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Karl Popper

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of empirical falsification. According to Popper, a theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can (and should) be scrutinised with decisive experiments. Popper was opposed to the classical justificationist account of knowledge, which he replaced with critical rationalism, namely "the first non-justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy".

In political discourse, he is known for his vigorous defence of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism that he believed made a flourishing open society possible. His political philosophy embraced ideas from major democratic political ideologies, including socialism/social democracy, libertarianism/classical liberalism and conservatism, and attempted to reconcile them.

Quotes

 * You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence "democracy", and the other "tyranny".
 * As quoted in Freedom: A New Analysis (1954) by Maurice William Cranston, p. 112

 * Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology. (All that technology may say about ends is whether they are compatible with each other or realizable.)
 * The Poverty of Historicism (1957) Ch. 22 The Unholy Alliance with Utopianism

 * If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.
 * The Poverty of Historicism (1957) Ch. 29 The Unity of Method

 * Scientists try to eliminate their false theories, they try to let them die in their stead. The believer—whether animal or man—perishes with his false beliefs.
 * Epistemology Without A Knowing Subject (1967)

 * Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
 * Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1972)

 * For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance.

 * Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us. . . . We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.
 * As quoted in Popper (1973) by Bryan Magee

 * Appealing to his [ Einstein's ] way of expressing himself in theological terms, I said: If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.
 * As quoted in Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes by Charles Hartshorne (1984)

 * From Plato to Karl Marx and beyond, the fundamental problem has always been: who should rule the state? (One of my main points will be that this problem must be replaced by a totally different one.)
 * "On Democracy", The Economist (1988)

 * There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. ... It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.
 * "The Importance of Critical Discussion" in On the Barricades: Religion and Free Inquiry in Conflict (1989) by Robert Basil

 * Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.
 * The Open Universe : An Argument for Indeterminism (1992), p. 44

 * It seems to me that I may be living too long. Indeed: my nearest relations have all died, and so have some of my best friends, and even some of my best pupils. However, I do not have a reason to complain. I am grateful and happy to be alive, and still be able to continue with my work, if only just. My work seems to me more important than ever.
 * As quoted in "At 90, and Still Dynamic : Revisiting Sir Karl Popper and Attending His Birthday Party" by Eugene Yue-Ching Ho, in Intellectus 23 (Jul-Sep 1992)

 * I think so badly of philosophy that I don't like to talk about it. ... I do not want to say anything bad about my dear colleagues, but the profession of teacher of philosophy is a ridiculous one. We don't need a thousand of trained, and badly trained, philosophers — it is very silly. Actually most of them have nothing to say.
 * As quoted in "At 90, and Still Dynamic : Revisiting Sir Karl Popper and Attending His Birthday Party" by Eugene Yue-Ching Ho, in Intellectus 23 (Jul-Sep 1992)

 * I appeal to the philosophers of all countries to unite and never again mention Heidegger or talk to another philosopher who defends Heidegger. This man was a devil. I mean, he behaved like a devil to his beloved teacher, and he has a devilish influence on Germany. ... One has to read Heidegger in the original to see what a swindler he was.
 * As quoted in "At 90, and Still Dynamic : Revisiting Sir Karl Popper and Attending His Birthday Party" by Eugene Yue-Ching Ho, in Intellectus 23 (Jul-Sep 1992)

 * If the many, the specialists, gain the day, it will be the end of science as we know it - of great science. It will be a spiritual catastrophe comparable in its consequences to nuclear armament.
 * K. Popper, The Myth of the Framework, London: Routledge. As quoted in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Popper (2016) by J. Shearmur, G. Stokes

 * When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism. A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others — not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others. The emphasis here is on the idea of criticism or, to be more precise, critical discussion. The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff. He is well aware that acceptance or rejection of an idea is never a purely rational matter; but he thinks that only critical discussion can give us the maturity to see an idea from more and more sides and to make a correct judgement of it.
 * "On Freedom" in All Life is Problem Solving (1999)

 * Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
 * As quoted in In Passing: Condolences and Complaints on Death, Dying, and Related Disappointments (2005) by Jon Winokur, p. 144

 * Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle — the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.
 * As quoted in 1,001 Pearls of Wisdom (2006) by David Ross

 * Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.
 * As quoted in My Universe : A Transcendent Reality (2011) by Alex Vary, Part II

The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)

 * First translated into English in 1959

 * ...no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.

 * ...The answer to this problem is: as implied by Hume, we certainly are not justified in reasoning from an instance to the truth of the corresponding law. But to this negative result a second result, equally negative, may be added: we are justified in reasoning from a counterinstance to the falsity of the corresponding universal law (that is, of any law of which it is a counterinstance). Or in other words, from a purely logical point of view, the acceptance of one counterinstance to 'All swans are white' implies the falsity of the law 'All swans are white' - that law, that is, whose counterinstance we accepted. Induction is logically invalid; but refutation or falsification is a logically valid way of arguing from a single counterinstance to - or, rather, against - the corresponding law.This shows that I continue to agree with Hume's negative logical result; but I extend it.This logical situation is completely independent of any question of whether we would, in practice, accept a single counterinstance - for example, a solitary black swan - in refutation of a so far highly successful law. I do not suggest that we would necessarily be so easily satisfied; we might well suspect that the black specimen before us was not a swan."
 * Ch. 1 "A Survey of Some Fundamental Problems", Section I: The Problem of Induction p. 27

 * A principle of induction would be a statement with the help of which we could put inductive inferences into a logically acceptable form. In the eyes of the upholders of inductive logic, a principle of induction is of supreme importance for scientific method: "... this principle", says Reichenbach, "determines the truth of scientific theories. To eliminate it from science would mean nothing less than to deprive science of the power to decide the truth or falsity of its theories. Without it, clearly, science would no longer have the right to distinguish its theories from the fanciful and arbitrary creations of the poet's mind." Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. Indeed, if there were such a thing as a purely logical principle of induction, there would be no problem of induction; for in this case, all inductive inferences would have to be regarded as purely logical or tautological transformations, just like inferences in inductive logic. Thus the principle of induction must be a synthetic statement; that is, a statement whose negation is not self-contradictory but logically possible. So the question arises why such a principle should be accepted at all, and how we can justify its acceptance on rational grounds.
 * Ch. 1 "A Survey of Some Fundamental Problems", Section I: The Problem of Induction

 * The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.
 * Ch. 2 "On the Problem of a Theory of Scientific Method", Section XI: Methodological Rules as Conventions

 * ...non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science.
 * Ch. 4 "Falsifiability", Section XXII: Falsifiability and Falsification. p. 66.

 * Science is not a system of certain, or well established, statements; nor is it a statement which steadily advances towards state of finality. Our science is not knowledge (epistēmē): it can newer claim to have attained truth, or even substitute for it, such as probability. . . . We do not know; we can only guess.
 * Ch. 10 "Corroboration, or How a Theory Stands up to Tests", section 85: The Path of Science, p. 278.

 * Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.
 * Ch. 10 "Corroboration, or How a Theory Stands up to Tests", section 85: The Path of Science, p. 280.

The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)

 * If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the greatest among the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not, I hope, the wish to belittle them. It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes; and as the book tries to show, some of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on freedom and reason. Their influence, too rarely challenged, continues to mislead those on whose defence civilization depends, and to divide them. The responsibility of this tragic and possibly fatal division becomes ours if we hesitate to be outspoken in our criticism of what admittedly is a part of our intellectual heritage. By reluctance to criticize some of it, we may help to destroy it all.
 * Preface to the First Edition

 * I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous — from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows. For these troubles are the by-products of what is perhaps the greatest of all moral and spiritual revolutions of history, a movement which began three centuries ago. It is the longing of uncounted unknown men to free themselves and their minds from the tutelage of authority and prejudice. It is their attempt to build up an open society which rejects the absolute authority to preserve, to develop, and to establish traditions, old or new, that measure up to their standards of freedom, of humaneness, and of rational criticism. It is their unwillingness to sit back and leave the entire responsibility for ruling the world to human or superhuman authority,and their readiness to share the burden of responsibility for avoidable suffering, and to work for its avoidance. This revolution has created powers of appalling destructiveness; but they may yet be conquered.
 * Preface to the Second Edition.

