Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of mind that finds its cause wherever life is governed by production quotas.


Gunther Grass

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privileg...
GUNTER GRASS
Reach out and help others. If you have the power to make someone happy, do it. Be a vessel, be the c...
GERMANY KENT
Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; it is the understanding of the totality of life in w...
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tend...
RAOUL VANEIGEM
Well, there is an attorney-client privilege here that needs to be respected, and it's a privileg...
ALBERTO GONZALES
The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves every...
CARL SCHMITT
By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production an...
FRIEDRICH ENGELS
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
WILLIAM J. H. BOETCKER
The thought of security bears within it an essential risk. A state which has security as its sole ta...
GIORGIO AGAMBEN
Today a minimum wage earner has to work a day and a half just to pay for a full tank of gas. That is...
BILL PASCRELL
An individual who has in his mind that he can accomplish a certain task is far more likely to succee...
DANIEL WILLEY
Now, everybody, I suppose, is aware that in recent years the silly business of divination by dreams ...
ARTHUR MACHEN
There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception
JAMES THURBER
At each such turning point since 1960, industrial production has risen notably over the succeeding 1...
ROBERT DICLEMENTE
Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, its priests. To submit it to the in...
JOSEPH DE MAISTRE
A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather ...
LIONEL TRILLING
This is not an increasing phenomenon, but what has happened since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans ...
ALAN CLAPSADDLE
Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything ...
LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
In the center of an irrational universe governed by an irrational Mind stands rational man.
PHILIP K. DICK
Life is a game governed by rules; the obedient win wherever they go.
KIMTO OCHE EMMANUEL
The old man, of whom we know how he has become what he is, is more of an individual than the young m...
ERICH AUERBACH
Life is an audition.
THOMAS FLAJNIK - ANTICHIMERAPODAL
The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an er...
HANNAH ARENDT
Be the girl you want your daughter to be. Be the girl you want your son to date. Be classy, be smart...
GERMANY KENT
The organization has state offices and is also governed by a board of governors made up of teachers ...
BEN YATES
The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or sh...
JAMES BALDWIN
Here’s to all the places we went. And all the places we’ll go. And here’s me, whispering again...
JOHN GREEN
I'm not interested in dating a girl I'm not gonna marry
JOHN GREEN
The future will erase everything--there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend ob...
JOHN GREEN
I am saddened by the reality that an individual has to live the whole life with the bitter fact that...
BHAVIK SARKHEDI
State companies winning deals because of government-to- government interaction has become a rule rat...
ARJUNA MAHENDRAN
Dying is an integral part of life, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is ca...
ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS
It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his o...
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
The power of an idea is never to be underestimated. Many a thought has survived long after its host ...
A.J. DARKHOLME
Put your mind to it and you will do it. This is how the impossible become possible
SOTONYE ANGA
En inglés, Borogove’” I said. “But what if I don’t finish this painting in
time?” TERRY BISSON
The mass production of distraction is now as much a part of the American way of life as the mass pro...
C. WRIGHT MILLS
We convince ourselves that happiness is an effect; that there has to be cause for it. That makes hap...
R. N. PRASHER
Genius is an intellect that has become unfaithful to its destiny.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
It is rare that even a jazz musician finds an individual voice.
DAVID BAKER
Oftentimes in a society when people of a certain type, whether individual or a group, are subconscio...
CRISS JAMI
The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man...
C.G. JUNG
All higher education belongs only to the exception: one must be privileged to have a right to so hig...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Every believer should be an apostle since each believer is sent by the Lord Jesus to go and bear fru...
HENRY HON
Daydreaming is one of the key sources of poetry - a poem often starts as a daydream that finds its w...
EDWARD HIRSCH
Curran's whore comes to visit us," Jarek said in accented English.

The three men laughed ...
ILONA ANDREWS
One cannot change, that is to say become a different person, while continuing to acquiesce to the fe...
MARCEL PROUST
The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an...
AUGUSTE COMTE
The Mafia has returned to dominate the landscape and become more of an economic presence instead of ...
ANTONIO INGROIA
At the current $5.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage has become a poverty wage. A full-time worker...
BERNIE SANDERS
All initiation of force is a violation of someone else's rights, whether initiated by an individ...
RON PAUL
It is an established principle of jurisprudence in all civilized nations that the sovereign cannot b...
ROGER B. TANEY
Congress has no business telling courts within a state that they are prohibited from considering iss...
TED DEUTCH
Without forgiveness life is governed by... an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.
ROBERTO ASSAGIOLI
Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation
ROBERTO ASSAGIOLI
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point...
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation - which is not blankness,...
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community...
JOHN MASEFIELD
As goods become more standardized - and mass production has that effect, standardizing product - the...
STANLEY MARCUS
The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based...
ALBERT JAY NOCK
The power of heart is much stronger than the power of mind to empower our life.
ANUJ SOMANY
The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of ...
CHRISTOPHER LASCH
The state of Alaska has a minimum wage which is higher than the federal level because our state lead...
JOE MILLER
What we try to do is develop housing that the average wage-earner can reasonably afford.
ANN MURPHY
In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pu...
MARIANNE MOORE
The state has got to be its own master. The modalities of civic life may not be prescribed for it th...
EDITH STEIN
Over the last few years, we've had a number of clients liquidate a portion of their stock portfolios...
DAVID KOTOK
As I’ve said, encountering death has a way of jerking your priorities into line.
JAMES C. DOBSON
Experience has taught me that any kind of political grouping is oppressive. It's the blind mass ...
GAO XINGJIAN
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the rulin...
KARL MARX
Evil finds itself in the large cities, the small cities, the villages, ... Wherever there is an indi...
DENNIS ROGERS
It has to be a team concept. It isn't an individual game.
JOHN WOODEN
When a child is conceived, an egg is fertilized, and at that point the unborn child has all the DNA ...
ANNE NEWMAN
Anyone who suffers from anxiety or depression should remember that an unhappy gut can be the cause o...
GIULIA ENDERS
The goal in life is not to try and live forever, but to create something that will live forever in p...
KARON WADDELL
Philosophy not only begins with the individual, but also ends with the individual. For an individual...
LIN YUTANG
Powerful state and business elites seek to determine the basic framework of modern social goals: max...
DAVID EDWARDS
Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ...
GERMANY KENT
Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wh...
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Porsche is the exception that proves the rule: no other car company of its size has had a chance on ...
GAREL RHYS
Beauty fades, but knowledge is eternal
ANDREW FAIRCHILD
Feast of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Martyr, c.107 Beginning a series on the church: The laity....
DOUGLAS RHYMES
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a poin...
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Wherever you see an empty life, or an empty page or an empty mind, add something good to it!
MEHMET MURAT ILDAN
[Popular sympathy for snowbirds is often restrained by class envy and the phenomenon of all the out-...
STAN SMITH
The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
A great future starts with what you can see
SOTONYE ANGA
You don't find interesting stuff because you don't search enough, ... every book has it's own lesson...
DEYTH BANGER
To show pity is felt as a sign of contempt because one has clearly ceased to be an object of fear as...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
19. Those who are the happiest are not necessarily those for whom life has been easiest. Emotional s...
JAMES C. DOBSON
We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as th...
PIERRE-SIMON LAPLACE
This substance, which is manifold in its forms and protean in its transformations, has, in its state...
ASA GRAY
Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in ...
ERIC HOFFER
Think of all the mesquite in Texas, the pinyon pines, the acorns in Appalachia, every place has the ...
JOEL SALATIN
‎Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against...
EMMA GOLDMAN
Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man root...
JOSEPH CONRAD
To me it was plain silly. It is so obvious that life works in terms of species rather than individua...
DIANA ATHILL
The working-class is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman's heaven-born privile...
MATTHEW ARNOLD
We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had ...
BOB GRAHAM
All philosophic propositions, every attempt to think including all acts of oral or written articulat...
KILROY J. OLDSTER

More Gunther Grass

The human head is bigger than the globe. It conceives itself as containing more. It can think and re...
GUNTHER GRASS
Believing: it means believing in our own lies. And I can say that I am grateful that I got this less...
GUNTHER GRASS
Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and y...
GUNTHER GRASS
We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, ...
GUNTHER GRASS
I shall speak of how melancholy and utopia preclude one another. How they fertilize one another... o...
GUNTHER GRASS
Information networks straddle the world. Nothing remains concealed. But the sheer volume of informat...
GUNTHER GRASS
If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle -- absolute busyness -...
GUNTHER GRASS
Art is uncompromising and life is full of compromises.
GUNTHER GRASS
We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation...
GUNTHER GRASS
The patience of poverty. In rice fields, backs bent forever.Amazing, man outoxens the oxen and still...
