It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be. Archibald MacLeish More Quotes by Archibald MacLeish More Quotes From Archibald MacLeish Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. Archibald MacLeish nations democracy done There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience. Archibald MacLeish being-happy happiness inspirational How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms, by truth when it is attacked by lies, by faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma. Always, in the final act, by determination and faith. Archibald MacLeish finals determination lying The only thing about a man that is a man . . . is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse. Archibald MacLeish horse pigs men Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only, that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold. Archibald MacLeish democracy done gold As things are now going the peace we make, what peace we seem to be making, will be a peace of oil, a peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace in brief.without moral purpose or human interest. Archibald MacLeish oil gold peace The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. Archibald MacLeish patriotism freedom thinking A man who lives, not by what he loves but what he hates, is a sick man. Archibald MacLeish sick hate men That peculiar disease of intellectuals, that infatuation with ideas at the expense of experience, that compels experience to conform to bookish expectations. Archibald MacLeish atheism expectations ideas There is no dusk to be, There is no dawn that was, Only there's now, and now, And the wind in the grass. Archibald MacLeish dawn grass wind Love becomes the ultimate answer to the ultimate human question. Archibald MacLeish humans answers love-is If God is God He is not good, if God is good He is not God; take the even, take the odd. Archibald MacLeish positive-atheism atheism odd There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream. Archibald MacLeish patriotic 4th-of-july dream Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered. Archibald MacLeish liberty freedom silence Man depends on God for all things: God depends on man for one. Without man's love God does not exist as God, only as creator, and love is the one thing no one, not even God himself, can command. It is a free gift or it is nothing. And it is most itself, most free, when it is offered in spite of suffering, of injustice, and of death . . . The justification of the injustice of the universe is not our blind acceptance of God's inexplicable will, nor our trust in God's love, his dark and incomprehensible love, for us, but our human love, notwithstanding anything, for him. Archibald MacLeish acceptance dark love-is See the world as it truly is, small and blue, beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats. Archibald MacLeish blue beautiful science A poem should not mean but be. Archibald MacLeish poetry should mean What is wrong is not the great discoveries of science—information is always better than ignorance, no matter what information or what ignorance. What is wrong is the belief behind the information, the belief that information will change the world. It won’t. Archibald MacLeish ignorance discovery world History, like a badly constructed concert hall, has occasional dead spots where the music can't be heard. Archibald MacLeish occasional spots concerts A self-advertising writer is always a self-extinguished writer. Archibald MacLeish advertising self