 * This book raises issues that might not be apparent from the table of contents. It sketches some of the difficulties faced by our civilization — a civilization which might be perhaps described as aiming at humanness and reasonableness, at equality and freedom; a civilization which is still in its infancy, as it were, and which continues to grow in spite of the fact that it has been so often betrayed by so many of the intellectual leaders of mankind. It attempts to show that this civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth — the transition from the tribal or "enclosed society," with its submission to magical forces, to the 'open society' which sets free the critical powers of man. It attempts to show that the shock of this transition is one of the factors that have made possible the rise of those reactionary movements which have tried, and still try, to overthrow civilization and to return to tribalism.
 * Introduction; part of this has sometimes been paraphrased : Our civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth — the transition from the tribal or 'closed society', with its submission to magical forces, to the 'open society' which sets free the critical powers of man.

 * We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
 * Introduction

 * What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most — that we are all frail human beings. What a decline from this world of irony and reason and truthfulness down to Plato's kingdom of the sage whose magical powers raise him high above ordinary men; although not quite high enough to forgo the use of lies, or to neglect the sorry trade of every shaman — the selling of spells, of breeding spells, in exchange for power over his fellow-men.
 * Vol. 1, Ch 8 "The Philosopher King"

 * The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.
 * Vol. 1, Endnotes to the Chapters : Notes to the Introduction.

 * In speaking of sociological laws or natural laws of social life I have in mind such laws as are formulated by modern economic theories, for instance, the theory of international trade, or the theory of the trade cycle. These and other important sociological laws are connected with the functioning of social institutions. These laws play a role in our social life corresponding to the role played in mechanical engineering by, say, the principle of the lever. For institutions, like levers, are needed if we want to achieve anything which goes beyond the power of our muscles. Like machines, institutions multiply our power for good or evil. Like machines, they need intelligent supervision by someone who understands their way of functioning and, most of all, their purpose, since we cannot build them so that they work entirely automatically.
 * Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol I Plato Chapter 5: Nature and Convention. P. 67

 * The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato. Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
 * Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4

 * Although my own position is, I believe, clearly enough implied in the text, I may perhaps briefly formulate what seems to me the most important principles of humanitarian and equalitarian ethics. (1) Tolerance towards all who are not intolerant and who do not propagate intolerance. ... This implies, especially, that the moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance. (2) The recognition that all moral urgency has its basis in the urgency of suffering or pain. I suggest, for this reason, to replace the utilitarian formula 'Aim at the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number', or briefly, 'Maximize happiness' by the formula 'The least amount of avoidable suffering for all', or briefly, 'Minimize suffering'. Such a simple formula can, I believe, be made one of the fundamental principles (admittedly not the only one) of public policy. (The principle 'Maximize happiness', in contrast, seems to be apt to produce a benevolent dictatorship.) We should realize that from the moral point of view suffering and happiness must not be treated as symmetrical; that is to say, the promotion of happiness is in any case much less urgent than the rendering of help to those who suffer, and the attempt to prevent suffering. (The latter task has little to do with 'matters of taste', the former much.)
 * Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 5, Note 6.

 * I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure. Both the greatest happiness principle of the Utilitarians and Kant's principle 'Promote other people's happiness ..' seem to me (at least in their formulations) wrong on this point which, however, is not completely decidable by rational argument. (For the irrational aspect of ethical beliefs, see note 11 to the present chapter, and for the rational aspect, sections II and especially III of chapter 24). In my opinion (cp. note 6 (2) to chapter 5) human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway. (A further criticism of the Utilitarian formula 'Maximize pleasure' is that it assumes, in principle, a continuous pleasure-pain scale which allows us to treat degrees of pain as negative degrees of pleasure. But, from the moral point of view, pain cannot be outweighed by pleasure, and especially not one man's pain by another man's pleasure. Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering—such as hunger in times of an unavoidable shortage of food—should be distributed as equally as possible.)
 * Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 9, Note 2.

 * We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.
 * Vol. 2, Ch. 21 "An Evaluation of the Prophecy"

 * No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
 * Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"

 * I do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate. (Socrates, I believe, saw something of this when he suggested that mistrust or hatred of argument is related to mistrust or hatred of man).
 * Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"

 * ... the attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell. It leads to intolerance. It leads to religious wars, and to the saving of souls through the inquisition. And it is, I believe, based on a complete misunderstanding of our moral duties. It is our duty to help those who need help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy, since this does not depend on us, and since it would only too often mean intruding on the privacy of those towards whom we have such amiable intentions.
 * Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"

 * ... the fight against suffering must be considered a duty, while the right to care for the happiness of others must be considered a privilege confined to the close circle of their friends. ... Pain, suffering, injustice, and their prevention, these are the eternal problems of public morals, the 'agenda' of public policy ...
 * Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"

 * There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent conception of mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the history of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder (including it is true, some of the attempts to suppress them). This history is taught in schools, and some of the greatest criminals are extolled as heroes.
 * Vol 2, Ch. 25 "Has History any Meaning?" Variant: There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world.

Utopia and Violence (1947)

 * Address to Institut des Arts in Brussels, Belgium (1947); later published The Hibbert Journal 46 (1948), and in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)

 * Not only do I hate violence, but I firmly believe that the fight against it is not hopeless. I realize that the task is difficult. I realize that, only too often in the course of history, it has happened that what appeared at first to be a great success in the fight against violence was followed by a defeat. I do not overlook the fact that the new age of violence which was opened by the two World wars is by no means at an end. Nazism and Fascism are thoroughly beaten, but I must admit that their defeat does not mean that barbarism and brutality have been defeated. On the contrary, it is no use closing our eyes to the fact that these hateful ideas achieved something like a victory in defeat. I have to admit that Hitler succeeded in degrading the moral standards of our Western world, and that in the world of today there is more violence and brutal force than would have been tolerated even in the decade after the first World war. And we must face the possibility that our civilization may ultimately be destroyed by those new weapons which Hitlerism wished upon us, perhaps even within the first decade after the second World war; for no doubt the spirit of Hitlerism won its greatest victory over us when, after its defeat, we used the weapons which the threat of Nazism had induced us to develop.

 * A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda.

 * We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell. Only if we give up our authoritarian attitude in the realm of opinion, only if we establish the attitude of give and take, of readiness to learn from other people, can we hope to control acts of violence inspired by piety and duty.

 * There are many difficulties impeding the rapid spread of reasonableness. One of the main difficulties is that it always takes two to make a discussion reasonable. Each of the parties must be ready to learn from the other. You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.

 * Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realised.

On Freedom (1958)

 * "On Freedom" (1958; 1967) essay republished in Alles Leben ist Problemlösen (1994); translated as All Life is Problem Solving by Patrick Camiller (1994)

 * The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong. Above all, he values the intellectual independence of others too highly to want to convince them in important matters. He would much rather invite contradiction, preferably in the form of rational and disciplined criticism. He seeks not to convince but to arouse — to challenge others to form free opinions.

 * Although I consider our political world to be the best of which we have any historical knowledge, we should beware of attributing this fact to democracy or to freedom. Freedom is not a supplier who delivers goods to our door. Democracy does not ensure that anything is accomplished — certainly not an economic miracle. It is wrong and dangerous to extol freedom by telling people that they will certainly be all right once they are free. How someone fares in life is largely a matter of luck or grace, and to a comparatively small degree perhaps also of competence, diligence, and other virtues. The most we can say of democracy or freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more influence on our well-being.

 * It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it. Poland fought for freedom as no other country did. The Czech nation was prepared to fight for its freedom in 1938; it was not lack of courage that sealed its fate. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 — the work of young people with nothing to lose but their chains — triumphed and then ended in failure. ... Democracy and freedom do not guarantee the millennium. No, we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves.

Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)

 * The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance — the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
 * Variant translation: The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, clear, and well-defined will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. The main source of our ignorance lies in the fact that our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

 *  What we should do, I suggest, is to give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach. We may admit that our groping is often inspired, but we must be on our guard against the belief, however deeply felt, that our inspiration carries any authority, divine or otherwise. If we thus admit that there is no authority beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our knowledge, however far it may have penetrated into the unknown, then we can retain, without danger, the idea that truth is beyond human authority. And we must retain it. For without this idea there can be no objective standards of inquiry; no criticism of our conjectures; no groping for the unknown; no quest for knowledge.
 * Introduction "On The Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance" Section XVII, p. 30 Variant translation: I believe it is worthwhile trying to discover more about the world, even if this only teaches us how little we know. It might do us good to remember from time to time that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal. If we thus admit that there is no authority beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our knowledge, however far we may have penetrated into the unknown, then we can retain, without risk of dogmatism, the idea that truth itself is beyond all human authority. Indeed, we are not only able to retain this idea, we must retain it. For without it there can be no objective standards of scientific inquiry, no criticism of our conjectured solutions, no groping for the unknown, and no quest for knowledge.
 * Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
 * Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations", Section VII

 * The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.
 * Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations"

 * Put in a nut-shell, my thesis amounts to this. The repeated attempts made by Rudolf Carnap to show that the demarcation between science and metaphysics coincides with that between sense and nonsense have failed. The reason is that the positivistic concept of 'meaning' or 'sense' (or of verifiability, or of inductive confirmability, etc.) is inappropriate for achieving this demarcation — simply because metaphysics need not be meaningless even though it is not science. In all its variations demarcation by meaninglessness has tended to be at the same time too narrow and too wide: as against all intentions and all claims, it has tended to exclude scientific theories as meaningless, while failing to exclude even that part of metaphysics which is known as 'rational theology'.
 * Ch 11. "The Demarcation between Science and Metaphysics." (Summary, p. 253)

 * It is often asserted that discussion is only possible between people who have a common language and accept common basic assumptions. I think that this is a mistake. All that is needed is a readiness to learn from one's partner in the discussion, which includes a genuine wish to understand what he intends to say. If this readiness is there, the discussion will be the more fruitful the more the partner's backgrounds differ.
 * p. 352

 * It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.
 * p. 368

 * If I were to give a simple formula or recipe for distinguishing between what I consider to be admissible plans for social reform and inadmissible Utopian blueprints, I might say: Work for the elimination of concrete evils rather than for the realization of abstract goods. Do not aim at establishing happiness by political means. Rather aim at the elimination of concrete miseries.
 * p. 385

 * Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now.
 * p. 485

 * In brief, it is my thesis that human misery is the most urgent problem of a rational public policy and that happiness is not such a problem.
 * p. 485

 * Besides, we should never attempt to balance anybody's misery against somebody else's happiness.
 * pp. 486-487

 * As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analyzing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. "Because of my thousandfold experience," he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: "And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold."

 * I may illustrate this by two very different examples of human behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child. Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and in Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man suffered from repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus complex), while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child). I could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory. It was precisely this fact — that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed — which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness.

 * There are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority ... The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of our knowledge is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between questions of origin and questions of validity.

Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (1976)

 * Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.

 * One of the ideas I had discussed in The Poverty of Historicism was the influence of a prediction upon the event predicted. I had called this the "Oedipus effect", because the oracle played a most important role in the sequence of events which led to the fulfilment of its prophecy. ... For a time I thought that the existence of the Oedipus effect distinguished the social from the natural sciences. But in biology, too—even in molecular biology—expectations often play a role in bringing about what has been expected.
 * Page 29

 * Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.
 * Unsourced variant: Evolution is not a fact. Evolution doesn't even qualify as a theory or as a hypothesis. It is a metaphysical research program, and it is not really testable science.
 * Popper later retracted his criticisms:
 * I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation.
 * "Natural selection and the emergence of mind" dialectica Vol. 32 (1978), p. 339-355; republished in Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge (1987) edited by Gerard Radnitzky and W. W. Bartley, III

In Search of a Better World (1984)

 * All things living are in search of a better world.
 * Preface

 * The belief in a political Utopia is especially dangerous. This is possibly connected with the fact that the search for a better world, like the investigation of our environment, is (if I am correct) one of the oldest and most important of all the instincts.

 * Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

 * There are uncertain truths — even true statements that we may take to be false — but there are no uncertain certainties. Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them.

 * Why do I think that we, the intellectuals, are able to help? Simply because we, the intellectuals, have done the most terrible harm for thousands of years. Mass murder in the name of an idea, a doctrine, a theory, a religion — that is all our doing, our invention: the invention of the intellectuals. If only we would stop setting man against man — often with the best intentions — much would be gained. Nobody can say that it is impossible for us to stop doing this.

Misattributed

 * These are quotations that have been wrongly attributed to Popper

 * Ignorance is not a simple lack of knowledge but an active aversion to knowledge, the refusal to know, issuing from cowardice, pride or laziness of mind.
 * Principle attributed to Popper by Ryszard Kapiscinski in New York Times obituary, 1995.

 * To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.
 * Cicero

 * The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.
 * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in "Israel in the Desert" (1819)

 * Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
 * Colin Powell in My American Journey (1995)

 * When we enter a new situation in life and are confronted by a new person, we bring with us the prejudices of the past and our previous experiences of people. These prejudices we project upon the new person. Indeed, getting to know a person is largely a matter of withdrawing projections; of dispelling the smoke screen of what we imagine he is like and replacing it with the reality of what he is actually like.
 * Anthony Storr as quoted in The Observer (12 July 1970)
 * Dubious quotations

 * A theory that explains everything, explains nothing.
 * In an address of 13 October 1896, published in Proceedings of the Liverpool Geological Society, Volumes 8-9 (1900), p. 28 Thomas Mellard Reade attributed this statement to John Playfair, citing it to his Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802); it has not yet been located in the volumes of that work presently available online, and was perhaps a summation or paraphrase, as Reade's statement reads:
 * It was well observed by Playfair, some 90 years ago, that "a theory that explains everything explains nothing."

Quotes about Popper

 * I referred above to the Popperian school as a school, and yet it was not until I came to Sydney from London that I fully realised the extent to which I had been in a school. I found, to my surprise, that there were philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein or Quine or Marx who thought that Popper was quite wrong on many issues, and some who even thought that his views were positively dangerous. I think I have learnt much from that experience. One of the things that I have learnt is that on a number of major issues Popper is indeed wrong, as is argued in the latter portions of this book. However, this does not alter the fact that the Popperian approach is infinitely better than the approach adopted in most philosophy departments that I have encountered.
 * Alan Chalmers (1976), Preface to the first edition, What is this thing called Science?

 * The first article republished in Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, "Degrees of Explanation," originally published in 1955, was largely consistent with Popper's methodology. Hayek embraced Popper's "hypothetico-deductive" approach to science: "The conception of science as a hypothetico-deductive system has been expounded by Karl Popper in a manner which brings out clearly some very important points." Here, as elsewhere in his work, Hayek distinguished between the facts of the natural and social sciences primarily on the basis of their complexity.
 * Alan Ebenstein, Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003), Ch. 14. Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics

 * I learned from Popper what for me is the essence of scientific investigation—how to be speculative and imaginative in the creation of hypotheses, and then to challenge them with the utmost rigor, both by utilizing all existing knowledge and by mounting the most searching experimental attacks. In fact, I learned from him even to rejoice in the refutation of a cherished hypothesis, because that, too, is a scientific achievement and because much has been learned by the refutation.
 * John Eccles, "Under the spell of the synapse," The Neurosciences: Paths of Discovery ed. F. G. Worden, J. P. Swazey, G. Adelman (1976)

 * Through my association with Popper I experienced a great liberation in escaping from the rigid conventions that are generally held with respect to scientific research. ... When one is liberated from these restrictive dogmas, scientific investigation becomes an exciting adventure opening up new visions; and this attitude has, I think, been reflected in my own scientific life since that time.
 * John Eccles, "Under the spell of the synapse," The Neurosciences: Paths of Discovery ed. F. G. Worden, J. P. Swazey, G. Adelman (1976)

 * [T]he paradox lurking at the heart of Karl Popper's career... Everyone says this opponent of dogmatism is almost pathologically dogmatic. ...Popper scoffs at scientists’ hope that they can achieve a final theory of nature. "...I think we have gone very far, but we are much further away." He... returns with his book Conjectures and Refutations... [and] reads his own words with reverence: "In our infinite ignorance we are all equal." ...Can a skeptic avoid self-contradiction... the Popper paradox? And if he doesn’t, if he preaches but fails to practice intellectual doubt and humility, does that negate his work? Not at all. Such paradoxes corroborate the skeptic’s point... the quest for truth is endless, twisty and riddled with pitfalls, into which even sharp-eyed seekers tumble. In our infinite ignorance we are all equal.
 * John Horgan, The Popper Paradox (August 4, 2023)

