John Updike

More from John Updike

• America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

  “How to Love America and Leave it at the Same Time,” Problems and Other Stories (1979)

  • America
  • Happiness

• A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

  “They Thought They Were Better” in TIME magazine (21 July 1980)

  • Leadership

• The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one’s obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

  On J. D. Salinger, from a review of his Franny and Zooey, in Studies in J. D. Salinger: Reviews, Essays, and Critiques of The Catcher in the Rye and other Fiction (1963) edited by Marvin Laser and Norman Fruman, p. 231

  • Art

All 15 quotes from John Updike

Popular quotes

• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In context

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar100–44 BCInscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

  • Success

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)

  • Philosophy