text:
Erica Jong

Erica Jong (born 26 March 1942) is an American author and educator. Born in New York City, Jong graduated from Barnard College in 1963. She is best known for her first novel, Fear of Flying (published in 1973), which created a sensation with its frank treatment of a woman's sexual desires.

Quotes

 * I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself. When Anne Sexton admonished me, "We are all writing God's poem," I took it to mean there should be no competition between writers because we are all involved in a common project, a common prayer. But to Gore's and Norman's generation, particularly those male writers who served in the second world war, the prizefighter paradigm remains.
 * "Into the lion's den" in The Guardian (26 October 2000)

 * I have had the experience of having my sister get up at a meeting at Columbia University, where these scholars from all over the world were anointing Fear of Flying as a classic. And my sister got up and said, "Erica Jong has ruined my life — with her books."
 * (quote at 14:05 of 36:38)

 * My advice to a young writer: Never give up. Read everything you can read — particularly the writers who move you deeply. Study how they do what they do. Read and read and read ... and write and write and write.

Fear of Flying (1973)

 * Underneath it all, you longed to be annihilated by love...

 * Each one an antidote to the one that went before. Each one a reaction, an about-face, a rebound.
 * (About Men)

 * The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.

 * Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life.

 * I'm just trying to lead my own fucking life if I can manage to find it in all this confusion.

 * Dancing is like fucking... it doesn't matter how you look - just concentrate on how you feel.

 * I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.

 * The ultimate sexist put-down: the prick which lies down on the job.

 * Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.

 * I'm very dependant. I fall apart regularly.

 * Sheer bitchiness can be a sort of style.

 * It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present.

 * Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.

 * Everyone's a little crazy when you get inside their head... it's only a matter of degree.

How to Save Your Own Life (1977)

 * I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world...

 * Having a baby with him meant marrying that face forever.

 * All people believe their suffering is greater than others.

 * Humor is a survival tool.

 * How could one create life with someone who represented death?

 * Inevitably, I drank too much, talked too much, smiled too hard, swallowed back too much bile.

 * My body was flesh, which was only one step removed from shit, from clay, from dust.

 * Keeping a journal implies hope.

 * The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach.

 * And what if I don't want forgiveness?

 * Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't...

 * Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends.

 * It takes a spasm of love to write a poem.

 * They all cheat sooner or later. You might as well have one who isn't a bore the rest of the time.

 * ...jealousy makes the prick grow harder. And the cunt wetter.

 * Love is love, but marriage is an investment.

 * Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it.

 * Without sex it would be so easy to choose appropriate people to live with. Sex was the joker in an otherwise rational deck.

 * Loving someone is a loss of freedom -- but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.

 * There is a rhythm to the ending...

 * Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it.

 * If you apologize for something that isn't your fault in the first place, you, in effect, confirm their belief that it is your fault.

 * Is perception equivalent to existence?

 * Photographs... are the most curious indicators of reality.

 * ...the ocean kept falling into itself, gathering itself up, and falling into itself again.

 * The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

 * What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to deceive?

 * I only know that in our choice of friends and lovers and teachers who will change our lives, we are guided by forces which have nothing to do with the rationalizations we give.

 * Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected (1991)

 * Pain is not love. Love flowers; love gives without taking; love is serene and calm.

 * Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye...

 * Betrayal does that -- betrays the betrayer.

 * It is our old love I love.

 * I look forward and see myself look back.

 * In loving life you love what can't survive...

 * Why does life need evidence of life?

 * I am not sure if love is a salve or just a deeper kind of wound.

 * ...I am sure that when we love we are better than ourselves and when we hate, worse.

 * The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.

 * Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry...

 * Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along.

 * Hate generalizes; love is particular.

 * Because I loved myself, I was loved.

 * ...if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

"Blood and Guts: The Tricky Problem of Being a Woman Writer in the Late Twentieth Century"
In The Writer on Her Work edited by Janet Sternburg (2000)

 * For women writers the systematic discouragement even to attempt to become writers has been so constant and pervasive a force that we cannot consider their literary productions without somehow assessing the effects of that barrage of discouragement.

 * For women writers the systematic discouragement even to attempt to become writers has been so constant and pervasive a force that we cannot consider their literary productions without somehow assessing the effects of that barrage of discouragement. Often discouraged in the home, often at school, often by families and spouses, the rare woman writer who does not lose her determination along the way is already a survivor. That one should next have to face the systematic discouragement of a male-oriented literary establishment is absurd and sad but nonetheless a real fact of life for many women writers.* (No one has chronicled this repression better than Tillie Olsen in her splendid book Silences (1978).) The truth is that many of us are doomed to do our best work in an atmosphere of condescension and loneliness. Yet perhaps there is some sense in which that lack of establishment approval is a blessing, for an artist must learn (the sooner the better) that he or she works for the work itself, not for approval, and it is easier to establish that sense of creative independence when approval is lacking than when one is seduced by it.

 * school is a microcosm of our society's values.

 * Sexism is somewhat better hidden now-though it is far from eradicated.

 * when I go to read my work at colleges, I find the students reading and discussing contemporary writing by women as if there never had been a time when a Distinguished Critic could say "Women can't be writers"-even in jest. I am grateful and glad for that change, but it has not been won without pain.

 * Nothing is more destructive of the spirit and ultimately of creativity than false meekness, anger that does not know its own name. And nothing is more freeing for a woman (or for a woman writer) than giving up the pleasures of masochism and beginning to fight. But we must always remember that fighting is only a first step. As Virginia Woolf points out in A Room of One's Own, many women's books have been destroyed by the rage and bitterness at their own centers. Rage opens the doors into the spirit, but then the spirit must be nurtureed.

 * The myths about women were mostly ways of keeping us out of touch with our own strength, and this confused many generations of women.

 * when I look back on the years since I left college, and I try to sum up what I have learned, it is precisely that: not to fear change, not to expect my life to be immutable.

 * Every poem, every page of fiction I have written, has been written with anxiety, occasionally panic, always uncertainty about its reception.

 * As a writer, I feel that the very source of my inspiration lies in my never forgetting how much I have in common with other women, how many ways in which we are all-successful or not-similarly shackled. I do not write about superwomen who have transcended all conflict; I write about women who are torn, as most of us are torn, between the past and the future, between our mothers' frustrations and the extravagant hopes we have for our daughters. I do not know what a writer would write about if all her characters were superwomen, cleansed of conflict. Conflict is the soul of literature.

 * I would like to see a world in which male writers wrote without masculinist bias, in which for example Hemingway's masculinist mythology (and that of many other contemporary American male writers) was perceived as quite as bizarre and hysterical as the most absurd excesses of militant feminist fiction, and in which consciousness had become so truly androgynous that the adjective itself would be puzzlingly obsolete.

 * The human need for companionship and sexuality is far stronger than any intellectual theory

 * Righteousness has no place in literature. Of course the keen observer of her culture will feel deeply about the oppression she sees around her, the inhumanity of man to man, of man to woman, but her vision of it must be essentially personal, not abstractly political.

 * I must gratefully acknowledge that the second wave of the feminist movement liberated my writing and was a liberating influence upon my whole life. How? Not by supplying me with dogma, but by making it easier for me to look into myself and assume that what I felt as a woman was also shared by other women (and men). For one of the most positive by-products of the so-called second wave of the feminist movement was its discovery of a new audience of readers-readers both female and male-who came to realize that literary history as we previously knew it was the history of the literature of the white, the affluent, the male, and that the female side of experience had been almost completely omitted (except as seen through the eyes of the traditional victors in the war between the sexes-men).

 * My job is not to paralyze myself by anticipating judgment but to do the best I can and let the judgment fall where it may.

 * No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.

 * It seems to me that having now created an entire literature of female rage, an entire literature of female introspection, women writers are ready to enter the next phase-the phase of empathy. Without forgetting how hard-won our rage was, without forgetting how many puritanical voices would still like to censor our sexuality, I think we must consider ourselves free to explore the whole world of feeling in our writings-and not to be trapped forever in the phase of discovering buried anger...The time has come to let go of that rage; the time has come to realize that curiosity is braver than rage, that exploration is a nobler calling than war.

Other

 * Never follow a dog act. You know you're on the skids when you play yourself in the movie version of your life.
 * Erica Jong's father (a musician, songwriter and later business man), his two pieces of advice for her. Given in the Times Literary Supplement, 7 October 1994, page 44.

Quotes about Erica Jong

 * Many contemporary women writers and artists have attempted to work with new images drawn from an explicitly feminist consciousness or from a female sensibility pulled from the experiences of daily life and made explicit in the context of the women's liberation movement. The struggle to do this requires both the break-up of the interior colonization and the actualization of a women-centered reality. Erica Jong described this process in her own work as she came of age as a writer in the 1970s: "I spent my whole bookish life identifying with writers and nearly all the writers who mattered were men. Even though there were women writers and even though I read them and loved them, they did not seem to matter. If they were good, they were good in spite of being women. If they were bad, it was because they were women. I had, in short, internalized all the dominant cultural stereotypes, and the result was that I could scarcely even imagine a woman as an author." Once Jong could name the problem, however, and see herself as a writer, the content of her work changed: "I stopped writing about ruins and nightingales. I was able to make poetry out of the everyday activities of my life: peeling onions, a trip to the gynecologist, a student demonstration, my own midnight terrors and dreams-all things I would have previously dismissed as trivial."
 * Bettina Aptheker Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Experience (1989)

 * (Did you every read Fear of Flying?) G.P.: Well, that's another book that I really read part of several times and couldn't really finish. I thought it could have been done a lot faster and shorter…But again, that book was very important to a lot of women. I respect those facts, when people feel like that. I don't think it's just pure popularity; I don't think it's just that they were sold…But those books, those two books [The Women's Room and Fear of Flying], really were very important for lots of women.
 * 1981 interview in Conversations with Grace Paley Edited by Gerhard Bach & Blaine Hall (2013)

 * Erica Jong's Fanny is a marvelous, robust, funny book.
 * Judith Paterson in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)

 * ... Jong presented millions of women readers with the possibility of — the great joys of — agency in place of soporific and joyless passivity in life and, of course, sex.
 * Heidi Pitlor,

 * (Which subjects do you wish more authors would write about?) Money. White authors often write about money (or don’t) in a way that disregards the realities of most people. It’s as if they assume that everyone simply has it. Or at least their readers. I remember reading “Fear of Flying,” by Erica Jong, many years ago, for instance, and getting very angry when the protagonist went to Europe for months with no concern for money or a job. I assumed she was relying on family money, but it was never explained. It took me out of the text because I couldn’t get over it. Maybe it’s because I grew up working class and money was a factor in everything we did. Marginalized people could never in their wildest dreams make these kinds of choices.
 * Erika Sánchez interview (2022

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

title: Erica Jong


text:
Wikiquote:Sourced and Unsourced sections

Only quotes properly sourced to an original work or a reputable secondary publication should appear in Wikiquote pages.

