A Clockwork Orange Quotes

“My book was Kennedyan and accepted the notion of moral progress. What was really wanted was a Nixonian book with no shred of optimism in it. Let us have evil prancing on the page... up to the very last line... Such a book would be sensational, and so it is. But I do not think it is it fair picture of human life. I do not think so because, 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... It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice... Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Alex like groweth up, Oh Yes.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“It may not be nice to be good, 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“My book was Kennedyan and accepted the notion of moral progress. What was really wanted was a Nixonian book with no shred of optimism in it. Let us have evil prancing on the page... up to the very last line... Such a book would be sensational, and so it is. But I do not think it is it fair picture of human life. I do not think so because, 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... It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice... Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“I kept pushing the old noga through the floorboards near, and the Durango 95 ate up the road like spaghetti.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“That's the law, son. But you were never much of a one for following the law.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change.

----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. 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.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip-music brrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“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.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“And those hard slovos, brothers, were like the beginning of my freedom.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Horrorshow is right, friend. A real show of horrors.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“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.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Then I noticed, in all my pain and sickness,what music it was that like crackled and boomed on the
sound-track, and it was Ludwig van, the last movement of the
Fifth Symphony, and I creeched like bezoomny at that. "Stop!"
I creeched. "Stop, you grahzny disgusting sods. It's a sin, that's
what it is, a filthy unforgivable sin, you bratchnies!”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Delimitation is always difficult. The world is one, life is one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Oh, it was gorgeosity and yumyumyum. When it came to the Scherzo I could viddy myself very clear running and running on like the very light and mysterious nogas, carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cut-throat britva.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“One thing I could never stand was to see a filthy dirty old drunky howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blurp blurp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts;I could never stand to see anyone like that. whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was real old like this one was.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Is the man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Özgür irade ile seçilen kötülük, organize güçler tarafından kişiye dayatılan deterministik iyilikten daha mı insancadır ?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“It’s a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there’s no law nor order no more.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“But poor old Dim kept looking up at the stars and planets and the Luna with his rot wide open like a kid who'd never viddied any such thing before, and he said: "What's on them, I wonder. What would be up there on things like that?" I nudged him hard, saying: "Come, gloopy bastard as thou art. Think thou not on them. There'll be life like down here most likely, with some getting knifed and others doing the knifing.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“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.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded-.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“If I had died it would have been even better for you political bratchnies, would it not, pretending and treacherous droogs as you are.' But all that came out was er er er.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“But this one was a writer, not a reader.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“And I sort of frowned about that, thinking. 'You felt ill this afternoon,' he said, 'because you're getting better. When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange