“The lifestyle that I have is probably neither desirable nor useful to most people.”
Oui interview (1979)
Context: The lifestyle that I have is probably neither desirable nor useful to most people. Most people are probably better off getting the certification they desire and spindling their lives away the way they’re doing. I don’t think they’d enjoy living any other way. There are millions of people who acquire all sorts of wonderful feelings from watching a football game and drinking a bottle of beer. It makes them really happy. Doesn’t do shit for me. But for them it’s life itself. As long as they can believe in the beer and the football, then they’ve really got something. And it’s probably more useful to them than religion. So why take it away? Why tell them what’s really going on? Let ’em be happy.
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Frank Zappa 129
American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and fil… 1940–1993Related quotes
Source: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
“Thank God we in Iran have neither the desire nor the need to suffer from democracy.”
As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 233
Attributed
“The most intimate feeling people can share is neither love nor hate, but pain.”
Source: The Surgeon
Dragons
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part X - The Position of a HomoUnius Libri
Nos plus cruels ennemis sont nos proches... Les rois n'ont ni frères, ni fils, ni mère.
Source: About Catherine de' Medici (1842), Part II: The Ruggieri's Secret, Ch. V: The Alchemists.
Defence at his Heresy Trial
Final address (1973)
Context: Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.
The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for communion and that there can never be too much of it; a capacity for winning and holding the utmost loyalty of a group of able lieutenants. This last faculty is one of the most essential and elusive.
Section 90
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice