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Quotes
Life itself is a quotation.
Jorge Luis Borges, at a lecture given in Paris, quoted in Cool Memories by Jean Baudrillard
The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically that not one of them is worth all the bother. On Earth – when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another – particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e., covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Wollte ich Liebe singen, ward sie mir zum Schmerz.
Und wollte ich wieder Schmerz nur singen, ward er mir zur Liebe.
[When I wished to sing of love, it turned to pain.
And when I wished to sing of pain, it turned to love.]
Franz Schubert, Mein Traum
Meine Erzeugnisse in der Musik sind durch den Verstand und durch meinen Schmerz vorhanden.
[My works are the fruit of my knowledge and my pain.]
Franz Schubert, diary entry, 27 March 1824
We must be what we are and not what they want us to be. To love what we love without obligation, without neurotic knots that we cannot untie. To desire what we want and to create what we are capable of making. To live with a certain prosperity, without wasting. But a prosperity for everyone, not a prosperity based on exploiting others. And, of course, it is necessary to become immortals and for this we have to live as if we were immortals thinking that we have a thousand years more to do what we want but without forgetting that in ten seconds we can die.
Alejandro Jodorowsky, Psychomagic
LaTeX does not work well for people who have sold their souls...
Tobias Oetiker et al., The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2ε
Viele sind ja, weil sie tief im Unglück stecken, im Grunde glücklich, dachte ich und ich sagte mir, daß Wertheimer wahrscheinlich tatsächlich glücklich gewesen ist, weil er sich seines Unglücks fortwährend bewußt gewesen ist, sich an seinem Unglück erfreuen konnte [...] Möglicherweise müssen wir davon ausgehen, daß es den sogenannten unglücklichen Menschen gar nicht gibt, dachte ich, denn die meisten machen wir ja erst dadurch unglücklich, daß wir ihnen ihr Unglück wegnehmen.
[Many people are basically happy because they're up to their necks in unhappiness, I thought, and I told myself that Wertheimer actually was happy because he was continually aware of his unhappiness, could take pleasure in his unhappiness [...] It's possible we have to assume that the so-called unhappy person doesn't exist, I thought, for we first make most of them unhappy by taking their unhappiness away from them.]
Thomas Bernhard, Der Untergeher
No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.
George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists
... la semiotica, in principio, è la disciplina che studia tutto ciò che può essere usato per mentire. Se qualcosa non può essere usato per mentire, allora non può neppure essere usato per dire la verità: di fatto non può essere usato per dire nulla.
[Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used to tell at all.]
Umberto Eco, Trattato di semiotica generale
Wer zu viel weiß, für den ist es schwer nicht zu lügen.
[Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.]
Ludwig Wittgenstein, journal entry, 1947
Die Irreführungen des Kindes bereiten den Erwachsenen Lust. Sie halten sie für notwendig, aber sie haben ihren Spaß daran. Sehr rasch kommen ihnen die Kinder drauf und üben das Irreführen selbst.
[Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practise deception themselves.]
Elias Canetti, Das Geheimherz der Uhr
There are many suicides in my writing. More than I like to think about. I have been afraid that I, in this way, may have contributed to legitimising suicide. So what touched me more than anything were those who candidly wrote that my writing had quite simply saved their lives. In a sense I have always known that writing can save lives, perhaps it has even saved my own life. And if my writing also can help to save the lives of others, nothing would make me happier.
Jon Fosse, 2023 Nobel Prize lecture
I thank all of my publishers and translators. I thank the building of the Swedish Academy and the dear light falling into that room as the final decision was being made in the awarding of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, and I give my thanks to Uncle Kerekes, sexton of the Gyula Romanian Orthodox church and cobbler, who is no longer among the ranks of the living, as the precise time of his death had come. I give my thanks to my friend Jóska Pálnik, who told me, on the second stair of the water slide pool in 1960, how babies are made, and under the grievous weight of this revelation I wanted to die. I give my thanks to Franz Kafka, whose novel Das Schloss I read when I was twelve years old so that I would be accepted in the circle of my brother, six years older than me; and so my fate was sealed. I give my thanks to the first thirty-one girls with whom I fell fatally in love, but especially to Márti Klinkovics. To Ernő Szabó and Imre Simonyi, unknown poets of Gyula, whom I have always admired, and who bore my admiration in a manner worthy of a man. To Péter Hajnóczy, the most staggering among Hungarian short story writers, who succumbed in his struggle with his phantasms, and thus is no longer among the ranks of the living. I give my thanks to the artists of Classical Greece, to the Italian Renaissance. To Attila József, the Hungarian poet who showed the magical power of words. To Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. To my older brother, who often carried me home from kindergarten, because of which I became infinitely grateful to him, as he showed me that there could be another way of looking at the world, not just that which is given. To William Faulkner. To the city of Kyoto. To Thomas Pynchon, beloved friend, to whom I owe deep gratitude. To Johann Sebastian Bach, for the Divine. To Patti Smith, for she is the eternal warning: never submit to anyone. To the voices of Agnes Baltsa, Natalie Dessay, Jennifer Larmore, Monserrat Caballe, Teresa Berganza and Emma Kirkby. To Béla Tarr, who created colours by making them disappear, because in his great films he tried to speak as the sinner who nevertheless, with all his sins, must still be loved. To Allen Ginsberg, the friend who is no longer among the ranks of the living, because the time of his death had come. To the literati of Imperial China. To Max Seebald, the marvellous writer and friend who is no longer among the ranks of the living, as he gazed for too long at one single blade of grass in the meadow. To the last wolf in Extremadura. To nature, that was given. To Prince Siddhartha. To the Hungarian language. To God.
László Krasznahorkai, speech at the Nobel Prize banquet, 10 December 2025
In England [...] alles wird da zünftig, und selbst die roués dieser Insel sind Pedanten.
[In England [...] everything becomes professional, even the rogues of that island are pedants.]
Friedrich Schlegel, fragment no. 67, Lyceums-Fragmente
Ein Crudescer ist da gewesen, der gut springt, aber nicht so schreibt wie ich: wie die säü brunzen.
[There is a grotesco who jumps cleverly, but cannot write as I do: as sows piss.]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, letter to his sister Maria Anna (Nannerl), Milan, 26 January 1770
Nun gebe ich Ihnen eine Nachricht die Sie vielleicht schon wissen werden,
daß nehmlich der gottlose und Erzspizbub Voltaire so zu sagen
wie ein Hund – wie ein Vieh crepirt ist – das ist der Lohn!
