Norman Mailer quote: "Political leaders and statesmen are serious men even when they appear to be fools, and it is rare to find them acting without some deeper reason they can offer to themselves."

He got a corporation mind. He doesn't believe in nature; he puts his trust and distrust in man.
NORMAN MAILER

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creati...
NORMAN MAILER

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
NORMAN MAILER

Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always livi...
NORMAN MAILER

The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smal...
NORMAN MAILER

Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.
NORMAN MAILER

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredi...
NORMAN MAILER

In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that....
NORMAN MAILER

There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democrac...
NORMAN MAILER

I usually need a can of beer to prime me.
NORMAN MAILER

Three miles long and two streets wide, the town curls around the bay ... a gaudy run with Mediterran...
NORMAN MAILER

One's condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and h...
NORMAN MAILER

The desire for success lubricates secret prostitution's in the soul.
NORMAN MAILER

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only b...
NORMAN MAILER

Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from th...
NORMAN MAILER

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining ...
NORMAN MAILER

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands ...
NORMAN MAILER

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
NORMAN MAILER

There's a subterranean impetus towards pornography so powerful that half the business world is juice...
NORMAN MAILER

What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptio...
NORMAN MAILER

There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the w...
NORMAN MAILER

Once a newspaper touches a story the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.
NORMAN MAILER

Left-wingers are incapable of conspiring because they are all egomaniacs.
NORMAN MAILER

I'm hostile to men, I'm hostile to women, I'm hostile to cats, to poor cockroaches, I'm afraid of ho...
NORMAN MAILER

In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.
NORMAN MAILER

There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.
NORMAN MAILER

The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a...
NORMAN MAILER

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.
NORMAN MAILER

One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's...
NORMAN MAILER

Alimony is the curse of the writing class.
NORMAN MAILER

Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back...
NORMAN MAILER

Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.
NORMAN MAILER

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of th...
NORMAN MAILER

The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.
NORMAN MAILER

Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.
NORMAN MAILER

Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts.
NORMAN MAILER

I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from...
NORMAN MAILER

There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children ...
NORMAN MAILER

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small t...
NORMAN MAILER

We can never know for certain where our prayers are likely to go, nor from whom the answers will com...
NORMAN MAILER

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his visio...
NORMAN MAILER

The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living the...
NORMAN MAILER

Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small ...
NORMAN MAILER

Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to de...
NORMAN MAILER

The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverbera...
NORMAN MAILER

There is no greater importance in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the ...
NORMAN MAILER

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.
NORMAN MAILER

Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
NORMAN MAILER

Part of the ability to keep writing over the years comes down to living with the expectation of disa...
NORMAN MAILER

Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
NORMAN MAILER

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness...
NORMAN MAILER

We are in love with the word. We are proud of it. The word precedes the formation of the state. The ...
NORMAN MAILER

The platitude turned on its head is still a platitude
NORMAN MAILER

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining ...
NORMAN MAILER

I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the...
NORMAN MAILER

When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.
NORMAN MAILER

Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts.
NORMAN MAILER

We are all so guilty at the way we have allowed the world around us to become more ugly and tasteles...
NORMAN MAILER

To be a mainstream American is to live as an oxymoron. You are a good Christian, but you strain to r...
NORMAN MAILER

Patterned after an Italian Renaissance palace, it is 88 times as large and one millionth as valuable...
NORMAN MAILER

Growth, in some curious way, I suspect, depends on being always in motion just a little bit, one way...
NORMAN MAILER

At the end of medicine is dope; at the end of life is death; at the end of man may be the Hell which...
NORMAN MAILER

I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a ba...
NORMAN MAILER

(On choosing to write the book in third person, and using his name Norman as the nom de plume)
...
NORMAN MAILER

Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.
NORMAN MAILER

He got a corporation mind. He don't believe in nature; he puts his trust and distrust in man.
NORMAN MAILER

People move forward into the future out of the way they comprehend the past. When we don't understan...
NORMAN MAILER

Moving from one activity to another makes sense if you do it with a hint of wit or touch of grace. B...
NORMAN MAILER

I've had an exciting relation to France all my life, from my young years in Brooklyn when I thought ...
NORMAN MAILER

The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverbera...
NORMAN MAILER

It's not a good idea to put your wife into a novel; not your latest wife anyway.
NORMAN MAILER

He bears an unmistakable resemblance to a cornered rat
NORMAN MAILER

Dying can’t be all that difficult, up to now everyone has managed to do it.
NORMAN MAILER

The desire for success lubricates secret prostitutions in the soul
NORMAN MAILER

The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety
NORMAN MAILER

You never really know a woman until you meet her in court
NORMAN MAILER

I felt something shift to murder in me. I felt that I was an outlaw, a psychic outlaw, and I liked i...
NORMAN MAILER

Short-term amnesia is not the worst affliction if you have an Irish flair for the sauce.
NORMAN MAILER

