All Quotes

"I sometimes think, with a sad delight, that if one day, in a future I no longer belong to, these sentences, that I write, last with praise, I will at last have the people who understand me, those mine, the true family to be born in and be loved. [...] I will only be understood in effigy, when affection no longer repays the dead the unaffection that was, when living."

"Enthusiasm is rude."

"My God, my God, who am I attending to? How many am I? Who is me? What is this interval between me and me?"

"Being a retired major looks like an ideal thing to me. What a pity you couldn't eternally have been just a retired major."

"My curiosity sister of larks."

"If a man can only write well when drunk, I'll tell him: get drunk. And if he tells me that his liver suffers with it, I'll answer: what's your liver? It's a dead thing that lives as long as you live, and the poems you'll write will live without a as long as."

"My homeland is the portuguese language."

"Art consists in making others feel what we feel."

"Art lies because it's social."

"Tedium is the lack of a mithology. To whom has no beliefs, even doubt is impossible, even skepticism has no strength to suspect."

"Smell is a strange sight. It evokes sentimental landscapes through a sudden sketching of the subconscious."

"Deceiving himself well is the first quality of the statesman."

"It's certain that, when hearing from any of those people the story of their sexual marathons, a vague suspicion pervades us, at about the seventh deflowering."

"Liberty is the possibility of isolation."

"If you cannot live alone, you were born a slave."

"And let our despite go to those who work and fight and our hate to those who hope and trust."

"We adore perfection because we can't have it; it would disgust us if we had it. Perfect is inhuman, because human is imperfect."

"If I had written King Lear, I would regret it all my life afterwards. Because that work is so big, that its defects show as huge, its monstrous defects, things even minimal in between some scenes and their possible perfection. It's not the sun with spots; it's a broken greek statue."

"For valuing your own suffering sets on it the gold of a sun of pride. Suffering a lot can originate the illusion of being the Chosen of Pain."

"The world belongs to who doesn't feel. The primary condition to be a practical man is the absence of sensitivity."

"What would happen to the world if we were human?"

"Who doesn't feel commands. He who only thinks what is required in order to win, wins."

"Sailing is necessary, living is not necessary."

"All pleasure is a vice, for seeking pleasure is what everybody does in life, and the only dark vice is doing what everybody does."

"I'm upset by the happiness of all these men who don't know they're unhappy. [...] Because of that, though, I love them all. Dear vegetables!"

"For the moment being, given that we live in society, the only duty of superior men is to reduce to a minimum their participation in the tribe's life. Not to read newspapers, or read them only to know about whatever unimportant and curious is going on. [...] The supreme honorable state for a superior man is in not knowing who is the Head of State of his country, or if he lives under a monarchy or a republic. All his attitude must be setting his soul so that the passing of things, of events doesn't bother him. If he doesn't do it he will have to take an interest in others in order to take care of himself."

"Wasting time has an esthetics to it."

"On a more serious note, one of the major differences between the two presidents dealt with partisan politics. President Clinton had reached out to the Republican Party in an attempt to have bipartisan legislation and bipartisan views of the different issues that would be required. He further extended that hand by selecting Senator William Cohen, a Republican, to be his Secretary of Defense. Contrast that with the incoming administration of President Bush, which was filled with a number of neocons and had an intense distaste- and distrust- for anybody who was associated with either a prior administration or the Democratic Party in general, in spit of their high levels of expertise and experience. I'm talking about midlevel and low-level positions that required a nomination or an appointment to be made by the President. If they had touched the Democratic Party in any way or if they had worked in a prior Democratic administration, they could forget it because they just weren't going to be considered in any capacity. It's too bad because he lost a large number of top people who would have been loyal, dedicated workers- but it was not to be. From my standpoint, it was disruptive to good government. Long gone were the days of a bipartisan view of what was best for America, which made it a very distasteful environment."

"One undeniable accomplishment of Bill Clinton's presidency was that it kept Jimmy Carter from being the worst U.S. president in history."

"Power corrupts, and, in many cases, absolute power makes you really horny. Clinton, Chirac, Mao, Mitterrand."

"I think Bill Clinton was a great President. You know, you look at the country then - the economy was doing great. Look at what happened during the Clinton years. I mean, we had no war, the economy was doing great, everybody was happy. A lot of people hated him because they were jealous as hell."

"He was admitted to the hospital for close monitoring and administered IV antibiotics and fluids. He remains at the hospital for continuous monitoring. We hope to have him go home soon."

"The President was shooting bombs overseas. Yet, I'm a bad guy because I sing some rock-and-roll songs? Who's a bigger influence, the President or Marilyn Manson? I'd like to think me, but I'm going to go with the President."

"In order to overcome the Reagan ascendency Democrats needed to advance the rights secured during the 1960s while returning to more traditional political bedrock. To a remarkable extent, Clinton delivered on that promise...Governor Clinton said in 1991: “Government’s responsibility is to create more opportunity for everybody, and our responsibility is to make the most of it.” These are Democratic ideas, and liberal ones. Bill Clinton reaffirmed, updated, and carried them forward into the twenty-first century."

"It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong."

"If I use the name 'Hesperus' to refer to a certain planetary body when seen in a certain celestial position in the evening, it will not therefore be a necessary truth that Hesperus is ever seen in the evening. That depends on various contingent facts about people being there to see and things like that. So even if I should say to myself that I will use 'Hesperus' to name the heavenly body I see in the evening in yonder position of the sky, it will not be necessary that Hesperus was ever seen in the evening. But it may be a priori in that this is how I have determined the referent."

"I am somewhat uncertain whether there is a definite factual question as to whether natural language handles truth-value gaps … Nor am I even quite sure that there is a definite question of fact as to whether natural language should be evaluated by the minimal fixed point or another, given the choice of a scheme for handling gaps. We are not at the moment searching for the correct scheme."

"At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock."

"When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it "creative". I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. When Aeschines spoke, they said, "How well he speaks". When Demosthenes spoke, they said, "Let us march against Philip.""

"… there are now unmistakeable signs of a trend in favor of superior products at premium prices. The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife."

"Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. 'Standing room only' creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure."

"Viewers have a way of remembering the celebrity while forgetting the product. I did not know this when I paid Eleanor Roosevelt $35,000 to make a commercial for margarine. She reported that her mail was equally divided. "One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation." Not one of my proudest memories."

"When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants."

"Never Write an Advertisement Which You Wouldn't Want Your Own Family To Read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by."

"The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her."

"I am somebody. I am a somebody. I am a child of God. I may not be educated but I am somebody. I may not have any money but I am somebody. I may not eat steak every day but I am somebody. I may not look the way you look but I am somebody."

"Politicians argue for abortion largely because they do not want to spend the necessary money to feed, clothe and educate more people... There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of higher order than the right to life. I do not share that view... That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside of your right to concerned."

"If my mind can conceive it, if my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it because I am somebody! Respect me! Protect me! Never neglect me! I am somebody! My mind is a pearl! I can learn anything in the world! Nobody can save us, from us, for us, but us! I can learn. It is possible. I ought to learn. It is moral. I must learn. It is imperative."

"That's all Hymie wants to talk about is Israel. Every time you go to Hymietown that's all they want to talk about."

"We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams."