Perversity Quotes

• Perversity is the muse of modern literature.

  Susan Sontag

  Literature, Muse, Modern

  1966 Against Interpretation,'Camus' Notebooks'.

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• In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Sad, World, Dominion

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2007). “The Art of Controversy”, p.69, Cosimo, Inc.

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• They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Mind, Literature

  1869 Of Trevelyan's paranoia about his wife's fidelity. He Knew He Was Right, ch.38.

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• National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Country, Character, Names

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “The Wisdom of Life”, p.44, Cosimo Classics

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• The human race was in need of salvation because of the perversity of sin. For when people who are ill are cured from their illness, they are called "saved." Therefore, the Lord says: "Your faith has saved you.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Race, People, Needs

  Saint Thomas (Aquinas) (2010). “The Academic Sermons (The Fathers of the Church, Mediaeval Continuation, Volume 11)”, p.47, CUA Press

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• Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity.

  Barbara Tuchman

  War, Ambition, Race

  Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.11, Crux Publishing Ltd

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• The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life.

  John Updike

  Moving, Heart, History

  JOHN UPDIKE (1965). “ASSORTED PROSE”

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• We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects...and the assorted human beings who perpetuate and maintain this perversity.

  Isaac Asimov

  Inanimate Objects, Natural, Assorted

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• Therefore, not only are their passions satanic, but their lives are diabolic. So I say to you that these are even worse than murderers, and that it would be better to die than to live in such dishonor. A murderer only separates the soul from the body, whereas these destroy the soul inside the body..... There is nothing, absolutely nothing more mad or damaging than this perversity.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Passion, Mad, Soul

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• Profanation and violation are part of the perversity of sex, which never will conform to liberal theories of benevolence. Every model of morally or politically correct sexual behavior will be subverted by nature's daemonic law.

  Camille Paglia

  Sex, Law, Abuse

  Camille Paglia (2018). “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism”, p.54, Canongate Books

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• The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.

  Larry Niven

  Maximum, Universe

  "Ringworld". Book by Larry Niven (p. 142), 1970.

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• If you tell me that there are obstacles in the way of your ambition that make it impossible to pursue, then I know it's not a real ambition. There are always obstacles. The 'perversity of events,' as someone once called it, is always ready to lick us. Events are never right for achieving what we most want to achieve. If this were not so, there would be no real fun in being 17 -- or even in being alive.

  Helen Gahagan Douglas

  Fun, Real, Ambition

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• The appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and "psychic hermaphroditism" made possible a strong advance of social controls into this area of "perversity"; but it also made possible the formation of a "reverse" discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or "naturality" be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified.

  Michel Foucault

  Strong, Psychics, Vocabulary

  "The History of Sexuality, Volume I: The Will to Knowledge". Book by Michel Foucault, 1978.

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• The death sentence is a necessary and efficacious means for the Church to attain its end when rebels act against it and disturbers of the ecclesiastical unity, especially obstinate heretics and heresiarchs, cannot be restrained by any other penalty from continuing to derange the ecclesiastical order and impelling others to all sorts of crime ... When the perversity of one or several is calculated to bring about the ruin of many of its children it is bound effectively to remove it, in such wise that if there be no other remedy for saving its people it can and must put these wicked men to death.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Wise, Children, Mean

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• A man would still do something out of sheer perversity - he would create destruction and chaos - just to gain his point...and if all this could in turn be analyzed and prevented by predicting that it would occur, then man would deliberately go mad to prove his point.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Mad, Humanity

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• Out of sheer perversity, I followed beauty where it lead, into the silence.

  Dave Hickey

  Silence, Sheer

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• I could be mistaken, but I believe the majority of artists are perverts, and that inspiration springs from the seat of perversity; that smooth stretch of consciousness between the balls and ass.

  James Jean

  Spring, Believe, Inspiration

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• Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.

  William James

  Running, Men, Sobriety

  1902 The Varieties of Religious Experience,'Mysticism'.

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• Money is an instrumentality of the profit motive and must be issued and backed only by private enterprisers. Economic and political perversities are inescapable while government is admitted to money power. Since all national governments have, up to the present, been money issuing powers we may justly attribute all the economic and political ills of mankind to this single error.

  E.C. Riegel

  Government, Errors, Political

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• Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you get to see the fruits of your actions in a daily way.

  Zadie Smith

  Writing, Luxury, World

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Could that have been what happened to the human race - a willing perversity that set at naught all human values which had been so hardly won and structured in the light of reason for a span of more than a million years?

  Clifford D. Simak

  Light, Race, Years

  Clifford D. Simak (2015). “Highway of Eternity”, p.70, Open Road Media

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• There is a diabolical streak in me, a troublesome and inexplicable perversity.

  Octave Mirbeau

  Depression, Mental Illness, Inexplicable

  Octave Mirbeau (1997). “Torture Garden”, Dedalus Limited

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• Prior to Valentinus, those who follow Valentinus had no existence. Nor did those from Marcion exist before Marcion. Nor, in short, did any of those malignant-minded people, whom I have listed above, have any existence previous to the initiators and inventors of their perversity.

  Irenaeus of Lyons

  Sarcastic, People, Existence

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• The nearer she came to death, the more, by some perversity of nature, did she enjoy living.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Death, Enjoy

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1938). “Works”

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• If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Years, Doubt

  Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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