Quotes about spectacles (265 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

For Wife , Love , Beauty , Cooking

“When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Beauty , Sad , Sadness , Beauty

“Neofascism dresses up in makeup, glamour, and pure spectacle.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: 1480 AM Rock & Pop. Guadalajara, Mexico.

“Ishabal: "If you may correct your vision as you like, why do you wear spectacles?"
Tris: "Because I like them. Because I have better things to do with my magic than fixing my vision when ordinary glass will do.”

Tamora Pierce book The Will of the Empress

Source: The Will of the Empress

“The predicament of our time is that the Rationalists have been at work so long on their project of drawing off the liquid in which our moral ideals were suspended (and pouring it away as worthless) that we are left only with the dry and gritty residue which chokes us as we try to take it down. First, we do our best to destroy parental authority (because of its alleged abuse), then we sentimentally deplore the scarcity of 'good homes', and we end by creating substitutes which complete the work of destruction. And it is for this reason that, among much else that is corrupt and unhealthy, we have the spectacle of a set of sanctimonious, rationalist politicians, preaching an ideology of unselfishness and social service to a population in which they and their predecessors have done their best to destroy the only living root of moral behaviour; and opposed by another set of politicians dabbling with the project of converting us from Rationalism under the inspiration of a fresh rationalization of our political tradition.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Home , Parent , Time , Drawing

“When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.”

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

Politics and the English Language (1946)

People , World , Feeling , Light

“Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Part 1, Ch. 1, § 1.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Context: Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone. What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use. Even exploitation and oppression still make society work and establish some kind of order. Only wealth without power or aloofness without a policy are felt to be parasitical, useless, revolting, because such conditions cut all the threads which tie men together. Wealth which does not exploit lacks even the relationship which exists between exploiter and exploited; aloofness without policy does not imply even the minimum concern of the oppressor for the oppressed.

Spring

“That devastating omniscience! That noxious, horn-spectacled refinement! And the money that such refinement means! For after all, what is there behind it, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 1

Money , Education , Peace , Books

“A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

"The Poets' Corner III," The Pall Mall Gazette http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/1307/ (May 30, 1887)

Suicide

“How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Message from Bertrand Russell to the International Conference of Parlimentarians in Cairo, February 1970," reprinted in The New York Times (23 February 1970)
1960s
Context: The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was "given" by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.

World

“Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Statement as he put on his glasses before delivering his response to the first Newburgh Address http://www.earlyamerica.com/milestone-events/newburgh-address/ (15 March 1783), quoted in a letter https://democraticthinker.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/newburgh-crisis-viwashingtons-newburgh-address/ from General David Cobb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cobb_(Massachusetts) to Colonel Timothy Pickering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Pickering (25 November 1825)
1780s, The Newburgh Address (1783)

Country

“Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.”

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) Martiniquais politician

Source: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

Life , Soul , Dance , Sea

“Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton book The Woman's Bible

The Woman's Bible (1898)

World

“The Mafia is not an outsider in this world; it is perfectly at home. Indeed, in the integrated spectacle it stands as the model of all advanced commercial enterprises.”

Guy Debord book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988)

World , Home

“You can’t believe something like that is happening to you; meeting the President of Ireland and the spectacle of the parade. And everyone is so nice. They all feel like they know you. That’s the nice thing about being in something that’s as universally recognised as Star Wars. Parents normally tell kids ‘Don’t talk to strangers’, but everyone thinks they know me, wherever I go.
I embrace being the more Obi-Wan like character, because that’s the natural progression of life.
There was a period after Return of the Jedi when Star Wars had not come back. These movies are timeless, not dated by their cars or fashions. So, you have these fans who are parents with young children who have just seen Star Wars for the first time and think we made it two weeks ago. The parents say, ‘Look who it is, it’s Luke Skywalker!’ And there I am at 50, and the child is aghast. ‘What happened to this guy, he really let himself go!’ It’s natural and good to see the ageing process. So at least now, when they see me, it’s OK because they’ve seen me in the current film rather than thinking about me in my 20s.”

Mark Hamill (1951) American actor, voice actor, producer, director, and writer

6 April 2018 interview with Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/mark-hamill-interview-star-wars-last-jedi-luke-skywalker-leaving-a8292541.html

Life , War , Children , Age

“Just like a child's play this world appears to me.
Every single night and day, this spectacle I see.”

Ghalib (1797–1869) Urdu-Persian poet

World , Appearance , Night

“Revealing great, unusual, and remarkable spectacles, opening these to the consideration of every man, and especially of philosophers and astronomers; as observed by Galileo Galilei, Gentleman of Florence, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Padua, with the aid of a spyglass lately invented by him, in the surface of the Moon, in innumerable fixed stars, in nebulae, and above all in four planets swiftly revolving about Jupiter at differing distances and periods, and known to no one before the author recently perceived them and decided they should be named the Medicean Stars”

Galileo Galilei book Sidereus Nuncius

Translation by Stillman Drake in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957)
Sidereus Nuncius (Venice, 1609)

Star , Mathematics , Universe

“That is the secret of all culture: it does not provide artificial limbs, wax noses or spectacles—that which can provide these things is, rather, only sham education. Culture is liberation, the removal of all the weeds, rubble and vermin that want to attack the tender buds of the plant.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Untimely Meditations (1876)

Education , Secret

“Especially is this true where the lynching is accompanied with torture. There are certain hideous sights which when once seen can never be wholly erased from the mental retina. The mere fact of having seen them implies degradation. This is a thousandfold stronger when, instead of merely seeing the deed, the man has participated in it. Whoever in any part of our country has ever taken part in lawlessly putting to death a criminal by the dreadful torture of fire must forever have the awful spectacle of his own handiwork seared into his brain and soul. He can never again be the same man.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)

Death , Soul , Parting , Country

“Ishta-devata and Guru are aids - very powerful aids on this path. But an aid to be effective requires your effort also. Your effort is a sine qua non. It is you who should see the sun. Can spectacles and the sun see for you? You yourself have to see your true nature. Not much aid is required for doing it!”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Nature , Effort , Sun

“In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are," of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence… the moment we see it 'as it really is,' this being dissolves itself into nothingness or, more precisely, it changes into another kind of reality. That is why we must avoid simple metaphors of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

24-25
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

School , Question , Reality , Change

“A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle.”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Men

“It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.”

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. II, Recalling the day in 1804 when he first took opium.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

“Try as you may, you don't get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire. You make a spectacle of yourself every time.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"Taming the Bicycle" (1917)

Time , Horse , Housing

“You request my presence at the Olympic Games, and for that reason you have sent envoys. For myself, I would come for the spectacle of physical struggle, except that I would be abandoning the greater struggle for virtue.”

Apollonius of Tyana (15–100) Ancient Greek philosopher

Epp. Apoll. 24
Letters

Game

“Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments, what is that? It is that man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.”

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. I.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

Sleep , Sun , Anger , Forgetting

“You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which — thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you — is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), Ch. 8
Context: I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now — I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which — thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you — is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before.

Life , God , Beauty

“We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honor of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked: A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay.”

Emile Zola J’accuse…!

J'accuse! (1898)
Context: It came down, once again, to the General Staff protecting itself, not wanting to admit its crime, an abomination that has been growing by the minute.
In disbelief, people wondered who Commander Esterhazy's protectors were. First of all, behind the scenes, Lt. Colonel du Paty de Clam was the one who had concocted the whole story, who kept it going, tipping his hand with his outrageous methods. Next General de Boisdeffre, then General Gonse, and finally, General Billot himself were all pulled into the effort to get the Major acquitted, for acknowledging Dreyfus's innocence would make the War Office collapse under the weight of public contempt. And the astounding outcome of this appalling situation was that the one decent man involved, Lt. Colonel Picquart who, alone, had done his duty, was to become the victim, the one who got ridiculed and punished. O justice, what horrible despair grips our hearts? It was even claimed that he himself was the forger, that he had fabricated the letter-telegram in order to destroy Esterhazy. But, good God, why? To what end? Find me a motive. Was he, too, being paid off by the Jews? The best part of it is that Picquart was himself an anti-Semite. Yes! We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honor of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked: A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay.

Life , Men

“That is our generation’s task -- to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life. It does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time. For now decisions are upon us and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years and 40 years and 400 years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)

Life , Way , Decision , Time

“This viscous whiteness became in my mind the frontier between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. Already I was beginning to realize that a spectacle has no meaning except it be seen through the glass of a culture, a civilization, a craft.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Source: Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. I : The Craft
Context: "Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing, but—"
And I was struck by the graphic image:
"But you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity."
And suddenly that tranquil cloud-world, that world so harmless and simple that one sees below on rising out of the clouds, took on in my eyes a new quality. That peaceful world became a pitfall. I imagined the immense white pitfall spread beneath me. Below it reigned not what one might think — not the agitation of men, not the living tumult and bustle of cities, but a silence even more absolute than in the clouds, a peace even more final. This viscous whiteness became in my mind the frontier between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. Already I was beginning to realize that a spectacle has no meaning except it be seen through the glass of a culture, a civilization, a craft. Mountaineers too know the sea of clouds, yet it does not seem to them the fabulous curtain it is to me.

“Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book II, 2.40-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book II
Context: Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours.

Decision , Personality

“By his silence Jesus recognizes power that is established as "devil" and defines Himself as The Powerless. He who cannot accept this view on power cannot look at establishments through the spectacle of the Gospel. This is what clergy and churches often have difficulty doing.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

The Educational enterprise in the Light of the Gospel (13 November 1988) http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1988_Educational.html.
Context: Jesus was an anarchist savior. That's what the Gospels tell us.
Just before He started out on His public life, Jesus went to the desert. He fasted, and after 40 days he was hungry. At this point the diabolos, appeared to tempt Him. First he asked Him to turn stone into bread, then to prove himself in a magic flight, and finally the devil, diabolos, "divider," offered Him power. Listen carefully to the words of this last of the three temptations: (Luke 4,6:) "I give you all power and glory, because I have received them and I give them to those whom I choose. Adore me and the power will be yours." It is astonishing what the devil says: I have all power, it has been given to me, and I am the one to hand it on — submit, and it is yours. Jesus of course does not submit, and sends the devilcumpower to Hell. Not for a moment, however, does Jesus contradict the devil. He does not question that the devil holds all power, nor that this power has been given to him, nor that he, the devil, gives it to whom he pleases. This is a point which is easily overlooked. By his silence Jesus recognizes power that is established as "devil" and defines Himself as The Powerless. He who cannot accept this view on power cannot look at establishments through the spectacle of the Gospel. This is what clergy and churches often have difficulty doing. They are so strongly motivated by the image of church as a "helping institution" that they are constantly motivated to hold power, share in it or, at least, influence it.

Silence

“This is an aesthetic century. In history, there are ages of reason and ages of spectacle, and it’s important to know which you’re in. Our America, our internet, is not ancient Athens - it’s Rome. And your problem is you think you’re in the forum, when you’re really in the circus.”

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

ContraPoints
Source: The Aesthetic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1afqR5QkDM, published 2018-09-19

Problem , History , Thinking , Age

“Lenin and Trotsky were the men of the hour and under their fearless, incorruptible and uncompromising leadership the Russian proletariat has held the fort against the combined assaults of all ruling class powers of earth. It is a magnificent spectacle. It stirs the blood and warms the heart of every revolutionist, and it challenges the admiration of all the world.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

"The Day of the People (1918)

World , Heart , Men

“If your stars go against you, the fantastic size of your cock will get you precisely nowhere, however much Virro may have drooled at the spectacle of your naked charms, though love-letters come in by the dozen, imploring your favors.”

