Martyn > Martyn's Quotes

“There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.”
― Tony Benn

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
― Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”
― Bertrand Russell

“We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”
― Noam Chomsky

“When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Le diable et le bon dieu

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
― Albert Camus

“L'enfer, c'est les autres.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Huis clos: suivi de Les Mouches

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I don't like this world. I definitely do not like it. The society in which I live disgusts me; advertising sickens me; computers make me puke.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Whatever

“I've lived so little that I tend to imagine I'm not going to die; it seems improbable
that human existence can be reduced to so little; one imagines, in spite of oneself,
that sooner or later something is bound to happen. A big mistake. A life can just as
well be both empty and short. The days slip by indifferently, leaving neither trace nor
memory; and then all of a sudden they stop.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Whatever

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“If life is an illusion it's a pretty painful one.”
― Michel Houellebecq

“There's more to life than books, you know. But not much more.”
― Morrissey

“This world, I am afraid, is designed for crashing bores.”
― Morrissey

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”
― Karl Marx

“If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody come sit next to me.”
― Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name.”
― Terry Eagleton

“A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.”
― Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction

“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success”
― Ian Fleming

“Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.”
― Ian Fleming, The Spy Who Loved Me

“Look with all your eyes, look.”
― Jules Verne

“One must see everything.”
― Raymond Queneau

“If in this world there is one misery having no relief, it is the pressure on the heart from the Incommunicable. And if another Sphinx should arise to propose another enigma to man–saying, what burden is that which only is insupportable by human fortitude? I should answer at once: It is the burden of the Incommunicable”
― Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

“Question your tea spoons.”
― Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx