Arthur Miller Quotes

The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when...

Arthur Miller

Share

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied...

Arthur Miller

Tragedy and the Common Man - 1949, The New York Times - 27 February 1949

Share

Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect. No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he...

Arthur Miller

Tragedy and the Common Man - 1949, The New York Times - 27 February 1949

Share

The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of...

Arthur Miller

Tragedy and the Common Man - 1949, The New York Times - 27 February 1949

Share

Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are "flawless." Most of us are in that category. But there are among us today, as there always have been, those who act...

Arthur Miller

Tragedy and the Common Man - 1949, The New York Times - 27 February 1949

Share

I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing — his sense of personal dignity. From...

Arthur Miller

Tragedy and the Common Man - 1949, The New York Times - 27 February 1949

Share

In this age few tragedies are written. It has often been held that the lack is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the...

Arthur Miller

Tragedy and the Common Man - 1949, The New York Times - 27 February 1949

Share

Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.

Arthur Miller

Quoted in Finding Your Bipolar Muse : How to Master Depressive Droughts and Manic Depression - 2006 by Lana R. Castle

Share

I don't know a critic who penetrates the center of anything.

Arthur Miller

Quoted in "Arthur Miller, Moral Voice of American Stage, Dies at 89" by Marilyn Berger in The New York Times - 11 February 2005

Share

I'm a fatalist. I consider I am rejected in principle. My work is, and, through my work, I am. If it's accepted, it's miraculous or the result of a misunderstanding.

Arthur Miller

Quoted in "Arthur Miller, Moral Voice of American Stage, Dies at 89" by Marilyn Berger in The New York Times - 11 February 2005

Share