John Boynton Priestley citáty

„Optimista je člověk, který je nedostatečně informovaný.“

—  John Boynton Priestley

„Znalosti lidí se člověk naučí buď bez učitele, anebo vůbec ne.“

—  John Boynton Priestley

„Jenom muži, kteří si myslí, že ženy jsou stejné, jsou všichni stejní.“

—  John Boynton Priestley

„Lidé nejsou horší než byli dříve. Jenom zpravodajství o jejich činech je teď důkladnější.“

—  John Boynton Priestley

„Pravda je jako brát zatáčku stovkou; a život je plný zatáček.“

—  John Boynton Priestley

„Když se chce člověk přátelit s mužem, nesmí říct nic, čím by se dotkl jeho drahocenné ješitnosti, a protože ta bývá velká jako stodola a nesmírně choulostivá, musí být strašlivě opatrný.“

—  John Boynton Priestley

„Moderní malíř mě přesvědčí o svém umění, až si vezme ženu, která bude vypadat tak jako ty, které maluje.“

—  John Boynton Priestley

„We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night.“

—  J.B. Priestley, An Inspector Calls

Zdroj: An Inspector Calls

„I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.“

—  J.B. Priestley

„Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.“

—  J.B. Priestley

„As soon as we have conquered the moon, we must make plans to conquer the planets. I am not denying that there is in all this a fine mixed element of enterprise, ingenuity and adventure.“

—  J.B. Priestley

Zdroj: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 7, p. 170

„I suppose -- in the last resort -- you trust life -- or you don't. Well -- I don't. There's something malicious... corrupt... cruel... at the heart of it. We don't belong. We're a mistake.“

—  J.B. Priestley, I Have Been Here Before

I Have Been Here Before, Act II.

„Although we talk so much about coincidence we do not really believe in it. In our heart of hearts we think better of the universe, we are secretly convinced that it is not such a slipshod, haphazard affair, that everything in it has meaning.“

—  J.B. Priestley

"A Coincidence," http://books.google.com/books?id=vmpHAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Although+we+talk+so+much+about+coincidence+we+do+not+really+believe+in+it+in+our+heart+of+hearts+we+think+better+of+the+universe+we+are+secretly+convinced+that+it+is+not+such+a+slipshod+haphazard+affair+that+everything+in+it+has+meaning%22&pg=PA215#v=onepage Going Up Stories and Sketches (1950)

„[I]f self-deception has to be risked anyhow, it might be better to risk it to take a broad view than a narrow view. It may be foolish, perhaps even dangerous, to wander too far from the highway and then be the dupe of fantasies; but it may be even more foolish, even more dangerous in the end, to be so determined to keep to the well-tested road that you wear blinkers, see nothing of the surrounding landscape, and find the road itself, all that you can see, more and more wearisome and detestable.“

—  J.B. Priestley

Zdroj: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 7, p. 176

„It is, of course, men who are more likely to inhibit themselves for the sake of appearing to be sensible and dependable.[…] If pressed, I will agree that more women than men wish to appear wonderfully sensitive and intuitive, and may stop being realistic […] in order to deceive themselves and other people. On the other hand, women in general tend to be more realistic and yet in certain matters more open-minded than men, more ready to resist that pressure of opinion. They are less likely to be put into blinkers by ideas.
Moreover […] as a rule the average woman notices far more than the average man; she has a better eye for detail than he has; she makes a more alert witness.“

—  J.B. Priestley

Zdroj: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 8, p. 182

„In our secret depths, wherever we do our unspoken wishing, either we want life to be tidy, clear, fully understood, contained within definite limits, or we long for it to seem larger, wilder, stranger. Faced with some odd incident, either we wish to cut it down or to build it up.
On this level, below that of philosophies and rational opinions, either we reject or ignore the unknown, the apparently inexplicable, the marvellous and miraculous, or we welcome every sign of them. At one extreme is a narrow intolerant bigotry, snarling at anything outside the accepted world-picture, and at the other is an idiotic credulity, the prey of any glib charlatan. At one end the world becomes a prison, at the other a madhouse.“

—  J.B. Priestley

Zdroj: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 8, p. 183

„Science can function only by abstracting from the reality in which the scientist has his being. In spite of the astonishing complications it discovers, with which it dazzles and almost blinds us, science is compelled by its own terms of reference to be a drastic simplification.“

—  J.B. Priestley

Zdroj: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 10, p. 253

„A man must be either conscientiously scientific in his approach or frankly speculative. What he must not do is present his speculative untested ideas in a manner and style of dogmatic certainty that they are not entitled to claim. This is being pseudo-scientific.“

—  J.B. Priestley

Zdroj: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 11, p. 271

„Shaw presumes that his friend Stalin has everything under control. Well, Stalin may have made special arrangements to see that Shaw comes to no harm, but the rest of us in Western Europe do not feel quite so sure of our fate, especially those of us who do not share Shaw's curious admiration for dictators.“

—  J.B. Priestley

J. B. Priestley, "The War - And After", in Horizon magazine (January 1940), reprinted in War Decade : An Anthology of the 1940s (1989) by Andrew Sinclair