Written Quotes - Page 27

• Along with Islam and Christianity, Judaism does insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such thing.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Thinking, Evil, Mad

  Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.59, Basic Books

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• The enormous dynamic and creative, as well as destructive energy of capitalism... is written up with more praise and more respect by Marx and Engels in the 1848 Communist Manifesto than probably by anyone since. I don't think anyone has ever said so precisely and with such awed admiration how great capitalism is, how inventive, how innovative, how dynamic, how much force of creativity it unleashes.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Creativity, Thinking, Creative

  "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism". PBS documentary, June 2005.

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• The fixation of the theater in one language--written words, music, lights, noises--betokens its imminent ruin.

  Antonin Artaud

  Light, Noise, Ruins

  Antonin Artaud (1958). “The Theater and Its Double”, p.12, Grove Press

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• The universal and absolute law is that natural justice which cannot be written down, but which appeals to the hearts of all.

  Victor Cousin

  Heart, Law, Natural Justice

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• Written laws are formulas in which we endeavor to express as concisely as possible that which, under such or such determined circumstances, natural justice demands.

  Victor Cousin

  Law, Natural Justice, Demand

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• Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in a mordant protest written soon after the [1952] election, found the intellectual "in a situation he has not known for a generation." After twenty years of Democratic rule, during which the intellectual had been in the main understood and respected, business had come back into power, bringing with it "the vulgarization which has been the almost invariable consequence of business supremacy.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Years, Intellectual, Twenties

  "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life". Book by Richard Hofstadter (p. 4), 1974.

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• If you cross the Atlantic with an American lady you invariably fall in love with her before the journey is over. Travel with the same woman in a railway car for twelve hours, and you will have written her down in your own mind in quite other language than that of love.

  Anthony Trollope

  Falling In Love, Journey, Car

  Anthony Trollope (1862). “North America”, p.159

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• One doesn't have an agreement to that effect written down on parchment and sealed; but it is as well understood and ought to be as faithfully kept as any legal contract.

  Anthony Trollope

  Agreement, Contracts, Wells

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “The Prime Minister: Trollope's Works”, p.78, 谷月社

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• When one read's Kierkegaard's profound analyses of anxiety and despair or Nietzsche's amazingly acute insights into the dynamics of resentment and the guilt and hostility which accompany repressed emotional powers, one might pinch oneself to realize that one is reading works written in the last century and not some new contemporary psychological analysis.

  Rollo May

  Reading, Emotional, Profound

  Rollo May (2015). “The Discovery of Being”, p.53, W. W. Norton & Company

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• In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind - not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.

  Maurice Ravel

  Art, Writing, Should Have

  "Ravel: Man and Musician". Book by Arbie Orenstein, p. 126, 1975.

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• One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them.

  Bel Kaufman

  Dream, School, Tree

  Bel Kaufman (1964). “Up the Down Stair Case”

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• And then I saw the menu, stained with tea and beautifully written by a foreign hand, and on top it said..."Chips with everything". Chips with every damn thing. You breed babies and you eat chips with everything.

  Arnold Wesker

  Baby, Food, Hands

  'Chips with Everything' (1962) act 1, sc. 2

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• Do we regard language as more public, more ceremonial, than thought? Just as family men condemn the profanity on the stage that they use constantly in conversation, in the same way we may look to written language as an idealization rather than a reflection of ourselves.

  Edmund White

  Reflection, Men, Looks

  Edmund White (2014). “States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America”, p.284, University of Wisconsin Pres

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• I should have written books instead of reading them.

  Alan Lightman

  Book, Reading, Should Have

  Alan Lightman (2007). “Reunion”, p.129, Vintage

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• Actors always have to fight for the good parts. There are so few good roles written for women each year, and when one is written like this every actress in town covets the role.

  Halle Berry

  Fighting, Years, Roles

  "From the Grave to the Cradle". Western Mail, February 01, 2008.

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• Even though poetry was written for the 'minds ear' as well as the physical ear, the minds ear can be trained only by the other ... which comes back to reading poetry aloud.

  Yvor Winters

  Reading, Mind, Ears

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• It is quite clear from what has been said and written that, time after time after time, there has been a conspiracy between the Conservative Front Bench in this House and the inbuilt Conservative majority in the House of Lords to defeat legislation that has passed through the House of Commons... I warn the House of Lords of the consequences... it is our strong view that the House of Lords should recall that its role is not that of a wrecking chamber, but of a revising chamber. In recent weeks, it has been wrecking legislation passed by this House.

  James Callaghan

  Strong, Views, House

  James Callaghan's speech on economic policy in the House of Commons, api.parliament.uk. November 9, 1976.

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• Some writers, of course, simply write, as they feel they are driven to do, by outer/inner inspirations. If, after the work is written and, hopefully, published, others respond -- that is the Champagne. But we, or some of us, don't write for the Champagne. We write because we write.

  Tanith Lee

  Inspiration, Writing, Driven

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• Nothing I have ever written has been admired as much as the announcement of my death.

  Harold Brodkey

  Announcements, Has Beens

  Remark about his articles tracing the course of his illness in the NewYorker. Quoted in his obituary in The Scotsman, 29 Jan1996.

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• Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse is a crash course in villanelles, sestinas and other such fixed forms. But most... are rare in English poetry. Few poets have written a villanelle worth reading, or indeed regret not having done so.

  James Fenton

  Regret, Believe, Reading

  "An Introduction to English Poetry". Book by James Fenton, 2002.

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• There is always something of the writer in the work but I don't think Melville had to be swallowed by a whale to write a great novel. If I had lived the lives of all the characters of the songs I've written, that would truly be an extraordinary story.

  Michael Stipe

  Song, Writing, Character

  2001 In the Daily Telegraph, 20 Oct.

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• Looking Backward was written in the belief that the Golden Age lies before us and not behind us.

  Edward Bellamy

  Lying, Age, Golden

  Edward Bellamy (2009). “Looking Backward 2000-1887”, OUP Oxford

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• It has been said, "History is written by the victors." I take this to mean we can make ourselves victorious by writing, and then rewriting our own stories. In a country and culture so dominated by media, by the manipulation of words and stories, telling the tales of people whose stories historically have not been told is a radical act and I believe an act that can change the world and help rewrite history.

  Jennifer Beals

  Country, Believe, Mean

  Speech at 4th Annual Power Up Premiere Gala, Los Angeles, California, November 07, 2004.

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• I believe in the time when we shall be able to create works of art in the Theatre without the use of the written play, without the use of actors.

  Edward Gordon Craig

  Art, Believe, Play

  Edward Gordon Craig (2008). “On the Art of the Theatre”, p.25, Routledge

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• Anything good that I have written has, at some point during its composition, left me feeling uneasy and afraid. It has seemed, for a moment at least, to put me at risk.

  Michael Chabon

  Feelings, Risk, Moments

  Michael Chabon (2011). “Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands”, p.163, Open Road Media

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