Mary Mccarthy quotes

" We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story. " # Life and Living # Heroes and Heroism # Poetry and Poets

" We are the hero of our own story. " # Heroes and Heroism

" In violence we forget who we are. " # Violence

" People with bad consciences always fear the judgement of children. " # Responsibility # Conscience # Fear

" Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. " # Bureaucracy # Government # Despotism

" It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing. " # Twentieth Century # Law and Lawyers # Capitalism

" The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air. " # America # Freedom # Power

" The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around. " # Goodness # Freedom # Power

" The labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process. " # Housework # Life and Living # Love

" Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior. " # Liberty # Opinions # Trust