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Quotes I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
André GIDE Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else. The Fruits of the Earth Before I explain my book to others, I expect them to explain it to me. To claim to explain it first is to immediately narrow down its reach; for if we know what we intended to say, we do not know whether we said only that. - One always says more than THAT. - And what interests me most is what I put in without knowing, - that unconscious share, which I would like to call God's share. Paludes [Marshlands] All these books have lived together [...] inside my mind. They follow one another only on paper and because of an utter impossibility to let themselves be all written at the same time. Whatever book I write, I never devote myself to it completely, and the matter which most insistently requires me soon later develops, however, at the other end of me. Journal, September-October 1909 The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say -- because they were too obvious. The Journals of André Gide Humanity cherishes its swaddling clothes; but it shall not grow up unless it can free itself from them. Turning down his mother's breast does not make the weaned child ungrateful. [...] Rise up naked, valiant; make the sheaths crack; push aside the stakes; to grow straight you need no more than the thrust of your sap and the call of the sun. Les Nouvelles Nourritures [Later Fruits of the Earth] Obsessions of the Orient, of the desert, of its ardor and its emptiness, of the shadows of palm gardens, of the garments white and wide - obsessions where the senses go berserk, where nerves are exasperated, and which made me, at the onset of each night, believe sleep impossible. Feuilles de route
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective. Be faithful to that which exists within yourself. In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime. It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not. Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all. One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward. Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly. Not everyone can be an orphan. Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
Jean-Paul SARTRE I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.
A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost. Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience. Acting is happy agony. Everything has been figured out, except how to live. Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them. Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives. Hell is other people. No Exit I confused things with their names: that is belief. The Words It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous. It is only in our decisions that we are important. Life begins on the other side of despair. Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal. Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have. Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor. Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat. One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life. Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat. She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. The existentialist says at once that man is anguish. The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity. Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. To eat is to appropriate by destruction. Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total... because it may well involve the whole world. When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die. Words are loaded pistols.
Albert CAMUS Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad. A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world. A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books. After all, every murderer when he kills runs the risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those who kill him risk nothing except promotion. Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. The Fall Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face. The Fall All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door. All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means. At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures—be what he is. And, above all, accept these things. At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time. But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question. The Fall Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny. Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves. The Fall Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic. For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium. For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing. I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is. In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist. In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money. It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all. Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love. Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions. Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -—never. Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death. Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely. Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion. One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves. Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence. Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference. Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way. That must be wonderful; I have no idea of what it means. The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth. The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves. The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. The Myth of Sisyphus The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism. The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm. The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone. The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions. The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude. The Fall The society based on production is only productive, not creative. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. The Myth of Sisyphus The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants. The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody. There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. The Myth of Sisyphus There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. The Myth of Sisyphus There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed. Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery. Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators. To abandon oneself to principles is really to die— and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love. To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today. To be happy we must not be too concerned with others. To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything. To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well. To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity. Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object. Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil. We are all special cases. We call first truths those we discover after all the others. We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die. We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead. We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves. What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians. When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future. Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer 'yes' without having asked any clear question. The Fall You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. Identity Isaac Asimov: "Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right." Mary Oliver: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Abraham Maslow: "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be." Anne Sexton: "It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." Blaise Pascal: "Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you." Epictetus: "First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do." Houssaye: "Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are." Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: "I am a woman above everything else." Pablo Picasso: "My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso." William Shakespeare: "All the world is a stage, /And all the men and women merely players. / They have their exits and entrances; / Each man in his time plays many parts. Freedom Albert Einstein: All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. Aldous Huxley: Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure. Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me. Barbara Ehrenreich: That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose. Benjamin Franklin: They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security C. Wright Mills: Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them—and then, the opportunity to choose. Charlie Daniels: (written en route to the funeral for his friend, Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd) Clarence Darrow: You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free. Dorothy Thompson: When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered. Dorothy Thompson: Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare. Dorothy Thompson: It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives Dwight D. Eisenhower: We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. Edward R. Murrow: We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. Eleanor Holmes Norton: The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with. Epictetus: We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free. Discourses Eugene V. Debs: Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. Florynce Kennedy: Freedom is like taking a bath -- you have to keep doing it every day! Franklin Delano Roosevelt: The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Frederick Douglass: Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will. Goethe: None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free. H. L. Mencken: I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air—that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. H. L. Mencken: The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. Henri-Frédéric Amiel: Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness. Henry David Thoreau: Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. Henry David Thoreau: Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. Hodding Carter: There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings. James Baldwin: Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be. Jean-Paul Sartre: Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. Jesse Jackson: No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams. John Adams: There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. John Dewey: The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity. John F. Kennedy: We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. John F. Kennedy: The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. John F. Kennedy: Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain. John P. Zenger: No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves. John Philpot Curran: It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt. (1790) John Stuart Mill: The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. John Stuart Mill: The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right... The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. Margaret Sanger: A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. Marianne Williamson: And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach: As far as your self-control goes, as far goes your freedom. Marilyn Ferguson: Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom. Mark Twain: It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither. Mark Twain: It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. Mohandas K. Gandhi: Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. Molly Ivins: It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America. Noam Chomsky: For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we sere as willing or unwitting instruments." Noam Chomsky: If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all. Noam Chomsky: In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued—they may be essential to survival. Norman Thomas: After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement. Patrick Henry: Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! Pearl S. Buck: None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free. Peyton Conway March: There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind—are always attained by giving them to someone else. Rabbi Sherwin Wine: There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom. The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity. This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies. Ralph Waldo Emerson: For what avail the plough or sail, / Or land or life, if freedom fail? "Boston" Stanza 15 Ramsey Clark: A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. Robert Frost: Freedom lies in being bold. Rosa Luxemburg: Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Samuel Adams: If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. Simone Weil: Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose. Somerset Maugham: If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. Søren Kierkegaard: People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation. Thomas Jefferson: A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. Thomas Jefferson: No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. Thomas Jefferson: A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government. Thomas Jefferson: I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. Thomas Jefferson: I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. Unknown: [C]reative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy. Victor Frankl: Everything can be taken from a man but ... the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Viktor Frankl: We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Virginia Woolf: To enjoy freedom, if the platitude is pardonable, we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose-bush; we must train them, exactly and powerfully, here on the very spot. Virginia Woolf: The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. Voltaire: So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. Wendell Phillips: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. (frequently misattributed to Thomas Jefferson) Wendy Kaminer: Patriotism does not oblige us to acquiesce in the destruction of liberty. Patriotism obliges us to question it, at least. William O. Douglas: Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
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