The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population — the intelligent ones or the fools?
HENRIK IBSENI’m plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.
More Henrik Ibsen Quotes
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The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions to destroy.
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The man-at-arms is the only man.
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A party is like a sausage machine, it grinds up all sorts of heads together into the same baloney.
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It’s such sport with these heroes of finance: they are like beads on a string – when one slips off, all the rest follow.
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There is so much falsehood both at home and at school. At home one must not speak, and at school we have to stand and tell lies to the children.
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A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.
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So to conduct one’s life as to realize oneself-this seems to me the highest attainment possible to a human being. It is the task of one and all of us, but most of us bungle it.
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Do you know what we are those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society’s tools, neither more nor less.
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Look into any man’s heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.
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The sea possesses a power over one’s moods that has the effect of a will. The sea can hypnotize. Nature in general can do so.
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It is no use lying to one’s self.
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Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.
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Oh, one soon makes friends with invalids; and I need so much to have someone to live for.
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I’m afraid for all those who’ll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!
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And what if I did run my ship aground; oh, still it was splendid to sail it!
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Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.
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The spectacles of experience; through them you will see more clearly a second time.
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It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life
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It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.
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To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?
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To live is to war with trolls.
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When you’ve sold yourself once for the sake of others, you don’t do it second time.
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Really to sin you have to be serious about it.
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To live is – to war with trolls In the holds of the heart and mind
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A forest bird never wants a cage.
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Most critical fault-finding, when reduced to its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the author because he is himself — thinks, feels, sees, and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and creating in the way the critic would have done.
HENRIK IBSEN