Essayists & Critics

“The largest part of what we call "personality" is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.”

“On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage.”

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.”

“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression.”

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.”

“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”

“Exister, c'est protester sans le savoir. Toute forme de vie comporte un excès de force, d'expansion; être n'est que violation de ce qui nous entoure.”

“To exist is to protest without knowing it. Every form of life involves an excess of force, of expansion; being is nothing but violation of what surrounds it.”

“The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.”

“Es gibt nichts, was der Mensch mehr fürchtet, als die Berührung durch das Unbekannte. Er will sehen, was nach ihm greift, er will es erkennen oder zumindest einreihen können.”

“There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it.”

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

“We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.”

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”

“The great irony of the modern period is that the "disenchantment of the world" that supposedly came with the rise of science was actually an impoverishment of thought, a collapse of attention.”

“Je ne comprends pas; je m'arrête; j'examine.”

“I do not understand; I pause; I examine.”

“万头攒动火树银花之处不必找我。如欲相见，我在各种悲喜交集处。”

“Do not look for me where crowds surge and fireworks blaze. If you wish to find me, I am where all sorrows and joys converge.”

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

“Activism is not a journey to the corner store. It is a plunge into the unknown.”

“一个人至少拥有一个梦想，有一个理由去坚强。心若没有栖息的地方，到哪里都是在流浪。”

“A person must have at least one dream, one reason to be strong. If the heart has no place to rest, wherever you go is wandering.”

“In the final analysis, style is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.”

“Всё так хрупко. Ты идёшь на войну, и первое, что теряешь, — это язык. Слова больше не работают. Для того, что там происходит, нет слов.”

“Everything is so fragile. You go to war, and the first thing you lose is language — the words don't work anymore. There are no words for what happens there.”

“The struggle is really all I have. The struggle is really all any of us have because the question is whether you are going to go forward.”

“Ideology, in short, is not a set of doctrines; it signifies the way men live out their roles in class-society, the values, ideas and images which tie them to their social functions and so prevent them from a true knowledge of society as a whole.”

“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”

“The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves. Every other lie is eventually forgiven or forgotten, but self-deception accumulates.”

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line — the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”

“一个人只拥有此生此世是不够的，他还应该拥有诗意的世界。”

“Having only this life and this world is not enough; one should also have a poetic world.”

“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.”