Silone Quotes & Sayings

The concept of logical thinking is selection and this is brought about by the processes of acceptance and rejection. Rejection is the basis of logical thinking. — Edward De Bono

All euphemisms are dishonest, but many are designed to make life easier — Kate Burridge

How pitiful is an intelligence used only to make excuses to quieten the conscience. — Ignazio Silone

But men in their role of taxpayers will be subsidizing themselves in their role of consumers. It becomes a little difficult to trace in this maze precisely who is subsidizing whom. What is forgotten is that subsidies are paid for by someone, and that no method has been discovered by which the community gets something for nothing. — Henry Hazlitt

I don't want to be a star, merely dying. — Leonard Cohen

The typical political ploy was to load up benefits in the present and push costs into the future. Yet that future always arrived; — Henry Hazlitt

Liberty isn't a thing you are given as a present. You can be a free man under a dictatorship. It is sufficient if you struggle against it. — Ignazio Silone

Being in good physical shape is the best way to combat depression. You just have endorphins running around your body. It is the best anti-depressive that there is. — Chris Pratt

Spiritual life and secure life do not go together; to save oneself on must struggle and take risks. — Ignazio Silone

A wrong war brings wrong; so does a right war. — Ignazio Silone

I want you to be nice ... until it's time to not be nice. — Patrick Swayze

To grow up requires a whole life but to become old one night is enough. — Ignazio Silone

Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place. — Ignazio Silone

In the countryside, secrets have a short lifespan — Ignazio Silone

The Italian novelist Ignazio Silone wrote about a revolutionary hunted by the police. In order to hide him, his comrades dressed him in the garb of a priest and sent him to a remote village in the foothills of the Alps. Word got out, and soon a long line of peasants appeared at his door, full of stories of their sins and broken lives. The "priest" protested and tried to turn them away, to no avail. He had no recourse but to sit and listen to the stories of people starving for grace. — Philip Yancey

I would willingly pass my life writing and re-writing the same book - that one book every writer carries within him - the image of his own soul. — Ignazio Silone

The past looks worse the closer you look at it. — Hanif Kureishi

On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture. — Ignazio Silone

Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned. — Ignazio Silone

She said all writers were prima donnas, drunks, social misfits, pompous, or depressed. Brilliant, maybe, but completely crazy. — Ilsa J. Bick

Sometimes I'm haunted by the thought that we only have one life and we live it provisionally, waiting in vain for the day that our real life will begin. And so life passes by. — Ignazio Silone

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying no to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social, and even political. — Ignazio Silone

No one can ever write about anything that happened to him after he was twelve years old. — Ignazio Silone

But you can live in the most democratic country on earth, and if you're lazy, obtuse or servile within yourself, you're not free. — Ignazio Silone

The final conflict will be between the Communists and the ex-Communists. — Ignazio Silone

Philosophers are only men in armor after all. — Charles Dickens

The State always stands for swindling, intrigue, and privilege, and cannot stand for anything else. — Ignazio Silone