"Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of us will never know love"

“Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good!”

“I would like to paint the way a bird sings.”

“Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome,or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die.”

“A poet articulating the dreads and horrors of our time is necessary in order to make readers understand what is happening, really understand it, not just know about it but feel it: and should be accompanied by a willingness on the part of those who write it to take additional action towards stopping the great miseries which they record.”

Source : Denise Levertov (1992). “New & Selected Essays”, p.146, New Directions Publishing

“Everybody in America is angry about something.”

“A metaphysical conclusion is either a false conclusion or a concealed experimental conclusion.”

Source : Hermann von Helmholtz, David Cahan (1995). “Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays”, p.326, University of Chicago Press

“There is more difference within the sexes than between them.”

Source : Mother and Son ch. 10 (1955)

“The movies I make and my interests are always about pushing the technology as far as we can in support of telling great stories and showing an audience things they haven't seen before.”