[I must give you a piece of intelligence that you perhaps already know – namely, that the ungodly arch-villain Voltaire has died miserably like a dog – just like a brute. This is his reward!]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, letter to his father Leopold, Paris, 3 July 1778
Ich lege mich nie zu Bette ohne zu bedenken daß ich vielleicht, so jung als ich bin, den andern Tag nicht mehr seÿn werde.
[I never lie down at night without reflecting that – young as I am – I may not live to see another day.]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, letter to his father Leopold, Vienna, 4 April 1787
L'angoisse de lire : c'est que tout texte, si important, si plaisant et si intéressant qu'il soit (et plus il donne l'im pression de l'être), est vide – il n'existe pas dans le fond; il faut franchir un abîme, et si l'on ne saute pas, on ne comprend pas.
[Reading is anguish, and this is because any text, however important, or amusing, or interesting it may be (and the more engaging it seems to be), is empty – at bottom it doesn't exist; you have to cross an abyss, and if you do not jump, you do not comprehend.]
Maurice Blanchot, L'écriture du désastre
Sans la prison, nous saurions que nous sommes tous déjà en prison.
[If it weren't for prisons, we would know that we are all already in prison.]
Maurice Blanchot, L'écriture du désastre
Die Übergänglichen müssen zuletzt das wissen, was alles Dringen auf Verständlichkeit zuerst verkennt: daß jedes Denken des Seins, alle Philosophie, nie bestätigt werden kann durch die »Tatsachen«, d. h. durch das Seiende. Das Sichverständlichmachen ist der Selbstmord der Philosophie. Die Götzendiener der »Tatsachen« merken nie, daß ihre Götzen nur in einem erborgten Glänze leuchten.
[Those in the crossing must in the end know what is mistaken by all urging for intelligibility: that every thinking of being, all philosophy, can never be confirmed by "facts", i.e. by beings. Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. Those who idolise "facts" never notice that their idols only shine in a borrowed light.]
Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)
Es ist ein Irrtum, an meine Anwesenheit zu glauben [...] Nehme ich einen Stuhl ein, und gar in Gesellschaft, so sehe ich selber von weitem schon, daß nur ein Gespenst dasitzt.
[It is a mistake to believe in my presence [...] If I take a seat, and especially in company, I can see even from afar that merely a ghost is sitting there.]
Hugo Ball, Die Flucht aus der Zeit
Lovers are always waiting. They hate to wait; they love to wait. Wedged between these two feelings, lovers come to think a great deal about time, and to understand it very well, in their perverse way.
Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
I was at Agenda 2000, and one of the people who was there was Craig Mundie, who is some kind of high mucky muck at Microsoft, I think vice-president of consumer products or something like that. And I hadn't actually met him. I bumped into him in an elevator. And I looked at his badge and said, "Oh, I see you work for Microsoft." And he looked back at me and said, "Oh yeah, and what do you do?" And I thought he seemed just sort of a tad dismissive. I mean, here is the archetypal guy in a suit, looking at a scruffy hacker. And so I gave him the thousand yard stare and said, "I'm your worst nightmare."
Eric S. Raymond, opening words to Revolution OS (2001)
... because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.
The Stalker, Stalker (1979) by Andrei Tarkovsky
... take music. It's connected least of all with reality. Or, if connected, then it's without ideas. It's merely empty sound without associations. Nevertheless, music miraculously penetrates your very soul. What chord in us responds to its harmonies... transforming it into a source of delight, uniting us and shattering us.
The Stalker, Stalker (1979) by Andrei Tarkovsky
In 1976, still back in the USSR, I got a very serious case of food poisoning from eating raw fish. While in the hospital, in the state of delirium, I suddenly realised that the ability to add numbers in parallel depends on the fact that addition is associative. In other words, I realised that a parallel reduction algorithm is associated with a semigroup structure type. That is the fundamental point: algorithms are defined on algebraic structures. So, putting it simply, STL is the result of a bacterial infection.
Alexander Stepanov, interview with Graziano Lo Russo, when asked "What is the origin of STL?"
For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart.
Morton Feldman, quoted in American Sublime: Morton Feldman's mysterious musical landscapes by Alex Ross
La storia insegna, ma non ha scolari.
[History teaches, but it has no pupils.]
Antonio Gramsci, letter from prison, 21 June 1919
Toutes choses sont dites déjà; mais comme personne n'écoute, il faut toujours recommencer.
[Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.]
André Gide, Le traité du Narcisse
In a real war no one knew which side he was on, and there were no flags or commentators or winners. In a real war there were no enemies.
J. G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun
It's so amazing when people tell me that... electronic music has not got soul. And they blame the computers. They got the finger pointed at the computers like, "There's no soul here."... You can't blame the computer. If there's not soul in the music, it's because nobody put it there. And it's not the tool's fault.
Björk, The South Bank Show, series 21, episode 4
When I was on the train from Liverpool to Cambridge to become a student, it occurred to me that no one at Cambridge knew I was painfully shy, so I could become an extrovert instead of an introvert.
John Horton Conway, quoted in Symmetry and the Monster by Mark Ronan
Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.
Alan Turing, epigram to Robin Gandy, 1954
Either mathematics is too big for the human mind, or the human mind is more than a machine.
Kurt Gödel, quoted in Topoi: The Categorial Analysis of Logic by Robert Goldblatt
No one invented schemes.
Jean-Pierre Serre, quoted in The rising sea: Grothendieck on simplicity and generality by Colin McLarty
Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch?
[I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?]
Franz Kafka, letter to Oskar Pollak, Prague, 27 January 1904
Nun haben aber die Sirenen eine noch schrecklichere Waffe als den Gesang, nämlich ihr Schweigen [...] sich jemand vor ihrem Gesang gerettet hätte, vor ihrem Schweigen gewiß nicht.
[Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence [...] Someone might have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.]
Franz Kafka, Das Schweigen der Sirenen
What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.
Sigmund Freud, letter to Ernest Jones, 1933
Aye, I suppose I could stay up that late.
James Clerk Maxwell, on being told on his arrival at Cambridge University that there would be a compulsory 6 a.m. church service
Aurait-il connu ce bonheur d'un vertige suicidaire si Hamlet n'avait eu ni public ni réplique ?
[Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn't had an audience, and lines to speak?]
