Quotes to inspire and reflect

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

Behold! human beings living in a underground den … Like ourselves … they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.

And so with the objects of knowledge: these derive from the Good not only their power of being known, but their very being and reality; and Goodness is not the same thing as being, but even beyond being, surpassing it in dignity and power.

Can we devise one of those lies—the kind which crop up as the occasion demands, which we were talking about not so long ago—so that with a single noble lie we can indocrinate the rulers themselves, preferably, but at least the rest of the community?

What I say is that ‘just’ or ‘right’ means nothing but what is in the interest of the stronger party.

This was the end, Echekrates, of our friend; a man of whom we may say that of all whom we met at that time he was the wisest and justest and best.

Socrates, he says, breaks the law by corrupting young men and not recognizing the gods that the city recognizes, but some other new deities.

Is that which is holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?

The woman is perfected

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

I have always been scared of you,

Every woman adores a Fascist,

Is there no way out of the mind?

Six characters in search of an author.

Water is best. But gold shines like fire blazing in the night, supreme of lordly wealth.

Mankind is a dream of a shadow.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

Every positive value has its price in negative terms … The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael: it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children.

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.

No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It’s an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

‘Oh Grandmother! What big ears you have!’

Anne, ma sœur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir?

Tyranny is always better organised than freedom.

The power of positive thinking.

Cry, the beloved country.

Wine may well be considered the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.

Where observation is concerned, chance favours only the prepared mind.

FIRE . God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

Man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces [the heavens] terrifies me.

‘God is or he is not.’ But to which side shall we incline? … Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate the two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.

When we see a natural style, we are quite surprised and delighted, for we expected to see an author and we find a man.

Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.

I have made this [letter] longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.

Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply callisthenics with words.

Hollywood money isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.

She ran the whole gamut of the emotions from A to B.

Excuse my dust.