Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create."
54 Quotes
"To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"The heresy of an age of reason. I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"So we got hold of him and cracked him with a few good horrorshow tolchocks, but he still went on singing."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986"
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off forever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"And what, brothers, I had to escape into sleep from then was the horrible and wrong feeling that it was better to get the hit than give it. If that veck had stayed I might even have like presented the other cheek."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"Delimitation is always difficult. The world is one, life is one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"That's the law, son. But you were never much of a one for following the law."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"The old days are dead and gone days. For what I did in the past I have been punished. I have been cured."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"Of course it was horrible,' smiled Dr. Branom. 'Violence is a very horrible thing. That's what you're learning now. Your body is learning it."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"The Government cannot be concerned any longer with outmoded penelogical theories. Cram criminals together and see what happens, You get concentrated criminality, crime in the midst of punishment."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded-."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"Youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"What's all this about sin, eh''That,' I said, very sick. 'Using Ludwig van like that. He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music.' And then I was really sick and they had to bring a bowl that was in the shape of like a kidney.'Music,' said Dr. Brodsky, like musing. 'So you're keen on music. I know nothing about it myself. It's a useful emotional heightener, that's all I know. Well, well. What do you think about that, eh, Branom''It can't be helped,' said Dr. Branom. 'Each man kills the thing he loves..."
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
"It may not be nice to be good, 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
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