Jean Genet, Un captif amoureux
Beaucoup de Palestiniens, simples feddayin et dirigeants d'importance, furent invités à Pékin – comme à Moscou. Je crois encore aujourd'hui qu'ils confondirent la Chine avec les foules mobilisées, les manifestations chaleureuses dont ils rapportèrent les images ou les récits d'une vie quotidienne paradisiaque – ce fut au moins quarante fois que les invités me parlèrent de la beauté des vieillards qui, chaque matin, faisaient en silence, avec ou sans sourire, leurs mouvements de gymnastique suédoise sur la place T'ien an Men.
[Many Palestinians, ordinary fedayeen as well as important leaders, were invited to Peking. And to Moscow. I still believe they confused China itself with the organised crowds and ardent demonstrations that sent them home with accounts and images of some sort of paradise. I was told dozens of times how marvellous the old men looked as, grave or smiling, they silently performed their Swedish drill every morning in T'ien an Men Square.]
Jean Genet, Un captif amoureux
Ça fonctionne partout, tantôt sans arrêt, tantôt discontinu. Ça respire, ça chauffe, ça mange. Ça chie, ça baise. Quelle erreur d'avoir dit le ça. Partout ce sont des machines, pas du tout métaphoriquement des machines de machines, avec leurs couplages, leurs connexions.
[It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines – real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections.]
Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, L'anti-Œdipe
To emphasise only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
Paul Klee, diary entry, March 1906
The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.
Stan Barstow, Daily Mail, 15 August 1989
For me, football is the only thing more inspiring than the cinema. You wake up in the morning, and the magic was all real.
Jürgen Klopp, on his Champions League triumph with Liverpool in 2018–19
Plus d'un, comme moi sans doute, écrivent pour n'avoir plus de visage. Ne me demandez pas qui je suis et ne me dites pas de rester le même : c'est une morale d'état civil ; elle régit nos papiers. Qu'elle nous laisse libres quand il s'agit d'écrire.
[More than one person, like me no doubt, writes in order to have no face. Do not ask me who I am, and do not tell me to remain the same: that is a morality of the registry office; it governs our papers. Let it leave us free when it comes to writing.]
Michel Foucault, L'archéologie du savoir
El problema del matrimonio es que se acaba todas las noches después de hacer el amor, y hay que volver a reconstruirlo todas las mañanas antes del desayuno.
[The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.]
Gabriel García Márquez, El amor en los tiempos del cólera
Les bonnes habitudes : elles ne sont jamais bonnes, parce qu'elles sont habitudes.
[Good Habits: they are never good, because they are habits.]
Jean-Paul Sartre, Cahiers pour une morale
... es ist alles lächerlich, wenn man an den Tod denkt. [...] Der Staat ist ein Gebilde, das fortwährend zum Scheitern, das Volk ein solches, das ununterbrochen zur Infamie und zur Geistesschwäche verurteilt ist. Das Leben Hoffnungslosigkeit, an die sich die Philosophien anlehnen, in welcher alles letzten Endes verrückt werden muss. Wir sind Österreicher, wir sind apathisch; wir sind das Leben als das gemeine Desinteresse am Leben, wir sind in dem Prozess der Natur der Grössenwahn-Sinn der Zukunft.
[... it's all ridiculous when you think about death [...] The state is a structure that is constantly doomed to failure, the people is one that is constantly doomed to infamy and mental weakness. Life is hopelessness, which the philosophies are based on, in which everything must ultimately go crazy. We are Austrians, we are apathetic; we are life as the common lack of interest in life, we are in the process of nature the megalomaniac sense of the future.]
Thomas Bernhard, acceptance speech for the 1967 Austrian State Prize for literature. This is known as the Staatspreis-Skandal
Der Staat gebiert in Wahrheit die Kinder, nur Staatskinder werden geboren, das ist die Wahrheit. Es gibt kein freies Kind, es gibt nur das Staatskind, mit dem der Staat machen kann, was er will, der Staat bringt die Kinder auf die Welt, den Müttern wird nur eingeredet, daß sie die Kinder auf die Welt bringen, es ist der Staatsbauch, aus dem die Kinder kommen, das ist die Wahrheit. [...] Die Staatskinder kommen aus dem Staatsbauch auf die Welt und gehen in die Staatsschule, wo sie von den Staatslehrern in die Lehre genommen werden. Der Staat gebiert seine Kinder in den Staat, das ist die Wahrheit, der Staat gebiert seine Staatskinder in den Staat und läßt sie nicht mehr aus. Wir sehen, wohin wir schauen, nur Staatskinder, Staatsschüler, Staatsarbeiter, Staatsbeamte, Staatsgreise, Staatstote, das ist die Wahrheit. Der Staat macht und ermöglicht nur Staatsmenschen, das ist die Wahrheit. Den natürlichen Menschen gibt es nicht mehr, es gibt nur noch den Staatsmenschen und wo es noch den natürlichen Menschen gibt, wird er verfolgt und zu Tode gehetzt und / oder zum Staatsmenschen gemacht. [...] Der Staat hat mich, wie alle andern auch, in sich hineingezwungen und mich für ihn, den Staat, gefügig gemacht und aus mir einen Staatsmenschen gemacht, einen reglementierten und registrierten und trainierten und absolvierten und pervertierten und deprimierten, wie alle andern. [...] Heute ist der Mensch nur noch Staatsmensch und also ist er heute nurmehr noch der vernichtete Mensch und der Staatsmensch als der einzige menschenmögliche Mensch, denke ich. Der natürliche Mensch ist gar nicht mehr möglich, denke ich. [...] Die Lehrer, die wir haben, lehren den Menschen den Staat und lehren sie alle Fürchterlichkeiten und Grauenhaftigkeiten des Staates, alle Verlogenheiten des Staates, nur nicht, daß der Staat alle diese Fürchterlichkeiten und Grauenhaftigkeiten und Verlogenheiten ist.
[The state in fact gives birth to the children, only state children are being born, that is the truth. There is no free child, there is only the state child, with whom the state can do what it pleases, it is the state that brings the children into this world, their mothers are merely made to believe that they bring their children into the world, but it is the state's belly from which the children come, that is the truth. [...] The state children come into the world from the state belly and they go to the state school, where they are worked on by the state teachers. The state gives birth to its children into the state, that is the truth, and it retains its hold over them. Wherever we look we see only state children, state pupils, state workers, state officials, state pensioners, state dead, that is the truth. The state produces and permits only state people, that is the truth. Natural man no longer exists, there is only state man, and where natural man still exists he is persecuted and chased to death and/or turned into state man. [...] The state forced me, like everyone else, into itself and made me compliant towards it, the state, and turned me into a state person, regulated and registered and trained and finished and perverted and dejected, like everyone else. [...] Humanity is now only state humanity and has lost its identity for centuries, in fact ever since there has been a state, I reflect. Humanity today is only an inhumanity which is the state, I reflect. Man today is only a state man, and in consequence he is today only a destroyed man and a state man as the only humanly possible man, it seems to me. Natural man is no longer even possible, it seems to me. [...] The teachers we have teach the state to young people, teaching them all the dreadfulness and horrors of the state, all the mendacity of the state, but they do not teach them that the state is all this dreadfulness and these horrors and this mendacity.]
