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Weapons Are Like Money; No One Knows The Meaning Of Enough.
-Martin Amis
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Weapons Are Like Money;

Martin Amis
...
Weapons Are Like Money; No One Knows The Meaning Of Enough.

Understanding the Quote: "weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough...."

This quote by Martin Amis reflects deeply on the theme of weapons. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Weapons, Enough, Arms Race, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Martin Amis interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Martin Amis

Martin Amis is celebrated for insightful thoughts on weapons and enough. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Weapons
Enough
Arms Race
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Fiction
Crank
He Was An Artist When He Saw Society: It Never Crossed His Mind That Society Had To Be Like This; Had Any Right, Had Any Business Being Like This. A Car In The Street. Why? Why Cars? This Is What An Artist Has To Be: Harassed To The Point Of Insanity Or Stupefaction By First Principles.
Artist
Car
Insanity
Who Would Want The Socialist Utopia? Especially If You Were At All Artistic - You Want All Those Inequalities, Because That's What Makes Life Interesting.
Interesting
Want
Artistic
On Any Longer View, Man Is Only Fitfully Committed To The Rational -- To Thinking, Seeing, Learning, Knowing. Believing Is What He's Really Proud Of.
Believe
Men
Thinking
The Uruguayans Have A Sort Of Purity. I Don't Know Where They Got It, And I Doubt Even If They Know From Where They Got It. Perhaps They Didn't Kill Off Their Major Population.
Doubt
Purity
When You’ve Lost All Your Play, Guess What Love Becomes. Work. Work That Gets Harder Every Hour.
Play
Hours
Lost
People Are Always Talking On Their Phones, Or Looking At Their Phones, Because They Don't Want To Be Alone With Their Thoughts.
Phones
Talking
People
Your Heart Becomes Gangrenous In Your Body When You Go Against Your Talent.
Heart
Body
Talent
You Get The Feeling That Childhood Does Not Last As Long As It Used To. Innocence Gets Harder To Hold On To As The World Gets Older, As It Accumulates More Experience, More Mileage And More Blood On The Tracks.
Blood
Long
Track
Unless I Specifically Inform You Otherwise, I'm Always Smoking Another Cigarette.
Smoking
Cigarette
Sometimes I Feel That Life Is Passing Me By, Not Slowly Either, But With Ropes Of Steam And Spark - Spattered Wheels And A Hoarse Roar Of Power Or Terror. It's Passing, Yet I'm The One Who's Doing All The Moving.
Time
Moving
Sparks
Weapons Are Like Money; No One Knows The Meaning Of Enough.
Weapons
Enough
Arms Race
I Always Do My Draft In Long Hand Because Even The Ink Is Part Of The Flow.
Writing
Hands
Long
I Am, Incidentally, The Only Writer To Have Received The Somerset Maugham Award Twice - The First Time For My First Novel, The Second Time For My Second First Novel.
Awards
Firsts
First Time
Love Might Have Expanded Her. But We Are Not All Of Us Going To Get Loved. We Are Not All Of Us Going To Get Expanded.
Might
When Communism Failed, It Wasn't A Good Idea That Had Gone Wrong, It Was A Bad Idea That Had Been Sustained With Incredible Determination In The Face Of All The Commonsense Arguments, And At The Cost Of 20 Million Lives At Least, In Russia, To Build The Socialist Utopia.
Determination
Russia
Ideas
Belief Is Otiose; Reality Is Sufficiently Awesome As It Stands.
Reality
Belief
Dickens Is A Much Misunderstood And Mis-approached Writer, In That He Tends To Be Read, Particularly In The Twentieth Century, As A Social Commentator - Like The Great Victorians, A Realist In His Way. But He Isn't At All Like That. His Genre Is Actually More Like A Fairy Tale - Weird Transformations, Long Voyages From Which People Come Back Altered, Parental Mysteries, Semi-magical Twists.
Genre Is
Long
People
Only In Art Will The Lion Lie Down With The Lamb, And The Rose Grow Without Thorn.
Art
Lying
Rose
Don't Dumb Down; Always Write For Your Top Five Percent Of Readers.
Writing
Dumb
Reader
All Novelists Write In A Different Way, But I Always Write In Longhand And Then Do Two Versions Of Typescript On A Computer.
Writing
Two
Novelists
Life Is Made Of Fear. Some People Eat Fear Soup Three Times A Day. Some People Eat Fear Soup All The Meals There Are. I Eat It Sometimes. When They Bring Me Fear Soup To Eat, I Try Not To Eat It, I Try To Send It Back. But Sometimes I'm Too Afraid To And Have To Eat It Anyway.
Fear
People
Trying
The Universe Is A Million Billion Light-years Wide, And Every Inch Of It Would Kill You If You Went There. This Is The Position Of The Universe With Regards To Human Life.
Light
Years
Inches
You Can Kill Time In A Number Of Ways But It Always Depends On The Kind Of Time You're Fighting: Some Time Is Unkillable, Immortal
Time
Fighting
Numbers
The True Manipulator Never Has A Reputation For Manipulating.
Reputation
True Man
Manipulator
Your Purpose When Driving Is Not To Arrive At Your Destination Safely Or Quickly. Your Purpose When Driving Is...to Impress Your Personality On The Road.
Personality
Purpose
Driving
It Sounds Schmaltzy To Say, But Fiction Is Much More To Do With Love Than People Admit Or Acknowledge. The Novelist Has To Not Only Love His Characters - Which You Do, Without Even Thinking About It, Just As You Love Your Children. But Also To Love The Reader, And That's What I Mean By The Pleasure Principle.
Children
Love You
Character
I Had My Yob Periods. Nothing Violent But Certainly Loutish. I Think It's Frustrated Intelligence. Imagine That If You Were Really Intelligent And Everyone Treated You As Though You Were Stupid And No One Tried To Teach You Anything -- The Sort Of Deep Subliminal Rage That Would Get Going In You. But Then Once It Gets Going, You Make A Strength Out Of What You Know Is Your Weakness, Which Is That You Are Undeveloped.
Stupid
Intelligent
Thinking
Every Writer Hopes Or Boldly Assumes That His Life Is In Some Sense Exemplary, That The Particular Will Turn Out To Be Universal.
Writing
Assuming
Life Is
Probably Human Cruelty Is Fixed And Eternal. Only Styles Change.
Style
Fixed
Cruelty
People Look At Fame And Feel Deprived If They Haven't Got It, Feeling That This Is A Basic, Almost A Human Right, A Civil Right. And Also Feel The Same Way About Wealth, I Suppose - Why Haven't I Got It?
People
Feelings
Looks
Very Broadly, Literature Concerns Itself With The Internal, Cinema With The External.
Cinema
Literature
Concern
Bullets Cannot Be Recalled. They Cannot Be Uninvented. But They Can Be Taken Out Of The Gun.
Peace
Military
Taken
If You Want To Know The Real Meaning Of Pornography, It Is The Utter Dissociation Of Love And Sex, The Banishment Of Love From The Sexual Arena.
Sex
Real
Want
It Used To Be Said, Not So Long Ago, That Every Suicide Gave Satan Special Pleasure. I Don't Think That's True-unless It Isn't True Either That The Devil Is A Gentleman. If The Devil Has No Class At All, Then Okay, I Agree: He Gets A Bang Out Of Suicide. Because Suicide Is A Mess. As A Subject For Study, Suicide Is Perhaps Uniquely Incoherent. And The Act Itself Is Without Shape And Without Form. The Human Project Implodes, Contorts Inward-shameful, Infantile, Writhing, Gesturing. It's A Mess In There.
Suicide
Thinking
Long Ago
Perhaps There Are Other Bits Of My Life That Would Take On Content, Take On Shadow, If Only I Read More And Thought Less About Money.