Where they appear depends on whether they are -
 * (a) sourced to an original speech, book, interview, film, or other work ("Quotes"),
 * (b) found in a reputable secondary source ("Attributed"), or
 * (c) widely associated with an author or work but sourced to another author or work ("Misattributed").

Quotes widely attributed to the author or work but not sourced to an original work or reputable secondary publication should appear as the first entry on the Discussion page {"Unsourced"}.

Sourced
Place sourced quotes as follows.

Quotes
Quotes sourced to the author or work appear without qualification in a "Quotes" section of the author's article,

Attributed
Quotes sourced to a reputable secondary publication but not to an original work appear in an "Attributed" section in the author's article,

Markup. Create an Attributed section by copying the following wikitext and pasting it just below the Quotes section:

 * ==Attributed==
 * Attributed: Quotes found in a reputable secondary source but not sourced to an original work. Read more at Sourced and Unsourced sections.
 * Attributed: Quotes found in a reputable secondary source but not sourced to an original work. Read more at Sourced and Unsourced sections.

Then insert content after   and before  .

Misattributed
Quotes widely attributed to one author or work but sourced to another author or work appear in a "Misattributed" section in the non-author's article with citation to the correct authorship.

Markup. Create a Misattributed section by copying the following wikitext and pasting it just below the Attributed section if there is one, the Quotes section if there isn't:

 * ==Misattributed==
 * Misattributed: Quotes widely associated with an author or work but sourced to another author or work. Read more at Sourced and Unsourced sections.
 * Misattributed: Quotes widely associated with an author or work but sourced to another author or work. Read more at Sourced and Unsourced sections.

Then insert content after   and before  .

Unsourced
Unsourced quotes widely attributed to an author but not sourced to any author's work or a reputable secondary publication should not appear in the author's article. Instead, they should appear in an "Unsourced" section in the reputed author's discussion page. See, for example, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme," widely attributed to Mark Twain. In the past, many articles were divided into "Sourced" and "Unsourced" sections. Move unsourced sections appearing in articles to discussion pages.

Markup. Create an Unsourced section at the top of a talk page by copying the following wikitext and pasting it just below and any other leading templates:

 * ==Unsourced==
 * Unsourced: Quotes widely attributed to the author or work but not sourced to an original work or reputable secondary publication. Read more at Sourced and Unsourced sections.
 * ==Unsourced==
 * Unsourced: Quotes widely attributed to the author or work but not sourced to an original work or reputable secondary publication. Read more at Sourced and Unsourced sections.

Then insert content after   and before  .

Idiocy, pranks and vandalism
Remove unsourced quotes that are not commonly attributed to an author. This includes quotes obviously not made by or about the subject, prank edits, and outright vandalism.

Moving quotes
In all cases of moving or removing a quote, please include an explanation in the edit summary to inform other Wikiquotians why you feel this is appropriate. Example summaries include:
 * "sourced quote"
 * "moved to Misattributed after finding original quote"
 * "removed likely prank edit"


text:
Neil Armstrong

Neil Alden Armstrong (5 August 1930 – 25 August 2012) was an American test pilot and astronaut, who was the commander of the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission on July 20, 1969, in which he and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to land on the Moon, and he was the first man to walk on the Moon.

Quotes

 * I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul ... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.
 * Apollo mission press conference (1969); ABC World News; also quoted in Of a Fire on the Moon (1970) by Norman Mailer, and in First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong (2005) by James R. Hansen

 * Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
 * First words from the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle after guiding the craft to a landing on the Moon at 4:17pm EDT (20 July 1969)

 * That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.
 * Words said when Armstrong first stepped onto the Moon (20 July 1969) One Small Step, transcript of Apollo 11 Moon landing. In the actual sound recordings he apparently fails to say "a" before "man" and says: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." This was generally considered by many to simply be an error of omission on his part. Armstrong long insisted he did say "a man" but that it was inaudible. Prior to new evidence supporting his claim, he stated a preference for the "a" to appear in parentheses when the quote is written. The debate continues on the matter, as "Armstrong's 'poetic' slip on Moon" at BBC News (3 June 2009) reports that more recent analysis by linguist John Olsson and author Chris Riley with higher quality recordings indicates that he did not say "a".

 * I'm quite certain that we'll have such [lunar] bases in our lifetime, somewhat like the Antarctic stations and similar scientific outposts, continually manned.
 * BBC interview (1970)

 * Through books you will meet poets and novelists whose creations will fire your imagination. You will meet the great thinkers who will share with you their philosophies, their concepts of the world, of humanity and of creation. You will learn about events that have shaped our history, of deeds both noble and ignoble. All of this knowledge is yours for the taking... Your library is a storehouse for mind and spirit. Use it well.
 * Letter to the children of Troy, Michigan on the opening of its Public Library (1971), in Why Libraries Matter: Letters to the Children of Troy, Michigan (From 1971), by Lucas Reilly, Mental Floss (3 July 2012)

 * I remember on the trip home on Apollo 11 it suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
 * As quoted in The People's Almanac (1975) by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, p. 675

 * I am comfortable with my level of public discourse.
 * Declining to be interviewed for a magazine article, quoted in "Armstrong's Code" by Kathy Sawyer in Washington Post Magazine (11 July 1999)

