Quotes About Denial

The effort not to know what one knows is the most corrupting effort one can make—

Una cosa o l'altra: ci vuole forza per ricordare, ci vuole un altro tipo di forza per dimenticare, ci vuole un eroe per fare le due cose insieme. Chi ricorda corteggia la pazzia attraverso il dolore, il dolore dell'eterno ritorno della morte alla propria innocenza; chi dimentica corteggia un altro tipo di follia, la follia della negazione del dolore e dell'odio per l'innocenza; e il mondo si divide per lo più tra pazzi che ricordano e pazzi che dimenticano. Gli eroi sono rari.

The Negro can precipitate this abdication because white Americans have never, in all their long history, been able to look on him as a man like themselves. This point need not be labored; it is proved over and over again by the Negro's continuing position here, and his indescribable struggle to defeat the stratagems that white Americans have used, and use, to deny him his humanity.

As pessoas que lembram correm o risco de enlouquecer de dor, a dor da morte de sua inocência, a recorrer eternamente; as que esquecem se arriscam a mergulhar em outra espécie de loucura, a loucura de negar a dor e odiar a inocência; e o mundo basicamente se divide entre loucos que lembram e loucos que esquecem.

People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare. Jacques

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It

this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.

it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.

We will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, armies, flags nations in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me one should rejoice in the fact of death, one out to decide indeed to earn ones death by confronting with passion, the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life. It is that small beacon from that terrifying darkness from wence we come and wence we shall return.

We will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, armies, flags, & nations; in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me one should rejoice in the fact of death, one out to decide indeed to earn ones death by confronting with passion, the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life. It is that small beacon from that terrifying darkness from wence we come and wence we shall return.

But to try and find out what Americans mean is almost impossible because there are so many things they do not want to face.

It is a terrible thing, simply, to be trapped in one's history, and attempt, in the same motion (and in this, our life!) to accept, deny, reject, and redeem it--and, also, on whatever level, to profit from it.

he had received the blow from which he never would recover and this no one wanted to believe. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? The men on the stand stayed with him, cool and at a little distance, adding and questioning and corroborating, holding it down as well as they could with an ironical self-mockery; but each man knew that the boy was blowing for every one of them.

All the white people she has ever met needed, in one way or another, to be reassured, consoled, to have their consciences pricked but not blasted; could not, could not afford to hear a truth which would shatter, irrevocably, their image of themselves. It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

The American sense of reality is dictated by what Americans are trying to avoid; and if you're trying to avoid reality, how can you face it?

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours. --"The Crusade of Indignation," in Nation (New York, 7 July 1956; repr. in The Price of the Ticket, 1985)     It

There is, moreover, a sign by which you may distinguish Thragnar. For if you deny what he says, he will promptly concede you are in the right. This was the curse put upon him by Miramon Lluagor, for a detection and a hindrance." "By that unhuman trait," says Jurgen, " Thragnar ought to be very easy to distinguish.

I'm saying it's so big and audacious that we'll most likely never be suspected. I'm saying that even if we are, the powers that be will realize that it can never be conclusively proven. I'm saying that a consensus of denial will build off of it. I'm saying that people will want to remember the man as something he wasn't. I'm saying that we'll present them with an explanation and the powers that be will prefer it to the truth, even though they know better. Marcello said, Do it. Make it happen

I didn't know that costs accrue. I didn't know that you always pay for what you suppress.

I think God is something that People use to avoid reality.

No one wants to die alone, even though that's how it happens to all of us, even though we pretend there's some other ways.

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

quoting Tolstoy: "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

In a world where it is so easy to neglect, deny, corrupt and suppress the truth, the scientist may find his discipline severe. For him, truth is so seldom the sudden light that shows new order and beauty; more often, truth is the uncharted rock that sinks his ship in the dark.