[Above Martha Graham and Charles Baudelaire]
ACTORS AND ACTING
For
Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse
Marlon Brando
Against
The better the actor the more stupid he is
Truman Capote
I am not paid to think
Clark Gable
AMERICA
For
A thousand years hence, perhaps in less, America may be what Europe is now…the noblest work of human wisdom, the grand scene of human glory.
Thomas Paine
Against
The organisation of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by mass- media notoriously phony.
Paul Goodman, The Community of Scholars |(1962)
The difference between Los Angeles and yoghurt is that yoghurt has real culture
Tom Taussik, Legless in Gaza ( 1982).
The worse country to be poor in is America.
Arnold Toynbee
ANIMALS
For
It is easy to understand why the rabble dislike cats
Baudelaire, Mon coeur mis a nu (1887)
People with insufficient personalities are fond of cats. These people adore being ignored.
Henry Morgan
Against
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.
August Strindberg, A Madman’s Diary.
ARCHITECTURE
For
Less is more
Mies van de Rohe
Against
Less is only more when more is no good
Frank Lloyd Wright, The Future of Architecture ( 1953)
ART AND ARTISTS
For
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that others are behind the time.
Martha Graham
An artist must be a reactionary
Evelyn Waugh
The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you are an artist.
Max Jacob, Art Poetique (1922)
Artists by definition innocent—don’t steal, but do borrow without giving back.
Ned Rorem, Music from Inside Out (1967)
Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.
Pablo Picasso.
Against
Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and pastures blue ought to be sterilized
Adolf Hitler.
BEAUTY
For
We fly to Beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature
Emerson, Journals (1836)
Against
There is nothing sane about the worship of beauty
Oscar Wilde, Intentions (1891)
BLOODSPORTS
For
Shooting gives me a good feeling
Ernest Hemingway, ‘ Fathers and Sons’ (1944)
Against.
No sportsman wants to kill the fox or the pheasant as I want to kill him when I see him doing it
George Bernard Shaw.
BRITAIN
For
England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies, hobbies, and humours.
George Santayana, Soliloquies in England (1922)
Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.
Cecil Rhodes
The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia’s food.
Robert Burns, ‘ The Cotter’s Saturday Night’.
Against.
The climate of England has been the world’s moist powerful colonizing impulse
Russell Green.
Oats, a grain in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
Dr Johnson, Dictionary (1755)
CAPITALISM
For
Money-getters are the benefactors of our race. To them…we are indebted for our institutions of learning, and of art, our academies, college and churches.
Phineas T. Barnum
Civilisation and profits go hand in hand.
Calvin Coolidge
Against
You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)
There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital and labor.. As matters stand, their own common interest is that of cutting each other’s throat.
Brooks Atkinson, Once Around the Sun (1951).
CERTAINTY AND DOUBT
For
If the cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defense of it by its friends.
Charles Caleb Cotton, Lacon ( 1825)
Against
A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.
Dostoevsky (1895)
CHILDREN
For
A fairly bright boy is more intelligent and far better company than the average adult.
J. B. S. Haldane (1948)
Against
Boys are capital fellows in their own way…but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia (1823)
Taken from Contradictory Quotations by Michael Rogers (1984)
To be continued…
R.M.Healey