Quotes · Skopia

157 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Place·California✕clear

Scientific literature

Dinosaurs are a touchstone that separates the mentality of children from that of adults.

1989

★ 0.9

I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old.

1936

★ 1.0

Interview · Magazine

A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

Paris Review · 1954

★ 1.0

Interview · TV program

Weightlessness is a great equalizer.

1984

★ 1.0

Military force—especially when wielded by an outside power—just cannot bring order in a country that cannot govern itself.

Robert McNamara

1995

★ 1.0

Essay · Magazine

Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?

2001

★ 1.0

Autobiography and memoir

We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.

The Year of Magical Thinking · 2005

★ 1.0

We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five.

1979

★ 1.1

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.

1966

★ 1.2

I've often fantasized I would get a lot of writing done if I were put in prison for a minor crime. Three to six months.

2013

★ 1.2

The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You're one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you're two months back in the middle of March.

1934

★ 1.8

Scientific literature · Political literature

There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

Luis Walter Alvarez

1967

★ 1.8

We Americans are great on fillers, as if what we have, what we are, is not enough... We have only to look at the houses we build to see how we build against space, the way we drink against pain and loneliness. We fill up space as if it were a pie shell, with things whose opacity further obstructs our ability to see what is already there.

1985

★ 1.8

Historical literature

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the priniples and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribbly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.

Robert McNamara

1995

★ 1.8

Film · Documentary (film)

We all make mistakes. We know we make mistakes. I don't know any military commander, who is honest, who would say he has not made a mistake. There's a wonderful phrase: "the fog of war." What "the fog of war" means is: war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.

Robert McNamara

2003

★ 1.8

Interview · Magazine

Art is a completed pass. You don't just throw it out into the world-someone has to catch it.

2013

★ 1.8

Interview · Newspaper

You should feel slightly incompetent at what you're trying to do. The minute you start to feel like an expert, what you really are is a hack.

Michael Cunningham

2014

★ 1.8

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

1907

★ 1.9

I have seen the future; and it works.

Lincoln Steffens

1919

★ 1.9

Song · Musical · Great American songbook

Look for the silver lining Whene'er a cloud Appears in the blue.

1920

★ 1.9

The whole purpose of literature... Is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.

Thornton Wilder

The Bridge on San Luis Rey · 1927

★ 1.9

Play · Comedy (play) · Comedy

My advice to you is not to inquire into why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate-that's my philosophy.

Thornton Wilder

1942

★ 1.9

All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief.

1946

★ 1.9

A trip through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat.

1953

★ 1.9

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

1962

★ 1.9

Radio broadcast

If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation...acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.

1970

★ 1.9

There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture.

Clifford Geertz

1973

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

I suggested that we use the panther as our symbol and call our political vehicle the Black Panther Party. The panther is a fierce animal, but he will not attack until he is backed into a corner; then he will strike out.

1973

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?

Maxine Hong Kingston

1976

★ 1.9

When things are very very bad, a drink is the only magic cheap thing left to give you the dream, to make you feel good for a moment.

Charles Bukowski

1981

★ 1.9

We never reach a point at which our lives lie before us as a clearly marked open road, never have and never should expect a map to the years ahead, never do close those circles that seem, at thirteen and fourteen and nineteen, so urgently in need of closing.

1992

★ 1.9

Literature is humanity talking to itself.

Mortals · 2003

★ 1.9

Play · Drama (play) · Drama

The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go, doesn't it?

Thornton Wilder

1938

★ 1.9

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

1939

★ 1.9

Interview · Magazine

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

Cosmopolitan · 1947

★ 1.9

Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style-but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not... The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful.

Notes on Camp · 1964

★ 1.9

The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak.

Notes on Camp · 1964

★ 1.9

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.

1965

★ 1.9

Essay · Magazine

What pornographic literature does is precisely to drive a wedge between one's existence as a full human being and one's existence as a sexual being.

The Pornographic Imagination · 1967

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

We find ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth. We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfillment. We see tasks that need doing, waiting for hands to do them.

