All Quotes

"So long as man is protected by madness he functions and flourishes, but when he frees himself from the fruitful tyranny of fixed ideas, he is lost, ruined."

"The universal view melts things into a blur."

"Truths begin by a conflict with the police — and end by calling them in."

"At different degrees, everything is pathology, except for indifference."

"Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers."

"To Live signifies to believe and hope — to lie and to lie to oneself."

"When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves."

"Vague a l'ame — melancholy yearning for the end of the world."

"You are forgiven everything provided you have a trade, a subtitle to your name, a seal on your nothingness."

"Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude."

"We die in proportion to the words we fling around us."

"Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor."

"Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory."

"If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth."

"Chaos is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself."

"As a general rule—never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself; for the child's attention is so taken up with the symbol that he will forget what it signifies."

"Louis ... was marvelous to be with. He had tremendous warmth, appeal. And I idolized him, not only for how great he was singing and playing, but for himself. ... I used to get postcards from him [from] all over the world. ... He went to every accessible place in the world."

"He was the only musician who ever lived, who can't be replaced by someone."

"I like Louis! Anything he does is all right. I don't know about his statements, though. I can do without them."

"You know you can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played — I mean even modern. … I love his approach to the trumpet; he never sounds bad. He plays on the beat and you can't miss when you play on the beat — with feeling. That's another phrase for swing."

"I loved and respected Louis Armstrong. He was born poor, died rich, and never hurt anyone along the way."

"Louis Armstrong is a jazz ancestor, a kind of great-grandfather, or even an Adam of jazz, with Billie Holiday nearby as a stunning and gifted Eve. What fed all of them was the music of the Mississippi River, an entity that continues to carry life and stories from the north to the south, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico with arms to encircle the Caribbean."

"I knew Louis well, he had his crazy little habits. Everyone thinks he was a druggie, but he wasn't. After every concert, he would put on a stocking cap, then he'd have his bottle of Pluto water, orange juice, Serutan and a joint. This was his formula; in fact, he used to post the recipe on bulletin boards, calling it "The Road to Good Health.""

"My most revered idols as a kid growing up were Louis Armstrong and... Duke Ellington. When I got into the record business... the first recordings I made with him were for 's Roulette label. Louis... made my dream come truer: he brought in his little band—five pieces—and agreed to use a friend of mine on piano, Duke Ellington!"

"[I]n the mid-60s during the deepening national traumas of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, racial strife, and turmoil everywhere, my co-writer and I had an idea to write a "different" song specifically for Louis Armstrong... "". We wanted this immortal musician and performer to say, as only he could, the world really is great... At the time Louis's "Hello Dolly" was the biggest hit record in the country and... Armstrong was a bigger star than at any previous moment in his career. As he was constantly on tour... I went to Joe Glazer, ...Louis's manager ...With Glazer's permission and a small children's portable phonograph... I went down to Washington D.C. ...Between shows I auditioned our number ...Armstrong said, "Pops, I dig it. Let's do it! (Of course, we called him "Pops," and he called everybody "Pops.") ...Louis agreed to record it for minimum union scale (...$250 at the time)..."

"Religion comforts us for the defeat of our will to power. It adds new worlds to ours, and thus brings us hope of new conquests and new victories. We are converted to religion out of fear of suffocating within the narrow confines of this world."

"The then president of ... ... ...showed up at the recording session ...screamed at me that I had to be crazy to record a ballad with strings as the follow-up to "Hello Dolly" ...Finally he wanted to cancel the date and fire the musicians and me. ...[A]ll I could do to convince Newton to momentarily leave the control room... was to tell him he would go down in history as the only man who ever threw Louis Armstrong out of a recording studio. ...[A]lmost immediately ...Newton tried to storm back into the studio. ...Frank Military ...became a human barricade ...The ensuing door-pounding ...caused Frank ...to actually begin crying and plead, "You can't do this to Louis and Bob." Miraculously ...the recording of one of the most optimistic songs ever written was completed. ...[T]he record ...in the United States ...personally sabotaged by ...Newton, was a disaster. ...In England however, it became #1 ...[and] outsold both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. It also started to become a hit in many ...European countries and ...South Africa. The EMI Corporation ...sent a telegram to ...Newton ...MUST HAVE WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD ALBUM, which meant... eight more songs in the same style... Joe Glazer advised me to forget it unless Newton paid Louis Armstrong a then undreamed-of $25,000, advance... When the pressure ...finally caused Newton to relent... Louis Armstrong completed one of the best-selling albums of his lifetime and again, posthumously, when the original single became the centerpiece of... Good Morning Vietnam..."

