5 Quotes & Sayings By Philip Wylie

Philip Wylie was born in 1908, in Macon, Georgia. He spent most of his childhood in Macon, but his family moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1920. From an early age he was fascinated with languages and languages books. He attended the University of Richmond where he became involved with the literary magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Read more

While at the university he met John Dos Passos and formed a lifelong friendship with him.

1
They are afraid. They would, today, keep secret a thousand things that, yesterday, they would have told one another freely. Freedom. Where is it now? We are driving it into limbo–their kind. To limbo. Philip Wylie
2
An old Russian proverb . "Where hangs the smoke of hate burns a fiercer fire called fear." The trick . was to keep that fire alive, but to know at the same time it might consume you also. Then the trick was to make the fear invisible in the smokes of hatred. Having accomplished that, you would own men's souls and your power would be absolute, so long as you never allowed men to see that their hate was but fear, and so long as you, afraid, knowing it, hence more shrewd and cautious than the rest, did not become a corpse at the hands of the hating fearful. There, in a nutshell, was the recipe for dictatorship. Over the proletariat. Over the godly believers. Over the heathen. Over all men, even those who imagined they were free and yet could be made to hate. Frighten; then furnish the whipping boys. Then seize. Philip Wylie
3
If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve. Philip Wylie
4
One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen. Philip Wylie