Thomas Bernhard, Alte Meister. Komödie
Meine Heimatstadt ist in Wirklichkeit eine Todeskrankheit, in welche ihre Bewohner hineingeboren und hineingezogen werden, und gehen sie nicht in dem entscheidenden Zeitpunkt weg, machen sie direkt oder indirekt früher oder später unter allen diesen entsetzlichen Umständen entweder urplötzlich Selbstmord oder gehen direkt oder indirekt langsam und elendig auf diesem im Grunde durch und durch menschenfeindlichen architektonisch – erzbischöflich – stumpfsinnignationalsozialistisch-katholischen Todesboden zugrunde. Die Stadt ist für den, der sie und ihre Bewohner kennt, ein auf der Oberfläche schöner, aber unter dieser Oberfläche tatsächlich fürchterlicher Friedhof der Phantasien und Wünsche. Dem Lernenden und Studierenden, der sich in dieser überall nur im Rufe der Schönheit und der Erbauung und zu den sogenannten Festspielen alljährlich auch noch in dem Rufe der sogenannten Hohen Kunst stehenden Stadt zurecht und Recht zu finden versucht, ist sie bald nur mehr noch ein kaltes und allen Krankheiten und Niedrigkeiten offenes Todesmuseum, in welchem ihm alle nur denkbaren und undenkbaren, seine Energien und Geistesgaben und -anlagen rücksichtslos zersetzenden und zutiefst verletzenden Hindernisse erwachsen, die Stadt ist ihm bald nicht mehr eine schöne Natur und eine exemplarische Architektur, sondern nichts anderes als ein undurchdringbares Menschengestrüpp aus Gemeinheit und Niedertracht, und er geht nicht mehr durch Musik, wenn er durch ihre Gassen geht, sondern nur mehr noch abgestoßen durch den moralischen Morast ihrer Bewohner. Die Stadt ist dem in ihr auf einmal um alles Betrogenen, seinem Alter entsprechend, in diesem Zustand nicht Ernüchterung, sondern Entsetzen, und sie hat für alles, auch für Erschütterung, ihre tödlichen Argumente.
[This city of my fathers is in reality a terminal disease which its inhabitants acquire through heredity or contagion. If they fail to leave at the right moment, they sooner or later either commit suicide, directly or indirectly, or perish slowly and wretchedly on this lethal soil with its archiepiscopal architecture and its mindless blend of National Socialism and Catholicism. Anyone who is familiar with the city knows it to be a cemetery offantasy and desire, beautiful on the surface but horrifying underneath. Whoever goes there to learn and to study, trying to find his way around and expecting to meet with some kind of justice, soon discovers that this city, renowned the world over for beauty and edification, as well as for the celebration of what is known as Great Art at its annual festival, is in truth nothing but a chill museum of death, open to every kind of disease and depravity, in which he finds himself ruthlessly confronted by every conceivable and inconceivable obstacle designed to sap his energies and to impair and inhibit his intellectual talents. What was at first a place of natural beauty and matchless architecture soon becomes a vile and impenetrable jungle of human viciousness, and when he goes through the streets they are no longer filled with music but with the moral filth of those who people them. Suddenly finding himself cheated of all he hoped for, he reacts in accordance with his age, not just with disenchantment but with horror; and for all this, even for shattering his whole life, the city can produce its deadly arguments.]
Thomas Bernhard, Die Ursache. Eine Andeutung, speaking of Salzburg
Freunde, der Boden ist arm, wir mussen reichlichen Samen ausstreun, daß uns doch nur maßige Ernten gedeihn.
[Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.]
Novalis, epigram at the beginning of Blüthenstaub
Jede Stufe der Bildung fängt mit Kindheit an. Daher ist der am meisten gebildete, irdische Mensch dem Kinde so ähnlich.
[Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child.]
Novalis, Blütenstaub, fragment no. 50
Der edle Kaufmannsgeist, der ächte Großhandel, hat nur im Mittelalter und besonders zur Zeit der deutschen Hanse geblüht. Die Medicis, die Fugger waren Kaufleute, wie sie sein sollten. Unsere Kaufleute im Ganzen, die größten nicht ausgenommen, sind nichts als Krämer.
[The noble spirit of commerce, true wholesale trade, flourished only in the Middle Ages and especially in the age of the German Hanseatic League. The Medicis, the Fuggers were merchants as merchants ought to be. Our merchants on the whole, not excepting the greatest among them, are nothing but petty shopkeepers.]
Novalis, Blütenstaub, fragment no. 67
Welten bauen genügt dem tiefer dringenden Sinn nicht: aber ein liebendes Herz sättigt den strebenden Geist.
[Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.]
Novalis, Blütenstaub, fragment no. 91
There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace
I think being funny is not anyone's first choice.
Woody Allen, The Guardian, 23 March 1992
Slovo změna, tak drahé naší Evropě, dostalo nový smysl: neznamená nové stadium souvislého vývoje (jak to chápali Vico, Hegel nebo Marx), nýbrž přemisťování z místa na místo, z jedné strany na druhou, dozadu, doleva, dopředu (tak jak to chápou krejčí vymýšlející nový střih pro novou sezónu).
[The word change, so dear to our Europe, has been given a new meaning: it no longer means a new stage of coherent development (as it was understood by Vico, Hegel or Marx), but a shift from one side to another, from front to back, from the back to the left, from the left to the front (as understood by designers dreaming up the fashion for the next season).]
Milan Kundera, Nesmrtelnost
Myslím, tedy jsem je věta intelektuála, který podceňuje bolest zubů.
[I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underestimates toothaches.]
Milan Kundera, Nesmrtelnost
La photographie, c'est la vérité et le cinéma, c'est vingt-quatre fois la vérité par seconde.
[Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.]
Bruno Forestier, Le petit soldat (1963) by Jean-Luc Godard
Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
J. G. Ballard, interview in Friends, 30 October 1970
University degrees are a bit like adultery: you may not want to get involved with that sort of thing, but you don't want to be thought incapable.
