The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs John Dos Passos More Quotes by John Dos Passos More Quotes From John Dos Passos Love is cheap. You can buy it anywhere. Lives are cheap. It's money that's dear. You have to work days and sit up nights thinking how to make money. John Dos Passos love-isnightthinking The only way to find out anything about what kinds of lives people led in any given period is to tunnel into their records and to let them speak for themselves John Dos Passos recordstunnelspeople U.S.A. is the speech of the people John Dos Passos speechpeople The world's becoming a museum of socialist failures. John Dos Passos becomingmuseumsworld The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there's nowhere else. It's the top of the world. John Dos Passos terriblenew-yorkworld Why, lies are like a sticky juice overspreading the world, a living, growing flypaper to catch and gum the wings of every human soul. . . And the little helpless buzzings of honest, liberal, kindly people, aren't they like the thin little noise flies make when they're caught? John Dos Passos wingslyingpeople Eh Bien you like this sacred pig of a country?" asked Marco. "Why not? I like it anywhere. It's all the same, in France you are paid badly and live well; here you are paid well and live badly. John Dos Passos immigrationpigscountry A novel is a commodity that fulfills a certain need; people need to buy daydreams like they need to buy ice cream or aspirin or gin. They even need to buy a pinch of intellectual catnip now and then to liven up their thoughts. John Dos Passos ice-creamintellectualpeople We work to eat to get the strength to work to eat to get the strength to work. John Dos Passos Display advertising and the movies, though they may dull the wits, certainly stimulate the eyes. John Dos Passos eyemaydull War is utter damn nonsense, a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking malignity on the part of those who don't do the fighting. John Dos Passos cancerpeacelying Experiments in the visual arts (the invention of new ways of seeing things), are made because, due to the way the apparatus that makes up the mind is made, old processes and patterns have continually to be broken up in order to make it possible to perceive the new aspects and arrangements of evolving consciousness. The great enemy of intelligence is complacency. John Dos Passos brokenorderart I dont think there is anything on earth more wonderful than those wistful incomplete friendships one makes now and then in an hour's talk. You never see the people again, but the lingering sense of their presence in the world is like the glow of an unseen city at night--makes you feel the teemingness of it all. John Dos Passos citiesnightthinking A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible in order to get relief. John Dos Passos reliefmenorder This ain't a war... It's a goddam whorehouse. John Dos Passos politicalwar There's something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting out at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof. John Dos Passos gunskysong A curious thing about atrocity stories is that they mirror, instead of the events they purport to describe, the extent of the hatred of the people that tell them. Still, you can't listen unmoved to tales of misery and murder. John Dos Passos mirrorshatredpeople Women alone always order sole. It means something. John Dos Passos foodordermean When I was a kid I used to tell myself the moon was a silver gong and if I could climb high enough to beat on it with both hands all my wishes would come true. John Dos Passos moonkidshands Shakespeare wouldn't have been any good if he'd stayed in Stratford. He had to go to London to be bathed in the full current of the Renaissance. John Dos Passos renaissancelondonliterature
