Cannot Quotes (page 78)
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What right have you to pray for me? I need no intercessor, I shall manage alone. The prayers of a wretch I might accept, but no one else’s, not even a saint’s. I cannot bear your bothering about my salvation. If I apprehend salvation and flee it, your prayers are merely an indiscretion. Invest them elsewhere; in any case, we do not serve the same gods. If mine are impotent, there is every reason to believe yours are no less so. Even assuming they are as you imagine them, they would...
Emile M. Cioran
The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle? a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak? and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as...
Mikhail Bakunin
I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music.
Ernest Gellner
Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour. Than languish in his slow-chapt power. Let us roll all our strength and all. Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife. Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun. Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Andrew Marvell
