Greg > Greg's Quotes

“Das Schicksal der Menschen wird davon abhängen, ob sich die Politik endlich bequemt, das Leben eines jeden heilig zu nehmen, oder ob die Hure weiterhin für jene auf die Straße geht, denen nichts heilig ist. Die Dame muß sich entscheiden.”
― Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Das Dürrenmatt Lesebuch.

“POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Franken ist ein gesegnetes Land.”
― Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen

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

“I can see how, with enough false education, enough widespread illusion and error, men can, while remaining men, believe this and commit the most unspeakable crimes.”
― Isaiah Berlin, The Power of Ideas

“Death needs time for what it kills to grow in.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Der Mensch lernt in der Katastrophe, menschlich zu leben, was er im Frieden nicht kann.”
― Friedrich Dürrenmatt

“The right? Ah, what does it help to be in the right if you don't have any power?”
― Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“Optimismus ist nur ein Mangel an Information.”
― Heiner Müller

“If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“You could tell by the way he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“The fact that I despise religion doesn't mean I don't esteem it highly.”
― Eugène Ionesco, Rhinoceros and Other Plays

“We do not believe in any gods, especially not in supernatural gods. In fact, we have no faith, because it is faith we do not believe in. Least of all do we believe in the Catholic faith, it has sullied itself the most, it has defiled itself.”
― Daša Drndić, Trieste

“Die Partei weiß genau, daß sie nur jene zu fürchten hat, welche die Ideale ernst nehmen, die sie zu verkörpern vorgibt.”
― Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi

“She had a great many opinions, but taken together they did not add up to a point of view.”
― V. S. Naipul

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov

“Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Wahrheit ist ein Wort des Glaubens. Niemand vermag grausamer zu sein, als jene, die im Namen der Wahrheit handeln. Sie handeln auch im Namen der Gerechtigkeit.”
― Friedrich Dürrenmatt

“Noch nie hat die Demokratie so prompt reagiert, wie wenn es sich darum handelt, etwas gegen die Diktatur nicht zu tun.”
― Kurt Tucholsky, Briefe aus dem Schweigen: 1932-1935

“Ambition uses against foreign peoples that violence which neither the law nor her king permits her to use against herself.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli

“Out of the shadows came men whom fascism had not bowed, lawyers, professors, and workers, and we recognized in them our teachers, those from whom we had till then uselessly sought wisdom in the Bible, in chemistry, in the mountains. Fascism had reduced them to silence for twenty years, and they explained to us that fascism was not only a clownish and improvident bad government but the denier of justice; it not only had dragged Italy into an ill-omened and unjust war but had arisen and established itself as the guardian of a detestable order and law, based on coercion of those who work, on uncontrolled profits for those who exploit the work of others, on silence imposed on those who think and don’t wish to be slaves, on systematic and calculated lies.”
― Primo Levi, The Complete Works of Primo Levi

“His spirit was warped by bitter vindictiveness and puerile self-commiseration, and he spent his days in scorn of the labour that brought him bread and in pitiful devotion to the labour that brought him only disappointment, writing interminable scores which demanded of the orchestra everything under heaven except melody.”
― Willa Cather, The Troll Garden: Short Stories

“…he sees a play by Arthur Kopit, he doesn’t remember the title, something about the way a lie becomes the truth and the truth a lie.”
― Daša Drndić, Belladonna

“POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of an edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

“Der Satiriker ist ein gekränkter Idealist: er will die Welt gut haben, sie ist schlecht, und nun rennt er gegen das Schlechte hin.”
― Kurt Tucholsky, Panter, Tiger & Co.

“A drowning man, they say, clutches even at a little splinter, and does not have sense enough at that moment to reflect that perhaps only a fly could go riding on a splinter, while he weighs as much as a hundred and fifty pounds, if not a full two hundred; but the thought does not enter his head at that moment, and he clutches at the splinter.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“Es gibt auch die Wunde Mahler; sie will und wird sich nicht schließen, solange es eine menschliche Gesellschaft gibt, die der Versöhnung ermangelt. Von diesem Mangel spricht Mahlers Musik so deutlich wie kaum eine Zweite.”
― Jens Malte Fischer, Gustav Mahler

“The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them.”
― Turkish Proverbs

“When men perceive that nothing is restraining them but their consent to be restrained, then at last there is nothing to obstruct the free play of selfishness which is the dominant characteristic and fundamental motive of human nature and human action respectively. Politics, which may have had something of the character of a contest of principles, becomes a struggle of interests, and its methods are frankly serviceable to personal and class advantage. Patriotism and respect for the law pass like a tale that is told. Anarchy, no longer disguised as ‘government by consent,’ reveals his hidden hand…”
― Ambrose Bierce, Ambrose Bierce Collection: The Devil'S Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs, Tales Of Soldiers And Civilians, Can Such Things Be, Present At A Hanging And ... Stories, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge,

“Leider sei eben heute alles Politik, es gebe keine geistige Reinheit mehr.”
― Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus