Len > Len 's Quotes

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”
― Thomas Wolfe, God's Lonely Man

“Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.”
― Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

“You can't go home again”
― Thomas Wolfe

“A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world.

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

This is a moment:”
― Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

“...he was like a man who stands upon a hill above the town he had left, yet does not say 'The town is near,' but turns his eyes upon the distant soaring ranges.”
― Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

“O lost,
And by the wind grieved,
Ghost,
Come back again.”
― Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

“A cult is a religion with no political power.”
― Tom Wolfe

“Everybody, everybody everywhere, has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

“Bullshit reigns.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

“You're either on the bus or off the bus.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

“America is a wonderful country! I mean it! No honest writer would challenge that statement! The human comedy never runs out of material! it never lets you down!”
― Tom Wolfe

“In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, old people in America had prayed, "Please God, don't let me look poor." In the year 2000, they prayed, "Please God, don't let me look old." Sexiness was equated with youth, and youth ruled. The most widespread age-related disease was not senility but juvenility.
”
― Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
― E.L. Doctorow, Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 2nd Series

“It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction.”
― E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

“We are all good friends. Friendship is what endures. Shared ideals, respect for the whole character of a human being. ”
― E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”
― Eugene Debs

“I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.”
― Eugene Debs, Writings of Eugene V. Debs

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.”
― Eugene Victor Debs

“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene V. Debs

“While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene V. Debs

“Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches

“Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.”
― Eugene V. Debs

“I may not be able to say all I think, but I am not going to say anything I do not think.”
― Eugene V Debs

“I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Eugene V. Debs Speaks

“I would not be a Moses to lead you into the Promised Land, because if I could lead you into it, someone else could lead you out of it.”
― Eugene V Debs

“Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth.”
― Eugene Debs

“The people can have anything they want, the only problem is they do not want anything.”
― Eugene Victor Debs

“While there is a lower class, I am in it.
While there is a criminal element, I am of it.
While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene Debs