A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible in order to get relief.
John Dos PassosRead
The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that people inherently need to create a moral framework to make sense of their actions, similar to how spiders instinctively weave webs.
John Dos Passos highlights the necessity of morality in human behavior, implying that individuals cannot thrive in a state of moral uncertainty or chaos. Just as spiders are compelled to build their webs, humans are driven to establish ethical beliefs to guide their actions and interactions, ensuring a stable and coherent existence.
Themes
MoralityEthicsBehaviorChaosHuman Nature
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on ethics in a philosophy class.
More from John Dos Passos
All quotes βAnything that happens to you has some bearing upon what you write.
John Dos PassosRead
Breaking with old friends is one of the most painful of the changes in all that piling up of a multitude of small distasteful changes that constitutes growing older.
John Dos PassosRead
Love is cheap. You can buy it anywhere. Lives are cheap. It's money that's dear. You have to work days and sit up nights thinking how to make money.
John Dos PassosRead
There's something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting out at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.
John Dos PassosRead
U.S.A. is the speech of the people
John Dos PassosRead
Similar quotes
Hamilton had one of those extraordinary 18th-century minds that touched on virtually every major topic of the day.
Ron ChernowRead
A fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.
Luigi PirandelloRead
In Canada, there's a surprising worship of managerialism versus ownership and wealth creation. There's a real problem in this country with believing that management is the answer to our problems.
John Ralston SaulRead
To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
H. L. MenckenRead
And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.
Abraham LincolnRead
The man or nation of high culture may acknowledge to great lengths the restraints imposed by conventions and honour, but beyond a certain point, primitive will or desire cannot be curbed.
H. P. LovecraftRead