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Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
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W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
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If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.
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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.
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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
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We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
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You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
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Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.
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Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
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To save your world you asked this man to die would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
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It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
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A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
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All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
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