Banality Quotes

65 quotes by 59 authors

... In contrast to the "banality of evil," which posits that ordinary people can be responsible for the most despicable acts of cruelty and degradation… — Philip Zimbardo
Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it… — Andre Gide
Each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant; impossible socially, but full scale; and it's the knockings and battering we… — Elizabeth Bowen
Among human beings there is no greater banality than death. Second in order, because it is possible to die without being born, comes birth, and… — Friedrich Nietzsche
We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large… — Susan Sontag
Exclamation points are the most irritating of all. Look! they say, look at what I just said! How amazing is my thought! It is like… — Lewis Thomas
Hume develops his arguments by a series of models. He doesn't call them models in the pretentious way in which we envelope, very often, pure… — Lionel Robbins, Baron Robbins
Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity,… — Perry Anderson
Life happened. In all its banality, brutality, cruelty, unfairness. But also in its beauty, pleasures and delights. Life happened. — Thrity Umrigar
When all the archetypes burst out shamelessly, we plumb the depths of Homeric profundity. Two clichÃ©s make us laugh but a hundred clichÃ©s moves us… — Umberto Eco
Banality is a symptom of non-communication. Men hide behind their cliches. — Eugene Ionesco
Spirituality can be severed from both vicious sectarianism and thoughtless banalities. Spirituality, I have come to see, is nothing less than the thoughtful love of… — Robert C. Solomon
Understanding a people's culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity...It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves… — Clifford Geertz
Fashion must be the most intoxicating release from the banality of the world. — Diana Vreeland
But some natives--most natives in the world--cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to… — Jamaica Kincaid
There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy… — Douglas Sirk
A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never… — Alasdair Gray
My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn't live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance… — Max Beckmann
Iâ€™ve been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me, — Chris Marker
It is the sheer ugliness and banality of everyday life which turns my blood to ice and makes me cringe in terror. — Jean Lorrain

Who Wrote These Banality Quotes

59 authors contributed a total of 65 Banality Quotes, led by these top contributors: