“People with the same education as my own, speaking the same words that I do, loving the same books, the same music, the same paintings, are by no means immune from the danger of turning into monsters and doing things we would not have thought possible among the people of our own day, apart from a few pathological exceptions. If they are not immune, Why should I be so confident of my own immunity?”
Sketchbook 1946-1949
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Max Frisch 67
Swiss playwright and novelist 1911–1991Related quotes
“I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.”
Source: The Collected Stories
“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
Response to the question "What is behind this mysterious math-music link?"
Music + Math: A Common Equation?, 1988
“Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.”
“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.”
Address in Baltimore, Maryland http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=88871 (18 April 1864)
1860s
Context: The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1886/jan/21/first-eight in the House of Commons (21 January 1886).
1880s