Poems List

Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're still-born.

The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went.

He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it.

Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like -- and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.

It's no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself.

Scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.

No one has ever said it, but how painfully true it is that the poor have us always with them.

No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve.

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.

When we begin relying on the Internet for all of our news and information we will turn into a nation of zombies.

The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.

If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?

Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

Man may be defined as the animal that can say I, that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.

The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while ones own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standardevery action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. Patriotism is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by patriotism I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one's own nation, which is the concern with the nation's spiritual as much as with its material welfare --never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become Golems, they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.

Happiness is a how, not a what: a talent, not an object

Love is stronger than violence.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.