All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
John FowlesRead
One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, "You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love." They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The Nazis gained power not by providing order, but by creating chaos and rejecting moral constraints.
In this quote, John Fowles argues that the rise of the Nazis can be attributed to their ability to manipulate societal norms and offer people the allure of unchecked desires and moral ambiguity. By discarding established moral commandments and promoting chaos, they empowered individuals to act on their basest instincts, which contributed to their success and the tragic events that followed. This insight provokes reflection on the dangers of abandoning ethical standards and the seductive pull of extremist ideologies.
Themes
NazisChaosOrderMoralityTemptationPower
In practice
Example use cases
In a history lecture discussing the dangers of totalitarian regimes.
More from John Fowles
All quotes →There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
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I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.
John FowlesRead
Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?
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The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.
John FowlesRead
It came to me…that I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencing…a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice.
John FowlesRead
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