Needed Quotes (page 98)
There is no need," Capricorn finally began, raising his voice, "for me to explain to most of you why the three prisoners you see there are to be punished. For the rest, it is enough for me to say it is for treachery, loose talk, and stupidity. One may argue, of course, over whether or not stupidity is a crime deserving of death. I think it is, for it can have exactly the same consequences as treachery.
Cornelia Funke
If the ethical - that is, social morality - is the highest and if there is in a person no residual incommensurability in some way such that this incommensurability is not evil then no categories are needed other than what Greek philosophy had... and what their wisdom amounts to is the beautiful proposition that basically everything is the same.
Soren Kierkegaard
We need to be virtually bludgeoned into detachment from our daily lives, our habits and mental laziness, which conceal from us the strangeness of the world. Without a fresh virginity of mind, without a new and healthy awareness of existential reality, there can be no theatre and no art either; the real must be in a way dislocated, before it can be re-integrated.
Eugene Ionesco
There are people, primarily women!--who are what I call 'conduits of emotion.' In their company, the half dead can come alive. They need not be beautiful women or girls. It's a matter of blood warmth. The integrity of the spirit." He turned the page of his sketch pad and began anew, whistling thinly through his teeth."Thus an icy-cold soul, in the presence of one so blessed, can regain something of his lost self. Sometimes!
Joyce Carol Oates
They feed back exactly what is given them. Because they do not believe in words - words are for "typeheads," Chester Anderson tells them, and a thought which needs words is just one more of those ego trips - their only proficient vocabulary is in the society's platitudes. As it happens I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language, and I am not optimistic about children who will settle for saying, to indicate that their...
Joan Didion
If my story means anything, it is that people are very often too quick to judge a person by the way they look or by their quirks of behavior. I may not have quite the same sense of humour as other people, but at least I do have a sense of humour, and I've needed it! As a society, we seem to have very tight restrictions on what is considered "normal.
Susan Boyle