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"He had liked to listen to the exotic (to a Belsey) chatter of business and money and practical politics; to hear that Equality was a myth, and Multiculturalism was a fatuous dream; he thrilled at the suggestion that Art was a gift from God, blessing only a handful of masters, and most Literature merely a veil for poorly reasoned left-wing ideologies."
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Exlpore more Ideology quotes
"It is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists."
"Our Western society is so deeply divided between these two approaches (moralism, self-discovery) that hardly anyone can conceive of any other way to live. If you criticize or distance yourself from one, everyone assumes you have chosen to follow the other, because each of these approaches tends to divide the whole world into two basic groups. The moral conformists say: 'the immoral people -- the people who 'do their own thing' -- are the problem with the world, and moral people are the solution.' The advocates of self-discovery say: 'The bigoted peole -- the people who say, 'We have the Truth' -- are the problem with the world, and progressive people are the solution."
"Hitherto men have always formed wrong ideas about themselves, about what they are and what they ought to be. They have arranged their relations according to their ideas of God, of normal man, etc. The products of their brains have got out of their hands. They, the creators, have bowed down before their creations."
"Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies."
"Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof."
"I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person - they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated."
"Those who find it hypocritical of others to use, say, a smartphone, to speak ill of capitalism, needs to be reminded that capitalism is an ideology, not a technology."
"Feminism was good for me, as were any number of causes, but as I developed as a thinking person, the truisms and dogmas of every ideology became as worn as that book's cover."
Explore more quotes by Zadie Smith
"Right. I look fine. Except I don't,' said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman's magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki's knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it."
"I'd decided to establish a new rule for myself: read for half an hour an evening, no matter what."
"It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe."
"You don't come to live here [New York City] unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. 'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition."
"To her credit, though, Trace didn't lose her famous temper, not at that moment. At eighteen she was already expert at the older woman's art of fermenting rage, conserving it, for later use."
"This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living."
"It starts innocently. Casually. You turn up at the annual spring fair full of beans, help with the raffle tickets (because the pretty red-haired music teacher asks you to) and win a bottle of whiskey (all school raffles are fixed), and, before you know where you are, you're turning up at the weekly school council meetings, organizing concerts, discussing plans for a new music department, donating funds for the rejuvenation of the water fountains-you're implicated in the school, you're involved in it. Sooner or later you stop dropping your children at the school gates. You start following them in."
"They were real people who entertained and argued and existed entirely independently from him, although he had set the thing in motion. They had different thoughts and beliefs. ~ on children growing up."
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