Peter Imbert, The Times, 11 October 1992
Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous.
Pierre Boulez, The Guardian, 13 January 1989
It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of "culture".
John Cage, Forerunners of Modern Music
Music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music.
Luciano Berio, Two Interviews (1985)
I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I write the music. Afterward it is the listener who must experiment.
Edgard Varèse, Varèse: A Looking-Glass Diary
People basically only want very little from music, and I want a lot from it. It's capable of amazing journeys and meanings. And if you understand that, the problem with the kind of music I write is no problem at all.
Harrison Birtwistle, interview in Independent, 7 April 1996
On n'habite pas un pays, on habite une langue.
[One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language.]
Emil Cioran, Aveux et anathèmes
Wir haben alle gedacht wir haben ein Vaterland
aber wir haben keins
[We all thought we had a homeland
but we don't]
Professor Robert, Heldenplatz by Thomas Bernhard
Nulla infonde più coraggio al pauroso della paura altrui.
[Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.]
Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa
I have nothing to say
and I am saying and that is
poetry.
John Cage, Lecture on Nothing
Le langage est une peau : je frotte mon langage contre l'autre. C'est comme si j'avais des mots en guise de doigts, ou des doigts au bout de mes mots. Mon langage tremble de désir.
[Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.]
Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux
A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.
Garrison Keillor, Leaving Home
From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.
Katharine Whitehorn, Roundabout
Ce ne sont pas les idées qui mènent le monde. Mais c'est justement parce que le monde a des idées (et parce qu'il en produit beaucoup continuellement) qu'il n'est pas conduit passivement selon ceux qui le dirigent ou ceux qui voudraient lui enseigner à penser une fois pour toutes.
[Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it continually produces many of them) that it is not passively ruled by those who govern it or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.]
Michel Foucault, Les reportages d'idées
... l'idéologie a fort peu à voir avec la « conscience » [...] Elle est profondément inconsciente...
[... ideology has very little to do with "consciousness" [...] It is profoundly unconscious...]
Louis Althusser, Pour Marx
Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we'll never achieve.
Ryszard Kapuściński, A Warsaw Diary
Ce n'est pas la peine de se tuer, puisqu'on se tue toujours trop tard.
[It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.]
Emil Cioran, De l'inconvénient d'être né
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
John Cage, interview in Down Beat, 20 October 1977
Some guy hit my fender the other day, and I said unto him, "Be fruitful, and multiply." But not in those words.
Woody Allen, Woody Allen (1964)
Lidé, měl jsem vás rád. Bděte!
[Humans, I have loved you all. Be vigilant!]
Julius Fučík, Reportáž psaná na oprátce
Amy Ziering Kofman: Have you read all the books in here?
Jacques Derrida: No, only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully.
Derrida (2002), referring to Derrida's personal library
How happy the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavourably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.
W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand
Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: "here are our monsters", without immediately turning the monsters into pets.
Jacques Derrida, Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms
L'Algèbre est généreuse, elle donne souvent plus qu'on ne lui demande.
[Algebra is generous; she often gives more than is asked of her.]
Jean le Rond d'Alembert, quoted by Hermann Hankel in Mathématiques et mathématiciens by Alphonse Rebière
The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory
Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry.
The Big Short (2015) by Adam McKay
En skulde aldrig ha' sine bedste buxer på, når en er ude og strider for frihed og sandhed.
[You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.]
Henrik Ibsen, En folkefiende
A qui n'a pas connu cette rage de creuser, ce démon du système, cette fièvre mentale, ce délire d'absolu, je pense qu'il manquera toujours quelque chose du côté de la comprenette.
[Anyone who has never known such a feverish need to delve deeply, to think systematically and use one's own mind to the full, who has never experienced such a frenzied passion for the absolute, will I fear never know quite what thinking means.]
Michel Tournier, Le vent Paraclet
Je n'ai plus aucun secret, à force d'avoir perdu le visage, forme et matière. Je ne suis plus qu'une ligne. Je suis devenu capable d'aimer, non pas d'un amour universel abstrait, mais celui que je vais choisir, et qui va me choisir, en aveugle, mon double, qui n'a pas plus de moi que moi.
[I no longer have any secrets, having lost my face, form, and matter. I am now no more than a line. I have become capable of loving, not with an abstract, universal love, but a love I shall choose, and that shall choose me, blindly, my double, just as selfless as I.]
Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Mille plateaux
... si rerum usu constat prudentia, in utrum magis competet eius cognominis honos, in sapientem, qui partim ob pudorem, partim ob animi timiditatem nihil aggreditur, an in stultum, quem neque pudor, quo vacat, neque periculum quod non perpendit, ab ulla deterret?
[... if prudence depends upon experience, to whom is the honour of that name more proper? To the wise man, who partly out of modesty and partly distrust of himself, attempts nothing; or the fool, whom neither modesty which he never had, nor danger which he never considers, can discourage from anything?]
Erasmus, Moriae encomium
... in art as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation... My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings. I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, Poetics of Music
... die heute die Erziehungssysteme machen, die sollen sich schleunigst damit bemühen, dass die Musiker und die Fantastiker, die Erziehung der Fantasie, dass diese Fächer genauso wichtig sind wie die Naturwissenschaftlichen [...] Was glauben Sie, dass der Einstein die Relativitätstheorie gefunden hätte, wenn er nicht Gleige gespielt hätte? Ich bin sicher nein.
[... those who shape our education systems today should make every effort, as a matter of urgency, to ensure that music and the arts – the cultivation of the imagination – are recognised as subjects just as important as the natural sciences [...] Do you think Einstein would have come up with the theory of relativity if he hadn't played the violin? I'm sure the answer is no.]
Nikolaus Harnoncourt, interview, 22 March 2009
There is no mathematics in Göttingen anymore.
David Hilbert, replying to the Nazi minister of education Bernhard Rust's question "How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?", 1934
Of the many lies told by the U.S. military-industrial complex, my favorite is still their claim that sleep deprivation didn't qualify as torture.
The Killer, The Killer (2023) by David Fincher
I have not thought it necessary to undertake the labour of a formal proof of the theorem in the general case.
Arthur Cayley, one of the mathematicians for whom the Cayley–Hamilton theorem is named, stated that theorem for n × n matrices in one of his papers, and then checked the 2 × 2 case. He closed his discussion of the theorem with the sentence quoted here
S'il ne se passe rien dans la philosophie, c'est justement parce qu'elle n'a pas d'objet. S'il se passe en effet quelque chose dans les sciences, c'est qu'elles ont un objet, dont elles peuvent approfondir la connaissance, ce qui leur donne une histoire. Comme la philosophie n'a pas d'objet, il ne peut rien s'y passer. Le rien de son histoire ne fait que répéter le rien de son objet.
