“--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“Anything can happen to anyone, but it usually doesn't. Except when it does.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“And as Lindbergh's election couldn't have made clearer to me, the unfolding of the unforeseen was everything. Turned wrong way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as "History," harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“It's so heartbreaking, violence, when it's in a house-like seeing the clothes in a tree after an explosion. You may be prepared to see death but not the clothes in the tree.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“There were two types of strong men: those like Uncle Monty and Abe Steinheim, remorseless about their making money, and those like my father, ruthlessly obedient to their idea of fair play.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“And how long will the American people stand for this treachery perpetrated by their elected president? How long will Americans remain asleep while their cherished Constitution is torn to shreds”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“To have enslaved America with this hocuspocus! To have captured the mind of the world's greatest nation without uttering a single word of truth! Oh, the pleasure we must be affording the most malevolent man on earth!
Philip Roth (2004-09-06T16:00:00+00:00). The plot against America (Kindle Locations 4887-4888). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“War with Canada was far less of an enigma to me than what Aunt Evelyn was going to use for a toilet during the night”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“But how will I get out?" And all at once the door was open--and there was Seldon and behind him his mother. "How'd you do that?" I said. "I opened the door," he said. "But how?" He shrugged. "I pushed. I just pushed. It was open all the time." And that was when I began to bawl and Mrs. Wishnow took me in her arms and said, "That's okay. Things like this happen. They can happen to anyone.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“I was still too much of a fledgling with people to understand that, in the long run, nobody is a picnic and that I was no picnic myself.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“The pompous son of a bitch knows everythingit's too bad he doesn't know anything else.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“...I realized that my father, of all these men, was the most obstinate, helplessly bonded to his better instincts and their excessive demands. I only then understood that he had quit his job not merely because he was fearful of what awaited us down the line should we agree like the others to be relocated, but because, for better or worse, when he was bullied by superior forces that he deemed corrupt it was his nature not to yield--in this instance, to resist either running away to Canada, as my mother urged our doing, or bowing to a government directive that was patently unjust. There were two types of strong men: those like Uncle Monty And Abe Steinheim, remorseless about their making money, and those like my father, ruthlessly obedient to their idea of fair play.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“He'd tell us that in a democracy, keeping abreast of current events was a citizen's most important duty and that you could never start too early to be informed about the news of the day.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“You had to be there to see what it looked like. They live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“Others? He dares to call us others? He’s the other. The one who looks most American—and he’s the one who is least American! The man is unfit. He shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t be there, and it’s as simple as that!”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“But why did you go,” my mother asked him, “when it was bound to upset you like this?” “I went,” he told her, “because every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d think I was having a hallucination.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“Son, anything can happen to anyone," my father told me, "but it usually doesn't.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d think I was having a hallucination.” Though”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“And how long will the American people stand for this treachery perpetrated by their elected president? How long will Americans remain asleep while their cherished Constitution is torn to shreds?”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“Ordinarily my mother drew no strength from scorn,”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“Never in my life had I so harshly judged any adult—not my parents, not even Alvin or Uncle Monty—nor had I understood till then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others. “Did you meet Mr. von Ribbentrop?” Now almost girlishly bashful, she replied, “I danced with Mr. von Ribbentrop.” “Where?”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“the quiet, conscientious boy whose satisfactions emanated not from his being a precocious big shot full of contrary opinions but from that strong, even current of an interior life that carried him steadily along from morning to night and that, in my eyes, had always made him genuinely superior to the other kids his age.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“They recruited the most supple and athletic of the cops to train as mounted policemen, and a small kid could be mesmerized just watching one who’d been lazing majestically down the street stop to write a parking ticket and then lean way over in the saddle so as to place the ticket under the car’s windshield wiper, a physical gesture, if ever there was one, of magnificent condescension to the machine age.