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Quotes by Dramatist
"Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?"
29
"The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things."
29
"Men are wise in proportion not to their experience but to their capacity for experience."
29
"More of your conversation would infect my brain."
28
"Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead."
28
"What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwealth? Is this the wealth we seek to have in common - optimal security at the cost of maximal surveillance?"
28
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
28
"When I was twelve I was obsessed. Everything was sex. Latin was sex. The dictionary fell open at 'meretrix', a harlot. You could feel the mystery coming off the word like musk. 'Meretrix'! This was none of your mensa-a-table, this was a flash from a forbidden planet, and it was everywhere. History was sex, French was sex, art was sex, the Bible, poetry, penfriends, games, music, everything was sex except biology which was obviously sex but not really sex, not the one which was secret and ecstatic and wicked and a sacrament and all the things it was supposed to be but couldn't be at one and the same time - I got that in the boiler room and it turned out to be biology after all."
28
"In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer."
28
"Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course."
28
"He that knew all that learning ever writ, Knew only this - that he knew nothing yet."
28
"Formerly, when I would feel a desire to understand someone, or myself, I would take into consideration not actions, in which everything is relative, but wishes. Tell me what you want and I'll tell you who you are."
28
"Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both."
28
"It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity, But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable."
28
"Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing."
28
"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
28
"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art."
28
"The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices-after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's."
27
"The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well."
27
"Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing."
27
"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance."
27
"We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It's so clear, you see, that if we're to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it forever. And the only way we can redeem our past is by suffering and by giving ourselves over to exceptional labor, to steadfast and endless labor."
27
"What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?"
27
"THOMASINA:But then the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue!"
27
"That I have the right to express myself freely at all times in all circumstances entails the idea that free speech is a 'basic human right' possessed by each individual, and, as such, trumps the interests of the society or group, including my neighbour."
27
"If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits oneself, life would be unbearable."
27
"A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament."
27
"Even in Siberia there is happiness."
27
"I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it. I think that's the way I was thinking. But my actual experience is that the best way to find out what the structure is, is by writing the play out laterally. You just have got to be brave enough to start without knowing where you are going."
27
"Being a person is respect, because you're not a cat or a dog or a bunch of tulips, you're a human person and humanness isn't like something there can be different amounts of, it's maxed out from the start, total respect every time - kill one, kill a trainload, you're dissing the transcendental is all."
27
"He who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self sacrifice."
27
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