Stupefaction Quotes

You ever notice, Joe,” he asked, mechanically picking up the mug, "that it always takes a little more trouble to get something than the thing was really worth?” Joe considered it. "Better than taking a lot of trouble and getting nothing.” Dundee sipped the coffee. He didn't seem to have heard Joe. "There's so much weariness and fatigue in it all. For every action there is an equal... stupefaction. No, that might be bearable-it's greater than the action. (Tim Powers)
It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times --the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie --seem attractive by comparison. View quote
Christopher Lasch
Socialization through schooling, as it takes place here, and in Western societies, in general, is a priori stupefaction. View quote
Peter Sloterdijk
The religious superstition is encouraged by means of the institution of churches, processions, monuments, festivities....The so-called clergy stupefy the masses....They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition of stupefaction. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship. View quote
Andrei Sakharov
M. Manet has never seen any Goya's, M. Manet has never seen any El Greco's.. ..that may seem unbelievable to you, but it's the truth. I myself have been filled with wonder and stupefaction at these mysterious coincidences.. .He's heard so much about his 'pastiches' of Goya, that he is now trying to see some of Goya's paintings.. .Every time you try to pay Manet a service, I'll be grateful.. ..quote my letter or at least several lines of it. What I'm telling you is the naked truth. View quote
Francisco Goya