Philistines Quotes

• One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down.

  Pauline Kael

  Culture, Taste, Reverence

  pauline kael (1965). “i lost it at the movies”

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• Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.

  Matthew Arnold

  America, Justice, Our Society

  Culture and Anarchy preface (1869)

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• Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Clever, Remarks, Jokes

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.136, Courier Corporation

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• The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class.

  Louis Dudek

  Art, Class, Definitions

  Louis Dudek (1991). “Small perfect things”, Dc Books

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• Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There's a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.

  Orson Welles

  Two, Saint, Contradiction

  Orson Welles, Mark W. Estrin (2002). “Orson Welles: Interviews”, p.141, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Atheism, Age

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1618, Delphi Classics

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• The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.

  Colin Firth

  Country, Thinking, People

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Real, Criticism

  Evergreen Review Dec. 1964

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• Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the children of the light.

  Matthew Arnold

  Strong, Children, Light

  Essays in Criticism First Series, "Heinrich Heine" (1865)

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• PHILISTINE, n. One whose mind is the creature of its environment, following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment. He is sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always solemn.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Fashion, Learning, Feelings

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.93, Courier Corporation

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• Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to "sexual impurity" or has a tendency "to excite lustful thoughts." This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where, in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win.

  William O. Douglas

  Winning, Expression, Community

  "Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. June 24, 1957.

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• A country of inveterate, backwoods, thick-headed, egotistic philistines

  Vladimir Lenin

  Country, Backwoods, Thick

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• Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Vulgarity Is, Vulgarity, Exhilarating

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.412, Vintage

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• A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas and conventional ideals of his or her group and time.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Ideas, Groups, Interest

  Vladimir Nabokov (2017). “Lectures on Russian Literature”, p.309, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What passed for society was a loud, giddy whirl of thieves and pretentious hustlers, a dull sideshow full of quacks and clowns and philistines with gimp mentalities.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Dull, Thieves, Pretentious

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “The Rum Diary: Film Tie-in Edition”, p.72, A&C Black

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• Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Real, Design

  Evergreen Review Dec. 1964

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• A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Reality, Boredom, Needs

  "Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life". Book by Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. by E. Payne, Vol. 1, p. 345, 1974.

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• A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Men, Needs, Normal

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - The Wisdom of Life (illustrated)”, p.33, Full Moon Publications

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• England has become a squalid, uncomfortable, ugly place ... an intolerant, racist, homophobic, narrow-minded, authoritarian, rat-hole run by vicious, suburban-minded, materialistic philistines.

  Hanif Kureishi

  Running, Insulting, Racist

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• A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won't bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored.

  Karl Kraus

  Art, Boredom, Looks

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• To speak the truth is the most difficult of all arts, for in its "pure" form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, or nations, truth is almost completely unsuitable for use by the Philistine and is unacceptable to him.

  Maxim Gorky

  Art, Truth, Class

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• Philistine - a word which I understand properly to denote indifference to the higher intellectual interests. The word may also be defined, however, as the name applied by prigs to the rest of their species.

  Leslie Stephen

  Names, Intellectual, May

  Leslie Stephen (1928). “Sir Thomas Browne. Jonathan Edwards. Horace Walpole. Dr. Johnson's writings. Crabbe. William Hazlitt. Disraeli's novels. Massinger”

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• A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it.

  Dmitri Shostakovich

  Beautiful, Pieces, Matter

  "Composers on Music". Book by Josiah Fisk, p. 364, 1997.

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• No difference exists between American and European manners. A proletarian from Chicago can be just as Philistine as an English duke.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Differences, Chicago, Dukes

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• There is nothing more vulgar than a petty bourgeois life with its halfpence, its victuals, its futile talk, and its useless conventional virtue.

  Anton Chekhov

  Vapid, Mediocrity, Useless

  "Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends: With Biographical Sketch". Book by Anton Chekhov, 1920.

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