Wyndham Lewis Quotes

When we say "science" we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect; or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science, the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.

The puritanical potentialities of science have never been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchically organized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of "decency." The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to.

Revolutionary politics, revolutionary art, and oh, the revolutionary mind, is the dullest thing on earth. When we open a "revolutionary" review, or read a "revolutionary" speech, we yawn our heads off. It is true, there is nothing else. Everything is correctly, monotonously, dishearteningly "revolutionary." What a stupid word! What a stale fuss!

So-called "austerity," the stoic injunction, is the path towards universal destruction. It is the old, the fatal, competitive path. "Pull in your belt" is a slogan closely related to "gird up your loins," or the guns-butter metaphor.

All orthodox opinion -- that is, today, "revolutionary" opinion either of the pure or the impure variety -- is anti-man.

Men were only made into "men" with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally "a man" any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.

Then we are assured by Sartre that owing to the final disappearance of God our liberty is absolute! At this the entire audience waves its hat or claps its hands. But this natural enthusiasm is turned abruptly into something much less buoyant when it is learnt that this liberty weighs us down immediately with tremendous responsibilities. We now have to take all God's worries on our shoulders -- now that we are become "men like gods." It is at this point that the Anxiety and Despondency begin, ending in utter despair.

With a new familiarity and a flesh-creeping "homeliness" entirely of this unreal, materialistic world, where all "sentiment" is coarsely manufactured and advertised in colossal sickly captions, disguised for the sweet tooth of a monstrous baby called "the Public," the family as it is, broken up on all hands by the agency of feminist and economic propaganda, reconstitutes itself in the image of the state.

In the democratic western countries so-called capitalism leads a saturnalia of "freedom," like a bastard brother of reform.

So-called austerity, the stoic injunction, is the path towards universal destruction. It is the old, the fatal, competitive path. Pull in your belt is a slogan closely related to gird up your loins, or the guns-butter metaphor.