 * The leading critic of the positivists in their heyday was of course Popper. There has been a tendency for philosophers of science to regard Popper as something of an embarrassment. However, naturalistic philosophers should take it as an interesting fact about science that Popper has long been the favourite philosopher of science among scientists; and it would be condescending to attribute this entirely to the fact that Popper's philosophy is relatively non-complex, self-contained, and flattering to scientists.
 * James Ladyman and Don Ross, "The World in the Data" in Scientific Metaphysics (2013) edited by Don Ross, James Ladyman, and Harold Kincaid

 * Popper was kind of an egocentric jerk.
 * Tim Maudlin, quoted in John Horgan, "Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress" (2018)

 * Socrates (and so Plato) makes it quite clear that the rule of wisdom is tyrannical, and that it cannot tolerate words or deeds, laws or traditional institutions, and certainly political theories that impinge upon its rule. In this sense, modern enemies of Plato's political thought, of whom the most prominent in our time is no doubt Karl Popper, are correct in their objections, although they are ingenuous or let us say insufficiently rigorous in their consideration of the political consequences of theoretical truth. In Popper's case, this is probably due to his conviction that we can establish the falsehood of a proposition but not its truth. This conviction may well be more compatible with democracy in the modern sense of the term than the conviction that genuine philosophers know the truth. The argument of the Republic on the other hand is that, if we did know the truth, we would be led to support a city very much like the one constructed in the Republic under the leadership of Socrates.
 * Stanley Rosen, Plato's Republic: A Study (2005), Introduction

 * I do have a great respect for Popper. I mean, I think... he's nearer to... I mean, Popper's ambition, in relation to science, at least, was to discriminate between, sort of, science and what he called pseudo-science.
 * John Maynard Smith, about Karl Popper and the philosophy of science (April 1997)

 * Popper believed that any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed owing to the fact that it chokes its own refutations. The simple notion of a good society that cannot be left open for falsification is totalitarian. I learned from Popper, in addition to the difference between an open and a closed society, that between an open and a closed mind.
 * Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2001) Seven: The Problem of Induction | Sir Karl's Promoting Agent | Open Society

 * I read Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper, whose analysis in many ways complemented that of Hayek, approached Marxism from the point of view of the philosopher of the natural sciences. This meant that he was ideally equipped to expose the fraudulent claim of Marxists to have discovered immutable laws of history, social development or "progress" – laws which were comparable to the laws of natural science. It was not just that the "inevitable" course of events which Marx had prophesied had not occurred and showed no signs of occurring. Marx and Marxists had not even understood the scientific method, let alone practised it in their analysis. Unlike the Marxists – whether historians, economists or social scientists – who tried to "prove" their theories by accumulating more and more facts to sustain them, "the method of science is rather to look out for facts which may refute the theory... and the fact that all tests of the theory are attempted falsifications of predictions derived with its help furnishes the clue to scientific method". The political consequences of this basic error – perhaps more properly described as basic fraud – were summed up by Popper in the dedication of his later book The Poverty of Historicism: "In memory of the countless men, women and children of all creeds or nations or races who fell victims to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny."
 * Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (1995), pp. 58-59

 * I got to know Bertrand Russell in the last years of his life. I knew Karl Popper quite well, and they were a whole class above me in intelligence. It wasn’t that I was jealous, it was that I was trying to grapple with these problems with inadequate weaponry… Popper had this originality, Russell had it, and Einstein had it in spades.
 * Bryan Magee, The New Statesman, 8 April 2018

title: Karl Popper


text:
User:Scholar~enwikiquote

=Scholar=

A french philologist and linguist wanting to increase the amount of quality french content on the internet.

Please feel free to add here requests and comments

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Scholar~enwikiquote


text:
Wikiquote talk:Wikiquotians

Wikiquoter
Could we change this page to be at Wikiquoters? Wikiquotians doesn't sound good. -- en:User:Kwekubo
 * Agreed. -- Jeandré, 2004-06-14t00:22z
 * I think I prefer this as well. If no one objects I might change the page within a week or so. ~ Kalki 23:58, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Personally, I like "Wikiquotians" better. It sounds more elegant. "Wikiquoters" sounds kinda silly. —JarlaxleArtemis  2 July 2005 20:59 (UTC)
 * I also prefer Wikiquotians. --Newsong 20:41, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
 * i agree even though i'm not registeered but wikiquotians sounds better
 * "Wikiquotian" is best, for it aligns with "Wikimedian" and "Wikipedian". Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 18:44, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Removing people?
Is there any mechanism for removing people from this list? Some seem not to have edited for over a year.--Ole.Holm 00:01, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * If they're inactive, just put "Inactive" next to their name, just in case they come back. Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 18:49, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Number o' edits
Is there any list that shows Wikiquotians by number of edits? Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 18:49, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, see here (Ctrl+F "50 recently active wikiquoters, excl. bots, ordered by number of contributions"). ~ DanielTom (talk) 18:53, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 12:06, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Am I a wikiquotien?
I think I would like to be a wikiquotian. Where do I apply? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 20:01, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

title: Wikiquote talk:Wikiquotians


text:
Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (28 April 1953 – 15 July 2003) was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666.

Quotes

 * ¿Cómo reconocer una obra de arte? ¿Cómo separarla, aunque sólo sea un momento, de su aparato crítico, de sus exégetas, de sus incansables plagiarios, de sus ninguneadores, de su final destino de soledad? Es fácil. Hay que traducirla.
 * How do you recognize a work of art? How can it be kept apart, even if only for a moment, from its critics, commentators, its indefatigable plagiarists, its defacers and its final destiny in solitude? Simple — just translate it.
 * Entre Paréntesis (2004) edited by Ignacio Echevarría, p. 223

 * Those in power (even if it's only for a little while) known nothing about literature, all they care about is power. And I'll play the fool for my readers, if I feel like it, but never for the powerful.
 * Between Parentheses. Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998–2003. ed. Ignacio Echevarría, trans. Natasha Wimmer (New York: New Directions, 2011 [2004]). 358.
 * Alternative translation: "Those who have power—even for a short time—know nothing about literature; they are solely interested in power. I can be a clown to my readers, if I damn well please, but never to the powerful." Interview with Mónica Maristain for Playboy (Mexican edition), "The Last Interview" (2003), 102, in: The Last Interview. trans. Sybil Perez (New York: Mellville House, 2009). 93-123

 * If I were to say what I really think I would be arrested or shut away in a lunatic asylum. Come on, I am sure that it would be the same for everyone.
 * As quoted in Mining Mirror Vol. 19 (2006), p. 3

 * Literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies, except for a few classic authors (just a few), and every day I had to walk through that minefield, where any false move could be fatal, with only the poems of Archilochus to guide me. It's like that for all young writers. There comes a time when you have no support, not even from friends, forget about mentors, and there's no one to give you a hand; publication, prizes, and grants are reserved for the others, the ones who said “Yes, sir,” over and over, or those who praised the literary mandarins, a never-ending horde distinguished only by their aptitude for discipline and punishment — nothing escapes them and they forgive nothing.
 * "Meeting with Enrique Lihn" (The New Yorker,December 22, 2008)

Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

 * The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every single damn thing matters! Only we don't realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don't realize that's a lie.
 * Dentist

 * We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.
 * Dentist

 * It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as the Eye, always tried to escape from violence even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around twenty years old when Salvador Allende died.
 * Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva

 * One day I heard that The Eye had left Mexico. I wasn't surprised that he hadn't said good-bye. The Eye never said good-bye to anyone. I never said good-bye to anyone either.
 * Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva

 * That night when he went back to his hotel, he wept for his dead children and all the other castrated boys, for his own lost youth, for those who were young no longer and those who died young, for those who fought for Salvador Allende and those who were too scared to fight.
 * Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva

 * I was imprisoned in Concepción for a few days and then realeased. They didn't torture me, as I had feared; they didn't even rob me. But they didn't give me anything to eat either, or any kind of covering for the night, so I had to rely on the goodwill of other prisoners, who shared their food with me. In the small hours I could hear them torturing others; I couldn't sleep and there was nothing to read except a magazine in English that someone had left behind. The only interesting article in it was about a house that had once belonged to Dylan Thomas. ... I got out of that hole thanks to a pair of detectives who had been at high school with me in Los Ángeles...
 * His experience of being imprisoned during the regime of Augusto Pinochet, as depicted in "Dance Card", p. 215

2666: A Novel (2008)

 * La literatura es un vasto bosque y las obras maestras son los lagos, los árboles inmensos o extrañísimos, las elocuentes flores preciosas o las escondidas grutas, pero un bosque también está compuesto por árboles comunes y corrientes, por yerbazales, por charcos, por plantas parásitas, por hongos y por florecillas silvestres.
 * Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms and little wildflowers.

 * About happiness he said not a word, I suppose because he considered it something strictly private and perhaps, how shall I say, treacherous or elusive.

 * Darling, Juan de Dios Martínez would say to her sometimes, sweetheart, love, and in the darkness she would tell him to be quiet and then suck every last drop from him- of semen? of his soul? of the little life he felt, at the time, remained to him? They made love, at her express request, in semidarkness.

 * He began to think about semblance, as Ansky had discussed it in his notebook, and he began to think about himself. He felt free, as he never had in his life, and although malnourished and weak, he also felt the strength to prolong as far as possible this impulse toward freedom, toward sovereignty. And yet the possibility that it was all nothing but semblance troubled him. Semblance was an occupying force of reality, he said to himself, even the most extreme, borderline reality.  It lived in people's souls and their actions, in willpower and in pain, in the way memories and priorities were ordered.  Semblance proliferated in the salons of the industrialists and in the underworld.  It set the rules, it rebelled against its own rules...it set new rules.

Quotes about Bolaño

 * More recent writers who have knocked me dead include Roberto Bolaño, Ruth Ozeki, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Isabel Quintero and N. K. Jemisin.
 * Kathleen Alcalá Interview

 * Among the many acid pleasures of the work of Roberto Bolaño, who died at 50 in 2003, is his idea that culture, in particular literary culture, is a whore. In the face of political repression, upheaval and danger, writers continue to swoon over the written word, and this, for Bolaño, is the source both of nobility and of pitch-black humor. In his novel The Savage Detectives, two avid young Latino poets never lose faith in their rarefied art no matter the vicissitudes of life, age and politics. If they are sometimes ridiculous, they are always heroic. But what can it mean, he asks us and himself, in his dark, extraordinary, stinging novella By Night in Chile, that the intellectual elite can write poetry, paint and discuss the finer points of avant-garde theater as the junta tortures people in basements? The word has no national loyalty, no fundamental political bent; it's a genie that can be summoned by any would-be master. Part of Bolaño's genius is to ask, via ironies so sharp you can cut your hands on his pages, if we perhaps find a too-easy comfort in art, if we use it as anesthetic, excuse and hide-out in a world that is very busy doing very real things to very real human beings. Is it courageous to read Plato during a military coup or is it something else?
 * Stacy D'Erasmo, in "The Sound and the Führer" in The New York Times Book Review (24 February 2008).

 * Who said literature has no real power to affect history? Not Bolaño — for him, literature is an unnervingly protean, amoral force with uncanny powers of self-invention, self-justification and self-mythification. The mythmakers, he suggests, certainly do matter.
 * Stacy D'Erasmo, in "The Sound and the Führer" in The New York Times Book Review (24 February 2008)

 * I still don’t want to accept that W. G. Sebald and Roberto Bolaño, working only yesterday, are gone today. They each published for only a decade before dying in their fifties, but not before expanding our idea of what a novel can be. Half of what’s published these days bears their marks, and so it’s impossible for me to think of writers working today without thinking first of them.
 * Nicole Krauss Interview (2017)

 * The moment we "discover" a favorite writer is like our experience of a cataclysmic event — we can remember precisely where we were and what we were doing when it occurred... So I assume I'll always recall the doctor's waiting room where I opened a dimpled, out-of-date issue of The New Yorker and found Roberto Bolaño's story "Gómez Palacio." For the first time, I was glad the doctor was running late, so I could read the story twice, and still have a few minutes left over to consider the fact that I had just encountered something extraordinarily beautiful and (at least to me) entirely new.
 * Francine Prose in "The Folklore of Exile", a review of Last Evenings on Earth (2006) in The New York Times (9 July 2006)

 * Reading Roberto Bolaño is like hearing the secret story, being shown the fabric of the particular, watching the tracks of art and life merge at the horizon and linger there like a dream from which we awake inspired to look more attentively at the world.
 * Francine Prose "The Folklore of Exile", a review of Last Evenings on Earth (2006) in The New York Times (9 July 2006)

 * Bolaño's narrative style is fragmented and loaded. It is also full of a strange kind of gallows humour, as we are swept along by stories that are invented and presented entirely convincingly, only to be suddenly brought up short by a reminder that this has not been done innocently.
 * Nick Caistor in The Guardian

 * Bolaño has a laser eye and a frank, confessional first-person voice as relentless as it is irresistible. His "infra-realism" sears through the book's world-weary characters... Just behind the nervy, deadpan narrative a total breakdown perpetually looms... Bolaño's writing... is an incantation — against horror, against defeat, against oblivion...
 * Anderson Tepper in The Village Voice (7 July 2006)

 * By far the most inspiring talent from south of the border since the '70s. A Chilean who lived for years in Mexico and ultimately settled near Barcelona before he died in 2003 at age 50, Bolaño's oeuvre is slowly making its way into English... His hypnotizing style and restless approach to plot are at once refreshing and humbling.
 * Ilan Stavans in The San Francisco Chronicle (16 July 2006)

title: Roberto Bolaño


text:
Wikiquote:Announcements

 * Past announcements can be found in the archives.

ja:Wikiquote:ニュース pl:Wikicytaty:Tablica ogłoszeń simple:Wikiquote:Announcements fi:Wikisitaatit:Ajankohtaista sv:Wikiquote:Historia zh:Wikiquote:宣告

title: Wikiquote:Announcements


text:
Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda (born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; 12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924).

 * See also: Canto General.

Quotes

 * Debajo de tu piel vive la luna.
 * The moon lives in the lining of your skin.
 * Oda a la Bella Desnuda (Ode to a Beautiful Nude), from Nuevas Odas Elementales (1956), trans. Nathaniel Tarn in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 349).

 * Mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada
 * My love feeds on your love, beloved
 * From "Si Tu Me Olvidas" (If You Forget Me)

 * ¿Sabes que en las calles no hay nadie y adentro de las casas tampoco? Sólo hay ojos en las ventanas. Si no tienes dònde dormir toca una puerta y te abrirán, te abrirán hasta cierto punto y verás que hace frío adentro, que aquella casa está vacía, y no quiere nada contigo, no valen nada tus historias, y si insistes con tu ternura te muerden el perro y el gato.
 * Don't you know there is no one in the streets and no one in the houses? There are only eyes in the windows. If you don't have a place to sleep, knock on a door and it will open, open up to a certain point and you will see that it is cold inside, and that that house is empty and wants nothing to do with you, your stories mean nothing, and if you insist on being gentle, the dog and the cat will bite you.
 * Soliloquio en Tinieblas (Soliloquy at Twilight) from Estravagario (Book of Vagaries) (1958).

 * Y algo golpeaba en mi alma, fiebre o alas perdidas, y me fui haciendo solo, descifrando aquella quemadura y escribí la primera línea vaga, vaga, sin cuerpo, pura, tontería pura sabiduría del que no sabe nada, y vi de pronto el cielo desgranado y abierto.
 * And something started in my soul, fever or forgotten wings, and I made my own way, deciphering that fire, and I wrote the first faint line, faint, without substance, pure nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing, and I suddenly saw the heavens unfastened and open.
 * Poesía (Poetry) from Memorial de Isla Negra (Memorial of Isla Negra) (1964), Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 457).

