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Browsing Quotes With Tag: cruelty (2)

• The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence … by the good people.

  Speaker: Martin Luther King, Jr.
  Rating:

  1 (1 vote)
  Posted: 25 Sep 2009 at 7:51 AM
  Posted By: DailyActivist
  Comments: None... Be the first to comment!
  Tags: cruelty, oppression, silence

• “What characterizes the human race more,” Karla once asked me, “cruelty, or the capacity to feel shame for it?” I thought the question acutely clever then, when I first heard it, but I’m lonelier and wiser now, and I know it isn’t cruelty or shame that characterizes the human race. It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.

  Speaker: Gregory David Roberts
  Rating:

  0 (0 votes)
  Posted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:13 PM
  Posted By: Puck
  Comments: None... Be the first to comment!
  Tags: cruelty, forgiveness, hope, humanity, love, shame, shantaram

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• I have always been fascinated by the abnegation with which we human beings are capable of devoting a great deal of energy to the quest for nothing and to the rehashing of useless and absurd ideas. I spoke with a young doctoral candidate in Greek patristics and wondered how so much youth could be squandered in the service of nothingness. When you consider that a primate’s major preoccupations are sex, territory and hierarchy, spending one’s time reflecting on the meaning of prayer for Augustine of Hippo seems a relatively futile exercise.
  To be sure, there are those who will argue that mankind aspires to meaning beyond mere impulses. But I would counter that while this is certainly true (otherwise, what am I to do with literature?), it is also utterly false: meaning is merely another impulse, an impulse carried to the highest degree of achievement, in that it uses the most effective means – understanding – to attain its goals. For the quest for meaning abd beauty is hardly a sign that man has an elevated nature, that by leaving behind his animal impulses he will go on to find the justification of his existence in the enlightenment of the spirit: no, it is a primed weapon in the service of a trivial and material goal. And when the weapon becomes its own subject, this is the simple consequence of the specific neuronal wiring that distinguishes us from other animals; by allowing us to survive, the efficiency of intelligence also offers us the possibility of complexity without foundation, thought without usefulness, and beauty without purpose. It’s like a computer bug, a consequence without consequence of the subtlety of our cortex, a superfluous perversion making an utterly wasteful use of the means at our disposal.

  Speaker: Muriel Barbery
  Source: the Elegance of the Hedgehog
  Rating:

  1 (1 vote)
  Posted: 25 Jun 2009 at 8:12 AM
  Posted By: Puck
  Comments: None... Be the first to comment!
  Tags: humanity, intellectualism, meaning, philosophy
  Shared By: 2 members; sdressfancy, Puck

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