Gary Chapin > Gary's Quotes

“In the absence of genius there is always craftsmanship.”
― Robert Harris, The Ghost

“The deeper we go in search of causes, the more of them we find, and each cause taken singly or whole series of causes present themselves to us as equally correct in themselves, and equally false in their insignificance in comparison with the enormity of the event, and equally false in their incapacity (without the participation of all other coinciding causes) to produce the event that took place.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“There are two sides to each man’s life: his personal life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental, swarmlike life, where man inevitably fulfills the laws prescribed for him. Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Germans can be self-assured on the basis of an abstract idea—science, that is, an imaginary knowledge of the perfect truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he considers himself personally, in mind as well as body, irresistibly enchanting for men as well as women. An Englishman is self-assured on the grounds that he is a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore, as an Englishman, he always knows what he must do, and knows that everything he does as an Englishman is unquestionably good. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and others. A Russian is self-assured precisely because he does not know anything and does not want to know anything, because he does not believe it possible to know anything fully. A German is self-assured worst of all, and most firmly of all, and most disgustingly of all, because he imagines that he knows the truth, science, which he has invented himself, but which for him is the absolute truth.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“Toto did not really care whether he was in Kansas or the Land of Oz so long as Dorothy was with him; but he knew the little girl was unhappy, and that made him unhappy too.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“It is such an uncomfortable feeling to know one is a fool.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“You people with hearts,' he said once, 'have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“Faith is hoping that the wizard behind the curtain will explain what the flying monkeys had to do with you realizing that there is no place like home.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I

“But if you stay, no part of this comm gets to decide that any part of this comm is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life.”
― John Holt

“One must have tradition in oneself, to hate it properly.”
― Theodor W. Adorno

“Alone, we are doomed, but by the same token, we’ve learned that people are impossible, even the ones we love most—especially the ones we love most: they’re damaged, prickly and set in their ways.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

“To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Kindness may look for something in return, but that doesn’t make it any less kind.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“It’s so simple,” she says. “So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don’t see it. So the authority of people is bankrupt.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“This is what I have learned these past six years, as opposed to what is taught in Oxford: the power of unreason. Everyone said—by everyone I mean people like me—we all said, ‘Oh, he’s a terrible fellow, Hitler, but he’s not necessarily all bad. Look at his achievements. Put aside this awful medieval anti-Jew stuff: it will pass.’ But the point is, it won’t pass. You can’t isolate it from the rest. It’s there in the mix. And if the anti-Semitism is evil, it’s all evil. Because if they’re capable of that, they’re capable of anything.”
― Robert Harris, Munich

“The original is unfaithful to the translation.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“One day when she ventured upon a bit of criticism, precisely about an azure-tinted poplar, he made her go to nature and note for herself the delicate bluishness of the foliage. It was true enough, the tree was blue; but in her inmost heart she did not surrender, and condemned reality”
― Émile Zola, Delphi Complete Works of Emile Zola

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”
― Epictetus