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I was in that ultimate moment of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing. Simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things is that there is no final Truth. Truth is what's transitory. It's human life that is real.

— Paddy Chayefsky Altered States (1980)

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More quotes by Paddy Chayefsky

You see, dogs like us, we ain't such dogs as we think we are.

Marty (1955)

All my brothers and brothers-in-laws tell me what a good-hearted guy I am. You don't get to be good-hearted by accident. You get kicked around long enough, you become a professor of pain.

Marty (1955)

Now what in hell am I going to tell this boy Schaefer's parents? That a substitute nurse assassinated him because she couldn't tell the doctors from the patients on the floor?

The Hospital (1971)

You've done the morally right thing. God save us all from people who do the morally right thing. It's always the rest of us who get broken in half.

The Americanization of Emily (1964)

Marty was a comment on the social values of our times.

Television Plays by Paddy Chayefsky (1955)

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Attribution

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