All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
John FowlesRead
One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, "You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love." They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The Nazis gained power not by providing order, but by creating chaos and rejecting moral constraints.
In this quote, John Fowles argues that the rise of the Nazis can be attributed to their ability to manipulate societal norms and offer people the allure of unchecked desires and moral ambiguity. By discarding established moral commandments and promoting chaos, they empowered individuals to act on their basest instincts, which contributed to their success and the tragic events that followed. This insight provokes reflection on the dangers of abandoning ethical standards and the seductive pull of extremist ideologies.
Themes
NazisChaosOrderMoralityTemptationPower
In practice
Example use cases
In a history lecture discussing the dangers of totalitarian regimes.
More from John Fowles
All quotes →There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
John FowlesRead
I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.
John FowlesRead
Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?
John FowlesRead
The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.
John FowlesRead
It came to me…that I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencing…a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice.
John FowlesRead
Similar quotes
My feeling is that the hero has now been defined by phrases like the odious one that we were all raised with - crimes does not pay. Of course it pays, you schmuck. That's not why we don't do it. We don't do it because it is wrong.
Frank MillerRead
I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.
Arthur GoldenRead
Human kind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies?
Mustafa Kemal AtaturkRead
Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.
Oscar WildeRead
If I had a brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I...daily consorted with the assassin who drove the dagger into my brother's heart; surely I too must be an accomplice in the crime. Sin murdered Christ; will you be a friend to it? Sin pierced the heart of the Incarnate God; can you love it?
Charles SpurgeonRead
The ascetic is often a sensualist who has reached the limit of his capacity.
Jacques BarzunRead