"Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals."
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Quote collection
Edmund Wilson quotes (page 1 of 2)
34 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine."
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"No two persons ever read the same book."
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"If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes."
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"There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income."
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"In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can never read the same book twice."
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"In times of disorder and stress, the fanatics play a prominent role; in times of peace, the critics. Both are shot after the revolution."
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"I have learned to read the papers calmly and not to hate the fools I read about."
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"The most immoral and disgraceful and dangerous thing that anybody can do in the arts is knowingly to feed back to the public its own ignorance and cheap tastes."
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"Keep going; never stop; sit tight; Read something luminous at night."
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"Only the curious will learn and only the resolute will overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient."
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"The Jew lends himself easily to Communism because it enables him to devote himself to a high cause, involving all of humanity, characteristics which are natural to him as a Jew."
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"One didn't really believe till one saw it demonstrated that giving oneself up completely to art, to emotion, to enjoyment, without planning for the future or counting the cost, produced dreadful disabilities and bankruptcies later."
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"A young poet in America should not be advised at the outset to give up all for the Muse-to seclude himself in the country, to live hand from mouth in Greenwich Village or to escape to the Riviera. I should not advise him even to become a magazine editor or work in a publisher's office. The poet would do better to study a profession, to become a banker or a public official or even to go in for the movies."
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"The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since he was shot by Booth was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg."
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"From the moment a New Yorker is confronted with almost any large city of Europe, it is impossible for him to pretend to himself that his own city is anything other than an unscrupulous real-estate speculation"
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"On the one hand, I have wanted to supply documentation on myself by including material relevant to my emotions and ideas in my youth; and, on the other, not to let myself down by publishing inferior material. My poetry comes under the latter head. My only advice to the reader is to skip any verse that he sees coming."
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"The great mistake about Europe is taking the countries seriously and letting them quarrel and drop bombs on one another."
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"Every work of art is a trick by which the artist manipulates appearances."
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"It is certainly very hard to write about sex in English without making it unattractive."
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