"In jazz, all roads lead back to Louis Armstrong. He is the supreme example of the vitality of the past animating and challenging the present. Trumpeter Art Farmer acknowledged him as ‘still the mark people go after when it comes to sheer emotion speaking through music’, and the contemporary British star Guy Barker declared that any jazz lacking the Armstrong spirit was ‘going to be missing a lot’. [...] Besides his startling playing, Armstrong’s unique scat vocals brought a new dimension to improvisation: a piece like ‘Heebie Jeebies’ seems an outpouring of pure joy, a song that doesn’t need words to convey its rhythmic and melodic gusto. And on the magnificent ‘West End Blues’. his trumpet and vocal powers combine to produce a masterpiece of searing emotion."

"Let's go dance under the elms: Step lively, young lassies. Let's go dance under the elms: Gallants, take up your pipes."

"All that time is lost which might be better employed."

"L'accent est l'âme du discours."

"An honest man nearly always thinks justly."

"A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue."

"Days of absence, sad and dreary, Clothed in sorrow's dark array,— Days of absence, I am weary: She I love is far away."

"Chère amie, ne savez-vous pas que la vertu est un état de guerre, et que, pour y vivre, on a toujours quelque combat à rendre contre soi?"

"I shall need only myself to be happy."

"The supreme enjoyment is in satisfaction with oneself ; it is in order to deserve this satisfaction that we are placed on earth and endowed with freedom."

"What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?"

"L'offenseur ne pardonne jamais."

"Two conflicting types of educational systems spring from these conflicting aims. One is public and common to many, the other private and domestic. If you wish to know what is meant by public education, read Plato's Republic. Those who merely judge books by their titles take this for a treatise on politics, but it is the finest treatise on education ever written. In popular estimation the Platonic Institute stands for all that is fanciful and unreal. For my own part I should have thought the system of Lycurgus far more impracticable had he merely committed it to writing. Plato only sought to purge man's heart; Lycurgus turned it from its natural course. The public institute does not and cannot exist, for there is neither country nor patriot. The very words should be struck out of our language. The reason does not concern us at present, so that though I know it I refrain from stating it."

"Let us not forget what befits our present state in the pursuit of vain fancies. Mankind has its place in the sequence of things; childhood has its place in the sequence of human life; the man must be treated as a man and the child as a child. Give each his place, and keep him there. Control human passions according to man's nature; that is all we can do for his welfare. The rest depends on external forces, which are beyond our control."

"There is only one man who gets his own way—he who can get it single-handed; therefore freedom, not power, is the greatest good. That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires. This is my fundamental maxim. Apply it to childhood, and all the rules of education spring from it. Society has enfeebled man, not merely by robbing him of the right to his own strength, but still more by making his strength insufficient for his needs. This is why his desires increase in proportion to his weakness; and this is why the child is weaker than the man. If a man is strong and a child is weak it is not because the strength of the one is absolutely greater than the strength of the other, but because the one can naturally provide for himself and the other cannot. Thus the man will have more desires and the child more caprices, a word which means, I take it, desires which are not true needs, desires which can only be satisfied with the help of others."

"Our island is this earth; and the most striking object we behold is the sun. As soon as we pass beyond our immediate surroundings, one or both of these must meet our eye. Thus the philosophy of most savage races is mainly directed to imaginary divisions of the earth or to the divinity of the sun."

"We replace God as best we can; for every god is good, provided he perpetuates in eternity our desire for a crucial solitude. . . ."

"As soon as we have contrived to give our pupil an idea of the word "Useful," we have got an additional means of controlling him, for this word makes a great impression on him, provided that its meaning for him is a meaning relative to his own age, and provided he clearly sees its relation to his own well-being. This word makes no impression on your scholars because you have taken no pains to give it a meaning they can understand, and because other people always undertake to supply their needs so that they never require to think for themselves, and do not know what utility is. "What is the use of that?""

"At first our pupil had merely sensations, now he has ideas; he could only feel, now he reasons. For from the comparison of many successive or simultaneous sensations and the judgment arrived at with regard to them, there springs a sort of mixed or complex sensation which I call an idea. The way in which ideas are formed gives a character to the human mind. The mind which derives its ideas from real relations is thorough; the mind which relies on apparent relations is superficial. He who sees relations as they are has an exact mind; he who fails to estimate them aright has an inaccurate mind; he who concocts imaginary relations, which have no real existence, is a madman; he who does not perceive any relation at all is an imbecile. Clever men are distinguished from others by their greater or less aptitude for the comparison of ideas and the discovery of relations between them. Simple ideas consist merely of sensations compared one with another. Simple sensations involve judgments, as do the complex sensations which I call simple ideas. In the sensation the judgment is purely passive; it affirms that I feel what I feel. In the percept or idea the judgment is active; it connects, compares, it discriminates between relations not perceived by the senses. That is the whole difference; but it is a great difference. Nature never deceives us; we deceive ourselves."

"The origin of our passions, the root and spring of all the rest, the only one which is born with man, which never leaves him as long as he lives, is self-love; this passion is primitive, instinctive, it precedes all the rest, which are in a sense only modifications of it. In this sense, if you like, they are all natural. But most of these modifications are the result of external influences, without which they would never occur, and such modifications, far from being advantageous to us, are harmful. They change the original purpose and work against its end; then it is that man finds himself outside nature and at strife with himself."

"Complete ignorance with regard to certain matters is perhaps the best thing for children; but let them learn very early what it is impossible to conceal from them permanently. Either their curiosity must never be aroused, or it must be satisfied before the age when it becomes a source of danger. Your conduct towards your pupil in this respect depends greatly on his individual circumstances, the society in which he moves, the position in which he may find himself, etc. Nothing must be left to chance; and if you are not sure of keeping him in ignorance of the difference between the sexes till he is sixteen, take care you teach him before he is ten."

"As a man's conduct is controlled by public fact, so is her religion ruled by authority. The daughter should follow her mother's religion, the wife her husband's. Were that religion false, the docility which leads mother and daughter to submit to nature's laws would blot out the sin of error in the sight of Goddess. Unable to judge for themselves they should accept the judgment of father and husband as that of the church. While men unaided cannot deduce the rules of their faith, neither can they assign limits to that faith by the evidence of reason; they allow themselves to be driven hither and thither by all sorts of external influences, they are ever above or below the truth. Extreme in everything, they are either altogether reckless or altogether pious; you never find them able to combine virtue and piety. Their natural exaggeration is not wholly to blame; the ill-regulated control exercised over them by men is partly responsible. Loose morals bring religion into contempt; the terrors of remorse make it a tyrant; this is why women have always too much or too little religion. As a woman's religion is controlled by authority it is more important to show her plainly what to believe than to explain the reasons for belief; for faith attached to ideas half-understood is the main source of fanaticism, and faith demanded on behalf of what is absurd leads to madness or unbelief. Whether our catechisms tend to produce impiety rather than fanaticism I cannot say, but I do know that they lead to one or other. In the first place, when you teach religion to little girls never make it gloomy or tiresome, never make it a task or a duty, and therefore never give them anything to learn by heart, not even their prayers. Be content to say your own prayers regularly in their presence, but do not compel them to join you. Let their prayers be short, as Christ himself has taught us. Let them always be said with becoming reverence and respect; remember that if we ask the Almighty to give heed to our words, we should at least give heed to what we mean to say."

"When you reached the age of reason, I secured you from the influence of human prejudice; when your heart awoke I preserved you from the sway of passion. Had I been able to prolong this inner tranquillity till your life's end, my work would have been secure, and you would have been as happy as man can be; but, my dear Emile, in vain did I dip you in the waters of Styx, I could not make you everywhere invulnerable; a fresh enemy has appeared, whom you have not yet learnt to conquer, and from whom I cannot save you. That enemy is yourself. Nature and fortune had left you free. You could face poverty, you could bear bodily pain; the sufferings of the heart were unknown to you; you were then dependent on nothing but your position as a human being; now you depend on all the ties you have formed for yourself; you have learnt to desire, and you are now the slave of your desires. Without any change in yourself, without any insult, any injury to yourself, what sorrows may attack your soul, what pains may you suffer without sickness, how many deaths may you die and yet live! A lie, an error, a suspicion, may plunge you in despair."