Juvenal book Satires

Nam si tibi sidera cessant,
nil faciet longi mensura incognita nervi,
quamvis te nudum spumanti Virro labello
viderit et blandae adsidue densaeque tabellae
sollicitent, autos gar ephelketai andra kinaidos.
IX, line 33.
Satires, Satire IX

Love , Star , Making love

“How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by
the often perverse wisdom of man!”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Source: The Name of the Rose

Wisdom , Beauty , Nature

“Result of self-consciousness: audience and actor are the same. I live my life as a spectacle for myself, for my own edification. I live my life but I don't live in it. The hoarding instinct in human relations.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Life

“I also think he is given to disguises… Sometimes he wears spectacles and sometimes he does not. And twice he has worn an extremely peculiar hat. Inside.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: What Happens in London

Thinking

“i've always wanted, basically, to do research in the form of a spectacle.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

“After all who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of their loneliness”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Loneliness

“The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”

Guy Debord book The Society of the Spectacle

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 1, sct. 4.
Source: The Society of the Spectacle

People

“How do you invent a religion?” Evie asked.

Will looked over the top of his spectacles. “You say, ‘God told me the following,’ and then wait for people to sign up.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

God , People , Religion , Waiting

“It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.”

Jean Genet The Balcony

Source: The Balcony

Falseness

“I’m done. I’m old, I’m sad - that’s on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Death , Sadness , Art

“Myrnin turned away to pick up his Ben Franklin spectacles, balanced them on his nose, and looked over them to say,
"Don't do drugs. I feel I ought to say that.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

Feeling

“The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

World

“If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, "Wake up and write the book!”

Kerry Greenwood (1954) Australian crime writer

Books

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 1, sct. 1.

Life

“A man screaming is not a dancing bear. Life is not a spectacle.”

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) Martiniquais politician

Source: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

Life , Dance

“ʺWe need someone to get the roomʹs attention,ʺ I said. ʺSomeone not afraid to make a spectacle—I mean, besides me, of course.ʺ”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Death , Art

“The bird that would soar above the plane of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening (1899)

Sadness , Bird , Strong

“A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

People

“My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Self-Reliance

Life

“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Soul , Sea

“I will contemplate the spectacle of your sea. The viewpoints of our mountains also offer us the limitless spectacle of immensity. The unfillable void has a calming effect... The sea! The sea with its charms saddens me. In its joyful moods, it makes me think of the laughing tiger; in its sad moods it recalls the crocodile’s tears, and in its roaring fury, the caged monster that cannot swallow me up.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote in Courbet's letter to Victor Hugo, 28 November 1864; as cited in Chu, Letters, p. 249; quoted in 'Paysages de Mer - Courbet's The Wave', by Anthony White https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/paysages-de-mer-courbets-the-wave/
1860s

Sadness , Mountain , Mood , Thinking

“Dutifully I thumbed the rides, hopped the B & Os and the Great Northerns, balled the lithe small-town girls in the band shells of their hometown parks, held the job as field hand and day laborer and soda jerk, saw the crude spectacles of American landscape slide past me as I lay in an open boxcar and drank cheap red wine; and if I didn't, I might as well have.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Jerk , Girl , Wine , Past

“I want people to go to the movies. I am the man of the spectacle. I'm playing.”

Roman Polanski (1933) Polish-French film director, producer, writer, actor, and rapist

Polanski : His Life and Films (1982)

People

“The appalling and shameful scene ("spectacle", Fr.) of disarray and illogicality that manifest itself in the thought and deeds of men, will no longer be seen, once these will possess an enlighten consciouness.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 61.

