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What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damned thing in the world I have any faith in. That's the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that's the only sensible way to run human affairs.

Rex Stout

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Rex Stout
Age: 88 †
Born: 1886
Born: December 1
Died: 1975
Died: October 27
Novelist
Radio Personality
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Noblesville
Indiana
Thing
Idea
Affairs
Believe
Means
Sensible
Way
Running
Affair
World
Seems
Obvious
Ideas
Democracy
Human
Belief
Humans
American
Mean
Faith
Damned

More quotes by Rex Stout

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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
Rex Stout
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In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.
Rex Stout
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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
Rex Stout
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Bosh. I find a rival - but no, I won't flatter myself that Tecumseh Fox would consider himself a rival of Dol Bonner - I find an eminent detective in your apartment, and that alone is enough, without adding that he is concealed in your bedroom while I am discussing my business with you.
Rex Stout
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I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
Rex Stout
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I understand the technique of eccentricity it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.
Rex Stout
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As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
Rex Stout
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There are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the writer has to ask himself questions - is he tall, is he short? - he had better quit.
Rex Stout
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I love to make a mistake. It is my only assurance that I cannot reasonably be expected to assume the responsibility of omniscience.
Rex Stout
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The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off
Rex Stout
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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
Rex Stout
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Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
Rex Stout
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I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.
Rex Stout
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To say that a man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.
Rex Stout
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God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.
Rex Stout
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Sometimes it's things that take the joy out of life, like a blowout when you're hitting sixty or a button coming off of a shirt when you're in a hurry, but usually it's people.
Rex Stout
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I love books, food, music, sleep, people who work, heated arguments, the United States of America, and my wife and children. I dislike politicians, preachers, genteel persons, people who do not work or are on vacation, closed minds, movies, loud noises, and oiliness.
Rex Stout
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The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.
Rex Stout
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If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.
Rex Stout
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It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.
Rex Stout