12 quotes
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
The Little Foxes (1939)
Lives were being ruined and few hands were raised in help. Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
Scoundrel Time (1976)
For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.
Watch on the Rhine (1941)
Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent.
Pentimento: A Book of Portraits (1973)
Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.
The Autumn Garden (1951)
A man should be jailed for telling lies to the young.
Candide (1956)
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
Untamed Tongues : Wild Words from Wild Women (1993)
Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.
An Unfinished Woman (1969)
I do not believe in recovery. The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.
Scoundrel Time (1976)
Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a Judge's chamber can believe in an unprejudiced point of view but, simply in self-interest, the biographer must try for one, or make us believe he has, or tell us that he hasn't.
There are people who eat earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it. (Softly) Sometimes I think it ain't right to stand and watch them do it.
The Little Foxes (1939)
We will not think noble because we are not noble. We will not live in beautiful harmony because there is no such thing in this world, nor should there be. We promise only to do our best and to live out our lives. Dear God, that's all we can promise in truth.
Candide (1956)