Skip to content

At this weak, pale, tabescent moment in the history of American literature, we need a battalion, a brigade, of Zolas to head out into this wild, bizarre, unpredictable, Hog-stomping, Baroque country of ours and reclaim it as literary property.

Another quote →

Topics

More quotes by Tom Wolfe

A cult is a religion with no political power.

It would be all one experience, with all the senses opened wide, words, music, lights, sounds, touch —
lightning.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)

Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: "You're either on the bus … or off the bus."

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)

A sect, incidentally, is a religion with no political power.

Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976)

Among other things Jonestown was an example of a definition well known to sociologists of religion: a cult is a religion with no political power.

In Our Time (1980)

All Tom Wolfe quotes →

You may also like

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Tom Wolfe (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.