Joan D. Vinge Quotes

I don't like things I work on to have political didacticism - there are questions, but not messages.

I'm not terribly fond of soapboxes.

I don't think being a writer who is religious means you have to write about nothing but religion. When I do write about religion, it's to inform the story, not to push a certain agenda.

There are certainly people for whom politics is not a category that helps you understand human existence. In fact, it's kind of a detour into superficiality, and although I disagree with those people, I don't think it's the case that everyone who writes has to write politically or has to write in opposition to the really horrendous things that are going on on a political level in the world today. There are some writers who simply aren't any good at that and really should stay away from it.

It makes me nuts, the idea that if you put a political struggle at the heart of your book, then it has to be that the author - me - is trying in some way to push my views onto my readers.

All literature is political.

Political art expresses the cliches you agree with, unlike propaganda, which expresses the cliches you don't.

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.

Political writings are often over-exaggerated polemics bearing the imprint of the period and the place in which written.

I do not believe that any work of art can help but be diminished by its adherence at any cost to a political program ... and not for any other reason than that there is no political program -- any more than there is a theory of tragedy -- which can encompass the complexities of real life.

Political speeches are a particularly low form of rhetoric.

If I was asked to do a film that was just trying to sell a political point of view or religious point of view, I wouldn't do that because that's a bad script.

I'm a wishy-washy 'Guardian' reader, but the last thing I want to do is force a political agenda down people's throats. It's not central to my work, unlike, say, China Mieville, who's very politicised.

I've never allowed my specific personal practice or belief to be overtly integrated to the music. Because that's crossing the line into, 'We want you to think this.' And that's not what we're about.

It's a very short walk to go from making jokes to getting on a soapbox and going on a diatribe.

I'm more concerned with getting them to find and strengthen their original voice as writers rather than imposing my own subjective tastes, judgements or sensibility on the project.

I don't make that hard and fast distinction between political and nonpolitical writing. I write about what bothers me.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always secretes too much jelly.

The greatest weapon in an ideological war is words.

The aim of the sculptor is to convince us that he is a sculptor; the aim of the orator, is to convince us that he is not an orator.

Art is not something to decorate a wall. Art is a political weapon.

Power comes through public persuasion.

One of the most disconcerting phenomena of these times is the disparity between the enormous amount of idealist propaganda that goes on from pulpit, platform and press, and the inconsiderable effect that it seems to produce in the actual conduct of men and of nations.

We are all missionaries (propagandists of our views). Each of us disapproves of the other missionaries.