"I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction."
John Steinbeck, "Travels with Charley: In Search of America"
“Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?”
― Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995
@edgarblythe,
"The uncivilized behavior of some human beings in a zoo has to be seen to be believed."
Gerald Durrell, "Menagerie Manor"
"You really stepped in something good this time."
Balki Bartokomous "Perfect strangers"
“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
"Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power."
John Steinbeck
Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humour. He will always use it in evidence against you.
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Education . . . has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.
G. M. Trevelyan
"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."
Leonard Bernstein
Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.
Lionel Trilling
"I always assumed everybody shared my love for overcast skies. It came as a shock to find out that some people prefer sunshine."
Glenn Gould, "Glenn Gould"
"That nut's a genius."
Cleveland Orchestra conductor George Szell describing eccentric pianist Glenn Gould after tangling with him over the interpretation of a Beethoven concerto.
"The war we are fighting until victory or the bitter end is in its deepest sense a war between Christ and Marx. Christ: the principle of love. Marx: the principle of hate."
Joseph Goebbels--Third Reich propaganda minister
When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency.
Harry Truman
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." -Malcolm X
"The ethical standards of scientists must change as the scope of the good and evil caused by science has changed. In the long run, as Haldane and Einstein said, ethical progress is the only cure for the damage done by scientific progress."
Freeman Dyson, "The Scientist as Rebel"
"If science ceases to be a rebellion against authority, then it does not deserve the talents of our brightest children."
Freeman Dyson, The Scientist as Rebel
I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.
Harriet Tubman
Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.
Paul Valéry
"Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
Hermann Goring
