Mary McCarthy Quotes

We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Once the state is looked upon as the source of rights, rather than their bound protector, freedom becomes conditional on the pleasure of the state.

Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.

We are the hero of our own story.

Feminism is ridiculous. Feminists are silly idealists who want to be on top. There is no real equality in sexual relationships - someone always wins.

From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people.

The happy ending is our national belief.

most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know; it made them feel ignorant.

Anybody who has ever tried to rectify an injustice or set a record straight comes to feel that he is going mad.

You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

A politician or political thinker who calls himself a political realist is usually boasting that he sees politics, so to speak, in the raw; he is generally a proclaimed cynic and pessimist who makes it his business to look behind words and fine speeches for the motive. This motive is always low.

The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.

You know what my favourite quotation is?.. It's from Chaucer... Criseyde says it, "I am myne owene woman, wel at ese."

The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.

To be disesteemed by people you don't have much respect for is not the worst fate.

Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.

Our language, once homely and colloquial, seeks to aggrandize our meanest activities with polysyllabic terms or it retreats from frankness into a stammering verbosity.

There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.

I shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.

In violence, we forget who we are