Obscurity Quotes

Much of the obscurity of our effort so far against terrorism originates in the now official idea that the enemy is evil and that we are (therefore) good, which is the precise mirror image of the official idea of the terrorists.

Wendell Berry

Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity (in a library), most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered.

Samuel Johnson

I'm not interested in security through obscurity. I want real security mechanisms, solutions that work for _everybody_. Yes, that's a lot more difficult than randomly blowing away "suspicious" portions of the Internet mail infrastructure, but it's the Right Thing To Do.

Daniel J. Bernstein

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Joseph Addison

Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.

James Thurber

[I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

Daniel Webster

One must choose between Obscurity with Efficiency, and Fame with its inevitable collateral of Bluff.

William McFee

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

Napoleon I

If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.

Emily Bronte

If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves.

John Kenneth Galbraith

The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.

Quintilian

Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Learn to be pleased with everything; with wealth, so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for, and with obscurity, for being unenvied.

Plutarch

Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting

Edmund Burke

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another; they might also ask themselves how much poetry of any period they can honestly say that they understand.

Wystan Hugh Auden
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