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Iago Quotes

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Iago Quotes

“As for Iago’s jealousy, one cannot believe that a seriously jealous man could behave towards his wife as Iago behaves towards Emilia, for the wife of a jealous husband is the first person to suffer. Not only is the relation of Iago and Emilia, as we see it on stage, without emotional tension, but also Emilia openly refers to a rumor of her infidelity as something already disposed of. Some such squire it was That turned your wit, the seamy side without And made you to suspect me with the Moor. At one point Iago states that, in order to revenge himself on Othello, he will not rest till he is even with him, wife for wife, but, in the play, no attempt at Desdemona’s seduction is made. Iago does not encourage Cassio to make one, and he even prevents Roderigo from getting anywhere near her. Finally, one who seriously desires personal revenge desires to reveal himself. The revenger’s greatest satisfaction is to be able to tell his victim to his face – "You thought you were all-powerful and untouchable and could injure me with impunity. Now you see that you were wrong. Perhaps you have forgotten what you did; let me have the pleasure of reminding you." When at the end of the play, Othello asks Iago in bewilderment why he has thus ensnared his soul and body, if his real motive were revenge for having been cuckolded or unjustly denied promotion, he could have said so, instead of refusing to explain.”

RevengeJealousyIagoPractical Joker
Book:The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
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“The English letter ‘O’ is similar to zero (0) in appearance. Iago’s [I am Ego = ‘I’ ‘a’m e‘go’] name starts with an egoistic ‘I’ and ends with an ‘O’ or zero. His ‘ego’ and envy lead him towards nothingness or zero! On the other hand, Othello’s name both starts and ends with ‘O’. It may be interpreted as- Othello has started his career from a ‘zero’, becomes successful, Iago’s deception makes him jealous or mad and he ultimately becomes a ‘zero’ by killing Desdemona and himself. However, Othello must not be called a ‘murderer’ because Iago has used Othello as a weapon to murder Desdemona and also led Othello towards death!”

DeathEgoMurderKillingZeroOthelloDesdemonaIagoEgoistic
Author:Md. Ziaul Haque
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“Iago’s treatment of Othello conforms to Bacon’s definition of scientific enquiry as putting Nature to the Question. If a member of the audience were to interrupt the play and ask him: "What are you doing? could not Iago answer with a boyish giggle, "Nothing. I’m only trying to find out what Othello is really like"? And we must admit that his experiment is highly successful. By the end of the play he does know the scientific truth about the object to which he has reduced Othello. That is what makes his parting shot, What you know, you know, so terrifying for, by then, Othello has become a thing, incapable of knowing anything. And why shouldn’t Iago do this? After all, he has certainly acquired knowledge. What makes it impossible for us to condemn him self-righteously is that, in our culture, we have all accepted the notion that the right to know is absolute and unlimited. […] We are quite prepared to admit that, while food and sex are good in themselves, an uncontrolled pursuit of either is not, but it is difficult for us to believe that intellectual curiosity is a desire like any other, and to realize that correct knowledge and truth are not identical. To apply a categorical imperative to knowing, so that, instead of asking, "What can I know?" we ask, "What, at this moment, am I meant to know?" – to entertain the possibility that the only knowledge which can be true for us is the knowledge we can live up to – that seems to all of us crazy and almost immoral. But, in that case, who are we to say to Iago – "No, you mustn’t.”

ScienceKnowledgeIagoPractical Joker
Book:The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
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“As his wife, Emilia must know Iago better than anybody else. She does not know, any more than the others, that he is malevolent, but she does know that her husband is addicted to practical jokes. What Shakespeare gives us in Iago is a portrait of a practical joker of a peculiarly appalling kind, and perhaps the best way of approaching the play is by a general consideration of the Practical Joker.”

IagoPractical Joker
Book:The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
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“The uniqueness of Iago, like the uniqueness of modern war, does not lie in the spirit of destruction. That has always been common enough. It lies in the genius he dedicates to destructive ends. Modern war would not recognize itself in the portraits of Shakespeare’s classical and feudal fighters, in Hector and Hotspur, in Faulconbridge and Coriolanus, or in Othello himself. But let it look in the glass and it will behold Iago. In him Shakespeare reveals , with clarity of nightmare, the unrestrained intellect, instead of being opposite of force, and an antidote for it, as much of the modern world thinks, is force functioning on a nother plane. It is the immoral equivalent of war, and as certain to clead to it in due seasons as Iago’s machinations were to lead to death. “All other knowledge is hurtful,” says Montaigne, “to him who has not the science of honesty and goodness.”

