Henry Kissinger Quotes
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that weren’t realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
Quotes to Explore
-
Female hysteria is a subject I'm very fond of. I always try to bring it in somewhere. For me, it is the finest part of the line between comedy and tragedy.
-
Civilization is so hard on the body that some have called it a disease, despite the arts that keep puny bodies alive to a greater average age, and our greater protection from contagious and germ diseases.
-
Gangster movies are the inheritor of the Greek tragedy: it's the only genre where the audience will be disappointed if there's not a tragic ending.
-
I trust people too much, and the other tragedy is I can't say no.
-
I consider that there are different degrees of civilization and there are many different ways of expressing it. But one is civilized or is not.
-
There's comedy even in tragedy. There's comedy in life. And in 'Castle', we go for that comedy.
-
A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.
-
What having a Down's syndrome child isn't - and I feel very strongly about this - is a tragedy. All those pregnancy books you read when you are expecting refer to Down's syndrome as if it were the worst possible outcome, and it's not.
-
One of the advantages of appearing in such a play is that you begin to understand it properly, I feel Ophelia's tragedy was that she had been so used by everybody and felt that she bore a great burden of guilt.
-
A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.
-
We Jews have been too adaptable. We have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies for the sake of social conformity. … Even in modern civilization, the Jew is most happy if he remains a Jew.
-
The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilization.
-
The tragedy unfolding in Zimbabwe is driven by one man's ruthless campaign to hang on to power whatever the cost to others in the process.
-
The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.
-
The tragedy is that everyone thinks they already have goals. But what they really have are hopes and wishes.
-
The misogyny that shapes every aspect of our civilization is the institutionalized form of male fear and hatred of what they have denied and therefore cannot know, cannot share: that wild country, the being of women.
-
Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.
-
Civilization today reminds me of an ape with a blowtorch playing in a room full of dynamite. It looks like the monkeys are about to operate the zoo, and the inmates are taking over the asylum.
-
One could judge the degree of civilization of a country by the social and political position of its women.
-
Pride in one's own race - and that does not imply contempt for other races - is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves. They belong to ancient civilizations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own. They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilization to which we belong. Indeed, I believe the more steadfast the Chinese and the Japanese remain in their pride of race, the easier I shall find it to get on with them.
-
You just don't luck into things as much as you'd like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it's friendships or opportunities.
-
It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.
-
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that weren’t realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
