Wallace Stevens Quotes

Civilizations do not give out, they give in. They come apart not in a flash but by the inch. In a society where anything goes, everything eventually will.

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.

Work, the what's-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what d'you-call-it.

Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.

After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquility of a political convention.

The beautiful disease and The government falls along the weed rooms flesh along the weed government.

Sadly, anarchy has gotten such a bad name. We don't really see much evidence of it because people associate it with reckless abandon.

I grow more and more suspicious of the political powers that take men away from their work and set them shooting one another.

The press lives on disaster.

The present age is demented. It is possessed by a sense of dislocation, a loss of personal identity, an alternating sentimentality and rage which, in an individual patient, could be characterized as dementia.

But woman brings disorder into society through passion.

The more laws and orders are multiplied, the more theft and violence increase.

It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.

Until the chance for political participation is there, we who are poor will continue to attack the soft part of the American system - its economic structure. We will build power through boycotts, strikes, new union - whatever techniques we can develop. These attacks on the status quo will come, not because we hate, but because we know America can construct a humane society for all its citizens - and that if it does not, there will chaos.

The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well.

In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel.

There are things we can do to give us a little more attention.... I've got to look more frantic.

Tyranny of freedom is do what you like. There's a world gone crazy, cause it can't say no.

We're in a state of crisis where our nation is literally ripping apart at the seams right now, and lawlessness is occurring from one ocean to the other. And we're seeing the fulfillment of the Book of Judges here in our own time, where every man doing that which is right in his own eyes-in other words, anarchy.

Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in confusion, destitution; on the eve of fiery wreck and madness! They will not march farther for you, on the sixpence a day and supply-demand principle; they will not; nor ought they, nor can they. Ye shall reduce them to order, begin reducing them. to order, to just subordination; noble loyalty in return for noble guidance. Their souls are driven nigh mad; let yours be sane and ever saner.

It's this mingling of the economic and political elite which is really destroying our democracy.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.

The present is filled with flotsam and irony and chaos and disorder in all arenas, political and sociological. I think we have to work in the present even if it's awkward, even if it's not necessarily good, even if we don't understand it ourselves. You only find out 10, maybe 20 years later what was going on.

Alcohol-inspired fights are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order.

If you have conflicts, everything breaks down in society. Kids can't go to school. Basic health can't be looked after. Every aspect of society falls apart.