Irving Layton Quotes

Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.

When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.

Only the tiniest fracton of mankind want freedom. All the rest want someone to tell them theyare free.

By walking, I found out where I was going.

God is indeed dead. He died of self-horror when He saw the creature He had made in His own image.

We love in another's soul whatever of ourselves we can deposit in it; the greater the deposit, the greater the love

Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante's scheme, Limbo is to Hell

A poet is deeply conflicted and it's in his work that he reconciles those deep conflicts. The place is the harbor. It doesn't set the world in order, you know, it's the place of reconciliation. It's the Consolamentum, the kiss of peace.

Whom the gods do not intend to destroy, they first make mad with poetry.

A political leader worthy of assassination

It amazes me that organs that piss Can give human beings such perfect bliss.

A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question, 'What is a Canadian?

how seasonably leaf and blossom uncurl and living things arrange their death, while someone from afar off blows birthday candles for the world.

Idealist: a cynic in the making.

My neighbor doesn't want to be loved as much as he wants to be envied.

Conscience: self-esteem with a halo.