Quotes from Mary McCarthy

Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would write the future. Instead, he has written his past.

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.

In violence we forget who we are, just as we forget who we are when engaged in sheer perception.

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished.

Driving a car, you are in danger of killing; walking or standing, of being killed.

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality

Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing nothing else to do) and understand what we cannot pardon.

The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers; suspicion is reserved for friends.

A good deal of education consists of unlearning-the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve.

As soon as you become a writer, you lose contact with ordinary experience or tend to. ... the worst fate of a writer is to become a writer.

We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.

it's easier to forgive your enemies than to forgive your friends.

Once the state is looked upon as the source of rights, rather than their bound protector, freedom becomes conditional on the pleasure of the state.

Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."

You musn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Every word she [Lillian Hellman] writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved by a tornado.