Sam > Sam's Quotes

“If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Insufferable Gaucho

“Suddenly drawing courage from nowhere, he decided he was not going to die. Now or never, he thought, and began to swim back up. It seemed to take forever to reach the surface and then he could hardly manage to keep himself afloat, but he did. That afternoon he learnt to swim without arms, like an eel or a snake. In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Distant Star

“Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and hazard, deception and devilry, in this world. How much money did the devil make by gulling Eve?”
― Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man

“But truth is like a thrashing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the way.”
― Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man

“Ensuring that we have a well-informed public citizenry is important for a well-functioning democracy, and that in turn requires an active and diverse media.”
― Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future

“Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

“It still remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”
― Aristotle

“I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time

“Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666