Howard Fast > Quotes

“A mountain still in the distance can appear as a molehill.”
― Howard Fast, April Morning

“Bagiku, sehari tanpa menulis adalah sehari hilang, terbuang.”
― Howard Fast

“Either you get a chance to be a kid when you are a kid, or you don't grow up.”
― Howard Fast, The Immigrants

“On three things life rests: on right, which is set forth in the Law; on truth, which is set forth in the world; and on the love of one man for another, which is set forth in your heart.”
― Howard Fast, My Glorious Brothers

“There is nothing more important than being a man, just a plain, ordinary, human man. I know you think Spartacus is something more than a man. He isn't. If he were, then he wouldn't be any good at all.
There is no great mystery about Spartacus.”
― Howard Fast, Spartacus

“Let us say that kindness costs me so little and rewards me well.”
― Howard Fast, اسپارتاکوس

“The first rule is never to split your forces unless it is necessary to survival. The second rule is to attack if you are going to fight, and if you are not going to attack, avoid battle. The third rule is to choose the time and place of battle and never leave that choice to the enemy. The fourth rule is to avoid encirclement at all cost. And the final rule is to attack and destroy the enemy where he is weakest.”
― Howard Fast

“I am a man of peace [so he told Mother, but it always appeared to me that he was the most belligerent man of peace I had ever encountered]”
― Howard Fast, April Morning

“Only people who suffer show the ravages of age.”
― Howard Fast, The Immigrants

“السياسة كما كان يردد من وقت لآخر تحتاج إلي مواهب ثلاث لا تتبدل ولا تحتاج إلي أية فضائل وكان يزعم أن الفضيلة حطمت السياسيين أكثر ممن حطمهم أى سبب آخر.
وكان يرتب المواهب الثلاث على هذا النحو : الموهبة الأولى هي القدرة على اختيار الجانب الرابح فإذا ما فشلت هذه ،فالموهبة الثانية هي القدرة على الانسحاب من الجانب الخاسر ، أما الموهبة الثالثة فهى ألا تعادي أحداً”
― Howard Fast, اسپارتاکوس

“Politics, as he occasionally said, required three unchanging talents and
no virtues. More politicians, he claimed, had been destroyed by virtue than by any other cause; and the talents he enumerated in this fashion. The first talent was the ability to choose the winning side. Failing that, the second talent was the ability to extricate oneself from the losing side. And the third talent was never to make an enemy.”
― Howard Fast

“Geronimo [is]...an example of our practice of destroying those who oppose us and then honoring them.”
― Howard Fast, Being Red

“السياسة أكذوبة والتاريخ تسجيل للأكذوبة”
― Howard Fast, اسپارتاکوس

“Man is a part of God, or else he is a beast; and beasts know love and fear and hate and hunger--but not exultation”
― Howard Fast, Citizen Tom Paine

“The easiest way to hide a relationship is not to attempt to hide it.”
― Howard Fast, The Immigrants

“ما هو الجحيم ؟ إن الجحيم يبدأ عندما تصبح الحياة البسيطة الضرورية في الحياة شيئاً رهيباً”
― Howard Fast, اسپارتاکوس

“Your life is nothing, just a little makeshift that you play with for a while, a machine that you put to use. And if something cracks it, then it's cracked, that's all.”
― Howard Fast

“When military men take over, honest men dance to the strings they pull.
Your life is no longer your own.”
― Howard Fast

“When I kissed her, I felt that my heart would tear through my chest for excitement and wonder, and then I felt a good, empty sicknesss, if you can speak of anything in such contradictory terms.”
― Howard Fast, April Morning

“I suppose I have cause you grief and misery at times, but I have never intentionally caused you embarrassment and discomfort.”
― Howard Fast, The Immigrants

“In the Congress of the United States, Cromwell had known a good many men who were possessed of absolute certainty, and this he feared so much that he felt the only real and enduring evil on the face of the earth was unbending certainty, unshakable orthodoxy.”
― Howard Fast, The Dinner Party

