Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
E.L. Doctorow 25
novelist, editor, professor 1931–2015Related quotes

"Introduction"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: The pessimist is commonly spoken of as the man in revolt. He is not. Firstly, because it requires some cheerfulness to continue in revolt, and secondly, because pessimism appeals to the weaker side of everybody, and the pessimist, therefore, drives as roaring a trade as the publican. The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons of God.

Interview for French TV (1998)

“When people went on vacation, they shed their home skins, thought they could be a new person.”
Source: Sea Change

“An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.”
Remarks from the witness stand, to a court in Mount Clemens, Michigan (July 1919), as quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts (1948) by Edmund Fuller, p. 162

19th World Vegetarian Congress 1967