Christoph Martin Wieland Quotes

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.

That is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned!

You know what happened the last time a group of people said, 'Screw it, we don't care what you think'? They got hung as witches.

To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity.

You cannot stoke the fires of prejudice against German people and then not find that somewhere, sometime down the road it doesn't discharge.

Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.

I have spent a great deal of my life being part of minorities. Some of the people I admire the most in the world have had the courage to defend, against wind and tide, minority viewpoints in those frightening times when any disagreement with universal conformity is identified as treason.

Avoid popularity; it has many snares, and no real benefit.

The danger chiefly lies in acting well; no crime's so great as daring to excel.

The most dangerous people are the ignorant.

There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet.

… when we know a thing we have only scorn for other people who don’t happen to know it.

Jews are dangerous and abominable people.

I think there's always going to be some kind of bigotry or some kind of racism. There has to be, because people can't feel that they have any hero qualities unless there's someone beneath them.

If you don't believe what other people believe, then they'll accuse you of being nihilistic.

Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?" "Why not, Papa?" "Because they'll take you away." "Why?" "Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is...not us." "Who are Jewish people?" "You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?" "Yes." "Well, he's Jewish." "I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?" ..... "...you've got beautiful blond hair and big safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?

If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

To be right is dangerous, it has ever been the source of all intolerance.

It is a curious fact that of all the illusions that beset mankind none is quite so curious as that tendency to suppose that we are mentally and morally superior to those who differ from us in opinion.

The passion to interpret as madness that with which we disagree seems to have infected the best of contemporary minds.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.