Arthur Miller Quotes

161 Sourced Quotes

Nevertheless, one learned very early that books had to be respected; they were all putative Bibles and to some small degree had a share in holiness.

Arthur Miller
An idol tells people exactly what to believe, God presents them with choices they have to make for themselves. The difference is far from insignificant; before the idol men remain dependent children, before God they are burdened and at the same time liberated to participate in the decisions of endless creation.

Arthur Miller
Part of knowing who we are is knowing we are not someone else. And Jew is only the name we give to that stranger, the agony we cannot feel, the death we look at like a cold abstraction. Each man has his Jew; it is the other.

Arthur Miller
A little man makes a mistake and they hang him by the thumbs; the big ones become ambassadors.

Arthur Miller
A genuine invention in the realm of ideas must first emerge as an abstruse and even partial concept? At first blusha new idea appearstobe verycloseto insanity because to be new it must reverse important basic beliefs and assumptions which, in turn, have been institutionalized and are administered by one or another kind of priesthood with a vested interest in an old idea.

Arthur Miller
For the political world, I have come to believe, is fundamentally beyond anyone's control, yet we all go on as though it were a kind of vehicle that only needs a change of drivers in order to steer it away from its frequent hair-raising visits to the edge of the cliff.

Arthur Miller
One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives.

Arthur Miller
Poor brain! How helplessly it dissolves when willing eyes meet and the nose warms to those old jungle scents.

Arthur Miller
If you love your country why is it necessary to hate other countries?

Arthur Miller
Like every writer, I am asked where my work originates, and if I knew I would go there more often to find more.

Arthur Miller
It may be that even if half consciously, we choose our personalities to maintain a certain saving balance in the family's little universe.

Arthur Miller