Terri Moore > Terri's Quotes

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire

“I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems

“I don't desire a change of scenery or exotic experiences. My heart yearns for familiarity, stability, the comfort of home- and my sanity depends on it.”
― Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas

“I wanted my home to be a haven, like coming in from the cold to a big warm hug.”
― Cathy Bramley, Conditional Love

“It'd be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view.”
― Oscar Levant

“On Ira Gershwin:
I remember when he was given the manuscript of a novel written by a woman friend who had hopes of having it published. To his astonishment it turned out to be the dirtiest, most pornographic book he had ever read. When the lady mentioned that she intended to use a nom de plume, Ira suggested she call herself Henrietta Miller.”
― Oscar Levant, The Unimportance of Being Oscar

“There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side.”
― Oscar Levant

“Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.”
― Oscar Levant

“You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow. (Oscar trying to talk his way out of a speeding ticket)”
― Oscar Levant

“In some situations I was difficult, in odd moments impossible, in rare moments loathsome, but at my best unapproachably great.”
― Oscar Levant

“I'm going to memorize your name and throw my head away.”
― Oscar Levant

“So little time and so little to do.”
― Oscar Levant

“Once I make up my mind, I'm full of indecision.”
― Oscar Levant

“Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.”
― Oscar Levant

“A pun is the lowest form of humor—when you don't think of it first.”
― Oscar Levant

“Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm schizophrenic, and so am I.”
― Oscar Levant

“It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts.”
― Oscar Levant

“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.”
― Oscar Levant

“Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.”
― Oscar Levant

“I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.”
― Oscar Levant

“The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.”
― Oscar Levant

“There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
― Oscar Levant

“By the end of the eighteenth century it had become clear that none of the estates or classes in the various countries was willing or able to become the new ruling class, that is to identify itself with the government as the nobility had done for centuries.8 The failure of the absolute monarchy to find a substitute within society led to the full development of the nation-state and its claim to be above all classes, completely independent of society and its particular interests, the true and only representative of the nation as a whole.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“The great challenge to the modern period, and its peculiar danger, has been that in it man for the first time confronted man without the protection of differing circumstances and conditions. And it has been precisely this new concept of equality that has made modern race relations so difficult, for there we deal with natural differences which by no possible and conceivable change of conditions can become less conspicuous. It is because equality demands that I recognize each and every individual as my equal, that the conflicts between different groups, which for reasons of their own are reluctant to grant each other this basic equality, take on such terribly cruel forms.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Nothing perhaps illustrates the general disintegration of political life better than this vague, pervasive hatred of everybody and everything, without a focus for its passionate attention, with nobody to make responsible for the state of affairs—neither the government nor the bourgeoisie nor an outside power. It consequently turned in all directions, haphazardly and unpredictably, incapable of assuming an air of healthy indifference toward anything under the sun.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“To them, violence, power, cruelty, were the supreme capacities of men who had definitely lost their place in the universe and were much too proud to long for a power theory that would safely bring them back and reintegrate them into the world. They were satisfied with blind partisanship in anything that respectable society had banned, regardless of theory or content, and they elevated cruelty to a major virtue because it contradicted society’s humanitarian and liberal hypocrisy.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“On the contrary, anyone speaking or writing about concentration camps is still regarded as suspect; and if the speaker has resolutely returned to the world of the living, he himself is often assailed by doubts with regard to his own truthfulness, as though he had mistaken a nightmare for reality.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Men have been found to resist the most powerful monarchs and to refuse to bow down before them, but few indeed have been found to resist the crowd, to stand up alone before misguided masses, to face their implacable frenzy without weapons and with folded arms to dare a no when a yes is demanded. Such a man was Zola!”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“To be sure, totalitarian dictators do not consciously embark upon the road to insanity. The”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“The point is that both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism