Nordau Quotes

#1. I quite agree with Dr. Nordau's assertion that all men of genius are insane, but Dr. Nordau forgets that all sane people are idiots.

Oscar Wilde

#2. Art is the means by which we communicate what it feels like to be alive - in the past, that was mixed up with other illustrative duties, but that was still its central function that has been liberated in the art called modern.

Antony Gormley

#3. If I despised myself, it would be no compensation if everyone saluted me, and if I respect myself, it does not trouble me if others hold me lightly.

Max Nordau

#4. To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, who neither listen nor speak ...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

#5. Degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists and pronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists

Max Nordau

#6. Let me tell you the following words as if I were showing you the rungs of a ladder leading upward and upward: Herzl; the Zionist Congress; the English Uganda proposition; the future world war; the peace conference where with the help of England a free and Jewish Palestine will be created.

Max Nordau

#7. The first condition a community should set, if it aspires to be a nation, is to own the land whereon it lives, and supply its own needs.

Max Nordau

#8. There aren't a lot of roles written for women who are strong willed.

Samantha Mathis

#9. In the absence of facts ... we tell ourselves stories.

Noah Hawley

#10. What about this overcrowded land/How much more abuse from man can she stand?

Marvin Gaye

#11. By the end of the 20th Century there will be a generation to whom it will not be injurious to read a dozen quire of newspapers daily, to be constantly called to the telephone ... and to live half their time in a railway carriage or in a flying machine.

Max Nordau

#12. Civilization is built on a number of ultimate principles ... respect for human life, the punishment of crimes against property and persons, the equality of all good citizens before the law ... or, in a word justice.

Max Nordau

#13. It is well to be alone. It fertilizes the creative impulse.

Max Nordau

#14. [H]istory is a melodrama on the theme of parasitism, characterized by scenes that are exciting or dull, as the case may be, and many a sudden stagetrick.

Max Nordau

#15. The artist writes, paints, sings or dances the burden of some idea or feeling off his mind.

Max Nordau