Stephen Vizinczey Quotes & Sayings

I made a resolution I would throw myself into the Danube if I didn't ask you to make love with me today. — Stephen Vizinczey

Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination. — Stephen Vizinczey

When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness. — Stephen Vizinczey

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test. — Stephen Vizinczey

We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them. — Stephen Vizinczey

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders. — Stephen Vizinczey

I wonder, what kind of life would I have had if it hadn't been for my mother's tea-and-cookie parties? Perhaps it's because of them that I've never thought of women as my enemies, as territories I have to conquer, but always as allies and friends - which I believe is the reason why they were friendly to me in turn. I've never met those she-devils you hear about: they must be too busy with those men who look upon women as a fortress they have to attack, lay waste and left in ruins. — Stephen Vizinczey

Private Eye continued to report that the stench in the Houses of Parliament was just as strong as it had been on the day when the birds flew away and the rodents fled. — Stephen Vizinczey

Great writers are not those who tell us we shouldn't play with fire, but those who make our fingers burn. — Stephen Vizinczey

Dictatorship is a constant lecture instructing you that your feelings, your thoughts and desires are of no account, that you are a nobody and must live as you are told by other people who desire and think for you — Stephen Vizinczey

I had affairs with a few girls of my own age, and they taught me that no girl, however intelligent and war-hearted, can possibly know or feel half as much at twenty as she will at thirty-five. — Stephen Vizinczey

You tell me your favorite novelists and I'll tell you whom you vote for, or whether you vote at all. — Stephen Vizinczey

The truth is that our race survived ignorance; it is our scientific genius that will do us in. — Stephen Vizinczey

As a rule, the most dangerous ideas are not the ones that divide people but those on which they agree. — Stephen Vizinczey

Whenever you hear the word "inevitable", watch out! An enemy of humanity has identified himself. — Stephen Vizinczey

Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it. — Stephen Vizinczey

Thou shalt not let a day pass without rereading something great. — Stephen Vizinczey

To be great is to assume great concerns. — Stephen Vizinczey

To state a lie firmly, categorically and with great authority, undeterred by the fact that all concerned know it to be a lie, is one of the principal activities defined by the term practising law. — Stephen Vizinczey

Art experts are unfailingly opposed to Art for the simple reason that they are interested in Art - but Art is not interested in Art. Art is interested in life. — Stephen Vizinczey

Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not. — Stephen Vizinczey

Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the centre of man's universe is the earth? — Stephen Vizinczey

Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parents birth — Stephen Vizinczey

I suppose it's more unnerving to be a boy than a girl,' she conceded.'It's the boys who have to make fools of themselves. — Stephen Vizinczey

The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture-aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere. — Stephen Vizinczey

Consistency is a virtue for trains. — Stephen Vizinczey

Like all wage slaves, he had two crosses to bear: the people he worked for and the people he worked with — Stephen Vizinczey

All great power has to do to destroy itself is persist in trying to do the impossible. — Stephen Vizinczey