Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that’s the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn’t anybody laughing. I haven’t heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), Chapter Five.
L’homme doit être content, dit-on; mais de quoi?
Man ought to be content, it is said; but with what?
François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), Pensées, Remarques, et Observations de Voltaire; ouvrage posthume (1802), p. 232.
You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work.
J. R. R. Tolkien, speaking on the central figure of the One Ring in his books The Lord of the Rings, in a letter to his publisher (July 31, 1947); published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien(1981), Letter 109.
Il est bien malaisé (puisqu’il faut enfin m’expliquer)
d’ôter à des insensés des chaînes qu’ils révèrent.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
Voltaire — François-Marie Arouet (1694 – 1778) — Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Troisième Entretien.
Cowards are nice, they’re interesting, they’re gentle, they wouldn’t think of shooting down people in a parade from a tower. They want to live, so they can see their kids. They’re very brave.
William Saroyan, Madness in the Family (1988).
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
Zora Neale Hurston, There Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Ch. 3, p. 21.
A prudent man does not open an umbrella for one drop of rain.
William Saroyan, Madness in the Family (1988).
It is a stern fact of history that no nation that rushed to the abyss ever turned back. No ever, in the long history of the world.
Taylor Caldwell, “Honoria” (1957); republished in The New American, Vol. 19, No. 20 (October 6, 2003).
Propaganda must be total. The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal — the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing. Modern propaganda must utilize all of these media. There is no propaganda as long as one makes use, in sporadic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or a radio program there, organizes a few meetings and lectures, writes a few slogans on walls: that is not propaganda.
Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1962).
I am fascinated by the idea that our civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.
Werner Herzog, Herzog on Herzog (2002).