“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

—  Sylvia Plath , book The Bell Jar

Variant: If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.
Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 8

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flyin…" by Sylvia Plath?
Sylvia Plath photo
Sylvia Plath 342
American poet, novelist and short story writer 1932–1963

Related quotes

Max Frisch photo

“One can be resolved to promote good, or one can be resolved to be a good person- Two separate things that are mutually exclusive”

Max Frisch (1911–1991) Swiss playwright and novelist

Sketchbook 1946-1949

R. G. Collingwood photo

“The ideal and the real are not mutually exclusive. A thing may be ideal and also real.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Source: "Some Perplexities about time: with an attempted solution" (1925), p. 150

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“In journalism school, what they want you to be is a camera. A trained, objective, detached professional. Accurate, polished, and observant. They want you to believe that the new and you are always two separate things. Killers and reporters are mutually exclusive. Whatever the story, this isn't about you.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Francis S. Collins photo

“Faith and reason are not, as many seem to be arguing today, mutually exclusive. They never have been. The letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament defines faith as ‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of the things not seen.”

Francis S. Collins (1950) Geneticist; Director of the National Institutes of Health

Source: Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith

“The basic rules of classification are
- Each characteristic of division must produce at least two classes
- Only one principle of division must be used at a time, to produce mutually exclusive classes.
- The species of any genius must be completely exhaustive of their parent class.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 2.

Swami Vivekananda photo

“Do one thing at a Time, and while doing it put your whole Soul into it to the exclusion of all else.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher
Karl Kautsky photo

“I expect that soon the failure of the attempts to transform Russia into a Socialist community by methods of dictatorship will become apparent to all. The failure of the Communist experiment in Russia, however, does not mean the downfall of the Bolshevik regime. The two things are not necessarily linked together. Nay, they are mutually exclusive. The same backwardness that makes Socialism in Russia at the present time impossible favors the strengthening of despotism once it has taken root.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. IV, Democracy and Dictatorship
“Marxism and Bolshevism: Democracy and Dictatorship,” (1934) http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/bolshevism/index.htm

Max Barry photo

“By this action, the Government has proved that so long as it exists, none of us are truly free. Government and freedom are mutually exclusive. So if we value freedom, there's only one conclusion. It's time to get rid of this leftover relic we call Government.”

Max Barry book Jennifer Government

Source: Jennifer Government (2003), Chapter 53, page 202

Joe Biden photo

“The one thing I want my kids to remember about me is that I was an athlete. The hell with the rest of this stuff.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Barack Obama Reveals How He Popped the Question to Joe Biden, People Magazine, August 25, 2008, 2008-08-26 http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20221223_2,00.html,
2000s

Booker T. Washington photo

“In all things social as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

As quoted in speech by Edward de Veaux Morrell https://cdn.loc.gov/service/rbc/lcrbmrp/t2609/t2609.pdf (April 1904)
Variant: In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Related topics