Brooks Atkinson Quotes

40 quotes in 588 categories

• In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted…
• Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.
• The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has…
• People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what…
• I have no objections to churches so long as they do not interfere with God's work.
• After each war there is a little less democracy left to save.
• This nation was built by men who took risks-pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, businessmen who were not afraid of failure, scientists who…
• There should be a dash of the amateur in criticism. For the amateur is a man of enthusiasm who has not settled down and is…
• Everyone in daily life carries such a heavy mixed burden on his own conscience that he is reluctant to penalize those who have been caught.
• The cheese and wine party has the form of friendship without the warmth and devotion. It is a device either for getting rid of social…
• Don't be condescending to unskilled labor. Try it for a half a day first.
• Say "Yes" to the seedlings and a giant forest cleaves the sky. Say "Yes" to the universe and the planets become your neighbors. Say "Yes"…
• The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to…
• The humorous man recognizes that absolute purity, absolute justice, absolute logic and perfection are beyond human achievement and that men have been able to live…
• It seems to me that the thing that makes the theater worthwhile is the fact that it attracts so many people with ideas who are…
• The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
• Real art is illumination, it adds stature to life.
• We cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all, that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and at the…
• Life is seldom as unendurable as, to judge by the facts, it logically ought to be.
• Poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.

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