Daniel Uzupis

In the unlikely and long-sought event that the sun, moon, and all the planets lined up in a straight line to combine their gravitational pulls, the effect on the human body would be nullified if the person merely sat down from a standing position!

It was like every attitude or action which reveals a man's deep and hidden character; they bear no relation to what he has previously said, and we cannot confirm our suspicions by the culprit's evidence, for he will admit nothing; we are reduced to the evidence of our own senses, and we ask ourselves, in the face of this detached and incoherent fragment of recollection, whether indeed our senses have not been the victims of a hallucination; with the result that such attitudes, and these alone are of importance in indicating character, are the most apt to leave us in perplexity.

Anyone slain for a cause greater than himself dies a martyr. The relative worth of causes may vary, but a man's relationship to a cause is a value that does not.

"Once we accept that people have a right to be protected from hearing fraudulent and inflammatory nonsense, we concede that the truth is an inadequate defence."

You know how I know it's the end of the world, Lenny? 'Cause everything's already been done, you know? Every kind of music's been tried, every government's been tried, you know? fucking hairstyles, fucking bubble-gum flavors, you know, breakfast cereal, every type of fucking, you know what I mean? What are we gonna do, man? How are we gonna make another thousand years for Christ's sake?

One of the good qualities of a drunk is that he doesn't lie.

The quasi-science of genealogy, as it is practiced in the United States, is directed almost exclusively toward establishing aristocratic descents for nobodies.

Such a writer, once he has told the one big story, is done for.

"Every work of art is, at bottom, unique, and that it is the business of the critic, not to label it and pigeon-hole it, but to seek for its inner intent and content, and to value it according as that intent is carried out and that content is valid and worth while. This is the precise opposite of the academic critical attitude. The professor is nothing if not a maker of card indexes; he must classify or be damned."

I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

Anger is acted out by the oppressed only when real weakness is perceived in the oppressor. So anger is never automatic or even inevitable for the oppressed; it is chosen when weakness in the oppressor means it will be effective in winning freedom or justice or spoils of some kind. Anger in the oppressed is a response to perceived opportunity, not to injustice. And expressions of anger escalate not with more injustice but with less injustice.

Pure friendship, uncomplicated by romance or blood, is one of the most nurturing human relationships and one of the most easily taken for granted.

I have to wish there had been more such instruction, and that it had been closer to explicit in a philosophical sense. Most of all I wish my father had passed along some detailed notion of how to be a boss. It was a thing he seemed to do naturally. I wish he had made clear to me the dangers of posturing in front of people who are in some degree dependent upon your whims, posturing until you have got yourself deep into the fraud of maintaining a distance and mystery in place of authenticity. A man once told me to smoke cigars. 'They see you peel that cellophane,' he said, 'and they know you don't live like they do.'

But I kept silent, out of confusion and embarrassment, and because I did not want to endorse wantonness, however trivial. In some moral sense, I suspected, she was right. That is one of the troubles with morality; its indifference to distinctions of degree; its impracticality.

You don't have to be a Palestinian to take a principled position on the West Bank. So what's new? By a celebrated and practiced flick of the lever, your enemies can transfer you from the 'anti' column to the 'self-hating.' A big deal it isn't.

If your dream were to compose music, would you say to yourself: 'I've heard a lot of symphonies... I can also play the piano... I think I'll knock one out this weekend'? No. But that's exactly how many screenwriters begin: 'I've seen a lot of flicks, some good and some bad... I got A's in English... vacation time's coming...'