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Top 20 Alasdair Gray Quotes (2025 Update)

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.”

1. “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having.”

2. “Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “I distrust speech therapy. Words are the language of lies and evasions. Music cannot lie. Music talks to the heart.”

3. “I distrust speech therapy. Words are the language of lies and evasions. Music cannot lie. Music talks to the heart.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “You suffer from the oldest delusion in politics. You think you can change the world by talking to a leader. Leaders are the effects, not the causes of changes.”

4. “You suffer from the oldest delusion in politics. You think you can change the world by talking to a leader. Leaders are the effects, not the causes of changes.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he’s already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn’t been used by an artist, not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively.”

5. “Think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he’s already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn’t been used by an artist, not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “She also said the wicked people needed love as much as good people and were much better at it.”

6. “She also said the wicked people needed love as much as good people and were much better at it.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Movement turns dead dogs into maggots and daisies, and flour butter sugar an egg and a tablespoon of milk into Abernethy biscuits, and spermatozoa and ovaries into fishy little plants growing babyward if we take no care to stop them.”

7. “Movement turns dead dogs into maggots and daisies, and flour butter sugar an egg and a tablespoon of milk into Abernethy biscuits, and spermatozoa and ovaries into fishy little plants growing babyward if we take no care to stop them.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “But I do enjoy words – some words for their own sake! Words like river, and dawn, and daylight, and time. These words seem much richer than our experiences of the things they represent –.”

8. “But I do enjoy words – some words for their own sake! Words like river, and dawn, and daylight, and time. These words seem much richer than our experiences of the things they represent –.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “I don’t think anybody should read anything except for fun because you won’t learn anything unless you enjoy it.”

9. “I don’t think anybody should read anything except for fun because you won’t learn anything unless you enjoy it.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “The world is only improved by people who do ordinary jobs and refuse to be bullied.”

10. “The world is only improved by people who do ordinary jobs and refuse to be bullied.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Dear God I am tired. It is late. Writing like Shakespeare is hard work for a woman with a cracked head who cannot spell properly.”

11. “Dear God I am tired. It is late. Writing like Shakespeare is hard work for a woman with a cracked head who cannot spell properly.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “I’m afraid you’ll have to take up art. Art is the only work open to people who can’t get along with others and still want to be special.”

12. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take up art. Art is the only work open to people who can’t get along with others and still want to be special.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “When a thing is perfect it is eternal. It can be destroyed afterward, or slowly decay, but its perfection is safe in the past, which is the only inevitable part of the universe.”

13. “When a thing is perfect it is eternal. It can be destroyed afterward, or slowly decay, but its perfection is safe in the past, which is the only inevitable part of the universe.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “I ought to have more love before I die. I’ve not had enough.”

14. “I ought to have more love before I die. I’ve not had enough.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music hall song and a few bad novels.”

15. “Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music hall song and a few bad novels.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Life becomes a habit. You get up, dress, eat, go tae work, clock in etcetera etcetera automatically, and think about nothing but the pay packet on Friday and the booze-up last Saturday. Life’s easy when you’re a robot.”

16. “Life becomes a habit. You get up, dress, eat, go tae work, clock in etcetera etcetera automatically, and think about nothing but the pay packet on Friday and the booze-up last Saturday. Life’s easy when you’re a robot.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Are there many people without illness or disability who sit at home in the evening with clenched fists, continually changing the channel of a television set and wishing they had the courage to roll over the parapet of a high bridge? I bet there are millions of us.”

17. “Are there many people without illness or disability who sit at home in the evening with clenched fists, continually changing the channel of a television set and wishing they had the courage to roll over the parapet of a high bridge? I bet there are millions of us.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “But leaders need to be mostly dead. People want solid monuments to cling to, not confused men like themselves.”

18. “But leaders need to be mostly dead. People want solid monuments to cling to, not confused men like themselves.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “He watched them with the passionate regret with which he saw them play football or go to dances: the activity itself did not interest, but the power to share it would have made him less apart.”

19. “He watched them with the passionate regret with which he saw them play football or go to dances: the activity itself did not interest, but the power to share it would have made him less apart.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Glasgow is still full of churches built in the last century. Half of them have been turned into warehouses.”

20. “Glasgow is still full of churches built in the last century. Half of them have been turned into warehouses.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Truth and goodness do not depend on me, Bell. I am too weak. I am as poor a thing as General Blessington. Prepare to despise both of us.”

21. “Truth and goodness do not depend on me, Bell. I am too weak. I am as poor a thing as General Blessington. Prepare to despise both of us.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “Many lives and limbs have been lost, McCandless, by excluding women from the more intricate medical arts.”

22. “Many lives and limbs have been lost, McCandless, by excluding women from the more intricate medical arts.”

— Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Quote: “You pessimists always fall into the disillusion trap,” said the cheerful man cheerfully. “From one distance a thing looks bright. From another it looks dark. You think you’ve found the truth when you’ve replaced the cheerful view by the opposite, but true profundity blends all possible views, bright as well as dark.”

23. “You pessimists always fall into the disillusion trap,” said the cheerful man cheerfully. “From one distance a thing looks bright. From another it looks dark. You think you’ve found the truth when you’ve replaced the cheerful view by the opposite, but true profundity blends all possible views, bright as well as dark.”

— Alasdair Gray

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