Stephen Vizinczey

Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.

— Stephen Vizinczey

Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.

— Stephen Vizinczey

As both capitalist and communist states -- not to mention the technological world --have evolved under the illusion that men purposefully built them, ideological optimism seeps into every niche of our lives. It is made worse by mass culture which feeds our

— Stephen Vizinczey

We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.

— Stephen Vizinczey

Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parents birth

— Stephen Vizinczey

Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.

— Stephen Vizinczey

When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness.

— Stephen Vizinczey

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.

— Stephen Vizinczey

Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the center of man's universe is the earth?

— Stephen Vizinczey

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

— Stephen Vizinczey

Like all wage slaves, he had two crosses to bear: the people he worked for and the people he worked with

— Stephen Vizinczey