Candide Quotes - Page 2

• Candide is one of those books I read when I was young and that I come back to regularly.

  Mark Ravenhill

  Book, Young

  Source: voltairefoundation.wordpress.com

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• Hyper-selectionism has been with us for a long time in various guises; for it represents the late nineteenth century's scientific version of the myth of natural harmony all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds (all structures well designed for a definite purpose in this case). It is, indeed, the vision of foolish Dr. Pangloss, so vividly satirized by Voltaire in Candide the world is not necessarily good, but it is the best we could possibly have.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Long, Vision, Drs

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.57, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Kissinger projects a strong impression of a man at home in the world and on top of his brief. But there are a number of occasions when it suits him to pose as a sort of Candide: naive, and ill-prepared for and easily unhorsed by events. No doubt this pose costs him something in point of self-esteem. It is a pose, furthermore, which he often adopts at precisely the time when the record shows him to be knowledgeable, and when knowledge or foreknowledge would also confront him with charges of responsibility or complicity.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Strong, Self Esteem, Responsibility

  "The Case Against Henry Kissinger. Part Two. Crimes against humanity". www.thirdworldtraveler.com. March 2001.

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• Also, everyone thinks they know Candide - you hear people described as 'Panglossian'. So if Candide appears on a poster, it feels familiar.

  Mark Ravenhill

  Thinking, People, Posters

  Source: voltairefoundation.wordpress.com

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• It's a book that makes me laugh and think - it would be very hard to like someone who didn't enjoy Candide!

  Mark Ravenhill

  Book, Thinking, Laughing

  Source: voltairefoundation.wordpress.com

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• I tend to look at the world more from Voltaire's perspective. Incidentally, if you haven't read Candide lately, it's a fabulous book. It's riotously, laugh-out-loud funny in a way that no Shakespeare comedy will ever be.

  George Meyer

  Book, Laughing, Perspective

  Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

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• The Saga of Dharmapuri is one of the great works of modern Indian literature. (...) Set against Vijayan's heroic and scatological Candide -- originally written in Malayalam and finely translated into English by the author -- the timidity of our own English talent for political satire is embarrassingly laid bare. For this is dangerous stuff, and cut close to the bone. (...) Fiercest of all is Vijayan's Voltairean recoil from Indian cringing to power.

  David Selbourne

  Cutting, Political, Literature

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• Translating Candide into tweets has really deepened my appreciation of his writing - it wouldn't work so well with nineteenth-century authors. Every single sentence in Voltaire seems to advance the story, and yet stand alone as a sound-bite.

  Mark Ravenhill

  Appreciation, Writing, Stories

  Source: voltairefoundation.wordpress.com

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• Rereading Candide, I was struck by the link between optimism and the optimal, the idea that we have been placed in this optimal world rather than some other.

  Mark Ravenhill

  Ideas, Optimism, World

  Source: voltairefoundation.wordpress.com

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• I have not chosen to create a linear story, but a series of different narratives: in the end there are five plays that almost, but don't quite, add up to one play... I start with the story of Candide, being performed as a play within a play, to bring the audience up to speed with the story.

  Mark Ravenhill

  Play, Stories, Narrative

  Source: voltairefoundation.wordpress.com

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