A Quote by Philip Roth

Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.

Philip Roth

Quote Topics

Beauty Arises Audacity Authority Beauty Contest Belief Contest Counts Inspires Literature Moral Off Power Pulled Which

Quote Author

Philip Roth
American - Novelist
March 19, 1933 - May 22, 2018

Authority and power are two different things: power is the force by means of which you can oblige others to obey you. Authority is the right to direct and command, to be listened to or obeyed by others. Authority requests power. Power without authority is tyranny.

Jacques Maritain

The contest of strength is not only a contest of military and economic power, but also a contest of human power and morale. Military and economic power is necessarily wielded by people.

Mao Zedong

The Court's legitimacy arises from the source of its authority - which is, of course, the Constitution - and is best preserved by adhering to decision methods that neither expand nor contract but legitimize the power of judicial review.

Diane S. Sykes

I don't think the possibility for beauty can be foreclosed, because beauty can take so many forms. There is beauty that arises from the unexpected, when our familiar perspectives are thrown off balance. There is also the beauty that paradoxically comes out of the tragic, that emerges because we are reminded of what is no longer there, that becomes powerful because of what is absent.

Sze Tsung Leong

Autocratic power requires the degradation of moral authority - not the capture of moral high ground.

Masha Gessen

...any belief in supernatural creators, rulers, or influencers of natural or human process introduces an irreparable split into the universe, and prevents us from grasping its real unity. Any belief in Absolutes, whether the absolute validity of moral commandments, of authority of revelation, of inner certitudes, or of divine inspiration, erects a formidable barrier against progress and the responsibility of improvement, moral, rational, and religious.

Julian Huxley

The spontaneous tendency to invoke a Final Cause in explanation of every difficulty is characteristic of metaphysical philosophy. It arises from a general tendency towards the impersonation of abstractions which is visible throughout History.

George Henry Lewes

Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain—the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed—then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.

Vladimir Nabokov

Belief comes spontaneously as well as by effort. Belief is power. An insincere and uninspired seeker is aware of the truth that belief is power, but he cannot go beyond understanding or awareness; whereas a sincere, genuine, devoted and surrendered seeker knows that belief is dynamic power, and he has this power as his very own.

Sri Chinmoy

During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.

Simone Weil

Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.

Susan Sontag

Gandhi held no formal position of authority. Nor was there an organized army standing behind him. What he did have were his core beliefs and the audacity to speak truth to power.

Punit Renjen

All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.

Edward Abbey

It is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude; that all beauty and power which men covet are somehow born out of that Alpine district; that any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition.