Quotes from Terrorist

John Updike ·  320 pages

Rating: (3.8K votes)


“He showed the world what can be done against the odds, against a superpower. He showed -- and this is where Vietnam and Iraq come in, that in a war between an imperialist occupier and the people who actually live there, the people will eventually prevail. They know the terrain. They have more at stake. They have nowhere else to go.”
― John Updike, quote from Terrorist


“Die christliche Sitte, träge aufrecht dazusitzen wie bei einer Unterhaltungsveranstaltung, deutet darauf hin, dass Gott als Unterhaltungskünstler gilt, der von der Bühne entfernt und durch eine andere Nummer ersetzt werden kann, wenn er nicht mehr unterhält.”
― John Updike, quote from Terrorist


“Vorsichtshalber haben sie das Etikett 'Kapitalismus' ersetzt durch solche, auf denen 'freie Marktwirtschaft' und 'Konsumkultur' steht, nur roch das immer noch zu sehr nach Hund-frisst-Hund, nach allzu vielen Verlierern und maßlos abrahmenden Gewinnern. Wenn man die Hunde aber isch nicht miteinander balgen lässt, dann liegen sie den ganzen Tag im Zwinger und pennen. Im Grund besteht das Problem darin, dass die Gesellschaft anständig zu sein versucht, und mit Anstand ist gegen die menschliche Natur nichts auszurichten. Nicht das Geringste. Wir sollten alle wieder Jäger und Sammler werden, dann hätten wir eine hundertprozentige Beschäftigungsquote und ein gesundes Magenknurren.”
― John Updike, quote from Terrorist


“Also ist mein Sohn ein Simpel.'
In einer Hinsicht. Aber der größte Teil der Menschheit ist so. Weil es sonst zu schwer zu ertragen ist, Mensch zu sein. Im Gegensatz zu den Tieren wissen wir zu viel. Sie, die anderen Tiere, wissen gerade genug, um ihren Job zu machen und zu sterben. Um zu essen, zu schlafen, zu vögeln, Babys zu kriegen und zu sterben.”
― John Updike, quote from Terrorist


“Wir wissen eben nicht, was einer tun sollte, wir haben nicht mehr wir früher Antworten parat; wir wursteln uns bloß weiter durch und versuchen, nicht nachzudenken.”
― John Updike, quote from Terrorist



About the author

John Updike
Born place: in Shillington, Pennsylvania, The United States
Born date March 18, 1932
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Perhaps the Negro musicians had not been able to give enough because they were inhibited by her Southern-supremacy origins.”
― Irving Wallace, quote from The Man


“And Jesus lived happily ever after.”
― Howard Mittelmark, quote from How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide


“You can't say it's a fair way to determine right or wrong one day, and then say it's unfair the next because you don't like the outcome.”
― Christie Golden, quote from The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm


“Emotions and the feelings are not a luxury, they are a means of communicating our states of mind to others. But they are also a way of guiding our own judgments and decisions. Emotions bring the body into the loop of reason.”
― António R. Damásio, quote from Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain


“Between Two Ages laid out Brzezinski’s vision of what U.S. society would be like. The U.S. he wrote “is now in an information revolution based on amusement focus, spectator spectacles (saturation coverage by television of sporting events), which provide an opiate for an increasingly purposeless mass.”
― quote from Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300


Interesting books

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man
(12.2K)
Daisy Fay and the Mi...
by Fannie Flagg
Never Knowing
(19.4K)
Never Knowing
by Chevy Stevens
Hitchcock
(4.7K)
Hitchcock
by François Truffaut
Beast Behaving Badly
(12.5K)
The Memory Artists
(0.9K)
The Memory Artists
by Jeffrey Moore
Dreadnought
(5K)
Dreadnought
by Robert K. Massie

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.