A Quote by Joseph Brodsky

After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.

Joseph Brodsky

Quote Topics

After Behalf Creed Evil Exhausted Fervor Having Nostalgia Rather Than

Quote Author

Joseph Brodsky
American - Poet
May 24, 1940 - January 28, 1996

A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence.

Jean Francois Revel

It doesn't matter what party you come from. The key thing is that you work on behalf of the people rather than on behalf of the party.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends...every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

John Brown

In a world where audiences listen for attitudes rather than arguments or information, speakers must feel the pressure to posture rather than engage.

Abhijit Banerjee

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates unduly over "thou shalt.

John Stuart Mill

[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Business has to stand up on behalf of its employees, on behalf of immigration, on behalf of its customers, and on behalf of supply chain-cum-globalization.

Richard Edelman

The Church was resolved to have a New Testament, and as, after the lapse of more than three hundred years, no handwriting could be proved or disproved, the Church, which like former impostors had then gotten possession of the State, had everything its own way. It invented creeds, such as that called the Apostle's Creed, the Nicean Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and out of the loads of rubbish that were presented it voted four to be Gospels, and others to be Epistles, as we now find them arranged.

Thomas Paine

Let us put aside resolutely that great fright, tenderly and without malice, daring to be wrong in something important rather than right in some meticulous banality, fearing no evil while the mind is free to search, imagine, and conclude, inviting our countrymen to try other instruments than coercion and suppression in the effort to meet destiny with triumph, genially suspecting that no creed yet calendared in the annals of politics mirrors the doomful possibilities of infinity.

Charles A. Beard

I felt rather exhausted, and wondered, rather shocked at my callous thought, why old people were sometimes such a strain. Worse than young children or puppies because one had to be polite.

Daphne du Maurier

Some people throw a bit of their personality after their bad arguments, as if that might straighten their paths and turn them into right and good arguments-just as a man in a bowling alley, after he has let go of the ball, still tries to direct it with gestures.

Friedrich Nietzsche

What a burden to think one is conceived in sin rather than in pleasure; that one is born into evil rather than into joy.

Alice Walker

Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity.

Georges Bernanos

After thee accumulation of too much history we have lost our innocence, we cannot easily believe in any explanations. We describe rather than feel, we touch rather than explore, we lust rather than adore.