 * The exciting part for me, as a pilot, was the landing on the moon. That was the time that we had achieved the national goal of putting Americans on the moon. The landing approach was, by far, the most difficult and challenging part of the flight. Walking on the lunar surface was very interesting, but it was something we looked on as reasonably safe and predictable. So the feeling of elation accompanied the landing rather than the walking.
 * Interview at The New Space Race (August 2007)

 * Space has not changed but technology has, in many cases, improved dramatically. A good example is digital technology where today's cell phones are far more powerful than the computers on the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module that we used to navigate to the moon and operate all the spacecraft control systems.
 * On the differences between the present and the time of the space race which existed during the Cold War years, in an interview at The New Space Race (August 2007)

 * Pilots take no special joy in walking: pilots like flying. Pilots generally take pride in a good landing, not in getting out of the vehicle.
 * On his famous moonwalk, as quoted in  In the Shadow of the Moon : A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969 (2007) by Francis French and Colin Burgess

 * A century hence, 2000 may be viewed as quite a primitive period in human history. It's something to hope for. ... I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer — born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow. As an engineer, I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.
 * "The Engineered Century" remarks delivered during National Engineers Week on behalf of the National Academy of Engineering at the National Press Club (22 February 2000)

 * Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am in the position of a pilot without his checklist, so I'll have to wing it a bit. ... [Prior to the Apollo missions,] no one knew what kind of person could be persuaded to take the trip. Prisoners were suggested. Soldiers could be ordered. Photographers could take pictures — and they're expendable. Doctors understood the limits of human physiology. Finally, both sides picked pilots.
 * On being awarded a Congressional Gold Medal on (21 July 2009)

 * I'll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, but nevertheless, it was a diversion.
 * Apollo 11 40th anniversary celebration (2009), Armstrong discussed how the space race functioned politically Neil Armstrong's Giant Leap, by Chris Higgins, in Mental Floss (25 August 2012)

Presidential telephone call (1969)

 * US President Richard Nixon spoke to Aldrin and Armstrong during their walk on the surface of the moon (20 July 1969) - Full transcript and link to the recording

 * Nixon: Hello, Neil and Buzz. I'm talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made from the White House. I just can't tell you how proud we all are of what you have done. For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives. And for people all over the world, I am sure that they, too, join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one; one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.
 * Armstrong: Thank you, Mr. President. It's a great honor and privilege for us to be here representing not only the United States but men of peace of all nations, and with interests and the curiosity and with the vision for the future. It's an honor for us to be able to participate here today.
 * Nixon: And thank you very much and I look forward — all of us look forward to seeing you on the Hornet on Thursday.
 * Aldrin: I look forward to that very much, sir.

60 Minutes interview (2005)

 * 60 minutes interview (2005)

 * Our autopilot was taking us into a very large crater, about the size of a big football stadium with steep slopes on the crater covered with very large rocks about the size of automobiles that was not the kind of place that I wanted to try to make the first landing.

 * I thought, well. when I step off it's just going to be a little step — a step from there down to there — but then I thought about all those 400,000 people who had given me the opportunity to make that step and thought it's going to be a big something for all those folks and, indeed for a lot of others that weren't even involved in the project, so it was kind of a simple correlation.
 * On what inspired him to say his famous words, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

 * It's a brilliant surface in that sunlight.

 * The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on Earth.

 * It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it.

 * Friends and colleagues all of a sudden looked at us, treated us, slightly differently than had months or years before when we were working together. I never quite understood that.

 * I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks but for the ledger of our daily work.

40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing (2009)

 * 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing - Personal tribute letter to Australians and Honeysuckle Creek Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, which provided the communications between Apollo 11 and mission control]

 * We were involved in doing what many thought to be impossible, putting humans on Earth's moon.

 * Science fiction writers thought it would be possible. H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and other authors found ways to get people to the moon. But none of those writers foresaw any possibility of the lunar explorers being able to communicate with Earth, transmit data, position information, or transmit moving pictures of what they saw back to Earth. The authors foresaw my part of the adventure, but your part was beyond their comprehension.

 * All the Apollo people were working hard, working long hours, and were dedicated to making certain everything they did, they were doing to the very best of their ability.

 * It would be impossible to overstate the appreciation that we on the crew feel for your dedication and the quality of your work.

Open letter on NASA cuts (2010)

 * Open letter with James Lovell and Eugene Cernan to U.S. President Barack Obama "Moon Men To Obama: Your Nasa Plans Suck Asteroids" by Kit Eaton in Fast Company (14 April 2010)

Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity. America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a program which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal.
 * For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. While the President's plan envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years.

Letter to Robert Krulwich (2010)

 * Letter to Robert Krulwich after he wondered in his columns why the astronauts stayed so close to the landing site Neil Armstrong Talks About The First Moon Walk, by Robert Krulwich at NPR (8 December 2010)

 * It is true that we were cautious in our planning. There were many uncertainties about how well our Lunar module systems and our Pressure suit and backpack would match the engineering predictions in the hostile lunar environment. We were operating in a near perfect vacuum with the temperature well above 200 degrees Fahrenheit with the local gravity only one sixth that of Earth. That combination cannot be duplicated here on Earth, but we tried as best we could to test our equipment for those conditions. For example, because normal air conditioning is inadequate for lunar conditions, we were required to use cold water to cool the interior of our suits. We did not have any data to tell us how long the small water tank in our backpacks would suffice. NASA officials limited our surface working time to 2 and 3/4 hours on that first surface exploration to assure that we would not expire of hyperthermia.

 * There was great uncertainty about how well we would be able to walk in our cumbersome pressurized suit.

 * Preflight planners wanted us to stay in TV range so that they could learn from our results how they could best plan for future missions. I candidly admit that I knowingly and deliberately left the planned working area out of TV coverage to examine and photograph the interior crater walls for possible bedrock exposure or other useful information.

 * Later Apollo flights were able to do more and move further in order to cover larger areas, particularly when the Lunar Rover vehicle became available in 1971.

 * During my testimony (to the House Science and Technology Committee) in May I said, “Some question why Americans should return to the Moon. “After all,” they say “we have already been there.” I find that mystifying. It would be as if 16th century monarchs proclaimed that “we need not go to the New World, we have already been there.” Or as if President Thomas Jefferson announced in 1803 that Americans “need not go west of the Mississippi, the Lewis and Clark Expedition has already been there.” Americans have visited and examined 6 locations on Luna, varying in size from a suburban lot to a small township. That leaves more than 14 million square miles yet to explore.

Misattributed

 * I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.
 * First On The Moon : A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin E Aldrin, Jr. (1970) edited by Gene Farmer and Dora Jane Hamblin, p. 113, states of this: "Like many a quote which gets printed once and therefore enshrined in the libraries of all newspapers and magazines, this particular one was erroneous. Neil recalled having heard the quote, and he even recalled having repeated it once. He did not subscribe to its thesis, however, and he only quoted it so that he could disagree with it."

Quotes about Armstrong

 * Sorted alphabetically by author or source

 * Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. He served his Nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits.
 * Armstrong family statement regarding his death, as quoted by ABC News (25 August 2012)

 * I am deeply saddened by the passing of my good friend, and space exploration companion, Neil Armstrong today. As Neil, Mike Collins and I trained together for our historic Apollo 11 Mission, we understood the many technical challenges we faced, as well as the importance and profound implications of this historic journey. [...] Whenever I look at the Moon I am reminded of that precious moment, over four decades ago, when Neil and I stood on the desolate, barren, yet beautiful, Sea of Tranquility, looking back at our brilliant blue planet Earth suspended in the darkness of space, I realized that even though we were farther away from Earth than two humans had ever been, we were not alone. Virtually the entire world took that memorable journey with us. I know I am joined by many millions of others from around the world in mourning the passing of a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew. My friend Neil took the small step but giant leap that changed the world and will forever be remembered as a historic moment in human history.
 * Buzz Aldrin, in Neil Armstrong Remembered By Buzz Aldrin As 'True American Hero And The Best Pilot I Ever Knew' Huffington Post (25 August 2012)

 * As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own. [...] Besides being one of America's greatest explorers, Neil carried himself with a grace and humility that was an example to us all. When President Kennedy challenged the nation to send a human to the Moon, Neil Armstrong accepted without reservation. As we enter this next era of space exploration, we do so standing on the shoulders of Neil Armstrong. We mourn the passing of a friend, fellow astronaut and true American hero.
 * Charles Bolden NASA Administrator Statement on Neil Armstrong's Death (25 August 2012)

 * He was the best, and I will miss him terribly.
 * Michael Collins, Apollo 11 command module pilot; NASA obituary (25 August 2012)

 * As the first human to land on any world outside the Earth, and probably the first living creature of any sort to come from the Earth and reach the Moon, his legacy will be safe as long as intelligent life survives in this corner of the cosmos.
 * Hugh Downs, National Space Society statement (26 August 2012)

 * You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again.
 * Charlie Duke, capcom of mission control in Houston, after the announcement that the Eagle had landed. Over 30 seconds earlier a previous message from Houston had been an indication that there was 30 seconds of fuel left in the landing vehicle.

 * His achievements were the stuff of legend, and I am lucky to have known him, if only for a brief time, I am sad that he's gone, proud as a member of the human race that he did what he did for all of us.
 * Neil Gaiman, in his "Neil Armstrong" post to his journal (25 August 2012)

 * Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn't qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things. On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, "I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent." And I said, "Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something." And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did.
 * Neil Gaiman, in remarks on "Imposter syndrome" on Tumblr (12 May 2017)

 * Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
 * Robert A. Heinlein, The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

 * Better if he had said something natural like, "Jesus, here we are."
 * Edmund Hillary, The Sunday Times [London] (21 July 1974)

 * Among the greatest of American heroes — not just of his time, but of all time.
 * President Barack Obama, White House statement; Wall Street Journal (25 August 2012)

 * At few other moments has one person become the fulcrum of such weighty imperatives — to win a famous victory for America and vindicate a vast investment of national treasure, to penetrate a hostile frontier, to master a new technology, to navigate a harrowing descent to the unknown — all in the glare of rapt global attention. By the time he landed in the Sea of Tranquility, the country boy from Ohio had already spent most of his adult life in jobs where intensity of focus and the threat of violent death were part of his daily routine. He was used to all of that. It was, instead, the loss of privacy that appalled him. He loved to fly, and he loved his country, and in the name of those passions he was willing to risk not only his hide but a piece of his soul. Only a piece, however — a mere finger's worth — and no more. ... Those who know him say he is a smart and intensely private, even shy, man determined to live life on his own terms despite having floated down that ladder into the public domain. Whether as an astronaut, naval combat aviator, test pilot, civil servant, engineer, absent-minded professor, gentleman farmer, businessman, civic booster, amateur musician, husband or father, Neil Armstrong has followed his own code.
 * Kathy Sawyer in "Armstrong's Code" in Washington Post Magazine (11 July 1999)

title: Neil Armstrong


text:
User talk:Kpjas

I fixe the valign="top" probl;em it appeard there was too many blank spaces "       " <-that caused the problem. -fonzy

title: User talk:Kpjas


text:
Talk:Buckminster Fuller

In this page I placed Bucky's undated motto at top, further verified quotes including the 2 that were already there in chronological order, followed with an extensive number of quotes from some of Bucky's major works below them also in chronological order, and then finally a few unverified quotes I had collected that I do not immediately know the source of, but which seem authentic. —Kalki 2003·08·19 23:59