Men

“The glitz and propaganda, the ridiculous obsessions imparted by our electronic hallucinations, and the spectacles that pass for political participation mask the deadly ecological assault by the corporate state. The worse it gets, the more we retreat into self-delusion. We convince ourselves that global warming does not exist. Or we concede that it exists but insist that we can adapt. Both responses satisfy our mania for eternal optimism and our reckless pursuit of personal comfort. In America, when reality is distasteful we ignore it. But reality will soon descend like the Furies to shatter our complacency and finally our lives. We, as a species, may be doomed. And this is a bitter, bitter fact for a father to digest.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Truthdig, Life Is Sacred, Sep 3, 2012 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/life_is_sacred_20120903/

Optimism , Reality , Personality

“Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,… They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he will clear a field and leave others to reap the harvest; he will take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and soon go off elsewhere with his changing desires. If his private business allows him a moment’s relaxation, he will plunge at once into the whirlpool of politics. Then, if at the end of a year crammed with work he has a little spare leisure, his restless curiosity goes with him traveling up and down the vast territories of the United States. Thus he will travel five hundred miles in a few days as a distraction from his happiness. Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter XIII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Death , Men , People , Age

“Prismatic is the only word for those frightful tweeds and, oddly enough, the spectacle of them had the effect of steadying my nerves. They gave me the feeling that nothing mattered.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Code of the Woosters

The Code of the Woosters (1938)

Feeling

“Surely, Shakespeare is wicked and the map a bad example
With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal —
For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes
From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children
Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel
With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.
All of their time and space are foggy slum.
So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"An Elementary School Classroom In A Slum"
Ruins and Visions (1942)

Love , Children , Time , Sun

“He considered horoscopes as silly as spectacles on a cow.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 4, “The Glory Road” (p. 43)

“Counting makes even hideous events bearable as simply more of the same -- the counting of wedding-rings, spectacles, teeth and bodies disassociates them from their context -- to make the ultimate obscene blasphemy of bureaucratic insensitivity. Engage the mind with numbing recitation to make it empty of reaction.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

Wedding

“There will be no propriety in the spectacle of an elegant interior approached by a low mean entrance.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter II, Sec. 6

“France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“I would have to point out in the strongest terms the autocracy of the Liberal structure and the cowardice of its members. I have never seen in all my examination of politics so degrading a spectacle as that of all these Liberals turning their coats in unison with their Chief, when they saw the chance to take power.”

Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada

As a CCF member taking issue with the federal Liberal Party. Cite libre (April 1963)

Chance

“It is restful to leave one's home; not because traveling does not entail varied and difficult daily actions, but because it removes our responsibilities. Except in the case of official persons, the traveler now lives for himself alone, and is no longer accountable to a community or a family clan. A foreign country is merely a spectacle; in it we no longer have the continual awareness of responsibility. All of us, from time to time, need a plunge into freedom and novelty, after which routine and discipline will seem delightful by contrast. Periods of rest, however, must be brief, but it is amazing to discover how a few days of travel can restore our mental freshness.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Family , Travel , Home , Communication

“If we re-elect Bush, we are endorsing the Bush doctrine. And then we are off to a vicious circle of escalating violence in the world. And I think, you know, terrorism, counter-terrorism, it's a very scary spectacle to me. If we reject him, then we are effectively rejecting the Bush doctrine. Because he was elected on a platform of a more humble foreign policy. Then we can go back to a more humble foreign policy. And treat this episode as an aberration. We have to pay a heavy price. You know, 100 billion dollars a year in Iraq. We can't get out of that. We mustn't get out of it. But still, we can then regain the confidence of the world, and our rightful place as leaders of the world, working to make the world a better place.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Interview with David Brancaccio (2003)

World , Confidence , Thinking

“Thick rumors of imminent peace are in the air… Big spectacle with six or seven British tanks. In the afternoon, they played war once more at the Palaisplein [near Dam square in Amsterdam center] and at the Rokin [street where Beckmann lived for 8 years, as 'entartete' German artist under German occupation; The Netherlands was liberated by the Allies, 5 May 1945].”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

In Max Beckmann, , Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 80
1940s

War , Peace

“… a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries, … a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence,… which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a ‘star’ in Los Angeles.”

Georges Duhamel book Scènes de la vie future

describing cinema, Scènes de la vie future (1930), p. 58

Hope , Angels , Star , Intelligence

“I shall only say that I have passed a varied and eventful life, that it has been my fortune to see earth, heavens, ocean, and man in most of their aspects; but never have I beheld any spectacle which so plainly manifested the majesty of the Creator, or so forcibly taught the lesson of humility to man as a total eclipse of the sun.”

