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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.

Mary McCarthy

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Mary McCarthy
Age: 77 †
Born: 1912
Born: June 21
Died: 1989
Died: October 25
Author
Autobiographer
Critic
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Mary Therese McCarthy
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Conditional
State
Protector
Rather
Bound
Freedom
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We are the hero of our own story.
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... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.
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What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?
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In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.
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If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.
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Others are to us like the characters in fiction, eternal and incorrigible the surprises they give us turn out in the end to have been predictable and unexpected variations on the theme of being themselves.
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The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the credulous- poets and honeymooners.
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Modern neurosis began with the discoveries of Copernicus. Science made men feel small by showing him that the earth was not the center of the universe.
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The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist.
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A good deal of education consists of unlearning-the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve.
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I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.
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If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.
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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.
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Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.
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From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people.
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A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.
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The desire to believe the best of people is a prerequisite for intercourse with strangers suspicion is reserved for friends.
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The dictator is also the scapegoat in assuming absolute authority, he assumes absolute guilt and the oppressed masses, groaning under the yoke, know themselves to be innocent as lambs, while they pray hypocritically for deliverance.
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Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.
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