Walker Percy: Man

Walker Percy was Southern philosophical novelist. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Walker Percy: 110 quotes4 likes

“I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

Source: The Moviegoer (1961)

“You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.”

Walker Percy

Source: Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

“Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.”

Walker Percy book Love in the Ruins

Source: Love in the Ruins

“Where does one start with a theory of man if the theory of man as an organism in an environment doesn't work and all the attributes of man which were accepted in the old modern age are now called into question: his soul, mind, freedom, will, Godlikeness?
There is only one place to start: the place where man's singularity is there for all to see and cannot be called into question, even in a new age in which everything else is in dispute.
That singularity is language…”

Walker Percy book The Message in the Bottle

The Message in the Bottle (1975)

“What a man can be the next minute bears no relation to what he is or what he was the minute before.”

Walker Percy book The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman (1966)

“Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?
Is it possible that a theory of man is nothing more nor less than a theory of the speaking creatures?”

Walker Percy book The Message in the Bottle

The Message in the Bottle (1975)