James Fenimore Cooper The Eclipse

The Eclipse (1869), conclusion

Life , Sun

“President Clinton has made a few feeble swipes at addressing this issue [school violence], but one can only gape at the unintentionally comic spectacle of this man chastising the gun-lobby and America's love of violent movies while he rains bombs on Yugoslavia, where at least twenty noncombatants have already died for every innocent student at Columbine High. It is like listening to a man with a crack-pipe in his hand lecture children about the evils of drugs.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Keynote Address, Vermont Library Conference, VEMA Annual Meeting, (26 May 1999)

Love , Children , School , Evil

“…[the] apostles of various kinds of error presented themselves. They were those like Sir Oswald Mosley who were fascinated by the spectacle of brutal power. They would like to use it themselves. They grovelled to Nazi dictatorship in order that they could make people in their turn grovel to them. … At the other end of the political scale were the Trotsky-ite Communists, furious fanatics whose sole aim was to throw the world into one supreme convulsion. Then there was Sir Stafford Cripps, who was in a class by himself. He wished British people to be conquered by the Nazis in order to urge them into becoming Bolsheviks. It seemed a long way round. (Laughter.) And not much enlightenment when they got to the end of their journey. Lastly, there were the absolute non-resisters like Canon Sheppard and Mr. Lansbury. They were pious men, but they would lead the country to ruin, even more surely than all the others.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Albert Hall, London (3 December 1936) at a cross-party meeting organised by the League of Nations Union "in defence of freedom and peace", quoted in The Times (4 December 1936), p. 18
The 1930s

Men , People , World , Way

“What makes the spectacle of Western bourgeois society so repulsive is the waste and squander of resources on needless products of status or display (e. g., the large, heavy automobile; the extravagant packaging of consumer items) for the sake of consumption.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Source: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Chapter 6, The Public Household, p. 274

“Nature is a Darwinian spectacle of the eaters and the eaten. All phases of procreation are ruled by appetite: sexual intercourse, from kissing to penetration, consists of movements of barely controlled cruelty and consumption. The long pregnancy of the human female and the protracted childhood of her infant, who is not self-sustaining for seven years or more, have produced the agon of psychological dependency that burdens the male for a lifetime. Man justifiably fears being devoured by woman, who is nature’s proxy.</b”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 16

Fear , Kiss , Nature , Childhood

“One should oppose the fascination with Hitler according to which Hitler was, of course, a bad guy, responsible for the death of millions — but he definitely had balls, he pursued with iron will what he wanted. … This point is not only ethically repulsive, but simply wrong: no, Hitler did not ‘have the balls’ to really change things; he did not really act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, i. e., he acted so that nothing would really change, he stages a big spectacle of Revolution so that the capitalist order could survive.”
In this precise sense of violence, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler: Gandhi’s movement effectively endeavored to interrupt the basic functioning of the British colonial state.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

"Disputations: Who Are You Calling Anti-Semitic?" in The New Republic (7 January 2009); Žižek is here quoting a statement he made in a prior essay to distinguish what he had actually said with such assertions as he was portrayed as having made. He asserts that Hitler for all his bluster and brutality was a promoter of established economies and less boldly revolutionary in his ideas and actions than Gandhi.

Death , Guy , Sense , Change

“The root objection to the pact is the nature of the Labour Party. It is not liberal. It is not becoming more liberal. The social democrats remain ineffective, or sneak off, after preaching equality to everyone else, to some of the highest-paid jobs open to the British. As a final spectacle of degradation, they are to be seen intimidating the Grunwick workers…The Labour Party remains without principle, clinging to office, paid by the trades unions, and with an anti-democratic Marxist wing. The pact, I fear, is having no effect on the nature of that party.”

Jo Grimond (1913–1993) British soldier, politician and academic

The Daily Mail (28 November, 1977).

