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Everybody continually tries to get away with as much as he can; and society is a marvelous machine which allows decent people to be cruel without realizing it.

— Émile Chartier Propos sur le bonheur [On Happiness (1928)

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Society

More quotes by Émile Chartier

Happiness is a reward that comes to those that have not looked for it.

Propos sur le bonheur [On Happiness (1928)

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.

One must preach life, not death; spread hope, not fear and cultivate joy, man's most valuable treasure. That is the secret of the greatest of the wise, and it will be the light of tomorrow.

Propos sur le bonheur [On Happiness (1928)

If religion is only human, and its form is man’s form, it follows that everything in religion is true.

Les Dieux [The Gods (1934)

Never be insolent unless it is a deliberate decision, and only toward a man more powerful than yourself.

Propos sur le bonheur [On Happiness (1928)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Attribution

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