William Saroyan - Race Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

View all William Saroyan Quotes

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?

William Saroyan

The race was over. I was last, by ten yards. Without the slightest hesitation I protested and challenged the runners to another race, same distance, back. They refused to consider my proposal, which proved, I knew, that they were afraid to race me. I told them they knew very well I could beat them.

William Saroyan

Baseball is caring. Player and fan alike must care, or there is no game. If there's no game, there's no pennant race and no World Series. And for all any of us know there might soon be no nation at all. It is good to care - in any dimension. More Americans put their caring into baseball than into anything else I can think of - and most put at least a little of it there. Baseball can be trusted, as great art can, and bad art can't.

William Saroyan

The child race is fresh, eager, interested, innocent, imaginative, healthy and full of faith, where the adult race, more often than not, is stale, spiritually debauched, unimaginative, unhealthy, and without faith.

William Saroyan

I love Armenian people — all of them. I love them because they are a part of the enormous human race, which of course I find simultaneously beautiful and vulnerable.

William Saroyan

I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.

William Saroyan

I am deeply opposed to violence in all its forms, and yet I myself am violent in spirit, in my quarrel with the unbeatable: myself, my daemon, God, the human race, the world, time, pain, disorder, disgrace and death.

William Saroyan

There was a touch of anxiety in the whole human race about its future.

William Saroyan

Babies who have not yet been taught to speak any language are the only race of the earth, the race of man: all the rest is pretence, what we call civilization, hatred, fear, desire for strength.

William Saroyan

I became a writer because during several of the most important years of my life, writing seemed to me to be the most unreal, unattractive, and unecessary idea ever imposed upon the human race.

William Saroyan