top of page

"You asked me how to get out of the finite dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don't use logic when I do it. Logic's the first thing you have to get rid of."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Philosophy quotes

"Christianity is not an accretion, it is not something added. It is a new total outlook which is satisfied with nothing less than penetration to the furthest corners of the mind and the understanding."

"As we cast our frightened eyes around for something that is real and true and enduring, we are turning once more to this ancient Book [the Bible] that has given consolation, comfort, and salvation to millions in the centuries past."

"Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into a lucid form and forcing them into the tightfitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear."

"By the 1960s the United States had a new ruling class-the teenager!"

"There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory."

"A great problem in America is that we have an anemic and watered-down Christianity that has produced an anemic, watered-down, and spineless Christian who is not willing to stand up and be counted on every issue."

"The feet of the Christian need to tread the narrow path that the Savior trod, keeping in step with Him."

"Life is not a sport. Life is not math. There is no final end goal and there is no right answer. Just because your truth does not match someone else's truth does not make either of you wrong. Life is not a zero sum game. If I am right, that does not make you wrong. If you are right, that does not make me wrong either. A jar of vinegar can sit in a cupboard beside a box of baking soda peacefully, and we can allow those who disagree with us to exist alongside us without reacting to them. There is nothing to prove. There is enough room in the world for all of us."

"Christianity is not a spectator sport, it's something in which we become totally involved."

"I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity."
Explore more quotes by J.D. Salinger


"One of the few things left in the world, aside from the world itself, that sadden me every day is an awareness that you get upset if Boo Boo or Walt tells you you're saying something that sounds like me. You sort of take it as an accusation of piracy, a little slam at your individuality. Is it so bad that we sometimes sound like each other? The membrane is so thin between us. Is it so important for us to keep in mind which is whose... For us, doesn't each of our individualities begin right at the point where we own up to our extremely close connections and accept the inevitability of borrowing one another's jokes, talents, idiocies?"


"The worst that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly."


"I'm no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I'm no animal. Don't gimme that. I'm no animal."


"It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so - I don't know - not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and - sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way."


"I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down."


"You ought to go to a boy's school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques."
bottom of page