First Inaugural Address of Richard Nixon · 1969

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

No man can be fully free while his neighbor is not. To go forward at all is to go forward together. This means black and white together, as one nation, not two. The laws have caught up with our conscience. What remains is to give life to what is in the law: to ensure at last that as all are born equal in dignity before God, all are born equal in dignity before man.

First Inaugural Address of Richard Nixon · 1969

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America—the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil, and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization.

First Inaugural Address of Richard Nixon · 1969

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another—until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

First Inaugural Address of Richard Nixon · 1969

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

We are approaching the limits of what government alone can do. Our greatest need now is to reach beyond government, and to enlist the legions of the concerned and the committed. What has to be done, has to be done by government and people together or it will not be done at all.

First Inaugural Address of Richard Nixon · 1969

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support.

1969

★ 1.9

Song · Folk rock

Still the rain kept pouring, falling on my ears, And I wonder, still I wonder, who'll stop the rain.

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Who'll Stop the Rain · 1970

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

Let us be proud that our system has produced and provided more freedom and more abundance, more widely shared, than any system in the history of the world.

Second Inaugural Address of Richard Nixon · 1973

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

Our children have been taught to be ashamed of their country, ashamed of their parents, ashamed of America's record at home and of its role in the world. At every turn, we have been beset by those who find everything wrong with America and little that is right. But I am confident that this will not be the judgment of history on these remarkable times in which we are privileged to live.

Second Inaugural Address of Richard Nixon · 1973

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

In our own lives, let each of us ask—not just what will government do for me, but what can I do for myself? In the challenges we face together, let each of us ask—not just how can government help, but how can I help?

Second Inaugural Address of Richard Nixon · 1973

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

A person can be expected to act responsibly only if he has responsibility. This is human nature. So let us encourage individuals at home and nations abroad to do more for themselves, to decide more for themselves. Let us locate responsibility in more places. Let us measure what we will do for others by what they will do for themselves.

Second Inaugural Address of Richard Nixon · 1973

★ 1.9

The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience.

1977

★ 1.9

So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.

On Photography · 1977

★ 1.9

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.

The White Album · 1979

★ 1.9

Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its "victims".

1989

★ 1.9

Interview · Newspaper

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

1993

★ 1.9

Speech · Commencement address

Above all, be the heroine in your life, not the victim.

1996 Wellesley commencement address · 1996

★ 1.9

Interview · Film · Documentary (film)

The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And what that means is...I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way.

Triumph of the Nerds · 1996

★ 1.9

That's been one of my mantras-focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

1998

★ 1.9

Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us.

2003

★ 1.9

Interview · Magazine

There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt.

Paris Review · 2010

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

Time passes. Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.

2011

★ 1.9

If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.

Fahrenheit 451 · 1953

★ 2.0

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

Against Interpretation · 1966

★ 2.0

Film · Comedy drama (film) · Comedy drama

Music, you know, true music, not just rock n roll, it chooses you.

Almost Famous · 2000

★ 2.0

The blizzard doesn't last forever; it just seems so.

2002

★ 2.0

I know this—a man got to do what he got to do.

The Grapes of Wrath · 1939

★ 2.1

What factors are at play, for example, when people of high IQ flounder and those of modest IQ do surprisingly well? I would argue that the difference quite often lies in the abilities called here emotional intelligence, which include self control, zeal and persistence, and the ability to motivate oneself.

1995

★ 2.5

Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.

2011

★ 2.9

Now no joy but lacks salt That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.

1923

★ 3.5

The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies.

1968

★ 3.5

The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences.

1996

★ 3.5

A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die... Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.

1902

★ 3.5

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

The Call of the Wild · 1903

★ 3.5

Novel · Magazine

He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.

The Saturday Evening Post · 1903

★ 3.5

Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.

Thornton Wilder

The Bridge on San Luis Rey · 1927

★ 3.5

Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well.

Thornton Wilder

The Bridge on San Luis Rey · 1927

★ 3.5

Essay · Food writing

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.

1949

★ 3.5

Novel · Science fiction

There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.

1950

★ 3.5

Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet 'em on your way down.

1953

★ 3.5

A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, and sick.

1959

★ 3.5

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