Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table. W. H. Auden More Quotes by W. H. Auden More Quotes From W. H. Auden Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public. W. H. Auden simplefunnyscience The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes. W. H. Auden mistakescienceart We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility. W. H. Auden lovecountrychildren The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice. W. H. Auden politicspracticejustice What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice. W. H. Auden symbols Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others. W. H. Auden genealogydelusioncurious Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible. W. H. Auden guidespleasuremean A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it; what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis? W. H. Auden wealthdrinkguilt If we apply the term revolution to what happened in North America between 1776 and 1829, it has a special meaning. Normally, the word describes the process by which man transforms himself from one kind of man, living in one kind of society, with one way of looking at the world, into another kind of man, another society, another conception of life.... The American case is different: it is not a question of the Old Man transforming himself into the New, but of the New Man becoming alive to the fact that he is new, that he has been transformed already without his having realized it. W. H. Auden specialmenamerica The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth. W. H. Auden takenmotherfather You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people. W. H. Auden twoamericathinking A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless. W. H. Auden dogmenchildren God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich. W. H. Auden usagodamerica Dance, dance, dance till you drop. W. H. Auden ballet-classdancingdance The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age. W. H. Auden moneytimebirthday If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor. W. H. Auden menbookart Those who hate to go to bed fear death; those who hate to get up fear life. W. H. Auden get-upbedhate To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. W. H. Auden prayingpayattention Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. W. H. Auden aristocracypoeticresponsibility I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual. W. H. Auden homosexualitypartypractice
