When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Tragedy
Like all wage slaves, he had two crosses to bear: the people he worked for and the people he worked with.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Money
Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Stupidity, Peculiarity, Oddity
Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers
Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parent’s birth.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Power
The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person’s name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Virtue
We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Society
Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Consistency
Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the center of man’s universe is the earth?
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: World
Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Imagination
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
W. O. Mitchell Canadian Novelist
Margaret Laurence Canadian Novelist
Lucy Maud Montgomery Canadian Novelist, Children’s Writer
Andrew Grove Hungarian-born American Businessperson
Adolf Hitler German Fascist Dictator
Harry Houdini Hungarian-born American Magician
Grenville Kleiser Canadian Author
Albert Benjamin Simpson Canadian Protestant Preacher
Thomas Chandler Haliburton Canadian Author
John Howe Canadian Artist