“This is so American, man: either make something your god and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.”

— David Foster Wallace

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "This is so American, man: either make something your god and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it." by David Foster Wallace?

David Foster Wallace 185

American fiction writer and essayist 1962–2008

Related quotes

“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they’ve slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, ‘Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!’ And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

“When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there's either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world.
And there's nothing wrong with my skills.”

Jonathan Maberry (1958) writer

Source: Patient Zero

“Generally speaking, a temple is a 'Place of Worship'. It is also called the 'House of God'. However, for a Hindu, it is both and yet still more. It is the whole cosmos in the miniature form.”

Swaraj Prakash Gupta (1931–2007) Indian archaeologist and art historian

Elements of Indian Art (2002)

“That’s the American Dream: to make your life into something you can sell.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005)

“Everything that is destroyed is either destroyed by itself or by something else.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: Everything that is destroyed is either destroyed by itself or by something else. If the world is destroyed by itself, fire must needs burn of itself and water dry itself. If by something else, it must be either by a body or by something incorporeal. By something incorporeal is impossible; for incorporeal things preserve bodies — nature, for instance, and soul — and nothing is destroyed by a cause whose nature is to preserve it. If it is destroyed by some body, it must be either by those which exist or by others. … But if the world is to be destroyed by other bodies than these it is impossible to say where such bodies are or whence they are to arise.