“Could be off one of your own boats, Lavette," Whittier said. "The crab I mean." Whittier was hostile, contriving his hostility in witless remarks. Dan said nothing, only thinking that if this small, pompous, foolish man, so uninformed about the essence of his own business, was a measure of the hundred tycoons who ruled the hills of San Francisco, then his own way up would be none too difficult. It came down to money; if you had money, you functioned and you could do without guts or brains; and if you had money, you saw a girl like Jean Sheldon more than once, more than by accident.”
― Howard Fast, The Immigrants

“This experiment may fail, but if it succeeds it can be the most important event of our time--even more important and consequential than this war we have just fought. (...) I had a wife and three children, and they were put to death because a nation of men turned into beasts. I watched that, and I could not have lived through it unless I believed, always, that what can turn into a beast can also turn into a man. We are neither. But if we go to create man, we must be humble. We are the tool, not the craftsman, and if we succeed, we will be less than the result of our work.”
― Howard Fast, The Edge of Tomorrow

“The revolution goes on; a man does not make the revolution, not a thousand men, not an army and not a party; the revolution comes from the people as they reach toward God, and a little of God is in each person and each will not forget it. This it is the revolution when slaves shake their chains and the revolution when a strong man bends toward a weaker and says, "Here, comrade, is my arm." The revolution goes on and nothing stops it; but because the people are seeking what is good, not what is wicked or powerful or cruel or rich or venal, but simply what is good--because of that the people flounder and feel along one dark road after another. The people no more all-seeing than their rulers once were; it is in intention that they differ.”
― Howard Fast

“He found himself smiling and talking politely to people who desired to show their respect and admiration for his uniform-instead of ignoring them and turning away. His sense of separation from and annoyance with these men and women who talked so glibly of war and who had not the faintest notion of what war was ebbed away; and he began to accept the fact that to chatter nonsense with neither knowledge nor perception was the ordinary manner of mankind.”
― Howard Fast, The Immigrants

“The dignity is in the worker, not in the job.”
― Howard Fast, The Immigrants

“أن جميع الرجال حتى البؤساء منهم يختزنون في رؤوسهم ذكريات رقيقة عن الحب والعطف والقبل , وهم يتعلقون بأطراف الحياة حتى لو كانت غير جديرة بأن تعاش ,هاهم في وحدتهم غرباء عن أوطانهم فَر من بين ايديهم الأمل ,وعانوا كثيراً من الألم والقسوة , يعلقون كالحيوانات ويدربهم الآخرون على القتال كي يسفكوا دماء بعضهم في سبيل مسرات الآخرين , مع هذا , وبالرغم منهم يتمسكون بأطراف الحياة !”
― Howard Fast (Author)

“You seem damn sure of yourself for a man your age?"
"I am as old as I can be at my age. I don't know very much, but I know the water.”
― Howard Fast, The Immigrants

“He found himself grinning at her. His nervousness had disappeared, and suddenly he had a sense of his own size, his physical strength, his own brains and being. Four years, he had earned his own bread and keep, fended for himself, had not only remained alive and well but had put together a small fishing fleet of his own, and kept it alive and functioning and fought the wind and the weather and met a payroll of eleven men in his crews-and be damned with the lot of them if he'd go into a funk over which spoon or knife to use.”
― Howard Fast, The Immigrants

“Why, Neph, do they live on? Isn’t it better to be dead, to die quickly and with some honour than to be worked and beaten to death like a beast?”
“No,” Neph answered shortly.
“I don’t understand. I would die and welcome the dark lord Osiris.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Neph said.
“But I tell you I would!”
“Ah, yes, you tell me that. When life is full and sweet and young, as it is with a prince of the Great House, then the thought of surrendering it becomes an easy abstraction. You have so much life that you can be prodigal with it, Moses. But when life hangs by a thread, then by all the gods that be, it is nothing you give up easily! Life is the reason for life, as you will some day learn, and reason enough, you may be sure.”
― Howard Fast, Moses The Epic Story of His Rebellion in the Court of Egypt