 * Allí en Rangoon comprendí que los dioses eran tan enemigos como Dios del pobre ser humano. Dioses de alabastro tendidos como ballenas blancas, dioses dorados como las espigas, dioses serpientes enroscados al crimen de nacer, budhas desnudos y elegantes sonriendo en el coktail de la vacía eternidad como Cristo en su cruz horrible, todos dispuestos a todo, a imponernos su cielo, todos con llagas o pistola para comprar piedad o quemarnos la sangre, dioses feroces del hombre para esconder la cobardía, y allí todo era así, toda la tierra olía a cielo, a mercadería celeste.
 * There in Rangoon I realized that the gods were enemies, just like God, of the poor human being. Gods in alabaster extended like white whales, gods gilded like spikes, serpent gods entwining the crime of being born, naked and elegant buddhas smiling at the cocktail party of empty eternity like Christ on his horrible cross, all of them capable of anything, of imposing on us their heaven, all with torture or pistol to purchase piety or burn our blood, fierce gods made by men to conceal their cowardice, and there it was all like that, the whole earth reeking of heaven, and heavenly merchandise.
 * Religión en el Este (Religion in the East) from Memorial of Isla Negra [Memorial de Isla Negra] (1964), trans. by Anthony Kerrigan in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 463).

 * Es la hora, amor mío, de apartar esta rosa sombría, cerrar las estrellas, enterrar la ceniza en la tierra: y, en la insurrección de la luz, despertar con los que despertaron o seguir en el sueño alcanzando la otra orilla del mar que no tiene otra orilla.
 * It is time, love, to break off that sombre rose, shut up the stars and bury the ash in the earth; and, in the rising of the light, wake with those who awoke or go on in the dream, reaching the other shore of the sea which has no other shore.
 * La Barcarola Termina (The Watersong Ends) (1967), trans. Anthony Kerrigan in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 500).

 * Sólo con una ardiente paciencia conquistaremos la espléndida ciudad que dará luz, justicia y dignidad a todos los hombres. Así la poesía no habrá cantado en vano.
 * Only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all mankind. In this way the song will not have been sung in vain.
 * Nobel lecture, Hacia la ciudad espléndida (Towards the Splendid City) (13 December 1971). In the passage directly preceding these words, Neruda identified the source of his allusion: "It is today exactly one hundred years since an unhappy and brilliant poet, the most awesome of all despairing souls, wrote down this prophecy: 'À l'aurore, armés d'une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes.' 'In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities.' I believe in this prophecy of Rimbaud, the Visionary." (Hace hoy cien años exactos, un pobre y espléndido poeta, el más atroz de los desesperados, escribió esta profecía: "À l'aurore, armes d'une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes". "Al amanecer, armados de una ardiente paciencia, entraremos a las espléndidas ciudades." Yo creo en esa profecía de Rimbaud, el Vidente.)  The quotation is from Arthur Rimbaud's poem "Adieu" from Une Saison en Enfer (1873).

 * Un pilar soportando consuelos Y no me digan nada ¿Y bien? ¿Te sana el metaloide pálido? Tengo un miedo terrible de ser un animal íY, si después de tantos palabras La cólera que quiebra al hombre en niños
 * One pillar holding up consolations And don’t bother telling me anything And so? The pale metalloid heals you? I have a terrible fear of being an animal. And what if after so many words, The anger that breaks a man down into boys.
 * From Espana, aparta de mi este caliz, Masa, Neruda and Vallejo: selected poems, By Robert Bly, John Knoepfle, James Arlington Wright, Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo, copyright 1971, Beacon Press. Translations by Robert Bly, John Knoepfle, and James Wright. ISBN 0-8070-6489-0.

Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) (1924)
trans. William S. Merwin [Penguin Classics, 1993, ISBN 0-140-18648-4]

 * ¿Quién escribe tu nombre con letras de humo entre las estrellas del sur? Ah déjame recordarte cómo eras entonces, cuando aún no existías.
 * Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south? Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
 * "Every Day You Play" (Juegas Todos los Días), XIV, p. 35.

 * Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos.
 * I want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees.
 * "Every Day You Play" (Juegas Todos las Días), XIV, p. 35.

 * Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente, y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca.
 * I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent, and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.
 * "I Like for You to be Still" (Me Gustas Cuando Callas), p. 37.

 * Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
 * Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
 * "Tonight I Can Write" (Puedo Escribir), XX, p. 49.

 * Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido.
 * Love is so short and forgetting is so long.
 * "Tonight I Can Write" (Puedo Escribir), XX, p. 51.

Residencia en la Tierra (Residence on Earth) (1933)
trans. William Merwin in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1]

 * Estoy solo entre materias desvencijadas, la lluvia cae sobre mí, y se me parece, se me parece con su desvarío,solitaria en el mundo muerto, rechazada al caer, y sin forma obstinada.
 * I am alone with rickety materials, the rain falls on me, and it is like me, it is like me in its raving, alone in the dead world, repulsed as it falls, and with no persistent form.
 * Débil del Alba (Weak with the Dawn or The Dawn's Debility), Residencia I (Residence I), I, stanza 5.
 * Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh: I am alone among rickety substances, the rain falls upon me and it seems like me, like me with its madness, alone in the dead world, rejected as it falls, and without persistent shape.

 * Enterrado junto al cocotero hallarás más tarde el cuchillo que escodí allí por temor de que me mataras, y ahora repentinamente quisiera oler su acero de cocina acostumbrado al peso de tu mano y al brillo de tu pie: bajo la humedad de la tierra, entre las sordas raíces, de los lenguajes humanos el pobre sólo sabría tu nombre, y la espesa tierra no comprende tu nombre hecho de impenetrables y substancias divinas.
 * Later on you will find buried near the coconut tree the knife which I hid there for fear you would kill me, and now suddenly I would be glad to smell its kitchen steel used to the weight of your hand, the shine of your foot: under the dampness of the ground, among the deaf roots, in all the languages of the men only the poor will know your name, and the dense earth does not understand your name made of impenetrable divine substances.
 * Tango del Viudo (The Widower's Tango), Residencia I (Residence I), III, stanza 3.
 * Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh: Buried next to the coconut tree you will later find the knife that I hid there for fear that you would kill me, and now suddenly I should like to smell its kitchen steel accustomed to the weight of your hand and the shine of your foot: under the moisture of the earth, among the deaf roots, of all human languages the poor thing would know only your name, and the thick earth does not understand your name made of impenetrable and divine substances.

 * No quiero para mí tantas desgracias. No quiero continuar de raíz y de tumba, de subterráneo solo, de bodega con muertos ateridos, muriéndome de pena.
 * I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes. I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb, as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses, stiff with cold, dying with pain.
 * Walking Around, Residencia II (Residence II), II, stanza 4-5.
 * Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh: I do not want for myself so many misfortunes. I do not want to continue as root and tomb, just underground, a vault with corpses stiff with cold, dying of distress.

 * Si me preguntáis en dónde he estado debo decir "Sucede." Debo de hablar del suelo que oscurecen las piedras, del río que durando se destruye: no sé sino las cosas que los pájaros pierden, el mar dejado atrás, o mi hermana llorando. ¿Por qué tantas regiones, por qué un día se junta con un día? ¿Por qué una negra noche se acumula en la boca? ¿Por qué muertos?
 * If you should ask me where I've been all this time I have to say "Things happen." I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth, on the river ruined in its own duration: I know nothing save things the birds have lost, the sea I left behind, or my sister crying. Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock with day? Why the dark night swilling round in our mouths? And why the dead?
 * No Hay Olvido (Sonata) (There's No Forgetting (Sonata) or There is No Oblivion (Sonata)), Residencia II (Residence II), VI, stanza 1.
 * Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh: If you ask me where I have been I must say "It so happens." I must speak of the ground darkened by stones, of the river that enduring is destroyed: I know only the things that the birds lose, the sea left behind, or my sister weeping. Why so many regions, why does a day join a day? Why does a black night gather in the mouth? Why dead people?

 * Preguntaréis: ¿Y dónde están las lilas? ¿Y la metafísica cubierta de amapolas? ¿Y la lluvia que a menudo golpeaba sus palabras llenándolas de agujeros y pájaros?
 * You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs? and the poppy-petalled metaphysics? and the rain repeatedly spattering its words and drilling them full of apertures and birds.
 * Explico Algunos Cosas (I'm Explaining a Few Things or I Explain a Few Things), Tercera Residencia (Third Residence), IV, stanza 1.
 * Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh: You will ask: And where are the lilacs? And the metaphysical blanket of poppies? And the rain that often struck your words filling them with holes and birds?

