„Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.“
— Thomas Sowell American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author 1930
Quotes about literature
A collection of quotes on the topic of literature.
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„I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.“
— Flannery O’Connor American novelist, short story writer 1925 - 1964
Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
„Literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.“
— James Baldwin (1924-1987) writer from the United States 1924 - 1987
„Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.“
— Cassandra Clare, book Clockwork Angel
Source: Clockwork Angel
„Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.“
— Fernando Pessoa, book The Book of Disquiet
A literatura é a maneira mais agradável de ignorar a vida.
Variant: To write is to forget. Literature is the pleasantest way of ignoring life.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 116
„A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive"; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture — in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.“
— Andrea Dworkin Feminist writer 1946 - 2005
Speech at Queen's College, City University of New York (March 12, 1975). "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage", ch. 5, published in Our Blood (1976).
„Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses:
"1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic.
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.“
— Arthur Conan Doyle, book A Study in Scarlet
Source: A Study in Scarlet
„The world itself is a great fusing pot, out of which the One Humanity is emerging. This necessitates a drastic change in our methods of presenting history and geography. Science has always been universal. Great art and literature have always belonged to the world. It is upon these facts that the education to be given to the children of the world must be built - upon our similarities, our creative achievements, our spiritual idealisms, and our points of contact. Unless this is done, the wounds of the nations will never be healed, and the barriers which have existed for centuries will never be removed.“
— Alice A. Bailey esoteric, theosophist, writer 1880 - 1949
Source: Education in the New Age (1954), p.46
„If you search the scientific literature on evolution, and if you focus your search on the question of how molecular machines—the basis of life—developed, you find an eerie and complete silence. The complexity of life’s foundation has paralyzed science’s attempt to account for it; molecular machines raise an as-yet-impenetrable barrier to Darwinism’s universal reach.“
— Michael J. Behe American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate 1952
Source: Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), p. (1996).
„Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.“
— Arundhati Roy Indian novelist, essayist 1961
Source: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2005), p. 86
Source: War Talk
„The treatises of Darboux (1842–1917) and Bianchi (1856–1928) on surface theory are among the great works in the mathematical literature. They are: G. Darboux, Théorie générale des surfaces, Tome 1 (1887), 2 (1888), 3 (1894), 4 (1896), and later editions and reprints. L. Bianchi. Lezioni di Geometria Differenziale, Pisa 1894; German translation by Lukat, Lehrbuch der Differentialgeometrie, 1899. The subject is basically local surface theory.“
— Shiing-Shen Chern mathematician (1911–2004), born in China and later acquiring U.S. citizenship; made fundamental contributions to differ… 1911 - 2004
[1991, Surface Theory with Darboux and Bianchi, Miscellanea Mathematica, 59–69, Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-76709-8_4]
„On graduating from the school, a studious young man who would withstand the tedium and monotony of his duties has no choice but to lose himself in some branch of science or literature completely irrelevant to his assignment.“
— Charles-Augustin de Coulomb French physicist 1736 - 1806
as quoted by [C. Stewart Gillmor, Coulomb and the Evolution of Physics and Engineering in Eighteenth-century France, Princeton University Press, 1971, 069108095X, 255-261]
„My weapon is literature“
— Chinua Achebe Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic 1930 - 2013
„To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.“
— Fernando Pessoa, book The Book of Disquiet
Source: The Book of Disquiet
„Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement… Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation.“
— Lynn Margulis American evolutionary biologist 1938 - 2011
Source: Acquiring Genomes: A Theory Of The Origin Of Species
„The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.“
— Eleanor Roosevelt American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States 1884 - 1962
„We must make [the Honour School of Chinese] sufficiently broad and humane to satisfy those whose interests are not narrowly philological […] by presenting Chinese literature as a part of our total human heritage; [and] we must always insist that the Honour School should be based on the study of literature.“
— David Hawkes (sinologist) British sinologist 1923 - 2009
Source: Inaugural Lecture, Oxford, 1961, p. 27
„Our task is not the training of interpreters, nor the indulgence of exotic tastes, nor the revelation of some arcane Truth which the Orient possesses but we do not, nor the mastery of a sterile Asiatic scholasticism, but literature. If universities are not to teach language by means of literature—by means of books which are intrinsically worth-while reading, I for one do not want to be a university teacher.“
— David Hawkes (sinologist) British sinologist 1923 - 2009
Source: Inaugural Lecture, Oxford, 1961, p. 27