Israel Zangwill Quotes

Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, freedom of belief, art and poetry, city life, the very things that make life worth dying for. Conservatives stand for tax cuts … and use of the tax refund to buy a gun and an attack dog to take with you when you drive your all-terrain vehicle through the barriers of Republicanville.

As far as reading is concerned, I like historical and political books and works of art.

Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.

I was able to read poets that were - allowed me to be humorous without being silly.

I find myself fascinated by a man who admits to enjoying fairy tales and uses the word "impinge"- barely misses a beat while indulging in a brief girl-on-girl fantasy. You're a man of layers, Ford." Me and Shrek, we're onions.

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

It takes more to make one sage today than it did to make the seven of Greece. And you need more resources to deal with a single person these days than with an entire nation in times past.

Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.

Mrs. Landingham, does the President have free time this morning? The President has nothing but free time, Toby. Right now he's in the residence eating Cheerios and enjoying Regis and Kathie Lee. Should I get him for you? Sarcasm's a disturbing thing coming from a woman of your age, Mrs. Landingham. What age would that be, Toby? Late twenties? Atta boy.

Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.

There is nothing in art, in philosophy, or in politics to match the fervor of mutual cooperation among discordant bands of fanatics.

The pursuit of politics is religion, morality, and poetry all in one.

It is sometimes forgotten how much wit there is in certain works of abstract art. There is a certain point in undergoing anguish when one encounters the comic.

Humor is a terrific tool for explaining things, especially when what you're explaining is frightening or dull and complicated.

I always advise people never to give advice.

I like both slapstick and contradiction. Like philosophers.

Punning is an art of harmonious jingling upon words, which, passing in at the ears, excites a titillary motion in those parts; and this, being conveyed by the animal spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the cockles of the heart.

No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal

History after all is the true poetry.

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.

The fact that there are so many weak, poor and boring stories and novels written and published in America has been ascribed by our rebels to the horrible squareness of our institutions, the idiocy of power, the debasement of sexual instincts, and the failure of writers to be alienated enough. The poems and novels of these same rebellious spirits, and their theoretical statements, are grimy and gritty and very boring too, besides being nonsensical, and it is evident by now that polymorphous sexuality and vehement declarations of alienation are not going to produce great works of art either.

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.

Where politics is concerned, I think poets have to be pragmatists, philosophical pragmatists.