“What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.
As translated by Michael Hamburger”
Hyperion
Original: (de) Immerhin hat das den Staat zur Hölle gemacht, daß ihn der Mensch zu seinem Himmel machen wollte.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Friedrich Hölderlin 16
German poet 1770–1843Related quotes
Torsten Manns interview <!-- p. 40 -->
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
Context: Now let's get this Devil business straight, once and for all. To begin at the beginning: the notion of God, one might say, has changed aspect over the years, until it has either become so vague that it has faded away altogether or else has turned into something entirely different. For me, hell has always been a most suggestive sort of place; but I've never regarded it as being located anywhere else than on earth. Hell is created by human beings — on earth!
What I believed in those days — and believed in for a long time — was the existence of a virulent evil, in no way dependent upon environmental or hereditary factors. Call it original sin or whatever you like — anyway an active evil, of which human beings, as opposed to animals, have a monopoly. Our very nature, qua human beings, is that inside us we always carry around destructive tendencies, conscious or unconscious, aimed both at ourselves and at the outside world.
As a materialization of this virulent, indestructible, and — to us — inexplicable and incomprehensble evil, I manufactured a personage possessing the diabolical traits of a mediaeval morality figure. In various contexts I'd made it into a sort of private game to have a diabolic figure hanging around. His evil was one of the springs in my watch-works. And that's all there is to the devil-figure in my early films... Unmotivated cruelty is something which never ceases to fascinate me; and I'd very much like to know the reason for it. Its source is obscure and I'd very much like to get at it.
“Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.”
"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)
“Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.”
Book III, Ode 29, lines 69–72.
Imitation of Horace (1685)
Context: Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
Jean Todt, Ferrari team boss, cited in: Planet-F1 (2006) "Todt and Montezemolo hail 'legend' Schumi". on Planet-F1. September 12, 2006 (no longer online)
“This has always been the strength of the United States”
Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), pp. 224–225
Context: In the United States, minority populations were never an indigestible mass—with the major exceptions of the one ethnic group that did not come here voluntarily (African Americans) and those who were here when Europeans arrived (American Indians). The rest all came, clustered and dispersed, and added new cultural layers to the general society. This has always been the strength of the United States. In much of Europe, for example, Muslims have retained religious and national identities distinct from the general population, and the general population has given them little encouragement to blend. The strength of their own culture has therefore been overwhelming.