 * Preguntaréis ¿por qué su poesía no nos habla del sueño, de las hojas, de los grandes volcanes de su país natal? Venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles!
 * And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the bloods in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets!
 * Explico Algunos Cosas (I'm Explaining a Few Things or I Explain a Few Things), Tercera Residencia (Third Residence), IV, stanza 9.
 * Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh: You will ask: why does your poetry not speak to us of of sleep, of the leaves, of the great volcanoes of your native land? Come and se the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets!

Misattributed
quien no oye música, quien no encuentra gracia en sí mismo. Muere lentamente quien destruye su amor propio, quien no se deja ayudar...'' who does not listen to music, who does not find grace in himself, she who does not find grace in herself, dies slowly. He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem, who does not allow himself to be helped, [dies slowly...]
 * ''Muere lentamente quien no viaja, quien no lee,
 * He who does not travel, who does not read,
 * Poem "Muere lentamente" (Dying Slowly), wrongly attributed to Pablo Neruda. See "Fake Pablo Neruda Poem Spreads on Internet" by Ana Mendoza, Latin American Herald Tribune (12 January 2009).

Real auhor: Martha Medeiros, Brazilian writer. First published in November 1, 2000, in Zero Hora, a newspaper published in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. It was not published as a poem, but as an article.

This line has been attributed to Neruda since the 1990s, but it is not in any of his published work. It appears to be a common saying in popular songs. Here is a citation from 1987 "Los grupos organizadores difundieron sus mensajes en pequeñas cuartillas y también en banderolas : 'Podrán cortar una flor / arrancar muchas flores / pero no podrán / detener la primavera' de la Biblioteca Popular Tahuantinsuyo." [https://www.google.com/books/edition/La_red/C1sPAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=Tahuantinsuyo Instituto de Defensa Legal (Lima, Peru). La Red. Lima, Perú: Instituto de Defensa Legal, 1987] at Hathi Trust and one from 1989 "o nuestros líderes populares . . . según se dice que podrán cortar las rosas pero no podrán detener la primavera" [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22podr%C3%A1n+cortar+las+rosas+pero+no%22&sxsrf=ALeKk02XgzElS8tG2TlidTHldZaiPoyHVA:1620917168899&source=lnms&tbm=bks&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjSyr-A88bwAhVbF1kFHQUKBggQ_AUoAXoECAEQCw&biw=1872&bih=1108 Taller Cultural "El Cueche.". (1989). Quinde: revista del Taller Cultural "El Cueche". Colombia. Issue 1 Page 38] at Hathi Trust
 * Podrán cortar todas las flores, pero no podrán detener la primavera.
 * They may mow down all the flowers, but they can't stop spring.

Quotes about Pablo Neruda

 * The influence of Pablo Neruda began to be felt after I left Chile. I took along a suitcase, photographs of my family, a small bag filled with soil and one volume of the complete works of Pablo Neruda. Every time I felt the need to recover my country, I read Neruda because he is Chile, he is the voice of Chile. It is a beautiful metaphor that he died following the military coup. With his death, the voice of the people and the voice of freedom grew silent...Pablo Neruda is a poet of emotion and sensuality. Although he is lacking Gabriela Mistral's mystical bent, I feel very close to his way of approaching, smelling, touching, tasting, and walking the world. I like this very much.
 * Isabel Allende, Interviews with Latin American writers by Marie Lise Gazarian Gautier (1989)

 * I don't know if he influenced my writing but he's a big influence in my life. Pablo Neruda is a poet of the senses. For example, I think of his "Ode to Oil." You may have used oil all your life, but you've never seen the transparency or the color, felt the texture, smelled it; you don't know where it comes from or how it's made. The beautiful nature of oil becomes real when you read Neruda.
 * 1994 interview in Conversations with Isabel Allende (1999)

 * I'm fairly certain that if you study any poet of any given time, any sex, any class background, the question of searching for identity is there. It's inherent. It is a process of self-understanding, of going through life. Take Pablo Neruda, ambassador for his country, writing poetry reflecting the issues of his life. What I'm saying is that the difference between me and Neruda is that I'm not a man from a middle-class elitist background. My government is not sending me as ambassador so I can go and write poetry in some other place. What is different with women of color is that they are the very last permitted a voice. What we are hearing now is this very unique, silenced, previously censored voice.
 * Ana Castillo 1990 interview in Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers edited by Hector A. Torres (2007)

 * hear Neruda: 'Can poetry serve our fellow men? Can it find a place in man's struggles? ... I felt a pressing need to write a central poem that would bring together the historical events, the geographical situations, the life ... of our peoples."
 * Nadine Gordimer "When Art Meets Politics" (1999)

 * Pablo Neruda is a New World poet whose fate differs from the other Whitman descendants because he was born into a country where the majority of the citizens did not mistake themselves for Englishmen or long to find themselves struggling, at most, with cucumber sandwiches and tea. He was never European. His anguish was not aroused by three piece suits and rolled umbrellas... Specifically, Neruda's self-conscious decision to write in a manner readily comprehensible to the masses of his countrymen, and his self-conscious decision to specify, outright, the United Fruit Company when that was the instigating subject of his become unfortunate moments in an otherwise supposedly sublime, not to mention surrealist, deeply Old World and European but nonetheless Chilean case history. To assure the validity of this perspective, the usual American critic and translator presents you with a smattering of the unfortunate, ostensibly political poetry and, on the other hand, buries you under volumes of Neruda's early work that antedates the Spanish Civil War or, in other words, that antedates Neruda's serious conversion to a political world view.
 * June Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die (2003)

 * When I was in high school, I had never read Black poetry. The one poet of color whom I had read, and loved, was Pablo Neruda. I have to say that Neruda and Millay were the two poets I loved. All the others didn't make much sense. Except Eliot. He really got to me.
 * 1984 interview in Conversations with Audre Lorde (2004)

 * Neruda died on the day that the military junta took power. Even more than in his life, he became a symbol of Chilean resistance. Both in his writings of and for and to his country, and in his countrypeople's response to him, there was a dialogue reaching beyond death. He was internationally famous, of course; of the middle class; a male. It was not the poetry of a dark-skinned mestizo-still less, a mestiza-that so commanded love and respect. Yet he could have betrayed, and did not; could have escaped into the international literary elite, and did not. The fence below his locked and off-limits house became a place for people to continue voicing their hopes and angers, a collective page greater even than the poet's books, a page made possible because of his books, because of the hand that had once crawled over line after line, writing the poems.
 * Adrienne Rich What Is Found There (1993)

 * Pablo Neruda of Chile, one of the world’s greatest poets
 * Paul Robeson, "Thoughts on Winning the Stalin Peace Prize" (January 1953)

 * I also read poetry — from Pablo Neruda to Warsan Shire — fairly regularly, and it keeps my sense of what words can do wide open and my sense of beauty awake.
 * Rebecca Solnit interview (2018)

title: Pablo Neruda


text:
Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert (December 12 1821 – May 8 1880) was an influential French writer who was perhaps the leading exponent of literary realism of his country. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for his Correspondence, and for his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics.
 * See also:
 * Madame Bovary

Quotes

 * The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating: "They are not men but oxen!" and the multitude round about repeated: "Oxen! oxen!" The devout exclaimed: "Lord! Eat!"
 * Salammbô (1862), Ch. 13 : Moloch

Sentimental Education (1869)

 * Don't talk to me about your hideous reality! What does it mean — reality? Some see things black, others blue — the multitude sees them brute-fashion. There is nothing less natural than Michael Angelo; there is nothing more powerful! The anxiety about eternal truth is a mark of contemporary baseness; and art will become, if things go on in that way, a sort of poor joke as much below religion as it is below poetry, and as much below politics as it is below business. You will never reach its end — yes, its end! — which is to cause within us an impersonal exaltation, with petty works, in spite of all your finished execution.
 * Pt. 1, Ch. 4

 * Without ideality, there is no grandeur; without grandeur there is no beauty. Olympus is a mountain. The most effective monument will always be the Pyramids. Exuberance is better than taste; the desert is better than a streetpavement, and a savage is surely better than a hairdresser!
 * Pt. 1, Ch. 4; the most famous portion of this statement is "Exuberance is better than taste..." [Mieux vaut l'exubérance que le goût.]

