Babel Quotes

• "I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing."
  "Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D."
  "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

  Douglas Adams

  Atheist, Men, Giving

  "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Book by Douglas Adams, Chapter 6, 1979.

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• Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

  Douglas Adams

  War, Communication, Race

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.47, Pan Macmillan

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• It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower -- and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Wise, Spring, Flower

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1852). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.10

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• What [Franz] Kafka says about the Tower of Babel: In the beginning there were actually many languages, and then as a punishment God gave the world a single language. And then they stopped understanding each other.

  Elie Wiesel

  Punishment, Understanding, Tower Of Babel

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.

  Franz Kafka

  Climbing, Hiking, Tower Of Babel

  Franz Kafka (2016). “Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka”, p.354, Archipelago

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• The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.

  Douglas Adams

  Atheist, Faith Religion, Atheism

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.47, Pan Macmillan

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• A bottomless pit of violence, a Tower of Babel where all are speakers and no hearers.

  Alexander Smith

  History, Tower Of Babel, Towers

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• If you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language.

  Douglas Adams

  Ears, Sticks, Language

  Douglas Adams (2010). “The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.68, Del Rey

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• Language as the technology of human extension, whose powers of division and separation we know so well, may have been the "Tower of Babel" by which men sought to scale the highest heavens. Today computers hold out the promise of a means of instant tr

  Marshall McLuhan

  Mean, Technology, Men

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• As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God's anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex.

  Adam Sedgwick

  Philosophy, Pyramids, Tower Of Babel

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• Our Lord never called His people to help build the tower of Babel in the hope of getting a Bible study in the basement. He commanded us to build our own city on a hill.

  David Chilton

  Cities, People, Tower Of Babel

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• No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.

  Isaac Babel

  Life, Heart, Iron

  1932 Guy de Maupassant.

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• Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Latin, Dark, Dust

  Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard (1983). “Les Fleurs Du Mal”, p.165, David R. Godine Publisher

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• There, pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of depsair

  Dante Alighieri

  Pride, Men, Envy

  Dante Alighieri (2001). “The Inferno”, p.67, Penguin

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• There are the further difficulties of building a population out of a diversity of races, each at a different stage of cultural evolution, some in need of restraint, many in need of protection; everywhere a bewildering Babel of tongues.

  Arthur Keith

  Race, Diversity, Population

  Sir Arthur Keith (1947). “Evolution and Ethics”

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• Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
  To peep at such a world; to see the stir
  Of the Great Babel, and not feel the crowd.

  William Cowper

  World, Crowds, Retreat

  'The Task' (1785) bk. 4 'The Winter Evening' l. 88

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• I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that "except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel

  Benjamin Franklin

  Fall, Believe, Writing

  Constitutional Convention Address on Prayer, delivered Thursday, June 28, 1787, Philadelphia, PA

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• A phrase is born into the world both good and bad at the same time. The secret lies in a slight, an almost invisible twist. The lever should rest in your hand, getting warm, and you can only turn it once, not twice.

  Isaac Babel

  Lying, Hands, Secret

  "Guy de Maupassant" (1924) (translation byWalter Morison)

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• Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

  Douglas Adams

  Puff, Hitchhiking, Logic

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.47, Pan Macmillan

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• ... I see the green earth covered with the works of man or with the ruins of men’s work. The pyramids weigh down the earth, the tower of Babel has pierced the sky, the lovely temples and the gray castles have fallen into ruins. But of all those things which hands have built, what hasn’t fallen nor ever will fall? Dear friends, throw away the trowel and mortarboard! Throw your masons’ aprons over your heads and lie down to build dreams! What are temples of stone and clay to the soul? Learn to build eternal mansions of dreams and visions!

  Selma Lagerlöf

  Dream, Lying, Fall

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• The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace'. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  War, Writing, Men

  Letter to his son Christopher Tolkien on August 09, 1945. "The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien", 1981.

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• The more the linguistic Babel corroded and disorganized parliament, the closer drew the inevitable hour of the disintegration of this Babylonian Empire, and with it the hour of freedom for my German-Austrian people.

  Adolf Hitler

  People, Empires, Hours

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There are some films that arrive here from the international festival circuit almost incandescent with self-importance. They hover into the cinema in a kind of floating trance at how challenging and moving they are. They are films with a profound reluctance to get over themselves. They look up at the sceptical observer with the saucer-eyed saintliness of a baby seal in culling season, or a charity mugger smilingly wishing a nice day on the retreating back of a passer-by. One such is Babel.

  Peter Bradshaw

  Baby, Nice, Moving

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• We, in the ages lying
  In the buried past of the earth,
  Built Nineveh with our sighing,
  And Babel itself with our mirth;
  And o'erthrew them with prophesying
  To the old of the new world's worth;
  For each age is a dream that is dying,
  Or one that is coming to birth.

  Arthur O'Shaughnessy

  Dream, Lying, Past

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• We monitor many frequencies. We listen always. Came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. It played us a mighty dub.

  William Gibson

  Voice, Tongue, Frequency

  William Gibson (2000). “Neuromancer”, p.96, Penguin

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