ShakespeareModern WarfareIago
Author:Harold C. Goddard
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“The delibarate placing of the highest intellectual gifs and achievement at the service of the lowest human instincts is a phenomenon with which the twentieth century is acquainted on a scale never previously attained. And whether the instinct be fear (the main defensive one) or revenge possessed (the main offensive ones) makes little difference in the end, so readily do they pass into one another. It is no recent discovery that brain as well as brawn is esential to the efficient figher. The Trojan Horse is the perennial symbol of that truth, and it is appropriate that Shakespeare put on the lips of Ulysses an encomium on the “still and mental parts” of war. But it remained for war in our time to effect the total mobilization of those still and mental parts. The ideological warfare that precedes and precipitates the physical conflict (cold war as it has significantly come to be called); the propaganda that prepares and unifies public opinion; the conscription, in a dozen spheres, of the nation’s brains; the organization of what is revealingly known as the intelligence service; but most of all the practical absorption of science into the military effort; these things, apart from the knowledge and skill required for actual fighting, permit us to define modern war, once it is begun, as an unreserved dedication of the human intellect to death and destruction.”

ShakespeareModern WarfareIago
Author:Harold C. Goddard
Create image

“The deliberate placing of the highest intellectual gifs and achievement at the service of the lowest human instincts is a phenomenon with which the twentieth century is acquainted on a scale never previously attained. And whether the instinct be fear (the main defensive one) or revenge possessed (the main offensive ones) makes little difference in the end, so readily do they pass into one another. It is no recent discovery that brain as well as brawn is esential to the efficient figher. The Trojan Horse is the perennial symbol of that truth, and it is appropriate that Shakespeare put on the lips of Ulysses an encomium on the “still and mental parts” of war. But it remained for war in our time to effect the total mobilization of those still and mental parts. The ideological warfare that precedes and precipitates the physical conflict (cold war as it has significantly come to be called); the propaganda that prepares and unifies public opinion; the conscription, in a dozen spheres, of the nation’s brains; the organization of what is revealingly known as the intelligence service; but most of all the practical absorption of science into the military effort; these things, apart from the knowledge and skill required for actual fighting, permit us to define modern war, once it is begun, as an unreserved dedication of the human intellect to death and destruction.”

ShakespeareModern WarfareIago
Author:Harold C. Goddard
Create image

“The deliberate placing of the highest intellectual gifts and achievement at the service of the lowest human instincts is a phenomenon with which the twentieth century is acquainted on a scale never previously attained. And whether the instinct be fear (the main defensive one) or revenge possessed (the main offensive ones) makes little difference in the end, so readily do they pass into one another. It is no recent discovery that brain as well as brawn is esential to the efficient figher. The Trojan Horse is the perennial symbol of that truth, and it is appropriate that Shakespeare put on the lips of Ulysses an encomium on the “still and mental parts” of war. But it remained for war in our time to effect the total mobilization of those still and mental parts. The ideological warfare that precedes and precipitates the physical conflict (cold war as it has significantly come to be called); the propaganda that prepares and unifies public opinion; the conscription, in a dozen spheres, of the nation’s brains; the organization of what is revealingly known as the intelligence service; but most of all the practical absorption of science into the military effort; these things, apart from the knowledge and skill required for actual fighting, permit us to define modern war, once it is begun, as an unreserved dedication of the human intellect to death and destruction.”

ShakespeareModern WarfareIago
Author:Harold C. Goddard
Create image

“The uniqueness of Iago, like the uniqueness of modern war, does not lie in the spirit of destruction. That has always been common enough. It lies in the genius he dedicates to destructive ends. Modern war would not recognize itself in the portraits of Shakespeare’s classical and feudal fighters, in Hector and Hotspur, in Faulconbridge and Coriolanus, or in Othello himself. But let it look in the glass and it will behold Iago. In him Shakespeare reveals , with clarity of nightmare, the unrestrained intellect, instead of being opposite of force, and an antidote for it, as much of the modern world thinks, is force functioning on another plane. It is the immoral equivalent of war, and as certain to clead to it in due seasons as Iago’s machinations were to lead to death. “All other knowledge is hurtful,” says Montaigne, “to him who has not the science of honesty and goodness.”

ShakespeareModern WarfareIago
Author:Harold C. Goddard
Create image

“The deliberate placing of the highest intellectual gifts and achievement at the service of the lowest human instincts is a phenomenon with which the twentieth century is acquainted on a scale never previously attained. And whether the instinct be fear (the main defensive one) or revenge possessed (the main offensive ones) makes little difference in the end, so readily do they pass into one another. It is no recent discovery that brain as well as brawn is essential to the efficient figher. The Trojan Horse is the perennial symbol of that truth, and it is appropriate that Shakespeare put on the lips of Ulysses an encomium on the “still and mental parts” of war. But it remained for war in our time to effect the total mobilization of those still and mental parts. The ideological warfare that precedes and precipitates the physical conflict (cold war as it has significantly come to be called); the propaganda that prepares and unifies public opinion; the conscription, in a dozen spheres, of the nation’s brains; the organization of what is revealingly known as the intelligence service; but most of all the practical absorption of science into the military effort; these things, apart from the knowledge and skill required for actual fighting, permit us to define modern war, once it is begun, as an unreserved dedication of the human intellect to death and destruction.”

ShakespeareModern WarfareIago
Author:Harold C. Goddard
Create image