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Ive had the best possible chance of learning that what the working-classes really need is to be allowed some part in the direction of public affairs, Doctorto develop their abilities, their understanding and their self-respect.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Capitalism
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What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!
-Henrik Ibsen, Pillars of Society, act 2 character Aune
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Democracy
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The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Dreams
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Castles in the air - -they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build as well.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Freedom
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You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
-Henrik Ibsen
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A forest bird never wants a cage.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Ghosts
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What we have inherited from our fathers and mothers is not all that 'walks in us.' There are all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have no tangibility, but they haunt us all the same and we can not get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. Ghosts must be all over the country, as thick as the sands of the sea.
-Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts
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Health
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People who don't know how to keep themselves healthy ought to have the decency to get themselves buried, and not waste time about it.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Idealism
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Don't use that foreign word ideals. We have that excellent native word lies.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Independence
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The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Liberalism
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The most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority
-Henrik Ibsen, Enemy of the People (p.117)
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Majority
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I am sticking as closely to my subject as I can; for my subject is precisely this, that it is the masses, the majority
-Henrik Ibsen, Enemy of the People (p.120)
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The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Marriage
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A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there's no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it's an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.
-Henrik Ibsen
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In that second it dawned on me that I had been living here for eight years with a strange man and had borne him three children.
-Henrik Ibsen
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In your power, all the same. Subject to your will and your demands. No longer free! No! That's a thought I'll never endure! Never.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Minorities
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A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong.
-Henrik Ibsen
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The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I don
-Henrik Ibsen, excerpt from
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Money
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Money may be the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not faithfulness; days of joy, but not peace and happiness.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Principles
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It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing raveled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Religion
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Bigger things than the State will fall, all religion will fall.
-Henrik Ibsen, letter to Georg Brandes, quoted in Ibsen by biographer Aall, 1906
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Respect
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Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it... it's just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Sin
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Really to sin you have to be serious about it.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Society
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The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom -- these are the pillars of society.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Torture
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It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.
-Henrik Ibsen
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Books by and about Henrik Ibsen