Manuel Riveros > Manuel's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is crazy for each other, but it's not true. Generally, people don't like each other very much. And that goes for friends, too.”
― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.”
― Emil Cioran

“«Celui qui n'a pas le goût de l'absolu se contente d'une médiocrité tranquille»”
― Paul Cézanne

“The people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demand the least self-exertion and the least use of their own reason, and which can best accommodate their duties to their inclinations.”
― Immanuel Kant

“You can't overestimate the stupidity of the general public.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“The rest is just sex, copulation, the perpetuation of the vile species.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“What is Man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”
― André Malraux

“Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former.”
― Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Monk

“Stay low, stay quiet, keep it simple, don't expect too much, enjoy what you have.”
― Dean Koontz

“I wish I loved the human Race, I wish I loved its silly face, and when I'm introduced to one, I wish I thought "what jolly fun"!”
― Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

“Most people are full of themselves and speak only the obnoxiously superficial, in other words they're annoying as hell”
― Novala Takemoto, Missin' (Novel)

“people diminish me;
the longer I sit and listen to them
the more empty I feel but I don't get
the idea that they feel empty, I feel
that they enjoy the sound from their
mouths.”
― Charles Bukowski, Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems

“You ever get the feeling the world's filling up with bastards? I do. What I want to know is what happens when all the bastards run out of people to crap on? What happens when all that's left in the world is bastards? . . . The golden rule. Screw unto others before they screw unto you.”
― William Hoffman, A Place For My Head

“I could never find two people who are perfectly equal: one will always be more valuable than the other. And many people, as a matter of fact, simply have no value.”
― Pentti Linkola, Can Life Prevail?

“The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.”
― Emil Cioran

“Nobody enjoys the company of others as intensely as someone who usually avoids the company of others.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Misanthropes have some admirable - if paradoxical - virtues. It is no exaggeration to say that we are among the nicest people you are likely to meet. Because good manners build sturdy walls, our distaste for intimacy makes us exceedingly cordial. “ships that pass in the night.” As long as you remain a stranger we will be your friend forever.”
― Florence King

“It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith

“I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I’m introduced to one,
I wish I thought “What Jolly Fun!”
― Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

“Qualsiasi uomo notevole, chiunque cioè non appartenga a quei 5/6 dell'umanità dotati tanto miseramente dalla natura, rimarrà dopo i quarant'anni difficilmente esente da una certa traccia di misantropia.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Whenever he met him or saw him sitting somewhere - he felt only the sentiment that is generally termed tolerance: a very lukewarm emotional stew of disgust, contempt, and sympathy.”
― Patrick Süskind, The Pigeon

“Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable ... and when it happens to someone often ... he ends up ... hating everyone”
― Plato, Phaedo

“Living among clowns and misanthropists, she probably cannot appreciate a better class of people when she meets them.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“The human heart is a damnable thing.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“I’m such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born that way? I don’t know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace, that make me feel good.

I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For one thing there are just too Goddamn many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in their vast cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise and their constant meaningless comings and goings. I hate cars. I hate modern architecture. Every building built after 1955 should be torn down!

I despise modern music. Words cannot express how much it gets on my nerves – the false, pretentious, smug assertiveness of it. I hate business, having to deal with money. Money is one of the most hateful inventions of the human race. I hate the commodity culture, in which everything is bought and sold. No stone is left unturned. I hate the mass media, and how passively people suck up to it.

I hate having to get up in the morning and face another day of this insanity. I hate having to eat, shit, maintain the body – I hate my body. The thought of my internal functions, the organs, digestion, the brain, the nervous system, horrify me.

Nature is horrible. It’s not cute and loveable. It’s kill or be killed. It’s very dangerous out there. The natural world is filled with scary, murderous creatures and forces. I hate the whole way that nature functions. Sex is especially hateful and horrifying, the male penetrating the female, his dick goes into her hole, she’s impregnated, another being grows inside her, and then she must go through a painful ordeal as the new being pushes out of her, only to repeat the whole process in time.

Reproduction – what could be more existentially repulsive?

How I hate the courting ritual. I was always repelled by my own sex drive, which in my youth never left me alone. I was constantly driven by frustrated desires to do bizarre and unacceptable things with and to women. My soul was in constant conflict about it. I never was able to resolve it.

Old age is the only relief.

I hate the way the human psyche works, the way we are traumatized and stupidly imprinted in early childhood and have to spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome these infantile mental fixations. And we never ever fully succeed in this endeavor.

I hate organized religions. I hate governments. It’s all a lot of power games played out by ambition-driven people, and foisted on the weak, the poor, and on children.

Most humans are bullies. Adults pick on children. Older children pick on younger children. Men bully women. The rich bully the poor. People love to dominate.

I hate the way humans worship power – one of the most disgusting of all human traits.

I hate the human tendency towards revenge and vindictiveness. I hate the way humans are constantly trying to trick and deceive one another, to swindle, to cheat, and take unfair advantage of the innocent, the naïve and the ignorant.

I hate the vacuous, false, banal conversation that goes on among people.

Sometimes I feel suffocated; I want to flee from it.

For me, to be human is, for the most part, to hate what I am. When I suddenly realize that I am one of them, I want to scream in horror.”
― Robert Crumb

“The most overrated things are fame, the future, marriage, being rich, happiness, being in love, sanity, being alive, sex, and human beings.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Yes, I do read books but only for one purpose: to learn how to hate man and to hold him in contempt.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Judas Iskarijotas. Šėtono dienoraštis

“What are we going to tell the Intergalactic Council of Ministers the first time one of our teenage mothers threw her newborn baby into a dumpster, huh? How're we gonna explain that to the space people? How are we gonna let them know that our ambassador was only late for the meeting because his breakfast was cold and he had to spend half an hour punching his wife around the kitchen? What are they gonna think when they find out that it's just a local custom that over 80 million women in the Third World have had their clitorises forcibly removed in order to reduce their sexual pleasures so they won't cheat on their husbands? Can't you just sense how eager the rest of the universe is for us to show up? Can't you see them out there?”
― George Carlin