“What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold their knife and fork.”
“We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.”
“the impossibility of being human all too human this breathing in and out out and in these punks these cowards these champions these mad dogs of glory moving this little bit of light toward us impossibly.”
“Change is one of the scariest things in the world and yet it is also one of those variables of human existence that no one can avoid.”
“For a Westerner, it is usually sufficient for a proposition to be logically sound. For a Chinese it is not sufficient that a proposition be logically correct, but it must be at the same time in accord with human nature.”
“Within Hobbes’ depiction of the motives for conflict. . . there is a problematic in which the grave threat that human beings pose to other human beings is not constituted simply by the structures of human passions, interests, and desires, nor by the addition of a self-deceptive and egotistical desire for recognition and proof of one’s perhaps illusory power. In this moment, it is the very rationality of other humans, reason in the broad sense, understood as roughly equal to oneself in both capacity and structure, that poses such a threat”
“Humankind spends so much time admiring and ritualizing the inventions of humankind! And yet humankind is such a tiny part of all there is. -- Nigel S. Hey, Wonderment(Matador, 2012)”
“To believe that man’s aggressiveness or territoriality is in the nature of the beast is to mistake some men for all men, contemporary society for all possible societies, and, by a remarkable transformation, to justify what is as what needs must be; social repression becomes a response to, rather than a cause of, human violence. Pessimism about man serves to maintain the status quo. It is a luxury for the affluent, a sop to the guilt of the politically inactive, a comfort to those who continue to enjoy the amenities of privilege.”
“Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, We ve always done it this way. I try to fight that. That s why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.”
“He wondered at the atrocities human kind was capable of committing. The majority of those housed below were ill, mentally or physically, not witches. Most were poor victims--the outcasts of society; or the opposite, people so blessed, others coveted their lives.”
“I ve an insatiable craving inside me that consumes everything and makes me regard the sufferings and joys of others only in their relationship to me, as food to sustain my spiritual powers. I am no longer capable of loosing my head in love, Ambition has been crushed in me by circumstances, but it has come out in another way, for ambition is nothing but a lust for power and my chief delight is to dominate those around me. To inspire in others love, devotion, fear - isn t that the first symptom and the supreme triumph of power? To cause another person suffering or joy, having no right to do so - isn t that the sweetest food of pride?”
“Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence.”