I wouldn't live in a colony like that, myself, for a thousand dollars an hour. I wouldn't want it next door. I'm not too happy it's within ten miles. Why? Because their soft-headedness irritates me. Because their beautiful thinking ignores both history and human nature. Because they'd spoil my thing with their thing. Because I don't think any of them is wise enough to play God and create a human society. Look. I like privacy, I don't like crowds, I don't like noise, I don't like anarchy, I don't even like discussion all that much. I prefer study, which is very different from meditation-not better, different. I don't like children who are part of the wild life. So are polecats and rats and other sorts of hostile and untrained vermin. I want to make a distinction between civilization and the wild life. I want a society that will protect the wild life without confusing itself with it. Wallace Stegner
Some Similar Quotes
  1. The soul is healed by being with children. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  2. Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue). - Jess C. Scott
  3. Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public. - Cornel West
  4. I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do – to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited... - Jess C. Scott
  5. Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people. - Albert Camus
More Quotes By Wallace Stegner
  1. Wherever you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, because evil loves paradise as much as good.
  2. The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, are fraudulent every time. A writer has no other material to make his people from than the people...
  3. Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not towisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
  4. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
  5. Wisdom.. .is knowing what you have to accept.
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