“Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.”
Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 4
Context: They say to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.
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Gore Vidal 163
American writer 1925–2012Related quotes
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: Henry David Thoreau told us: "All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end." …Goethe told us: "One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words." …Socrates told us: "The unexamined life is not worth living." …the prophet Micah told us: "What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?" And I can tell you... what Confucius, Isaiah, Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Spinoza and Shakespeare told us... There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.

Source: Short fiction, Companions on the Road (1975), Chapter 9, “The Dark” (p. 98)

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: We do not struggle for ourselves, nor for our race, not even for humanity.
We do not struggle for Earth, nor for ideas. All these are the precious yet provisional stairs of our ascending God, and they crumble away as soon as he steps upon them in his ascent.
In the smallest lightning flash of our lives, we feel all of God treading upon us, and suddenly we understand: if we all desire it intensely, if we organize all the visible and invisible powers of earth and fling them upward, if we all battle together like fellow combatants eternally vigilant — then the Universe might possibly be saved.
It is not God who will save us — it is we who will save God, by battling, by creating, and by transmuting matter into spirit.

Book Two, Part III “The Dark City”, Chapter 3 (p. 200)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Portfolio for Peace (1968), p. 92
Context: Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves. This, as the sages of many lands have taught us, is a golden rule in individual and group, as well as international, relations.
“We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.”
Source: Woman on the Edge of Time

Section 165
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Context: The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.

"It is good to be a stranger" http://www.hungarianpresence.ca/Culture/Literature/varnai-interview-e.cfm.
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