[If nothing happens in philosophy it is precisely because it has no object. If something actually does happen in the sciences, it is because they do have an object, knowledge of which they can increase, which gives them a history. As philosophy has no object, nothing can happen in it. The nothing of its history simply repeats the nothing of its object.]
Louis Althusser, Lénine et la philosophie, lecture in February 1968
This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.
Linus Torvalds, email to Till Kamppeter, 12 December 2005
Thirty years ago I was regarded as a rebel, but to-day, as you see, I have lived to find myself a classic.
Richard Strauss, 1931, quoted in The Caliph of Vienna: Dr. Richard Strauss, Musician by William Leon Smyser
这件事还是由你自己定夺，你说你你证明了黎曼猜想就证明了黎曼猜想，你说你没有证明黎曼猜想就没有证明了黎曼猜想。
[This is after all up to you to decide. If you believe you have proved the Riemann Hypothesis, then you have proved it. If you say you have not proved it, then you have not.]
张益唐 [Zhang Yitang], response to amateur mathematician 廖腾 [Liao Teng]'s claimed proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, email to Liao on 26 October 2018
Es ist lustig zu sehen, was diese Menschenart eigentlich geärgert hat, was sie glauben daß einen ärgert, wie schal, leer und gemein sie eine fremde Existenz ansehen, wie sie ihre Pfeile gegen das Außenwerk der Erscheinung richten, wie wenig sie auch nur ahnen, in welcher unzugänglichen Burg der Mensch wohnt, dem es nur immer Ernst um sich und um die Sachen ist.
[It is real fun to observe what has been offensive to this kind of people, and also what they think has been offensive to us. How trivial, empty, and mean they consider the life of others, and how they direct their arrows against the outside of the works. How little do they know that a man who takes life seriously lives in an impregnable castle.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, letter to Friedrich Schiller, Weimar, 5 December 1796
Where is Balkan? This was a standard joke. Let me do the entire theory. So we have here Slovenia and every Slovene will tell you this is the limit. Here Balkan confusion starts. Okay, then let's go on. You ask a Croat, he will tell you it is clear. Croats are middle European, Catholic; Belgrade, Serbia, Orthodox religion: we are in Balkan. You ask a Serb, he will tell you down here either Sarajevo or Kosovo, they will tell you this is the true Balkan. Now the irony is that if you go too much down, then all of a sudden Balkan is up there, no? In Greece they will tell you we Greeks, we are the origin of Europe, up there the dark Balkan mountains. If you ask an Austrian, he will tell you Slovenia [is where] Balkan begins, Slavic primitives and so on. If you ask a German, he will tell you Austria when they had an empire was already too much mixed with all this, it's already Balkanised. French people will tell you Germany, dark, fascist, kind of a Balkan, we are civilization. And finally the British will tell you all Europe is today a big Balkan with Brussels bureaucracy as a new Istanbul, we British are the only one.
Slavoj Žižek, Balkan Spirit (2013) by Hermann Vaske
La découverte est le privilège de l'enfant. C'est du petit enfant que je veux parler, l'enfant qui n'a pas peur encore de se tromper, d'avoir l'air idiot, de ne pas faire sérieux, de ne pas faire comme tout le monde.
[Discovery is the privilege of the child. It is the young child I want to talk about, the child who is not yet afraid of making mistakes, of looking silly, of not being serious, of not doing what everyone else does.]
Alexander Grothendieck, Récoltes et Semailles, première partie, 5.1(1) l'enfant et le Bon Dieu
J'ai dû me contraindre hier soir de couper court, histoire de ne pas continuer sur ma lancée jusqu'à des deux, trois, heures du matin et d'être repris dans un engrenage que je ne connais que trop bien. Je me sentais frais et dispos, et si j'avais suivi ma pente naturelle, j'aurais même continué jusqu'au petit matin ! Le piège du travail intellectuel – de celui du moins qu'on poursuit avec passion, dans une matière où on finit par se sentir comme le poisson dans l'eau, à la suite d'une longue familiarité – c'est qu'il est si incroyablement facile. On tire, on tire, et ça vient toujours, il n'y a qu'à tirer ; c'est à peine que parfois on a le sentiment d'un effort, d'un frottement, signe que ça résiste tant soit peu...
Je me rappelle pourtant, du temps de mes jeunes années de mathématicien, d'un sentiment persistant de lourdeur, de pesanteur qu'il fallait surmonter, par un effort obstiné, laissant dans son sillage une sensation de fatigue. Cela correspondait surtout à une période de ma vie où je travaillais avec un outillage insuffisant, voire inadéquat ; ou à celle, ultérieure, quand il m'a fallu acquérir plus ou moins péniblement des outils un peu "tous azimuths", sous la pression d'un milieu (essentiellement, celui du groupe Bourbaki) qui les utilisait couramment, sans que leur raison d'être ne m'apparaisse au fur et à mesure, ni même parfois pendant des années [...] Ça a été surtout la période des années 1945 à 1955, qui coïncide avec ma période d'analyse fonctionnelle [...] [C]'est à partir des années 1955 et suivantes surtout que j'ai eu l'impression souvent de "voler" – de faire les maths en me jouant, sans aucune sensation d'effort – tout comme tels de mes aînés que j'avais tant enviés naguère pour une telle facilité quasi-miraculeuse, qui m'avait semblé bien hors d'atteinte de ma modeste et pesante personne ! Aujourd'hui, il m'apparaît qu'une telle "facilité" n'est pas le privilège de quelque don exceptionnel [...] [M]ais qu'elle apparaît d'elle-même comme le fruit de l'union d'un intérêt passionné pour telle matière (comme la mathématique, disons), et d'une plus ou moins longue familiarité avec celle-ci.
[I had to force myself to cut things short last night, so as not to continue working until two or three in the morning and get caught up in a cycle I know all too well. I felt fresh and alert, and if I'd followed my natural inclination, I would have continued until dawn! The trap of intellectual work – at least the kind you pursue with passion, in a subject you eventually feel completely at ease with after long familiarity – is that it's so incredibly easy. You pull and pull, and it always comes; you just have to pull. You barely even feel an effort, a friction, a sign that there's any resistance at all.
Yet I remember, from my early years as a mathematician, a persistent feeling of heaviness, of weight, that had to be overcome through stubborn effort, leaving in its wake a sensation of fatigue. This corresponded above all to a period in my life when I was working with insufficient, even inadequate, tools; or to the later period when I had to acquire, more or less painfully, tools that were a bit "all-rounder", under pressure from a milieu (essentially, that of the Bourbaki group) which used them routinely, without their reason for being becoming apparent to me over time, or even sometimes for years [...] It was especially the period from 1945 to 1955, which coincides with my period of functional analysis [...] It was from 1955 onwards that I often had the impression of "flying" – of doing maths playfully, without any sensation of effort – just like some of my elders whom I had so envied in the past for such an almost miraculous ease, which had seemed well beyond the reach of my modest and ponderous self! Today, it appears to me that such "ease" is not the privilege of some exceptional gift [...] [B]ut it appears of itself as the fruit of the union of a passionate interest in a particular subject (such as mathematics, let's say), and a more or less long familiarity with it.]
Alexander Grothendieck, Récoltes et Semailles, troisième partie, note 99
Et il y a celui aussi quise trouve placé devant un inconnu, comme un enfant nu devant la mer. Quand l'enfant désire la connaître, il entre et la connaît – qu'elle soit tiède ou fraîche, calme ou agitée. Celui qu'attire telle chose inconnue, et qui part pour la connaître, sûrement la connaîtra peu ou prou. Avec ou sans filet, il trouvera le vrai, ou en tous cas du vrai. Ses erreurs comme ses trouvailles sont autant d'étapes dans son cheminement, ou pour mieux dire, dans ses amours avec ce qu'il désire connaître.
[And then there is the one who finds himself before the unknown, like a naked child before the sea. When the child desires to know it, he enters and knows it – whether it is lukewarm or cool, calm or turbulent. He who is drawn to something unknown, and who sets out to know it, will surely know it to some extent. With or without a safety net, he will find the truth, or at least something of the truth. His errors as well as his discoveries are so many stages in his journey, or rather, in his love affair with that which he desires to know.]
Alexander Grothendieck, Récoltes et Semailles, troisième partie, note 103
Je pourrais illustrer la deuxième approche, en gardant l'image de la noix qu'il s'agit d'ouvrir. La première parabole qui m'est venue à l'esprit tantôt, c'est qu'on plonge la noix dans un liquide émollient, de l'eau simplement pourquoi pas, de temps en temps on frotte pour qu'elle pénètre mieux, pour le reste on laisse faire le temps. La coque s'assouplit au fil des semaines et des mois – quand le temps est mûr, une pression de la main suffit, la coque s'ouvre comme celle d'un avocat mûr à point ! Ou encore, on laisse mûrir la noix sous le soleil et sous la pluie et peut-être aussi sous les gelées de l'hiver. Quand le temps est mûr c'est une pousse délicate sortie de la substantifique chair qui aura percé la coque, comme en se jouant – ou pour mieux dire, la coque se sera ouverte d'elle-même, pour lui laisser passage.
L'image qui m'était venue il y a quelques semaines était différente encore, la chose inconnue qu'il s'agit de connaître m'apparaissait comme quelque étendue de terre ou de marnes compactes, réticente à se laisser pénétrer. On peut s'y mettre avec des pioches ou des barres à mine ou même des marteaux-piqueurs : c'est la première approche, celle du "burin" (avec ou sans marteau). L'autre est celle de la mer. La mer s'avance insensiblement et sans bruit, rien ne semble se casser rien ne bouge l'eau est si loin on l'entend à peine... Pourtant elle finit par entourer la substance rétive, celle-ci peu à peu devient une presqu'île, puis une île, puis un îlot, qui finit par être submergé à son tour, comme s'il s'était finalement dissous dans l'océan s'étendant à perte de vue...
[I could illustrate the second approach using the image of a nut that needs to be opened. The first analogy that came to mind earlier is that you soak the nut in a softening liquid – water, why not? – and occasionally rub it to help it penetrate better. Otherwise, you let time do its work. The shell softens over the weeks and months – when the time is right, a gentle squeeze is all it takes, and the shell opens like that of a perfectly ripe avocado! Or, you can let the nut ripen in the sun and rain, and perhaps even under the winter frosts. When the time is right, a delicate sprout will have emerged from the heart of the nut, playfully piercing the shell – or rather, the shell will have opened itself, allowing it to pass through.
The image that came to me a few weeks ago was different again; the unknown thing I was trying to understand appeared to me as some expanse of earth or compact marl, reluctant to be penetrated. One can try with pickaxes or crowbars or even jackhammers: that's the first approach, the "chisel" approach (with or without a hammer). The other is that of the sea. The sea advances imperceptibly and silently; nothing seems to break, nothing moves; the water is so far away you can barely hear it... Yet it eventually surrounds the resistant substance, which gradually becomes a peninsula, then an island, then an islet, which is finally submerged in turn, as if it had ultimately dissolved into the ocean stretching as far as the eye can see...]
Alexander Grothendieck, Récoltes et Semailles, troisième partie, note 122
Devenez-vous-même ! C'est cette joie du devenir soi que vous trouvez dans toutes les pensées de type vitaliste. Quelle que soit l'abomination du monde, il y a que quelque chose qu'on ne pourra pas vous retirer par quoi vous êtes invincible. C'est surtout pas votre égoïsme, ce n'est pas votre petit plaisir d'être moi. C'est quelque chose de bien plus grandiose. Ce sera ce type de joie, de joie du devenir soi. "Que cette joie grandisse": voilà la formule de l'optimisme subjectif. Et que cette joie grandisse ! C'est-à-dire qu'elle devienne la joie de plus en plus de gens. Et cela ne veut pas dire que le monde ira mieux. Cela ne veut pas dire qu'il y aura moins d'abominations. Il ne s'agit pas de dire que les abominations vont me laisser indifférent. Sur tous ces points, Leibniz s'est merveilleusement exprimé dans le texte auquel je vous renvoie : "La profession de foi du philosophe". Être content du monde. Cela ne veut pas dire du tout soigner son égoïsme. Cela veut dire trouver en soi la force de résister à tout ce qui est abominable. Et trouver en soi la force de supporter l'abominable quand il vous arrive. Mais il faut savoir qu'il vaut mieux savoir être digne de ce qui vous arrive. Il faut savoir, il vaut mieux savoir être digne de ce qui vous arrive, que ce soit un grand malheur ou que ce soit un grand bonheur. Parce que si vous arrivez à être digne de ce qui vous arrive, à ce moment-là vous saurez très bien qu'est-ce qui est inimportant dans ce qui vous arrive et qu'est-ce qui est important dans ce qui vous arrive. Ce n'est pas forcément ce qu'on croit. Être digne de ce qui arrive, c'est ça le vitalisme.
