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Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Lewis Quotes

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Famous Wyndham Lewis Quotes

“The intelligence suffers today automatically in consequence of the attack on all authority, advantage, or privilege. These things are not done away with, it is needless to say, but numerous scapegoats are made of the less politically powerful, to satisfy the egalitarian rage awakened.”

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Book:Wyndham Lewis: an anthology of his prose
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“The puritanical potentialities of science have never been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchically organized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of 'decency.' The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to.”

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Author:Wyndham Lewis
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“When we say 'science' we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science, the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.”

HumansMeanDifferentSciencePoliticalReligiousPureActivityWeaponsAccountsIntellectDifferent ThingsManipulationDerivativesGreat Religious
Author:Wyndham Lewis
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“Feminism was recognized by the average man as a conflict in which it was impossible for a man, as a chivalrous gentleman, as a respecter of the rights of little nations (like little Belgium), as a highly evolved citizen of a highly civilized community, to refuse the claim of this better half to self-determination.”

MenLittlesSelfNationsCommunityHalfRightsImpossibleFeminismCitizensConflictDeterminationClaimsAverageRefuseGentlemanCivilizedSelf DeterminationBelgiumAverage ManBetter Half
Book:The Art of Being Ruled
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“Then we are assured by Sartre that owing to the final disappearance of God our liberty is absolute! At this the entire audience waves its hat or claps its hands. But this natural enthusiasm is turned abruptly into something much less buoyant when it is learnt that this liberty weighs us down immediately with tremendous responsibilities. We now have to take all God's worries on our shoulders -now that we are become men like gods. It is at this point that the Anxiety and Despondency begin, ending in utter despair.”

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Book:The Essential Wyndham Lewis: An Introduction to His Work
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“But let me have silence always, in the centre of the shouting—that is essential! Let me have silence so that no pin may drop and not be heard, and not a whisper escape us for all our spouting, nor the needle's scratching upon this gramophone of a circular cosmic spot. Hear me! Mark me! Learn me! Throw the mind's ear open—shut up the mind's eye—all will be music!”

MindMayEyeSilenceHeardEssentialsEarsLet MeMarkSpotsCosmicShut UpCentrePinsNeedlesShouting
Book:Wyndham Lewis, Collected Poems and Plays
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“A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphereThe ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.”

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Author:Wyndham Lewis
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