 * Why are some parts of some quotes in bold? Is that they way they are in the book, or has the emphasis been added to make those parts of the quotes stand out from the rest? If so, I think we need to discuss whether this is good practice generally or whether we should discourage it and let readers make up their own minds about which parts are somehow more important than others. Nanobug 12:25, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 See : Village_pump_archive_3 for further discussion on this topic.

Where´s "only integrity is going to count"?
 * I have just added it, and intend to do a bit more work here. Thanks for the suggestion. ~ Achilles 11:27, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to Buckminster Fuller. --Antiquary 11:46, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking -- Attributed to Buckminster Fuller through Stewart Brand, who attended his lectures. In DOI:10.1145/3530988 Communications of the ACM. A suitable source for such a widely quoted quote? -- Yoderj (talk) 14:42, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

 * All of humanity now has the option to "make it" successfully and sustainably, by virtue of our having minds, discovering principles and being able to employ these principles to do more with less.

 * If the success or failure of this planet, and of human beings, depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be? What would I do?

 * It is not for me to change you. The question is, how can I be of service to you without diminishing your degrees of freedom?

 * It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a ‘higher standard of living than any have ever known.’ It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival. (from Critical Path, 1981, page xxv)

 * People have feet. Trees have roots.
 * When asked why so many of his housing designs were portable.

 * "Reality" should always be in quotes.

 * There are over 2 million cars standing in front of red lights with their engines going. Then we have over 2 million times approximately 100 horsepower being generated as they are idling there, so that we have something like 200 million horses jumping up and down and going nowhere. Now, we have to count that in our economy when we begin to get down to what is the efficiency of the economy.

 * There is something patently insane about all the typewriters sleeping with all the beautiful plumbing in the beautiful office buildings — and all the people sleeping in the slums.

 * We are on a spaceship; a beautiful one. It took billions of years to develop. We're not going to get another. Now, how do we make this spaceship work?

 * When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

 * You either make sense or you make money.

 * '''You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. I found this quote in: L. Steven Sieden, „A Fuller View - Buckminster Fuller´s Vision of Hope and Abundance for all“, p. 358), Divine Arts Media (2011)

 * on first priority / in design consideration / is the full realization / of individual potential / in order to reach the second derivative-- / full realization for all individuals

 * Love is omni-inclusive, progressively exquisite, understanding and compassionately attuned to other than self.

 * Humanity has the option to become successful on our planet if we reorient world production away from weaponry-- from killingry to livingry. Can we convince humanity in time?

 * We are prisoners of our own metaphors, metaphorically speaking.

 * Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.

 * Really nobody knows the source of: "In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called."?! --Fixuture (talk) 18:42, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

 * Okay so I traced the quote down (mainly using Google's custom time-range feature) and I found this: https://books.google.de/books?id=MDC9izjKyUMC - it's the book Extreme Democracy (by Jon Lebkowsky and Mitch Ratcliffe ) and here's the free, full version of it: http://extremedemocracy.com/ExtremeDemocracy.pdf
 * On page 101 it says this:
 * As Buckminster Fuller said: “You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”78
 * With the 78 footnote being: Fuller, R. Buckminster (St. Martin's Griffin, 1982).
 * However googling it I find multiple books by Buckminster that were published in 1982 at St. martin Griffin. Does anybody of you know which one is meant or do you have access to one of those books to look it up?
 * --Fixuture (talk) 13:24, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

In his book'Critical Path' on page 283 I found this: "What makes obsolete any of the major categories of metals in use is the rate at which the new technologies occur that make obsolete the older technologies." Hope it helps:

"Islands of compression in an ocean of tension"
There are many variations and uses, some may be mangled. For example "We (humanity) are islands of compression in an ocean of tension" seems incorrect, while applied to tensegrity seems more apropiate. ~ JasonCarswell (talk) 18:26, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

"Waste materials"
Years ago I saw a documentary that attributed a quote to Bucky that stuck with me, though I've looked several times for it and failed. I don't know if it was even a real quote by anyone. It went something like, "Waste materials are simply a resource we haven't found a use for." ~ JasonCarswell (talk) 18:29, 24 September 2018 (UTC) The quote I found for this was “Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.” — Buckminster Fuller source https://quotecatalog.com/quote/buckminster-fuller-pollution-is-no-G7POoo1

Images removed
I removed many unrelated images. Please discuss here if you would like to add them back in as per Image_use_policy. Thanks! Doctormatt (talk) 04:05, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Buckminster Fuller


text:
William Congreve

William Congreve (24 January 1670 – 19 January 1729) was an English playwright and poet.

Quotes

 * Ah! Whither, whither shall I fly, A poor unhappy Maid; To hopeless Love and Misery By my own Heart betray’d?
 * Incognita: Or, Love and Duty Reconcil'd (1692)

 * Careless she is with artful care, Affecting to seem unaffected.
 * "Amoret", line 7 (1710)

 * Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, And black despair succeeds brown study.
 * "An Impossible Thing", line 105 (1720)

 * Defer not till tomorrow to be wise, Tomorrow's sun to thee may never rise.
 * "Letter to Cobham", line 61. Compare: "Be wise to-day, 't is madness to defer", Edward Young, Night Thoughts, Night i. line 390

 * Pious Selinda goes to Pray’rs, If I but ask the Favour; And yet the tender Fool’s in Tears,  When she believes I’ll leave her.Wou’d I were free from Restraint,  Or else had Hopes to win her; Wou’d she cou’d make of me a Saint,  Or I of her a Sinner.
 * "Song"; Poetical Miscellanies: The Fifth Part (1704), p. 362

The Old Bachelor (1693)

 * The Old Bachelor

 * In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.
 * Act I, scene iii

 * Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in those days.
 * Act II, scene 2

 * I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.
 * Act II, scene vii

 * If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.
 * Act III, scene x

 * Eternity was in that moment.
 * Act IV, scene vii

 * Men are apt to offend ('tis true) where they find most goodness to forgive.
 * Act IV, scene xi

 * Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure; Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.
 * Act V, scene viii. Compare: "Who wooed in haste, and means to wed at leisure", William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act iii, scene 2

The Double Dealer (1694)

 * Full text online

 * It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.
 * Epistle dedicatory

 * Retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.
 * Act I, scene i

 * Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves 'em still two fools.
 * Act II, scene iii

 * Now will I, in my old way, discover the whole and real truth of the matter to him, that he may not suspect one word on’t.
 * No mask like open truth to cover lies, As to go naked is the best disguise.
 * Act V, scene iv

Love for Love (1695)

 * Full text online

 * Thou liar of the first magnitude.
 * Act II, scene ii

 * I warrant you, if he danced till doomsday, he thought I was to pay the piper.
 * Act II, scene ii

 * Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.
 * Act II, scene v

 * I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.
 * Act II, scene vii; comparable to: "Born in a cellar, and living in a garret", Samuel Foote, The Author, act 2; "Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred", Lord Byron, A Sketch

 * O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell.
 * Act II, scene x

 * I know that's a secret, for it's whispered every where.
 * Act III, scene iii

 * Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, Which, to admire, we should not understand.
 * Act IV, scene iii

 * Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.
 * Act IV, scene xx

 * 'Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.
 * Act V, scene iii

The Mourning Bride (1697)

 * Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak. I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd, And, as with living Souls, have been inform'd, By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound. What then am I? Am I more senseless grown Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe! 'Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs. Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night The silent Tomb receiv'd the good Old King; He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg'd Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom. Why am not I at Peace?
 * Act I, scene i; the first lines of this passage are often rendered in modern spelling as "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast", or misquoted as: "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast".

 * Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent The base Injustice thou hast done my Love: Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress, And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn'd; Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.
 * Act III, scene viii; often paraphrased: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". A similar line occurs in Love's Last Shift, by Colley Cibber, act iv.: "We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman".

 * For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, And though a late, a sure reward succeeds.
 * Act V, scene 12

The Way of the World (1700)

 * Full text online

 * They come together like the Coroner's Inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.
 * Act I, scene i

 * Say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved.
 * Act II, scene i. Precedent for Alfred Tennyson's more famous: "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"

 * Love's but a frailty of the mind, When 'tis not with ambition joined.
 * Act III, scene xii

 * If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see That heart which others bleed for, bleed for me.
 * Act III, scene xii

 * I nauseate walking; 'tis a country diversion, I loathe the country.
 * Act IV, scene v

 * Let us be very strange and well-bred: Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while; And as well-bred as if we were not married at all.
 * Act IV, scene v

 * Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants, like a maker of pincushions; thou art in truth (metaphorically speaking) a speaker of shorthand.
 * Act IV, scene ix

 * O, she is the antidote to desire.
 * Act IV, scene xiv

Quotes About William Congreve

 * Mr Congreve... would make many brilliant hits – half a dozen in a night sometimes – but like sharpshooters, when they had fired their shot they were obliged to retire under cover till their pieces were loaded again.
 * William Makepeace Thackeray,  (1852)

Misattributed

 * Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.
 * Phyllis Diller, as quoted in Getting Through to the Man You Love : The No-Nonsense, No-Nagging Guide for Women (1999) by Michele Weiner-Davis, p. 151

title: William Congreve


text:
Walker Percy

Walker Percy (May 28 1916 – May 10 1990) was an American Southern author whose interests included philosophy and semiotics.

The Moviegoer (1961)

 * Further sourcing to chapters here and in further sections would be helpful.

 * Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upsidedown: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me; only the haters seem alive. (2.9).

 * I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free. (2.12).

 * She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere. (1.7).

 * I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.

 * A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle.

 * The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.

 * She can only believe I am serious in her own fashion of being serious: as an antic sort of seriousness, which is not seriousness at all but despair masquerading as seriousness.

 * As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair.

 * Oh the crap that lies lurking in the English soul. Somewhere it, the English soul, received an injection of romanticism which nearly killed it.

 * A good rotation. A rotation I define as the experiencing of the new beyond the expectation of the experiencing of the new.

 * Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be the moment when he manages to sin like a proper human (Look at us, Binx — my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me — we're sinning! We're succeeding! We're human after all!).

