WIST

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
“Reflections on the Atom Bomb” (1946)
First published in Yale Poetry Review (Dec 1947). Full text.

I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. It’s better to be rich.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
(Attributed)

I do want to get rich but I never what to do what there is to do to get rich.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
Everybody’s Autobiography, ch. 3 (1937)

Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
The Making of Americans (1925; written 1903-11)

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
The Radcliffe Manuscripts, “Form and Intelligibility” (1949; written 1895)

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realize the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
Wars I Have Seen(1945)

One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (22 May 1925)
Published in Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (1945).