"After all, if you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you also have to believe that no one was ever improved by a book (or a play or a movie). You have to believe, in other words, that all art is morally trivial and that, consequently, all education is morally irrelevant. No one, not even a university professor, really believes that."

--

Source : New York Times Magazine, March 28, 1971.

Irving Kristol

#Art Quotes #Believe Quotes #Book Quotes

“Where the world comes in my way - and it comes in my way everywhere - I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but - my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.”
“It is useless, sisters, for you to attempt the duties of your exalted callings . . . without the constant companionship of the Spirit of God.”
“The Lord doesn't put us through this test just to give us a test: He does it because the process will change us.”
“My father was a good preacher and had a little bit of drama.”
“The word "necessary" is miserably applied. It disordereth families, and overturneth government, by being so abused. Remember that children and fools want everything because they want judgment to distinguish; and therefore there is no stronger evidence of a crazy understanding than the making too large a catalogue of things necessary.”
“And I was having too much fun to stop now.”
“I tend to think that good and evil exist and that the quantity in each of us is unchangeable. The moral character of people is set, fixed until death.”
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

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