Some of My Favorite Quotes

[UPDATED HERE WITH THE EXTENSIVE SCHOOL OF NO MEDIA COLLECTION]

Besides Crane, Eco and quite a few others available on this blog under the “Quotes” category, these are quotes I have used in the past, either on my office door or as part of my signature:

•  The essence of normalcy is the refusal of reality. Ernst Becker
•  Technology… the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it. Max Frisch
•  His writing is not about something, it is that something itself.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
I can’t go on, I will go on.
Samuel Beckett
• … the thrall in which an ideology holds a people is best measured by their collective inability to imagine alternatives… Tony Judt
•  Everything exerts itself to have you believe that culture is great, that it’s cool, that movies are life, that poetry loves you, theatre awaits you, and that painting concerns you… They say, ‘Believe, we’ll do the rest.’ Philippe Muray
•  The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. Dorothea Lange.
•  To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless. Flaubert.
•   One does forget anything we want to forget: it’s the rest we forget/On n’oublie rien de ce qu’on veut oublier : c’est le reste qu’on oublie. Boris Vian
•    The Buddha’s Five Remembrances (as per Thich Nhat Hahn):
1. I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old.
2. I am of the nature to have ill-health. I cannot escape having ill-health.
3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. I cannot keep anything. I come here empty-handed, and I go empty-handed.
5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.
• If you are having a difficulty, what you must do is face it. Go into your hut. Shut the doors and windows. Wrap yourself in all the robes you own. Sit there and don’t move and face it. Only then can you overcome it. Ajahn Chah
• I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.
If two things don’t fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that’s credulity.
Lying about the future produces history.
A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie.
Umberto Eco (a sampling)
• Two classic Jewish quotes:
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me. And if I am only for myself, then what am I. And if not now, when. Rabbi Hillel
Rabbi Tarfon taught: The day is short, the work is great…it is not your task to finish the work but neither are you free to exempt yourself from it. Ethics of the Fathers 2:15-16
• I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us. Franz Kafka
• Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place. Molière
• One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.
Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.
Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.
Is it better to be loved or feared. My view is that it is desirable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and, if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.
Politics have no relation to morals.
Niccolo Machiavelli
• All’s well that ends well: … and swear the lies he forges. Act 4 scene 1
That time and place with this deceit so lawful May prove coherent. Act 3 scene 7 – Shakespeare
• Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.
The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.
Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. Very few people can afford to be poor.
Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
George Bernard Shaw
• One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them. Virginia Woolf
• When something seems ” the most obvious thing in the world”, it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up. Bertolt Brecht
• An idea becomes false the moment one becomes satisfied by it. Alain
• There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous. Hannah Arendt
• When around you, you hear the word “Jew” pronounced, be on guard, they are speaking about you. Frantz Fanon
• If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet renounce controversy are people who want crops without ploughing the ground. Frederick Douglass
• Silence is the authentic mode of speaking. Claude Lanzmann
• Before you know what kindness really is – You must lose things… Naomi Shehab Nye
• If you have come here to help me, then don’t waste your time. But if you have come here, because your liberation is bound up with mine, then come, let us join in the struggle together. Australian Aborigine Activists
• Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Martin Luther King.
• When you know nothing, you say a lot. When you know something, there is nothing to say./Tell them that there is nothing to understand. U.G. Krishnamurti (not the famous one).
• I used to think the mind was the most wonderful organ in the body. Then, I realized who was telling me that. Bertrand Russell
• What the eye can perceive isn’t worth seeing. St. Exupéry
and “to finish”:
• The passionate desire to conclude is one of humanity’s most pernicious and sterile manias. Flaubert
• A witty saying proves nothing. Voltaire
• Kindness is the highest form of intelligence.
The arrogance of normalcy.
Hospitals are one good reason not to get sick.
Kindness and precision, my mother and father… and the beauty of fairness.
P.M.

And of interest to me too, through Wikipedia:
• About Yehudi Menuhin‘s first name: The name Yehudi means ‘Jew’ in Hebrew. In an interview published in October 2004, he recounted to New Internationalist magazine the story of his name: “Obliged to find an apartment of their own, my parents searched the neighbourhood and chose one within walking distance of the park. Showing them out after they had viewed it, the landlady said: ‘And you’ll be glad to know I don’t take Jews.’ Her mistake made clear to her, the antisemitic landlady was renounced, and another apartment found. But her blunder left its mark. Back on the street my mother made a vow. Her unborn baby would have a label proclaiming his race to the world. He would be called ‘The Jew.'”
• Constantin Brunner (who inspired Menuhin) and Judaism: The opposition between the spiritual and the religious is a major theme in Brunner’s work. He contends that Judaism is essentially anti-religious, stating in Our Christ that “Judaism as a spiritual doctrine is the opposite of religion and a protest against it”, and culminates his argument with his own translation of the Shema: “Hear O Israel, Being is our god, Being is one”. He juxtaposes priestly and rabbinical to prophetic Judaism, stating that the latter represents the true mystical essence in opposition to the former which represent superstition: “Prophetic Judaism is not a religion. That which makes it into Judaism consists of something which no religion possesses: the revelatory character of mysticism.”