Platitudes Quotes

• Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

  H. L. Mencken

  Ideas, Cynical, Literature

  A Book of Burlesques ch. 11 (1920)

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• The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learnt, and arrives at the new truth with hands blood stained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Truth, Science, Men

  1930 The Revolt of theMasses.

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• She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Sarcastic, Powerful, Sea

  "A Writer's Notebook". Book by W. Somerset Maugham, 1946.

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• We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of achievment.

  Richard J. Daley

  Funny, Achievement, Greater

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• Speakers are not supposed to waste time on platitudes, but the capacity of this generation for ignoring the obvious and concentrating on the negative and the obscure is immense.

  Arthur Hays Sulzberger

  This Generation, Negative, Generations

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• Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.

  Colin Powell

  Justice, Comforting, Needs

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• Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth

  Bertrand Russell

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.66, Routledge

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• In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, World, Modern

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “An Ideal Husband: Second Edition, Revised”, p.30, A&C Black

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• Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

  Thornton Wilder

  Literature, Orchestration

  In Time 12 Jan. 1953

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• Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

  Aldous Huxley

  Truth, Literature

  Aldous Huxley (1948). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• Experience has taught me that the shallowest of communist platitudes contains more of a hierarchy of meaning than contemporary bourgeois profundity.

  Walter Benjamin

  Hierarchy, Taught, Communism

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• It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge.

  Havelock Ellis

  Wish, Firsts, Becoming

  Havelock Ellis (2013). “On Life and Sex: Essays of Love & Virtue”, p.25, Elsevier

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• The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram.

  Don Marquis

  Art, Literature, Newspapers

  In E. Anthony O Rare Don Marquis (1962) p. 354

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• Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his truths.

  Che Guevara

  Adventure, Political, Risk

  Last Letter to his Parents, www.companeroche.com. 1965.

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• Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.

  Margaret Thatcher

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• The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.

  Van Wyck Brooks

  Successful, Men, He Man

  Van Wyck Brooks (1941). “Opinions of Oliver Allston”, New York, Dutton

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• Because they don't teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. If schools were, in reality, democratic, there would be no need to bombard students with platitudes about democracy. They would simply act and behave democratically, and we know this does not happen. The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is.

  Noam Chomsky

  School, Reality, Democracy

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “Chomsky on Mis-Education”, p.16, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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• In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

  George Eliot

  Literature, Individualism, Spite

  George Eliot (2016). “Complete Works Of George Eliot”, p.3874, ShandonPress

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• Talk can neither be verified nor falsified in any rigorous sense. This is an open secret which hermeneutics and aesthetics, from Aristotle to Croce, have laboured to exorcise or to conceal from themselves and their clients. This ontological, which is to say both primordial and essential axiom (or platitude) of ineradicable undecidability needs, none the less, to be closely argued.

  George Steiner

  Secret, Essentials, Needs

  "Real Presences". Book by George Steiner, 1986.

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• Platitudes are safe, because they're easy to wink at, but truth is something else again.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Safe, Truth Is, Easy

  Hunter S. Thompson (2014). “The Proud Highway: Rejacketed”, p.184, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Moving Forward, Trust No One, Inspirational Tattoo

  "Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer". Book by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889.

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• Truth is rhythmical: if it implies stasis, it is platitude. Truth is syncopated: if it supplies all the terms, there is one term too many. Truth is barbed: if it comforts, it lies. Truth is an armed dancer.

  Robert Grudin

  Truth, Lying, Reality

  Robert Grudin (1997). “Time and the Art of Living”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it.

  Stanley Baldwin

  Funny, Truth, Tired

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• it's a rare day when she speaks in anything but platitudes--all those exhausted phrases and hand-me-down ideas that cram the dump sites of contemporary wisdom

  Paul Auster

  Life, Hands, Ideas

  Paul Auster (2008). “The Brooklyn Follies”, p.5, Faber & Faber

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• Principles without programs are platitudes.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Principles, Program

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