Oui interview (1979)
Context: Certification from one source or another seems to be the most important thing to people all over the world. A piece of paper from a school that says you’re smart, a pat on the head from your parents that says you’re good or some reinforcement from your peers that makes you think what you’re doing is worthwhile. People are just waiting around to get certified.
“Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upsidedown: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me; only the haters seem alive.”
2.9
The Moviegoer (1961)
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Walker Percy 55
Southern philosophical novelist 1916–1990Related quotes
Variants (these could be paraphrases or differing translations): The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world.
Source: Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance (1964), p. 230, also in My Life and Views (1968), p. 183
“Nothing seems to me the most potent thing in the world.”
Robert Barry, cited in: Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. New York, Praeger, 1973, p. 40.
Erving Goffman (1971), Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction, p. 38; As quoted by R. D. Laing in The Politics of Experience
1970s-1980s
“It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended upon me now.”
Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), II
Context: It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself.
“The world was collapsing, and the only thing that really mattered to me was that she was alive.”
Source: The Last Olympian
Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 469