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“she concludes, “I will not yield to or be intimidated by the illegal representatives of a seditious administration, and I ask no more of the American people than that they follow my example and refuse to accept or support government conduct that is indefensible. The history of the present administration is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations,”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“Before that night, I’d had no idea my father was so well suited for wreaking havoc or equipped to make that lightning-quick transformation from sanity to lunacy that is indispensable in enacting the unbridled urge to destroy.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“Remorse, predictably, was the form taken by her distress, the merciless whipping that is self-condemnation, as if in times as bizarre as these there were a right way and a wrong way that would have been clear to somebody else, as if in confronting such predicaments the hand of stupidity is ever far from guiding anyone.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 1941. Delivers his “Who Are the War Agitators?” radio speech to an America First rally in Des Moines on September 11; audience of eight thousand cheers when he names “the Jewish race” as among those most powerful and effective in pushing the U.S.—“for reasons which are not American”—toward involvement in the war.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“They were ordered to end their expatriation and return to America, where Colonel Lindbergh was to take up the cause of America First. Speeches were provided, written in English, denouncing the British, Roosevelt, and the Jews and supporting America’s neutrality in the European war;”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
“I am not impressed by the White House!” my father cried, hammering on the table to shut her up after she’d said “the White House” for the fifteenth time. “I am only impressed by who lives there. And the person who lives there is a Nazi.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Plot Against America
Philip Roth
Born place: in Newark, New Jersey, The United States
Born date March 19, 1933
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“I lied to Julia, I didn't know what else to do because you - you make me feel..." I had to stop. Not because I didn't have words. I did. But I was afraid to say them.
He looked at me, and I knew then I could love him. That if I let myself I would.
"You make me feel too," he said, and held out one hand.”
― Elizabeth Scott, quote from Love You Hate You Miss You
“There is only darkness, starless and complete. The waves glitter like a million dull knives.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“I want my students to learn what life readers know: reading is its own reward. Reading is a university course in life; it makes us smarter by increasing our vocabulary and background knowledge of countless topics. Reading allows us to travel to destinations that we will never experience outside of the pages of a book. Reading is a way to find friends who have the same problems we do and who can give advice on solving those problems. Through reading, we can witness all that is noble, beautiful, or horrifying about other human beings. From a book’s characters, we can learn how to conduct ourselves. And most of all, reading is a communal act that connects you to other readers, comrades who have traveled to the same remarkable places that you have and been changed by them, too. Rewarding reading with prizes cheapens it, and undermines students’ chance to appreciate the experience of reading for the possibilities that it brings to their life. For students who read a lot, these programs are neither an incentive, nor a challenge. Yes, my classes participate in the schoolwide incentive programs when they are offered; after all, they would blaze past the requirements anyway. But I never let my students lose sight of what the true prize is; an appreciation of reading will add more to their life than a hundred days at Six Flags ever could.”
― Donalyn Miller, quote from The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child
“The longer you've known someone- the more history there is between you- the longer it will take to establish in their mind that you have truly changed. Remember, forgiveness is an altogether different thing from trust or respect. Forgiveness is about the past. Trust and respect are about the future. Forgiveness will be in the hands of others and cna be given to you, but trust and respect are in your own hands and must be earned.”
― Andy Andrews, quote from The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective
“Ele prosseguiu: - É possível adquirir uma vasta gama de conhecimento simplismente extraindo nossas camadas externas e examinando o que há no interior. Talvez você suponha que haja uma constante... ou um esquema, se preferir, válido para o que existe na parte interna de todo organismo vivo, independentemente de seu formato e ambiente. Mas sua teoria estaria equivocada. Não existem constantes, só variáveis, e ainda assim todos os organismos se esforçam para alcançar um objetivo comum.
- E que objetivo é esse? - perguntou Eva, olhando para a coleção de plantas e animais na mesa de Zim.
- Entender isso, Eva Nove, é entender um dos maiores mistérios do universo: por que estamos aqui?”
― Tony DiTerlizzi, quote from The Search for WondLa
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The Endearment
Winter EveBookQuoters 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.