Fear , Nature

“A somewhat short junior, with a broad, pleasant face and an enormous pair of spectacles”

Charles Hamilton (writer) (1876–1961) English writer of school stories

The first mention of Bunter
Oxford Companion to Children's Literature: "Billy Bunter" (pages 62-4)

“The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire: whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path — these he cannot meet again.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book The Necessity of Atheism

The Necessity of Atheism (1811)

World , Light , Dead

“While it is possible to play a single game, unrelated to any other game events past or future, it is the campaign for which these rules are designed. It is relatively simple to set up a fantasy campaign, and better still, it will cost almost nothing. In fact you will not even need miniature figures, although their occasional employment is recommended for real spectacle when battles are fought. A quick glance at the Equipment section of this booklet will reveal just how little is required. The most extensive requirement is time. The campaign referee will have to have sufficient time to meet the demands of his players, he will have to devote a number of hours to laying out the maps of his "dungeons" and upper terrain before the affair begins.”

Gary Gygax (1938–2008) American writer and game designer

Preface of the Original Dungeons & Dragons, (1 November 1973)

Game , Time , Past , Future

“We renounce all your spectacles, as strongly as we renounce the matters originating them, which we know were conceived of superstition, when we give up the very things which are the basis of their representations. Among us nothing is ever said, or seen, or heard, which has anything in common with the madness of the circus, the immodesty of the theatre, the atrocities of the arena, the useless exercises of the wrestling-ground.”

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Source: Apologeticus pro Christianis, Chapter 38

Exercises , Madness

“Will you grant the audience?"
"Of cour-" Jarlaxle started to answer, but Entreri grasped his shoulder and shifted in front.
"Tell King Gareth we do not enjoy the spectacle of an army at our doorstep unannounced. But even so, Gareth may enter my home. We have many tall towers here, as you can see. Please tell Gareth, from me, that he is most welcomed to dive headlong off of any of them.”

R. A. Salvatore book Road of the Patriarch

Road of the Patriarch

Home

“The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

L'on voit bien que l'Opéra est l'ébauche d'un grand spectacle; il en donne l'idée.
Aphorism 47
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit

Idea

“Nothing is more chilling than such a spectacle of unremitting self-sacrifice. This is a woman born to be abandoned by her ungrateful husband at the very pinnacle of success she helped to make for him, for a shameless hussy of nineteen.”

Germaine Greer book The Female Eunuch

The Psychological Sell
The Female Eunuch (1970)

Success , Help

“As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2005-08-19
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2005/08/what_cindy_sheehan_really_wants.html
What Cindy Sheehan Really Wants
Slate
1091-2339
2000s, 2005

Family

“Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Life , Men , World , Courage

“Even the blandest (or bluffest) “scholarly work” fears getting into trouble: less with the adversaries whose particular attacks it keeps busy anticipating than through what, but for the spectacle of this very activity, might be perceived as an overall lack of authorization. It is as though, unless the work at once assumed its most densely professional form, it would somehow get unplugged from whatever power station (the academy, the specialization) enables it to speak. Nothing expresses—or allays—this separation anxiety better than the protocol requiring an introduction to “situate” the work within its institutional and discursive matrix. The same nervous ritual that attests a positive dread of being asocial — of failing to furnish the proper authorities with one’s papers, and vice versa — places these possibilities at an infinite remove from a writing whose thorough assimilation, courted from the start, makes it too readable to need to be read much further.”

D. A. Miller (1948) American literary critic

The Novel and the Police (1988), p. vii

Fear , Business , Reading

“Under the benignant providence of Almighty God the representatives of the States and of the people are again brought together to deliberate for the public good. The gratitude of the nation to the sovereign arbiter of all human events should be commensurate with the boundless blessings which we enjoy.
Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world.”

James K. Polk (1795–1849) American politician, 11th President of the United States (in office from 1845 to 1849)

Fourth Annual Message to Congress (5 December 1848) http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(sj0404)).

