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a3ba8c0
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Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name - A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?' Then I read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high preaching goloss: '--The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mec..
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Anthony Burgess |
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0e51f9f
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What's all this about sin, eh?' 'That,' I said, very sick. 'Using Ludwig van like that. He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music.' And then I was really sick and they had to bring a bowl that was in the shape of like a kidney. 'Music,' said Dr. Brodsky, like musing. 'So you're keen on music. I know nothing about it myself. It's a useful emotional heightener, that's all I know. Well, well. What do you think about that, eh, Branom..
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reason
sin
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Anthony Burgess |
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b5dcf34
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We were all feeling that bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it having been an evening of some small energy expenditure.
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Anthony Burgess |
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40f8888
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Quizas el hombre que elige el mal es en cierto modo mejor que aquel a quien se le impone el bien,
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Anthony Burgess |
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0a20877
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We only need to wear shoes because the British built roads which hurt our feet.
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Anthony Burgess |
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12f4c64
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The twenty-first chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that huma..
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Anthony Burgess |
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0ebb024
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Well, if they would not go to school they must still have their education. And education they had had.
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school-of-life
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Anthony Burgess |
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2718e4a
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When we pray we admit defeat.
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motivation
spirituality
taking-action
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Anthony Burgess |
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1f12313
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It'll be your own torture," he said, serious. "I hope to God it'll torture you to madness."
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Anthony Burgess |
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5194466
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And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries.
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Anthony Burgess |
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a84d08c
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Dreams go by opposites I was once told.
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Anthony Burgess |
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2036e0e
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Horrorshow is right, friend. A real show of horrors.
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nadsat
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Anthony Burgess |
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4a6eaa4
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Never,' I said. 'One can die but once. Dim died before he was born. That red red krovvy will soon stop.
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Anthony Burgess |
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591ad0a
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You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good.
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good-and-evil
government-corruption
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Anthony Burgess |
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8eefec3
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Each man kills the thing he loves
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Anthony Burgess |
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ee16586
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You have no cause to grumble boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice. Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen.
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anthony-burgess
book-quotes
books
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Anthony Burgess |
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ce0d791
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The heresy of an age of reason,' or some such slovos [words]. 'I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.
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reality
reason
reliance
society
truth
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Anthony Burgess |
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e744924
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It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
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Anthony Burgess |
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8f63832
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Look, I don't see why bad artists - I mean artists who are obviously incompetent... - why they should be presented hypocritically as good artists just because they're supposed to be advancing the frontiers of freedom of expression or... ...demonstrating that there should be no limit on subject matter.
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artists
freedom-of-expression
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Anthony Burgess |
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7132643
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I was very lighthearted. This often the way when the abandonment of personal responsibility is enforced: neither wronged innocence or just guilt can seriously impair the sensation of freedom one has.
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persecution
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Anthony Burgess |
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f17e0b3
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I am instructed by the Home Secretary to read out the following. . . . It is a prayer devised by the Ministry of Propaganda. . . . 'It is conceivable that the forces of death which at present are ravaging the esculent life of this planet have intelligence, in which case we beseech them to leave off. It we have done wrong--allowing in our blindness natural impulse to overcome reason--we are, of course, heartily sorry. But we submit that we h..
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Anthony Burgess |
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9e8e2c9
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You were not put on this earth just to get in touch with God.
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book-quotes
life-philosophy
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Anthony Burgess |
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b0a7409
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Then we slooshied.
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Anthony Burgess |
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2887956
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They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see that clearly--that business about the marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain.
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Anthony Burgess |
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4f08c05
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Life to most of us is just a jumble of sensations, like a very bad film with no plot, no real beginning and end.
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Anthony Burgess |
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dc5882f
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James Joyce, in conversation with Carl Jung:)"Literary artists know more about the human mind than you fellers have a hope in hell of knowing. Ha. My craft is ebbing. I am yung and easily freudened. One of these days I'll show the lot of you what the unconscious mind is really like. I don't need any of you. In a sense I am Freud." Jung looked gloomily guilty at the name. "Yes?" "What's Freud in English?" "Joy." "Joy and Joyce. There's littl..
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Anthony Burgess |
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5be4be1
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and you were sort of hypnotized by your boot or shoe or a finger-nail as it might be,and at the same time you were sort of picked up by the old scruff and shook like you might be a cat.you got shook and shook till there was nothing left.you lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care,and you waited until your boot or finger-nail got yellow,then yellower and yellower all the time.then the lights started cracking like ..
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Anthony Burgess |
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366f26a
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And, my brothers, it was real satisfaction to me to waltz-left two three, right two three-and carve left cheeky and right cheeky, so that like two curtains of blood seemed to pour out at the same time, one on either side of his fat filthy oily snout in the winter starlight.
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Anthony Burgess |
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33f2ad6
|
By definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as i..
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evil
good
moral-compass
morality
morals
sin
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Anthony Burgess |
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53fbeb3
|
What sort of world is it at all? Men on the moon and men spinning round the earth like it might be midges round a lamp, and there's not no attention paid to earthly law nor order no more.
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order
world
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Anthony Burgess |
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631a383
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Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude.
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good-and-evil
paradox
violence
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Anthony Burgess |
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61c6f83
|
A man who serves language, however imperfectly, should always serve truth.
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truth
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Anthony Burgess |
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55980ea
|
You must take your chance boy. The choice has been all yours.
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Anthony Burgess |
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04b6f61
|
The scientific approach to life is not necessarily appropriate to states of visceral anguish.
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Anthony Burgess |
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f330e9d
|
The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Greatness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.
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Anthony Burgess |
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80bf087
|
There is the devastatingly simple, yet profound, moral dilemma, which underlies the book: is it better for a man to choose to be bad than to be conditioned to be good?
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Anthony Burgess |
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8fffaef
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Yes yes yes, there it was. Youth must go, ah yes. But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straig..
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Anthony Burgess |
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ceeb620
|
Civilized my syphilised yarbles. Music always sort of sharpened me up, O my brothers, and made me like feel like old Bog himself, ready to make with the old donner and blitzen and have vecks and ptitsas creeching away in my ha ha power.
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Anthony Burgess |
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634e98a
|
But don't think that it's a system or a culture or a state or a person that does the letting down. It's our expectations that let us down. It begins in the warmth of the womb and the discovery that it's cold outside. But it's not the cold's fault that it's cold.
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Anthony Burgess |
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89c817a
|
When the State withers, humanity flowers.
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Anthony Burgess |
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7872e65
|
You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see that clearly - that business about marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain.
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lovemaking
society
|
Anthony Burgess |
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556ece8
|
But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of the brave malenky selves fighting these big machines?" nah, that's too serious. How's about: "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar m..
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punk
rebel
|
Anthony Burgess |
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23d2633
|
I was eighteen now, just gone. Eighteen was not a young age. At eighteen old Wolfgang Amadeus had written concertos and symphonies and operas and oratorios and all that cal, no, not cal, heavenly music. And then there was old Felix M. with his "Midsummer Night's Dream" Overture. And there were others. And there was this like French poet set by old Benjy Britt, who had done all his best poetry by the age of fifteen, O my brothers. Arthur, hi..
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Anthony Burgess |
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4892e54
|
Then I wanted to sick up the gluey pie I'd had before the start of the evening, But I couldn't stand the sort of veshch, sicking all over the floor, so I held it back.
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nausea
|
Anthony Burgess |