Quotessence
Home / Authors / Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenWritingLiteratureIfsPeopleThinkingWarWayLittlesWorld

Famous Norman Mailer Quotes

“Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.”

MenMayCertainLiteratureVisionAchieveCreationHeroDevilArguingContestsClear Vision
Book:The idol and the octopus: political writings, on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations
Create image

“I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.”

PeopleMayFeltNaturalSecretDemocracyGraceChildhoodConditionsAppealsRoutineFascismSplendidPessimistInfancy
Author:Norman Mailer
Create image

“You can indulge your righteous rage but the things it comes out of are pretty cheap. The trick is to make yourself an instrument of your own policy. Whether you like it or not, that's the highest effectiveness man has achieved.”

MenPolicyHighestInstrumentsRageTricksRighteousIndulgeEffectivenessYou Like It
Book:The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition, With a New Introduction by the Author
Create image

“America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You'd really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country.”

IfsThinkingWayLittlesPersonsRealCountryWholeBigsAmericaLostHoursPoorPowerfulPatriotismPatrioticRepublicFlagsInfatuationOne HourObsceneFlag WavingPowerful Countries
Author:Norman Mailer
Create image

“One's condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one's being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness - the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others.”

FeelsWarMomentsTurnsConditionsImportanceEnormousEmptinessWeedMarijuanaExistentialNothingnessPointlessCannabisInterruptionsHempMedical MarijuanaSmoking WeedFunny Marijuana
Author:Norman Mailer
Create image

“We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature. ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells.”

LifeLongEarthScienceNatureRocksMaterialsComplexesCancerWoodsAliensCellsIronPlasticDivorcedDerivativesOdorVatIron Ore
Book:The idol and the octopus: political writings, on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations
Create image

“A political convention is after all not a meeting of a corporation's board of directors; it is a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together of greed, practical lust, compromised idealism, career-advancement, meeting, feud, vendetta, conciliation, of rabble-rousers, fist fights (as it used to be), embraces, drunks (again as it used to be) and collective rivers of animal sweat.”

TogetherPoliticalUsedFightingFearVoiceAnimalCareersAtheismBandDirectorsRiversHorseEmbraceMeetingsGreedRageLustPracticalsUsed To BeCorporationsBoardsCollectivesSweatConventionsPigsIdealismFistsAdvancementMedievalGet TogetherBoard Of DirectorsCarnivalsVendettaFeudsFiesta
Book:The idol and the octopus: political writings, on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations
Create image

“At bottom, I mean profoundly at bottom, the FBI has nothing to do with Communism, it has nothing to do with catching criminals, it has nothing to do with the Mafia, the syndicate, it has nothing to do with trust-busting, it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it has nothing to do with anything but serving as a church for the mediocre. A high church for the true mediocre.”

MeanChurchBottomCriminalsCommunismServingCommerceMediocreCatchingMafiaDetectivesFbiE CommerceInterstateBustingSyndicate
Author:Norman Mailer
Create image