Max Eastman > Quotes

“A smile is the universal welcome.”
― Max Eastman, The Sense of Humor

“It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.”
― Max Eastman

“Living well is the best revenge.If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.”
― Max Eastman, The Sense of Humor

“It seems obvious to me now – though I have been slow, I must say, in coming to the conclusion – that the institution of private property is one of the main things that have given man that limited amount of free-and-equalness that Marx hoped to render infinite by abolishing this institution. Strangely enough Marx was the first to see this. He is the one who informed us, looking backwards, that the evolution of private capitalism with its free market had been a precondition for the evolution of all our democratic freedoms. It never occurred to him, looking forward, that if this was so, these other freedoms might disappear with the abolition of the free market.”
― Max Eastman

“The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.”
― Max Eastman

“History is not an escalator.”
― Max Eastman

“Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.”
― Max Eastman

“I wonder how many revolutions will be required before grown-up people learn not to say to children, 'I had those same ideas when I was your age.”
― Max Eastman, Leon Trotsky: The Portrait of a Youth

“The real treasurers of the language are and always have been the knowers of its immediate beauty.”
― Max Eastman, Journalism Versus Art