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Quotes by Writer
"It's all a risk. Always. That's not true, actually. The only exception: it's a certainty that there's risk. The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That's because the world is certainly, definitely, and more than possibly changing."
91
"I may not understand, but I am willing to admire."
90
"Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success."
90
"If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it the object of our game; to turn it into a toy."
90
"We make sense of the world intentionally. Faced with chaos, we seek or make the familiar, and build up the world with it. Babies do it, we all do it; we filter out most of what our senses report."
90
"When you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, 'It's all in Plato' - meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better. I want to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife."
90
"The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalization is the speed of light."
89
"There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow."
89
"It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words."
88
"The thing that attracted me about philosophy was that it went straight to essentials. I had never liked fiddling detail; I perceived the general significance of things rather than their singularities, and I preferred understanding to seeing; I had always wanted to know everything; philosophy would allow me to appease this desire, for it aimed at total reality;philosophy went right to the heart of truth and revealed to me, instead of an illusory whirlwind of facts or empirical laws, an order, a reason, a necessity in everything."
88
"The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple."
88
"To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor."
88
"Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated."
86
"I also identify as a Latin person, a person who has Latin blood."
86
"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up."
86
"The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth."
85
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers."
84
"Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside."
84
"And so, today, if the state can no longer appeal to the old moral principles that belong to the Christian tradition, it will be forced to create a new official faith and new moral principles which will be binding on its citizens."
84
"It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."
84
"All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and meaningless in some sense."
84
"The cells smell is a great feature of French prisons. Ours in No.44 was one of those fine broad-shouldered up and coming young smells, which stand on both feet and look the world in the eye. We became very fond and proud of it."
84
"I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are."
83
"You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself."
83
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