10 quotes
A humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think is creation's.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)