“Smugness kills all utopias.”
Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 1 (p. 12)
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James K. Morrow 166
(1947-) science fiction author 1947Related quotes
Letter to Colette, December 28, 1916
1910s
“America… You Kill Me! America kills all of us.”
America...You Kill Me
See also "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." (misattributed to Joseph Stalin)
I'm Sorry Folks (1989)
Context: [Someone in the crowd yells "Freebird"] Please quit yelling that. It's not funny, it's not clever; it's stupid, it's repetitive, why the fuck would you continue to yell that? I'm serious. [The same man yells something back] "Kevin Matthews"; okay, what does that mean, now? Now, what does it mean? I understand where it comes from, so do you. Now, what does it all mean? What is the culmination of yelling that? [The same man yells back again] Jimmy Shorts: he's not here, he's not gonna be here. Now what? Now where are we? We're here at you interrupting me again, you fucking idiot. That's you. You see, we are here at the same point again where you, the fucking peon masses, can once again ruin anyone who tries to do anything because you don't know how to do it on your own! That's where we're fucking at! Once again the useless wastes of fucking flesh that has ruined everything good in this goddamn world! That's where we're at! HITLER HAD THE RIGHT IDEA! HE WAS JUST AN UNDERACHIEVER! KILL 'EM ALL, ADOLF! ALL OF 'EM! JEW, MEXICAN, AMERICAN, WHITE, KILL 'EM ALL! START OVER! THE EXPERIMENT DIDN'T WORK! Rain 40 days, please fucking rain to wash these turds off my fucking life! Wash these human wastes of flesh and bones off this planet! I pray to you, God, to kill these fucking people! [Someone yells out "Freebird" once more] Freebird. [Falls back] And in the beginning there was the word, Freebird. And Freebird would be yelled throughout the centuries. Freebird, the mantra of the moron.
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 312
To Mike Wallace in an ABC-TV-interview in Los Angeles (May 18, 1957). Quoted in LA Times http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2007/05/cohen_talks.html (May 19, 1957).
“All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.”
"The Crow and the Scarecrow", The New Yorker (date unknown); Further Fables for Our Time (1956). This is derived from Oscar Wilde's statement "All men kill the thing they love..."
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time