God , People , World , Peace

“To amuse is not to teach. The object of teaching is to erect a framework of knowledge in a child's mind and gradually to bring the child as near as may be to the average level of intelligence. Later in life the facts taught by experience and new discoveries will add themselves to this framework. It is wrong to attempt to upset this natural order and to appeal to a child's mind by diverting it with the spectacle of modern life. Teaching by means of pictures, radio, and the cinema is in itself ineffective; these methods must not be used unless they involve (and this is possible) some effort or special enthusiasm. That which is learned without difficulty is soon forgotten, and for the same reason, oral instruction which does not require the pupil's personal participation is almost always rather useless. Eloquence slides in and out of young minds. To listen is not to work.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Naturally this does not apply to the teaching of modern languages.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Life , Intelligence , Nature , Knowledge

“In December 1941, when Australians began to sense that they were plunged into a new environment, the spectacles they had carried out from Britain were obsolete. They needed spectacles that would correct short-sightedness. They had to see the environment they were in as clearly as the environment they had left across the world.”

Geoffrey Blainey book The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History

The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History (1966)

World , Sense

“For art, the intervention of capital always signals a further degree of mediation. To say that art is commodified is to say that a mediation, or standing-in-between, has occurred, & that this betweenness amounts to a split, & that this split amounts to "alienation". Improv music played by friends at home is less "alienated" than music played "live" at the Met, or music played through media (whether PBS or MTV or Walkman). In fact, an argument could be made that music distributed free or at cost on cassette via mail, is less alienated than live music played at some huge We Are The World spectacle or Las Vegas niteclub, even though the latter is live music played to a live audience (or at least so it appears), while the former is recorded music consumed by distant & even anonymous listeners.”

Hakim Bey (1945) American political writer, poet and essayist

Immediatism (AK Press: 1994)

World , Art , Music , Home

“No more starry eyes from behind these dusty spectacles. I’ll wipe them and follow my own shadow for a change.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"Upon My Shelf"
Blue Walls and The Big Sky (1995)

Change

“What really got under Londa’s skin, I soon learned, was not the Messiah’s sermon per se but the discontinuity between its sublime directives and the ignominious course of Western history, a spectacle that, the more we thought about it, increasingly struck Londa and me as largely a fancy-dress danse macabre, Titus Andronicus on a hemispheric and ultimately global scale, though I hastened to point out that the chronicles of other civilizations were likewise awash in blood. What had gone wrong? She wanted to know. When and why had the teachings of Jesus Christ become an optional component of Christianity?”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 6 (pp. 128-129)

History , Learning , Christ

“Am I new minted by thy Stamp indeed?
Mine Eyes are dim; I cannot clearly see.
Be thou my Spectacles that I may read
Thine Image and Inscription stampt on mee.”

Edward Taylor (1642–1729) American poet

from "Meditation VI (Canticles II:1)"

Reading

“"You don't understand," he said, "who I am or what I am. I'll show you. By Heaven! I'll show you." Then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. "Here," he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose—it was the stranger's nose! pink and shining—rolled on the floor.Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my Gard!" said some one. Then off they came.It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all!”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 7: The Unveiling of the Stranger

Understanding , Housing , Falseness

“The disappearance of public executions marks therefore the decline of the spectacle; but it also marks a slackening of the hold on the body.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter One, The Spectacle of the Scaffold

“If we want to make our contribution to the pacification of the world, it is our duty to present to the world the spectacle of a rich country with a great people, with an adequate population - with a population which may justly say to the rest of the world: 'We are here; we propose to maintain our integrity as a nation; and our warrant for that is that we are using the resources which God has given into our hands.' The case for immigration on a grand scale is, indeed, an irresistible one.”

Robert Menzies (1894–1978) Australian politician, 12th Prime Minister of Australia

Citizenship Convention, Canberra, 23 January, 1950.
Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)
Source: http://www.australianquotes.com/quotes_1950-present.php

God , People , World , Country

“The “natural magic” of the camera obscura anticipated Hollywood in turning the spectacle of the external world into a consumer commodity or package.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 146

World , Nature