Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

I don't know why we're not interested in seeing good people. I think we like seeing good people, but only if bad things happen to them. Which is weird, isn't it?

We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

No habit or quality is more easily acquired than hypocrisy, nor any thing sooner learned than to deny the sentiments of our hearts and the principle we act from: but the seeds of every passion are innate to us, and nobody comes into the world without them.

Historical hypocrites have themselves carried out the very human rights abuses that they suddenly decide warrant intervention elsewhere.

We're all slight hypocrites who fall short of our ideals.

Everybody is a hypocrite. You can't live on this planet without being a hypocrite.

My judges preach against free love openly, practice it secretly.

It is hard to imagine, considering the inherent silliness, cruelty and superstition of the human race, how it has contrived to last as long as it has. The witch-hunting, the torturing, the gullibility, the massacres, the intolerance, the wild futility of human behaviour over the centuries is hardly credible. And the laws, as they stand today, are almost inconceivably stupid. With all this brilliant scientific knowledge of atom splitting and nuclear physics, etc., we are still worshipping at different shrines, imprisoning homosexuals, imposing unnecessary and completely irrelevant restrictions on each other. Hearts can be withdrawn from human beasts, dead hearts, and, after a little neat manipulation, popped back again as good as new. The skies can be conquered. Sputniks can whiz round and round the globe and be controlled and guided. People are still genuflecting before crucifixes and Virgin Marys, still persecuting other people for being coloured or Jewish or in some way different from what they apparently should be. There are wars being waged at this very moment in Indonesia, Algeria, the Middle East, Cyprus, etc. The Pope still makes pronouncements against birth control. The Ku-Klux-Klan is still, if permitted, ready to dash out and do some light lynching. God, for millions of people, is still secure in his heaven, and My Fair Lady opened in London last night.

Men condemne the same things in others, which they approve in themselves; on the other side, they publickly commend what they privately condemne;

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. ..And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man"--with his mouth.

The best men are not consistent in good--why should the worst men be consistent in evil?

Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches us that they have done so.

When men gossip, they call it exchanging anecdotes or sharing information.

I hate when people are chomping their gum, even though I do it. I hate that.

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

That's always the way with fanatics; they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple.

If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.

We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?

Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason.

Don't ask others to forgive in you a sin they're dying to commit themselves.

The propriety of some persons seems to consist in having improper thoughts about their neighbors.

Sara could commit adultery at one end and weep for her sins at the other, and enjoy both operations at once.

Men chase by night those they will not greet by day.