Every time I move I squash something said Loathesome.
NORMAN MAILER

Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always ...
NORMAN MAILER

You don't know a woman until you've met her in court.
NORMAN MAILER

It is not uncommon for fighters’ camps to be gloomy. In heavy training, fighters live in dimension...
NORMAN MAILER

When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.
NORMAN MAILER

Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors st...
NORMAN MAILER

Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart
NORMAN MAILER

Every one of my books had killed me a little more.
NORMAN MAILER

Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always li...
NORMAN MAILER

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his visio...
NORMAN MAILER

Let the passions and cupidities and dreams and kinks and ideals and greed and hopes and foul corrupt...
NORMAN MAILER

In the South of Spain, one could look to vice as quickly as to virtue for a sense of tradition.
NORMAN MAILER

WHEN YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHO YOU ARE, YOU NEVER HAVE TO HIDE.
NORMAN

I've always said it's interesting to watch devils cry when angels want to stab you in the ba...
NORMAN REEDUS

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of i...
NORMAN COUSINS

A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds toge...
NORMAN COUSINS

A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling. Nothing ...
NORMAN COUSINS

People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of the...
NORMAN COUSINS

He who keeps his cool best wins.
NORMAN COUSINS

Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
NORMAN COUSINS

What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they...
NORMAN COUSINS

If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality.
NORMAN COUSINS

My views line up with Mick Mulvaney's views pretty much exactly.
RALPH NORMAN

My one issue in this country is to get on a firm financial footing. There's not much you can do ...
RALPH NORMAN

Everybody's had their differences with President Trump. He's a polarizing president, but I t...
RALPH NORMAN

I firmly believe that with President Trump in the White House, we have such a great opportunity as c...
RALPH NORMAN

What Washington desperately needs now are citizen legislators that are dedicated to leading a free p...
RALPH NORMAN

Our message of a balanced budget amendment, term limits to end career politicians, and a real plan t...
RALPH NORMAN

My candidacy is one that fits the district and fits the Mick Mulvaney-Jim DeMint philosophy.
RALPH NORMAN

I am a businessman.
RALPH NORMAN

I got into politics because businessmen should be spending your money.
RALPH NORMAN

Business creates jobs; government does not. Government creates a whole slew of jobs each time a new ...
RALPH NORMAN

I believe in the free enterprise system.
RALPH NORMAN

John Spratt did a great job of constituent service. When somebody had a problem, he would jump on it...
RALPH NORMAN

I don't think I can sell to our voters in our district that there's nothing to cut in the fe...
RALPH NORMAN

If you liked Mick Mulvaney's votes, you'll like my votes.
RALPH NORMAN

If someone wants to say 'I love you' in a straight play, they say it, and then it's the ...
MARSHA NORMAN

I always get more applause than votes.
NORMAN THOMAS

To us Americans much has been given; of us much is required. With all our faults and mistakes, it is...
NORMAN THOMAS

Kennedy said that if we had nuclear war we'd kill 300 million people in the first hour. McNamara...
NORMAN THOMAS

If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag; wash it.
NORMAN THOMAS

I walk where I choose to walk.
NORMAN THOMAS

Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.
NORMAN COUSINS

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his mean...
NORMAN COUSINS

In Britain, the idea one could go from blue-collar beginnings to the university was so far out, it w...
NORMAN FOSTER

The secret of a good life is to have the right loyalties and hold them in the right scale of values.
NORMAN THOMAS

At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. It is those we live with and love and should know w...
NORMAN MACLEAN

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are to be desired when dying.
NORMAN DOUGLAS

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes?
NORMAN DOUGLAS

To find a friend one must close one eye - to keep him, two.
NORMAN DOUGLAS

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertising.
NORMAN DOUGLAS

The fun of fishing is catching 'em, not killing 'em.
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

Only in a concert situation do I have access to people directly to preach to them, and I don't b...
LARRY NORMAN

I want to encourage other people to try to discover who they are, not to try to fit into some superf...
LARRY NORMAN

Art is more engaging that propaganda.
LARRY NORMAN

I know I stand visibly onstage, but my function is still unseen, because I rarely see the immediate ...
LARRY NORMAN

Jesus got me through the slums without getting murdered. I just walked with him as though he were re...
LARRY NORMAN

Gospel songs to me are about the mansion in the sky, and washed in the blood of Christ's crimson...
LARRY NORMAN

Life is God's art.
LARRY NORMAN

I feel that Christian music is a subculture directed towards the Christians. It's not really bei...
LARRY NORMAN

I'm only here on Earth to serve God. I never had a career. I don't care about commercialism....
LARRY NORMAN

We need worship for our spirit, fellowship for our soul and committed subservience for our body.
LARRY NORMAN

I thought 'The Well' was going to launch my career, but nothing happened.
MAIDIE NORMAN

When I was young, I was rather attractive, and I thought that I would be a leading lady. I always th...
MAIDIE NORMAN

