray Bradbury
“For the record, suspicion can kill, and prejudice can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own, for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.”
― Rod Serling
“Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.”
― Charles Chaplin
@Olivier5,
"I was too young
To shun the bait, although I saw the snare.
I freed myself at last, and felt as though
I had left half my soul behind. At present
I am none the worse, and almost think the dream
Was worth the waking."
George Bernard Shaw.
@spendius,
We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.
Camus - Helen's Exile
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein
