The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
—Jean Genet, 1983
Archive
Quotes
It would be madness, and inconsistency, to suppose that things which have never yet been performed can be performed without employing some hitherto untried means.
—Francis Bacon, 1620The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.
—Virginia Woolf, 1921To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.
—Georges Bataille, 1957Life is the art of being well deceived.
—William Hazlitt, c. 1817The body says what words cannot.
—Martha Graham, 1985In dealing with the dead, if we treat them as if they were entirely dead, that would show a want of affection and should not be done; or, if we treat them as if they were entirely alive, that would show a want of wisdom and should not be done.
—Confucius, c. 500 BCThe waters are nature’s storehouse, in which she locks up her wonders.
—Izaak Walton, 1653What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855Medication alone is not to be relied on. In one half the cases medicine is not needed, or is worse than useless. Obedience to spiritual and physical laws—hygiene of the body and hygiene of the spirit—is the surest warrant for health and happiness.
—Harriot K. Hunt, 1856Darkness endows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power.
—Thomas Hardy, 1874Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
—Winston Churchill, 1939I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That’s a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.
—Philip K. Dick, 1972