Shadow
Bits
Ifs
It's Becoming Clearer And Clearer To Me That The World Is There To Be Celebrated By Writers, And In Fact This Is What All The Good Ones Do, And That The Great Fashion For Gloom And Grimness Was In Fact A False Path That Certain Writers Took, I Think In Response To The Horrors Of The First Half Of The Twentieth Century.
Fashion
Thinking
Half
I Am, Incidentally, The Only Writer To Have Received The Somerset Maugham Award Twice - The First Time For My First Novel, The Second Time For My Second First Novel.
Awards
Firsts
First Time
You Use A Different Part Of Your Heart With Girls.
Girl
Heart
Different
Saul Bellow Says, Funny Enough, What French Think Of Your Work Is Tremendously Important. And It Is. It's More Than What The Italians, The Spanish, And The Germans Think. Somehow It's Still Got That Cultural Primacy. I Feel That Too: To Get Praised In France Is Better Than To Get Praised Anywhere Else.
Thinking
Important
Enough
You Can't Sort Of Write The Novel As If You're Taking Dictation From Heaven.
Writing
Heaven
Novel
When It Comes To Flying, I Am A Nervous Passenger But A Confident Drinker And Valium-swallower.
Flying
Aviation
Nervous
The First Thing That Distinguishes A Writer Is That He Is Most Alive When Alone.
Alive
Firsts
For Both Of Us, I Think, It Had To Do With Our Weakened Power To Love. It Is Strange That Enslavement Should Have That Effect – Not Just The Fantastic Degradation, Not Just The Fear And The Boredom And All The Rest, But Also The Layered Injustice, The Silent Injustice. So All Right. We’re Back Where We Started. To You, Nothing – From You, Everything. They Took It From Me, It Seems, For No Reason, Other Than That I Value It So Much.
Thinking
Should Have
Boredom
Egotism Exists Everywhere, But It Has A Different Flavor In England, Where The Tabloid Culture Goes Much Deeper. It's Just The Indulgence Of Vulgarity, The Wallowing In Vulgarity. As With Everything English, There's A Sort Of Irony To It. They Write A Great Deal About These Trivial People Who Have A Certain Eminence, Always With A Bit Of, "isn't It Ridiculous That We Are Writing About This Person?"
Writing
People
Different
The Middle Class Is Doing Fine In Fiction. But It's Not What Gets Me Going. I Love The Working Class, And Everyone From It I've Met, And Think They're Incredibly Witty, Inventive - There's A Lot Of Poetry There.
Witty
Thinking
Class
Sex Was Like Disneyland To Her: An Allotment Of Organized Wonders And Legal Mischief.
Sex
Wonder
Allotments
Very Broadly, Literature Concerns Itself With The Internal, Cinema With The External.
Cinema
Literature
Concern
The Egotism Of People Who Are Eminent Without Being In The Least Distinguished And Somehow Feeling That's Their Due - That Seems To Me To Be A Peculiarly English Phenomenon.
People
Feelings
Egotism
If You Feel You Have A Strong Constituency Among The Young, You Can Really Die Happy, Because The Great Unanswered Question, The Only Valid Value Judgment Is Whether You're Going To Last, And That Tells You That You Are, For A Bit At Least.
Strong
Unanswered Questions
Lasts
Often It Doesn't Occur To You What Kind Of Novel You're Writing Until Quite Late On.
Writing
Kind
Late
Every 10 Years You're A Different Person, And The Really Great Books Evolve With You As You Get Older. They're Full Of New Rewards.
Book
Years
Different
I Say The Sentences Again And Again In My Head Until They Sound Right.
Writing
Sound
Again And Again
It Is Terrible To See Someone Being Beaten Up By The English Language.
Language
Terrible
English Language
When I Hear About Some Sensational New Writer I Sort Of Think, Shut Up ... You've Got To Be Around For A Long Time Before You Can Really Say You're A Writer. You've Got To Stand The Test Of Time, Which Is The Only Real Test There Is.
Real
Thinking
Long
Everyone Is Right Up There At The Very Brink Of Their Pain Limit.
Pain
Limits
My Friendship With The Hitch Has Always Been Perfectly Cloudless. It Is A Love Whose Month Is Ever May.
May
Months
My Friendship
It's Without Doubt My Main Subject. The Way Masculinity Can Go Wrong. And I'm Something Of A Gynocrat In A Utopian Kind Of Way.
Doubt
Way
Kind
When Success Happens To An English Writer, He Acquires A New Typewriter. When Success Happens To An American Writer, He Acquires A New Life.
Typewriters
New Life
Happens
When The Past Is Forgotten, The Present Is Unforgettable
Past
Forgotten
Unforgettable
This (writing) Is The Love Of Your Life. It's What I Want To Do When I Wake Up. Nothing Feels So Absorbing, So Fulfilling.
Writing
Wake Up
Want
The Future Could Go This Way, That Way. The Future's Futures Have Never Looked So Rocky. Don't Put Money On It. Take My Advice And Stick To The Present. It's The Real Stuff, The Only Stuff, It's All There Is, The Present, The Panting Present.
Real
Advice
Stuff
Like Fundamentalist Judaism And Medieval Christianity, Islam Is Totalist. That Is To Say, It Makes A Total Claim On The Individual.
Islam
Christianity
Medieval
Being Inoffensive, And Being Offended, Are Now The Twin Addictions Of The Culture.
Addiction
Culture
Twins
It's Hard To Make Progress With Grief.
Grief
Progress
Hard
He Didn't Want To Please His Readers. He Wanted To Stretch Them Until They Twanged.
Want
Reader
Please
Fiction Is The Only Way To Redeem The Formlessness Of Life
Fiction
Way
Everyone Is Right Up There At The Very Brink Of Their Pain Limit.
Pain
Limits
Probably Human Cruelty Is Fixed And Eternal. Only Styles Change.
Style
Fixed
Cruelty
It Used To Be Said That By A Certain Age A Man Had The Face That He Deserved. Nowadays, He Has The Face He Can Afford.
Men
Age
Faces
It's Interesting When You're Doing Signing Sessions With Other Writers And You Look At The Queues At Each Table And You Can See Definite Human Types Gathering There.... My Queue Is Always Full Of, You Know, Wild-eyed Sleazebags And People Who Stare At Me Very Intensely, As If I Have Some Particular Message For Them. As If I Must Know That They've Been Reading Me, That This Dyad Or Symbiosis Of Reader And Writer Has Been So Intense That I Must Somehow Know About It.
Reading
People
Interesting
Money Doesn't Mind If We Say It's Evil, It Goes From Strength To Strength. It's A Fiction, An Addiction, And A Tacit Conspiracy.
Evil
Addiction
Mind
They Did More Than Take Our Youth Away. They Also Took Away The Men We Were Going To Be.
Men
Youth
Tennis: The Most Perfect Combination Of Athleticism, Artistry, Power, Style, And Wit. A Beautiful Game, But One So Remorselessly Travestied By The Passage Of Time.
Beautiful
Games
Perfect
The Trouble With Life Is Its Amorphousness, Its Ridiculous Fluidity. Look At It: Thinly Plotted, Largely Themeless, Sentimental And Ineluctably Trite. The Dialogue Is Poor, Or At Least Violently Uneven. The Twists Are Either Predictable Or Sensationalist. And It’s Always The Same Beginning, And The Same Ending.
Twists
Looks
Fluidity
Life Is Made Of Fear. Some People Eat Fear Soup Three Times A Day. Some People Eat Fear Soup All The Meals There Are. I Eat It Sometimes. When They Bring Me Fear Soup To Eat, I Try Not To Eat It, I Try To Send It Back. But Sometimes I'm Too Afraid To And Have To Eat It Anyway.
Fear
People
Trying
This (writing) Is The Love Of Your Life. It's What I Want To Do When I Wake Up. Nothing Feels So Absorbing, So Fulfilling.
Writing
Wake Up
Want
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