I am a Republican because the United States is a republic, and the views we hold represent the found...
MAIDIE NORMAN

I do not want to be a pawn in a political campaign.
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

Particularly when you're dealing with very high ranking people, you know, you have to get their ...
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

What people don't understand is this is something that we only have in America. There is no othe...
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

When placed in command, take charge.
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

I've managed to convince my wife that somewhere in the Bible it says, 'Man cannot have too m...
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

A great deal of the capability of an army is its dedication to its cause and its will to fight. You ...
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

If it had been our intention to take Iraq, if it had been our intention to destroy the country, if i...
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

What is postwar Iraq going to look like, with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites? That's a...
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

To be an effective leader, you have to have a manipulative streak - you have to figure out the peopl...
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

They say the good Lord doesn't charge you for the days you hunt and fish, and I believe that.
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

You learn far more from negative leadership than from positive leadership. Because you learn how not...
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

Nobody can ever pin you down when you speculate.
NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

The Depression was remarkable because you had nothing, and the salaries, when you got a job, were ve...
NORMAN LLOYD

All my boyhood, all I ever wanted was to be loved.
NORMAN WISDOM

With most British actors, it's amazing. I think they start with the character on the outside and...
NORMAN JEWISON

Obviously it's my second senior event, and I'm tired obviously coming back from the British ...
GREG NORMAN

I could never bear to be buried with people to whom I had not been introduced.
NORMAN PARKINSON

Modern Orthodoxy has a highly positive attitude toward the State of Israel. Our Ultra-Orthodox breth...
NORMAN LAMM

If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality. ...
NORMAN COUSINS

In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsib...
NORMAN COUSINS

Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
NORMAN COUSINS

Bulgaria was the only Axis country to deflect insistent German demands for the deportation of its Je...
NORMAN DAVIES

I went camping one time when I was twelve, to the Great Lakes. My friend stepped in really deep mudd...
NORMAN REEDUS

I've been camping and stuff, but if you left me in the woods I'd probably just curl up and c...
NORMAN REEDUS

The E.U. is an organization that was created after the Second World War for calming down the nationa...
NORMAN DAVIES

I've been a huge Psychedelic Furs fan for a long time. I love Butler's paintings, too. I lik...
NORMAN REEDUS

I voted for Nader, and I have no doubts at all that it was the right thing to do because the Nader c...
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN

When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the field, you can hear the beards ...
NORMAN BORLAUG

How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consent...
NORMAN DOUGLAS

Every nation sincerely desires peace; and all nations pursue courses which if persisted in, must mak...
NORMAN ANGELL

Everywhere I go I see increasing evidence of people swirling about in a human cesspit of their own m...
NORMAN ANGELL

The greatest service we can do the common man is to abolish him and make all men uncommon.
NORMAN ANGELL

God has made Canada one of those nations which cannot be conquered and cannot be destroyed, except b...
NORMAN ANGELL

The capitalist can only make a whole people go to war . . . by capturing the popular will. The only ...
NORMAN ANGELL

Every nation sincerely desires peace; and all nations pursue courses which if persisted in, must mak...
NORMAN ANGELL

It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be ent...
NORMAN ANGELL

In fact, one was so booked out we went from March and were to go till November, but the pantomime wa...
NORMAN WISDOM

In the years of the Red Terror that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, the voice of dissent was stif...
NORMAN DAVIES

Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apar...
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN

Many are called but few are chosen. There are sayings of Christ which suggest that the Church he cam...
EDWARD NORMAN

There is a real danger of the United Kingdom breaking up. There is a loss of common identity.
NORMAN DAVIES

I happen to belong to that group opinion which holds the break-up of the United Kingdom to be immine...
NORMAN DAVIES

He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work.
NORMAN TEBBIT

I can just remember the blitz of Manchester, or perhaps my father's tales about the blitz of Man...
NORMAN DAVIES

War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.
NORMAN COUSINS

Courage brother, do not stumble,
though thy path be dark as night:
There is a star to gui...
NORMAN MACLEOD

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's...
NORMAN MACLEAN

All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.
NORMAN COUSINS

I'm a very intense person. When I go after something, I want to go after it with everything I have. ...
GREG NORMAN

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they wil...
NORMAN THOMAS

The facts of a person's life will, like murder, come out.
NORMAN SHERRY

Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother. Mothers at present can bring children into the w...
NORMAN DOUGLAS

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find...
NORMAN DOUGLAS

Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its eff...
NORMAN COUSINS

Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is.
NORMAN COUSINS

A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and ...
NORMAN DOUGLAS

It is certainly safe, in view of the movement to the right of intellectuals and political thinkers, ...
NORMAN TEBBIT

Political leaders and statesmen are serious men even when they appear to be fools, and it is rare to find them acting without some deeper reason they can offer to themselves.

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Norman Mailer

Political leaders and statesmen are serious men even when they appear to be fools, and it is rare to find them acting without some deeper reason they can offer to themselves.

Norman Mailer

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