382 Quotes by Anthony Burgess

Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?

The heresy of an age of reason,' or some such slovos [words]. 'I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.

Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.

To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.

Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.

El hombre que no puede elegir ha perdido la condición humana.

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.

An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust.

The heresy of an age of reason. I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.