“There are a few of us — madmen all!”
who are in love with knowing, who would sell the last shirt from our backs for one small truth, one tiny star-fire to light up the murk and mystery of what we call our life… We may go blind before we see it, that's the haunting —
The Heretic (1968)
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Morris West 36
Australian writer 1916–1999Related quotes
“Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal.”
Freedom and Death (1956)
Context: We, who are dying, are doing better, than they, who will live. For Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal.
“We painters use the same license as poets and madmen.”
Unsourced variant translation: We painters take the same liberties as poets and madmen.
Testimony to the Inquisition, (1573)
Steppenwolf (1927)
Context: “It is not a good thing when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are no susceptible of rational treatment. Then there are ideals such as those of the Americans or Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so crudely. The likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of becoming a machinemade article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to ennoble it again.”
Conversations with a Christian Lady (1774)
“Because when everyone dreams, but only a few realize their dreams, that makes cowards of us all.”
Source: Veronika Decides to Die
From 1985 interview with Swiss Journalist Jean-Philippe Rapp, translated from Sankara: Un nouveau pouvoir africain by Jean Ziegler. Lausanne, Switzerland: Editions Pierre-Marcel Favre, 1986. In Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983-87. trans. Samantha Anderson. New York: Pathfinder, 1988. pp. 141-144.