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This is just one example of the trimming of the self that — along with the language itself, where verbs and nouns changed places as freely as one dare to have them do so — bred in us such an overpowering sense of ambivalence that in ten years we ended up with a willpower in no way superior to a seaweed’s.

— Joseph Brodsky Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986)

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More quotes by Joseph Brodsky

The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity.

A Commencement Address (1984)

It is better to be a total failure in democracy than a martyr or the crème de la crème in tyranny.

As you pour yourself a scotch,
crush a roach, or scratch your crotch,
as your hand adjusts your tie, people die.

He’d be a ruin by now, both physically and mentally. Physically because of the bottle. . . . Mentally because of that mixture of impotence and cynicism that corrodes everyone there — the stronger you are the worse it is.

It is the army that finally makes a citizen of you; without it you still have a chance, however slim, to remain a human being.

Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986)

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