 * Not a single thing do I remember from the first trip but this: the sense of the place, the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or else is not a place...there it is as big as life, the genie-soul of the place which, wherever you go, you must meet and master first thing or be met and mastered. (4.3).

 * My aunt is convinced I have a "flair for research." This is not true. If I had a flair for research, I would be doing research. Actually I'm not very smart. My grades were average. My mother and my aunt think I am smart because I am quiet and absent-minded–and because my father and grandfather were smart. They think I was meant to do research because I am not fit to do anything else–I am a genius whom ordinary professions can't satisfy.

 * For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead. It happens when I speak to people. In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death. There is little to do but groan and make an excuse and slip away as quickly as one can.

 * To tell the absolute truth, I’ve always been slightly embarrassed by Walter’s company. Whenever I’m with him, I feel the stretch of the old tightrope, the necessity of living up to the friendship of friendships, of cultivating an intimacy beyond words. The fact is that we have little to say to each other. There is only this thick sympathetic silence between us. We are comrades, true, but somewhat embarrassed comrades. It is probably my fault. For years now I have had no friends. I spend my entire time working, making money, going to movies and seeking the company of women.

 * Beauty is a whore.

 * Today is my thirtieth birthday and I sit on the ocean wave in the schoolyard and wait for Kate and think of nothing. Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies - my only talent - smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall - on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.

 * The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.

 * To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. The movies are onto the search, but they screw it up. The search always ends in despair. They like to show a fellow coming to himself in a strange place-but what does he do? He takes up with the local librarian, sets about proving to the local children what a nice fellow he is, and settles down with a vengeance. In two weeks time he is so sunk in everydayness that he might just as well be dead.

The Last Gentleman (1966)

 * What a man can be the next minute bears no relation to what he is or what he was the minute before.

 * He was a young man of pleasant appearance. Of medium height and exceedingly pale, he was nevertheless strongly built and quick and easy in his ways. Save for his deafness in one ear, his physical health was perfect. Handsome as he was, he was given to long silences. So girls didn't know what to make of him. But men liked him. After a while they saw that he was easy and meant no harm. He was the sort whom classmates remember fondly; they liked to grab him around the neck with an elbow and cuff him around. Good-looking and amiable as he was, however, he did not strike one as remarkable. People usually told him the same joke two or three times.

 * Once again he began to feel bad in the best of environments. And he noticed that other people did too. So bad did they feel, in fact, that it took the worst of news to cheer them up. On the finest mornings he noticed that people in the subway looked awful until they opened their newspapers and read of some airliner crashing and killing all hundred and seven passengers. Where there had been misery in their happiness, now as they shook their heads dolefully at the tragedy they became happy in their misery.

 * Christ should leave us. He is too much with us and I don't like his friends. We have no hope of recovering Christ until Christ leaves us. There is after all something worse than being God-forsaken. It is when God overstays his welcome and take up with the wrong people.

 * It was no more nor less than true. You do things by doing things, not by not doing them. No more crazy upsidedownness, he resolved. Good was better than bad. Good environments are better than bad environments.

 * He could tell that the other expected him to be surprised, but it was not in him to be surprised because it was no more surprising to him when things did not fall out as they were supposed to than when they did.

The Message in the Bottle (1975)

 * Where does one start with a theory of man if the theory of man as an organism in an environment doesn't work and all the attributes of man which were accepted in the old modern age are now called into question: his soul, mind, freedom, will, Godlikeness? There is only one place to start: the place where man's singularity is there for all to see and cannot be called into question, even in a new age in which everything else is in dispute. That singularity is language...

 * Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature? Is it possible that a theory of man is nothing more nor less than a theory of the speaking creatures?

The Second Coming (1980)

 * You can get all A's and still flunk life.

 * The lives of other people seemed even more farcical than his own. It astonished him that as farcical as most people's live were, they generally gave no sign of it. Why was it that it was he not they who had decided to shoot himself? How did they manage to deceive themselves and even appear to live normally, work as usual, play golf, tell jokes, argue politics? Was he crazy or was it rather the case that other people went to any length to disguise from themselves the fact that their lives were farcical? He couldn't decide.

 * Peace is only better than war if peace is not hell too. War being hell makes sense.

 * You don't ever really learn anything you didn't know when you were thirteen.

 * What struck him was not sadness or remorse or pity but the wonder of it. How can it be? How can it happen that one day you are young, you marry, and then another day you come to yourself and your life has passed like a dream? They looked at teach other curiously and wondered how they could have missed each other, lived in the same house all those years and passed in the hall like ghosts.

 * He thought he was a good poet but he was not. He thought books could tell him how to live but they couldn't. He was a serious but dazed reader. He read Dante and Shakespeare and Nietzsche and Freud. He read modern poetry and books on psychiatry. He had taken a degree in English, couldn't, decided to farm, bought a goat farm, managed a Confederate museum in a cave on his property, wrote poetry, went broke, became a golf pro.

 * In all honesty it was easier to believe it in cool Long Island for its very outrageousness where nobody believed anything very seriously than in hot Carolina where everybody was a Christian and found unbelief unbelievable.

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)

 * Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos —  novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes  —  you are beyond doubt the strangest ...

 * Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone’s finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?

 * There is no fashion so absurd, even grotesque, that it cannot be adopted, given two things: the authority of the fashion-setter (Dior, Jackie Onassis) and the vacuity or noughtness of the consumer.
 * Chapter 2, section 2: The Self as Nought (II).

title: Walker Percy