I'm not Stiller (1955)
“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”
“If you can't win, make sure you don't lose.”
In They said It: Johan Cruyff ( FIFA.com, 25 April 2014 http://www.fifa.com/news/y=2014/m=4/news=they-said-it-johan-cruyff-2323958.html).
Source: The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History
Written by Antonio Fresco, Wes Joseph, and Devin O'Bannon
Song lyrics, Lose Myself https://genius.com/Antonio-fresco-lose-myself-lyrics (2017)
On his initial reaction, as a student, to the works of Shakespeare, The Washington University Record http://record.wustl.edu/archive/1996/01-25-96/1834.html (25 January 1996)
“The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.”
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: The world in which we live is very nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact... that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world which would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction.... in a world without spiritual or intellectual order, nothing is unbelievable; nothing is predictable, and therefore, nothing comes as a particular surprise.... The medieval world was... not without a sense of order. Ordinary men and women... had no doubt that there was such a design, and their priests were well able, by deduction from a handful of principles, to make it, if not rational, at least coherent.... The situation we are presently in is much different.... sadder and more confusing and certainly more mysterious.... There is no consistent, integrated conception of the world which serves as the foundation on which our edifice of belief rests. And therefore... we are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.
“Succes is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can't lose.”
The Road Ahead (1995)
Variant: Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.
“The Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/sanatorium1.htm
His father, Living things
“Money is like a sixth sense - and you can't make use of the other five without it.”
NY Times Magazine (October 18, 1958)
