The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

—Norman Mailer

About Norman Mailer

Portrait of Norman Mailer

Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist, and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War...

More quotations from Norman Mailer

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

—Norman Mailer

war bad necessity reason

One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that.

—Norman Mailer

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

—Norman Mailer

life growth transformation cost

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.

—Norman Mailer

There is no greater importance in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.

—Norman Mailer

More quotations tagged with “suffering”

For, as wolves and tigers gorge themselves with flesh and lick their gory chops, so do nations gorge themselves with human victims, not in detail, but in masses, by wholesale.

—Henry C. Wright

war suffering viciousness gore

The man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

—Michel de Montaigne

My father… used to say, "I need my anger. It obliges me to take action." I think my father was partly right. Anger arises, naturally, to signal disturbing situations that might require action. But actions initiated in anger perpetuate suffering. The most effective actions are those conceived in the wisdom of clarity.

—Sylvia Boorstein

action wisdom suffering anger clarity

Knowing he was suffering pained me. That's the way love tangles you up. I couldn't stop loving him, and couldn't shut off the feelings of wanting to care for him—but I also didn't have to run to answer his letters. I was hurting, too, and no one was running to me.

—Paula McLain in The Paris Wife

love suffering care

Great artists suffer for the people.

History

3 Oct 2016 Added