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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.

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
Authority
Absolutes
Assumes
Also
Assuming
Deliverance
Absolute
Yoke
Guilt
Lambs
Innocent
Dictator
Pray
Masses
Hypocritically
Praying
Oppressed
Groaning
Mass
Tyranny
Scapegoat

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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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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.
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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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Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by a saint who is really a prince who has just slain a dragon.
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A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.
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Whenever in history, equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.
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An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question.
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We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour in other words, we are the hero of our own story.
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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.
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The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist.
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Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.
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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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Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts.
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