"The age calls for simple statements and restatements of simple truths. The prophets of doom are involved, those who would bring light must be clear."
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Quote collection
Lin Yutang quotes (page 6 of 7)
138 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"What threatens civilization today is not war, but the changing conception of life values entailed by certain political doctrines. Only by recapturing the dream of human freedom and restoring the importance of the common man's liberties can that undermining threat to modern civilization be averted"
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"In fact,I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly and unemotionally at a fish without immediately thinking of how it tastes in the mouth and wanting to eat it. The reason I don't trust Chinese surgeons is that I am afraid that when a Chinese surgeon cuts up my liver in search of a gall-stone, he may forget about the stone and put my liver in a frying pan."
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"To me personally the only function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gayly than the average businessman does, for no businessman who does not retire at fifty, if he can, is in my eyes a philosopher."
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"I am put on my best behavior, which means the same thing as the most uncomfortable behavior."
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"A cocktail party is a place where you talk with a person you do not know about a subject you have no interest in."
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"A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals."
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"Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important."
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"As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini."
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"Creative work carries with it a form of intense love."
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"All men and women have passions, natural desires and noble ambitions, and also a conscience; they have sex, hunger, fear, anger, and are subject to sickness, pain, suffering and death. Culture consists of bringing about the expression of these passions and desires in harmony."
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"An educated man is one who has the loves and hatreds together."
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"Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body."
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"The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down."
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"We (the Chinese) eat food for its texture, the elastic or crisp effect it has on our teeth, as well as for fragrance, flavor and color."
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"The fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks."
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"If man be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed, counts at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly will give him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one."
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"Somewhere in [China's] soul lurks the cunning of an old dog, and it is a cunning that is strangely impressive. What a strange old soul! What a great old soul!"
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"Is it not tragic, for example, that while in the last World War almost everyone believed it was the war to end all wars and wanted to make it so, now in this Second World War almost no writer that I have read dares even suggest that this is the war to end all wars, or act on that belief? We have lost the courage to hope."
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"When we demand liberty of a person as a constitutional right, we are taking away from the officials their liberty to chop off people's heads."
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