[Become yourself! It is this joy of becoming oneself that you find in all forms of vitalist thinking. Whatever the abominations of the world, there is something that cannot be taken from you, by which you are invincible. It is above all not your egoism, not your petty pleasure of being me. It is something far more grandiose. It will be this kind of joy – the joy of becoming oneself. "Let this joy grow": such is the formula of subjective optimism. And let this joy grow! That is to say, let it become the joy of more and more people. And this does not mean that the world will improve. It does not mean there will be fewer abominations. It is not a matter of saying that abominations will leave me indifferent. On all these points, Leibniz expressed himself marvellously in the text to which I refer you: "The Philosopher's Profession of Faith". To be content with the world. This does not at all mean cultivating one's egoism. It means finding within oneself the strength to resist everything that is abominable. And finding within oneself the strength to bear the abominable when it befalls you. But one must know – it is better to know how to be worthy of what happens to you, whether it be a great misfortune or a great happiness. For if you manage to be worthy of what happens to you, you will then know very well what is unimportant in what happens to you and what is important in what happens to you. It is not necessarily what one might think. To be worthy of what comes to pass – that is vitalism.]
Gille Deleuze, lecture at Paris-Vincennes University, 7 April 1987
Also mit kühl bleiben ist hier nichts gemacht. Hier muss man wirklich dieselbe Hitze erreichen, eigentlich die der Komponist erreicht hat, als er es komponiert hat. Danach kommt erst der richtige Interpret, der durch sein gefülltes Herz sozusagen, sein starkes Gefühl mit dem, was er singt, ganz von alleine in eine andere Sphäre gerät. Er muss nur nicht mit dem Kopf denken, wie das so viele Hörer denken, dass ich das tue, dass man sich vorher hinsetzt und sagt, hm, wie mache ich das jetzt? Farbe es so und so, damit der Ausdruck so und so kommt. Nein, das müsste sich eigentlich von alleine herstellen. Wenn die Stimme wendig genug ist, wenn sie gehorcht, sie muss gehorchten, den feinsten Gedanken hier mehr haben. Schon ist es anders. Man muss gar nichts dazutun eigentlich.
[Keeping one's cool achieves nothing here. Here one must truly reach the same heat – in fact, the very heat the composer reached when he composed it. Only after that does the true interpreter emerge: through his filled heart, so to speak, his strong feeling for what he is singing, he arrives quite of his own accord in another sphere. He must simply not think with his head, as so many listeners imagine I do – that one sits down beforehand and says, hmm, how shall I do this now? Colour it thus and so, so that the expression comes out thus and so. No, that ought really to come about of its own accord. When the voice is supple enough, when it obeys – and it must obey, to harbour here the finest thoughts all the more. And at once it is different. One need add nothing at all, really.]
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Paroles ultimes (2013) by Bruno Monsaingeon
Madam, I have come from a country where people are hanged if they talk.
Leonhard Euler, in Berlin, to the Queen Mother of Prussia, on his return from Russia; quoted in Science in Russian Culture: A History to 1860 by Alexander Vucinich
You cannot impose a culture from the top – it must come from under. It grows out of the soil, out of the people, out of their daily life and work. It is a spontaneous expression of their joy in life, of their joy in work, and if this joy does not exist, the culture will not exist. Joy is a spiritual quality, an impalpable quality; that too cannot be forced. It must be an inevitable state of mind, born of the elementary processes of life, a by-product of natural human growth.
Herbert Read, A Civilization From Under
Kierkegaard's life was in every sense that of a saint. He is perhaps the most real saint of modern times.
Herbert Read, A Coat Of Many Colours
I believe that the poet is necessarily an anarchist, and that he must oppose all organised conceptions of the State, not only those which we inherit from the past, but equally those which are imposed on people in the name of the future.
Herbert Read, Poetry and Anarchism
For Aldo Andreotti, a mathematician of impeccable taste whose work added further luster to the extraordinary Italian tradition in geometry.
Dedication of notes on Mumford–Tate domains by Mark Green, Phillip Griffiths and Matt Kerr
Ибо мир говорит: «Имеешь потребности, а потому насыщай их, ибо имеешь права такие же, как и у знатнейших и богатейших людей. Не бойся насыщать их, но даже приумножай» — вот нынешнее учение мира. В этом и видят свободу. И что же выходит из сего права на приумножение потребностей? У богатых уединение и духовное самоубийство, а у бедных — зависть и убийство [...]
[For the world says: "You have needs, therefore satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the noblest and richest men. Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even increase them" – this is the current teaching of the world. And in this they see freedom. But what comes of this right to increase one's needs? For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder [...]]
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Sich mit wenigem begnügen ist schwer, sich mit vielem begnügen noch schwerer.
[To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, even harder.]
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorismen
Uomo. – Un sudicio impasto di schiavitù e di tirannia, di feticismo e di paura, di vanità e di ignoranza.
La più grande offesa che si possa dare a l'asino credo che sia quella di chiamarlo uomo.
Donna. – La più brutale tiranna di tutte le bestie schiave. La più grande vittima che striscia sulla terra. Ma la più colpevole – dopo l'uomo e il cane – meritevole di tutti i suoi guai. Sarei davvero curioso di sapere che cosa pensano di me quando le bacio.
[Man: A filthy paste of servitude, tyranny, fetishism, fear, vanity – and ignorance. The greatest offence one can commit against an ass is to call it a man.
Woman: The most brutal of enslaved beasts. The greatest victim shuffling on earth. And, after man, the most responsible for her problems. I'd be curious to know what goes through her mind when I kiss her.]
Renzo Novatore, Le mie sentenze
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
Gaius Helen Mohiam, Dune by Frank Herbert
Ich denke an die besondere innere Verwandtschaft der deutschen Sprache mit der Sprache der Griechen und deren Denken. Das besätigen mir heute immer wieder die Franzosen. Wenn sie zu denken anfangen, sprechen sie deutsch; sie versichern, sie kämen in ihrer Sprache nicht durch.
[I am thinking of the special inner affinity of the German language with the language of the Greeks and their thinking. The French confirm this to me again and again today. When they begin to think, they speak German; they assure me that they cannot get through in their own language.]
Martin Heidegger, interview in Der Spiegel, 23 September 1966 (published 31 May 1976)