Interview in 'The Observer' (25 January 1931), p.17, column 3
“Paradoxes explain everything. Since they do, they cannot be explained.”
Volume 1, Ch. 9
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)
An die Musik (pp. 159-160; first published in The Western Humanities Review (1961) Vol. 15, No. 3)
Short fiction, Orsinian Tales (1976)
Letter to Macvey Napier (5 November 1841)
“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions”
Letter to the House Committee on Un-American Activities http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6454 (HUAC) of the US House of Representatives (19 May 1952)
Context: I am ready and willing to testify before the representatives of our Government as to my own opinions and my own actions, regardless of any risks or consequences to myself.
But I am advised by counsel that if I answer the committee’s questions about myself, I must also answer questions about other people and that if I refuse to do so, I can be cited for contempt. My counsel tells me that if I answer questions about myself, I will have waived my rights under the fifth amendment and could be forced legally to answer questions about others. This is very difficult for a layman to understand. But there is one principle that I do understand: I am not willing, now or in the future, to bring bad trouble to people who, in my past association with them, were completely innocent of any talk or any action that was disloyal or subversive. I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form and if I had ever seen any I would have considered it my duty to have reported it to the proper authorities. But to hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.
Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 39)
Discussion with Jacob Burckhardt, League of Nation commissioner. Quoted in Norman Rich, Hitler's War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State, and the Course of Expansion pg. 126 https://books.google.com/books?id=1nPPbpXUZA0C&pg=PA126&dq=hitler+is+against+russia+the+west&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR3PP6n5bXAhVC6CYKHTKJB3EQ6AEISjAG#v=onepage&q=hitler%20is%20against%20russia%20the%20west&f=false
1930s
“You mustn't ask me to explain everything I do. I can't. That's that.”
Encountering Directors interview (1969)
Context: You mustn't ask me to explain everything I do. I can't. That's that. How can I say why at a certain moment I needed this. How can I explain why I needed a confusion of colors?