 * Rien n'est humiliant comme de voir les sots réussir dans les entreprises où l'on échoue.
 * Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
 * Pt. 1, Ch. 5

 * For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act. They are hampered by mistrust of themselves, daunted by the fear of giving offence; besides, deep feelings of affection are like respectable women; they are afraid of being found out and they go through life with downcast eyes.
 * Pt. 2, Ch. 3

 * He is so corrupt that he would willingly pay for the pleasure of selling himself.
 * Pt. 3, Ch. 3

Correspondence

 * Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d'être violent et original dans vos œuvres.
 * Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
 * To Gertrude Tennant (December 25, 1876) (Correspondence v4, pg280)

 * What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
 * To Guy de Maupassant (February 16, 1880)

 * There is no 'true'. There are merely ways of perceiving truth.
 * Quoted in The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1857-1880, ed. and trans. Francis Steegmuller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), xii.

Letters to Madame Louise Colet

 * One must not always think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form. (12 August 1846)

 * To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost. (13 August 1846)

 * Quelle atroce invention que celle du bourgeois, n'est-ce pas?
 * What a horrible invention, the bourgeois, don't you think? (22 September 1846)

 * One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier. (22 October 1846)

 * An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. (9 December 1852)

 * The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence. (11 December 1852)

 * You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it. (14 June 1853)

 * Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry. (14 August 1853)

Letters to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie

 * The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him. (18 March 1857)

 * Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live. (June 1857)

Letters to George Sand

 * Tout le rêve de la démocratie est d'élever le prolétaire au niveau de bêtise du bourgeois.
 * The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity. (4 or 5 October 1871)

 * Notre ignorance de l'histoire nous fait calomnier notre temps.
 * Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. (8 September 1871)

 * Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom. But I include in the word bourgeois, the bourgeois in blouses as well the bourgeois in coats. It is we and we alone, that is to say the literary men, who are the people, or to say it better: the tradition of humanity. (10 May 1867)

 * L'homme n'est rien, l'oeuvre – tout
 * The man is nothing, the work — all. (December 1875)
 * Slightly misquoted in "The Red-Headed League" by Arthur Conan Doyle as L'homme c'est rien – l'oeuvre c'est tout.

Misattributed

 * As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
 * William James, in The Will to Believe (1897)

Quotes about Flaubert

 * I see now, looking at this little book, November, by Flaubert, so many of the themes that he was going to explore so wonderfully later are just touched upon, he didn’t have the skill to carry them any further. And then, as his life went by, he followed them, he followed these dark tunnels.
 * Nadine Gordimer Interview (2004)

 * When I was working on China Men, I remember reading a critic who was praising the great male writers, like Flaubert and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Henry James, who were able to write great women characters. I don't remember if they said women had done men in this way or not, but I remember thinking that to finish myself as a great artist I'd have to be able to create men characters. Along with that, I was thinking that I had to do more than the first person pronoun.
 * 1991 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)

 * Madame Bovary is written entirely according to the system of tanka. Flaubert wrote it so slowly and painstakingly, because he had to begin it anew after every fifth word.
 * Osip Mandelstam THE NINETEENTH CENTURY translated into English in The complete critical prose (1997)

 * I want to think that every character is a little-I guess like Flaubert saying "Emma Bovary, c'est moi"-that I am the characters but the characters aren't me
 * 1996 interview in Conversations with Bharati Mukherjee Edited by Bradley C. Edwards (2009)

 * Thus Flaubert has two quite different conceptions of himself. One is at the level of banal description, for example when he writes to his mistress Louise: ‘What am I? Am I intelligent or am I stupid? Am I sensitive or am I stolid? Am I mean or am I generous? Am I selfish or am I selfless? I have no idea, I suppose I am like everyone else, I waver between all these. . . .’ In other words, at this level he is completely lost. Why? Because none of these notions has any meaning in themselves. They only acquire a meaning from inter-subjectivity, in other words what I have called in the Critique the ‘objective spirit’ within which each member of a group or society refers to himself and appears to others, establishing relations of interiority between persons which derive from the same information or the same context. Yet one cannot say that Flaubert did not have, at the very height of his activity, a comprehension of the most obscure origins of his own history. He once wrote a remarkable sentence: ‘You are doubtless like myself, you all have the same terrifying and tedious depths’—les mêmes profondeurs terribles et ennuyeuses. What could be a better formula for the whole world of psychoanalysis, in which one makes terrifying discoveries, yet which always tediously come to the same thing? His awareness of these depths was not an intellectual one. He later wrote that he often had fulgurating intuitions, akin to a dazzling bolt of lightning in which one simultaneously sees nothing and sees everything. Each time they went out, he tried to retrace the paths revealed to him by this blinding light, stumbling and falling in the subsequent darkness.
 * Jean-Paul Sartre, "Marxism and Subjectivity", 1961 lecture published in New Left Review (July–August 2014)

 * [ L'Éducation sentimentale displays Flaubert's ] nervous analysis of the smallest facts, a notation of life that is both meticulous and alive.
 * Émile Zola, La Tribune (28 November 1869), in Oeuvres complètes, X: Oeuvres critiques 1 (1968), p. 918, quoted in Robert Gildea, Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799–1914 (2008), p. 191

title: Gustave Flaubert


text:
Romeo LeBlanc

Roméo LeBlanc, PC, CC, ONB, CMM, CD (born December 18, 1927 in Memramcook, New Brunswick) is a former Governor General of Canada. LeBlanc was appointed Governor General of Canada on February 8, 1995, the first Acadian and the first person from the Maritimes to hold that post. He resigned from the position in 1999, citing health reasons.

Quotes

 * "If I am to be known for anything, I would like it to be for encouraging Canadians, for knowing a little bit about their daily, extraordinary courage. And for wanting that courage to be recognized."
 * Source: installation speech, February 8, 1995

 * "We are all immigrants to this land. It's just that some of us came earlier than others."
 * Source: installation speech February 8, 1995

 * "The hope of courage lies in every heart, together with the fear that we will fail. When the test came, you did not fail."
 * Source: speech at the Ceremony for Decorations for Bravery, June 23, 1995.

 * "Volunteers have enriched the lives of every Canadian, and asked nothing for themselves. Now we will honour the hidden helpers and the unsung heroes of Canada. It is time to give something back to the givers."
 * Source: speech on the occasion of the "Unsung Heroes" winning design (Caring Canadian Award), November 21, 1995

 * "I am told that there is a proverbial phrase among the Inuit: 'a long time ago, in the future.' Let the children see our history, and maybe it will help to shape the future."
 * Source: address to the Empire Club and the Royal Commonwealth Society, June 26, 1996

 * "We owe the Aboriginal peoples a debt that is four centuries old. It is their turn to become full partners in developing an even greater Canada. And the reconciliation required may be less a matter of legal texts than of attitudes of the heart."
 * Source: speech on the occasion of the presentation of the 1996 Native Role Models, February 23, 1996

 * "We send our [peacekeepers] off to some disputed zone, full of local intrigue and power blocs and uncertainty and danger, and they are supposed to save lives not with their weapons, but through their competence and their character. And they do it."
 * Source: speech on the occasion of the presentation of the insignia of the Order of Military Merit, February 5, 1997

 * "We are not building a new country. The Newfoundlanders and the Acadians have been here almost four centuries.  The  First Nations have been here almost forever. But we may be creating a new kind of country, where equality does not mean sameness but means respecting differences; and where freedom is intertwined with sharing."
 * Source: Canada Day speech, Parliament Hill, 1 July 1998.

 * "I fear that by gaining a limit, we'll lose an excuse."
 * Source: Speech as Fisheries Minister, at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, September 16, 1975, well in advance of Canada declaring 200-mile fisheries jurisdiction in 1977.

The above mostly consists of excerpts from his speeches as Governor General. Full speeches and messages are available on the Governor General of Canada's website.

title: Romeo LeBlanc