GUNTHER GRASS
If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - ...
GUNTHER GRASS
Only the Social Democrats will truly defend the culture of the German people.
GUNTHER GRASS
The patience of poverty. In rice fields, backs bent forever.
Amazing, man outoxens the oxen and ...
GUNTHER GRASS
Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea.
JOHN GUNTHER
If you are losing a tug-of-war with a tiger, give him the rope before he gets to your arm. You can a...
MAX GUNTHER
It is true that when we take chances, we stand to lose. But it is also true that we will never win a...
MAX GUNTHER
Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was belief in facts...
JOHN GUNTHER
The record company started as an adjunct to that, to give young composers their first recorded perfo...
GUNTHER SCHULLER
All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.
JOHN GUNTHER
What interested me was not news, but appraisal. What I sought was to grasp the flavor of a man, his ...
JOHN GUNTHER
It's the equivalent of putting on the brakes suddenly while driving uphill.
JOHN GUNTHER
There are no generalizations in American politics that vested selfishness cannot cut through.
JOHN GUNTHER
So this anchoring in some way, in some important way in the past without repeating the past, but on ...
GUNTHER SCHULLER
The last copy of the Chicago Daily News I picked up had three crime stories on its front page. But b...
JOHN GUNTHER
If you are losing a tug of war with a tiger, give him the rope before he gets to your arm. You can...
MAX GUNTHER
One travels like a golf ball, hopping from green to green.
JOHN GUNTHER
I, for one, know of no sweeter sight for a man's eyes than his own country
JOHN GUNTHER
If a man's from Texas, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him by asking?
JOHN GUNTHER
Well, because music is my life and music is not work for me.
GUNTHER SCHULLER
The first essence of journalism is to know what you want to know, the second, is to find out who wil...
JOHN GUNTHER
Happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast
JOHN GUNTHER
We put a new coat of paint and a drop ceiling, but that's about it.
PETER GUNTHER
perhaps the entire harrowing episode would make his brain even finer, subtler, and more sensitive th...
JOHN GUNTHER
It's the equivalent of putting on the brakes suddenly while driving uphill.
JOHN GUNTHER
Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea
JOHN GUNTHER
It's just a great event that we participate in every year and it's a great time.
JOHN GUNTHER
She used to tell me she had no idea how Jack was getting so drunk. But we figured it out. Then he ha...
PETER GUNTHER
So now, thirty years, forty years later, I mean, I could find a whole orchestra of a thousand to put...
GUNTHER SCHULLER
There was lots of time spent in negotiations with the Chinese military force that controls the natio...
GUNTHER MATSCHNIGG
It's more of a coaching convention than it is to see players.
GUNTHER CUNNINGHAM
[Of course, there's always the possibility this collection of talent might never live up to the hype...
GUNTHER CUNNINGHAM
And thank goodness. He's vastly underrated as a runner and a receiver. He really helps them big-time...
GUNTHER CUNNINGHAM
You know what it's like in basketball when a guy's hitting 3-pointers and can't miss? When you get i...
GUNTHER CUNNINGHAM
We're trying to change the culture here. They got into a passive defense that believed that offense ...
GUNTHER CUNNINGHAM
Let's not talk about it. I might throw up while I'm talking.
GUNTHER CUNNINGHAM
If I were making the decision, I would have kicked it.
GUNTHER CUNNINGHAM
I feel real really good. I can call any scheme in practice and have confidence that they'll execute ...
GUNTHER CUNNINGHAM
It was mostly about his coaching philosophy and the way we want to approach the season. But the rest...
GUNTHER CUNNINGHAM
We were coming off the field on Tuesday, and (wide receiver) Dante Hall said to me, 'Gun, they're sm...
GUNTHER CUNNINGHAM
I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why ...
GUNTHER SCHULLER
I would like to read some books: I don't have time; I would like to continue working on my autob...
GUNTHER SCHULLER
We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, ...
GUNTER GRASS
If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - ...
GUNTER GRASS
People change with time. There are things that happened to a person in his childhood and years later...
GUNTER GRASS
Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and whit...
GUNTER GRASS
My relationship with Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm reaches far back into my childhood. I grew up with Grim...
GUNTER GRASS
Our minds aren't bound by a chronological corset. When thinking and dreaming, past, present and ...
GUNTER GRASS
When the young woman
leans over the sky,
about to water the flowers as well as the weeds,<...
GüNTER GRASS
Memory likes to play hide-and-seek, to crawl away. It tends to hold forth, to dress up, often needle...
GUNTER GRASS
How do we prevent Iran developing an atomic bomb, when, on the American side, dropping atomic bombs ...
GUNTER GRASS
I'm always astonished by a forest. It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger...
GUNTER GRASS
We cannot get by Auschwitz. We should not even try, as great as the temptation is, because Auschwitz...
GUNTER GRASS
Auschwitz speaks against even a right to self-determination that is enjoyed by all other peoples bec...
GUNTER GRASS
For me, writing, drawing, and political activism are three separate pursuits; each has its own inten...
GUNTER GRASS
I was assigned to the Waffen-SS but was never involved in any crime. Besides, I always felt the need...
GUNTER GRASS
I have found that words that are loaded with pathos and create a seductive euphoria are apt to promo...
GUNTER GRASS
I belonged to the generation that grew up under National Socialism, and was blinded and led astray -...
GUNTER GRASS
I had an uncle who was a postal official at the Polish post office in Gdansk. He was one of the defe...
GUNTER GRASS
I catch myself judging myself as that 13-year-old boy, who, of course, rightfully points out that he...
GUNTER GRASS
Writers know that sometimes things are there in the drawer for decades before they finally come out ...
GUNTER GRASS
I have seen and drawn dying, poisoned worlds. I published a book of drawings called 'Death of Wo...
GUNTER GRASS
Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privileg...
GUNTER GRASS
Everybody knows how fallible memory can sometimes be. You remember certain fragments precisely, but ...
GUNTER GRASS
No idea stays pure. Even the flowering of art isn't pure. And the sun has spots.
GUNTER GRASS
The European Union arose on an economic foundation, and it turns out that even this is not a solid b...
GUNTER GRASS
I have heard my fill of hurtful words. I think it's especially egregious when citizens like me, ...
GUNTER GRASS
In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growt...
GUNTER GRASS
The naked figure will not get ahead between the mirrors.
GUNTER GRASS
Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.
GUNTER GRASS
The trend is towards the bourgeois-smug.
GUNTER GRASS
We are creating the future.
GUNTER GRASS
I don't want you to sketch this cripple, this freak of nature, I want you to slaughter him, crucify ...
GUNTER GRASS
Whenever there has been talk of exterminating rats, others, who were not rats, have been exterminate...
GUNTER GRASS
The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.
GUNTER GRASS
They swore by concrete. They built for eternity.
GüNTER GRASS
If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle -- absolute busyness -...
GUNTER GRASS
I shall speak of how melancholy and utopia preclude one another. How they fertilize one another... o...
GUNTER GRASS
Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and y...
GUNTER GRASS
...there is also such a thing as ersatz happiness, perhaps happiness exists only as an ersatz, perha...
GüNTER GRASS
Love

That’s it:
The cashless commerce.
The blanket always too short.
The...
GüNTER GRASS
And when the sun goes down and the mood comes upon me, I'll watch the play of the colors on the wate...
GüNTER GRASS
...if I were asked to think up a new name for temptation, I should recommend the word 'doorknob', be...
GüNTER GRASS
When Satan's not in the mood, virtue triumphs. Hasn't even Satan a right not to be in the mood once ...
GüNTER GRASS
After the collapse of socialism, capitalism remained without a rival. This unusual situation unleash...
GüNTER GRASS
Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a bette...
GüNTER GRASS
You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be.
GüNTER GRASS
Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.
GüNTER GRASS
Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.
GüNTER GRASS
My sister and I did not have our own rooms, or even a place to ourselves. In the living room, beyond...
GUNTER GRASS
Everyone is born into a certain era. I wouldn't want to see anyone faced with the circumstances ...
GUNTER GRASS
… there is something very strange and childish in the way grown-ups feel about their clocks—in t...
GüNTER GRASS
I can only write a book like 'The Tin Drum' or 'From the Diary of a Snail' at a spec...
GUNTER GRASS
How did it happen that an enlightened country like Germany was pulled into Nazism? That question has...
GUNTER GRASS
What I do is sometimes - at least in Germany - met with wounding campaigns. I always face the questi...
GUNTER GRASS
Hoy ya sé que todo nos espía, que nada pasa inadvertido y que aun el papal pintado de las paredes ...
GüNTER GRASS
Because men
are killing the forests
the fairy tales are running away.
The spindle doe...
GüNTER GRASS