You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that humans can be more dangerous than wild animals, emphasizing the inherent flaws in human nature.
Yann Martel's quote points to the ironic truth that, while animals in a zoo are often perceived as dangerous, it is humans who possess the capacity for greater malice and destruction. The assertion compels us to reflect on our own nature and the potential harm we can inflict on ourselves and the world around us, suggesting that our intellect and emotions can lead to more severe consequences than wild instincts.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about human impact on nature, one might say, 'We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man' to emphasize humanity's destructive potential.
More from Yann Martel
All quotes βCome aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it's a sad view.
Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.
The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.
I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, thatβs their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
Similar quotes
The point is not that Jesus was a good guy who accepted everybody, and thus we should do the same (though that would be good). Rather, his teachings and behaviour reflect an alternative social vision. Jesus was not talking about how to be good and how to behave within the framework of a domination system. He was a critic of the domination system itself.
To be free . . . to walk the good American earth as equal citizens, to live without fear, to enjoy the fruits of our toil, to give our children every opportunity in life--that dream which we have held so long in our hearts is today the destiny that we hold in our hands.
For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.
We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?
The Bible is not a script for a funeral service, but it is the record of God always bringing life where we expected to find death. Everywhere it is the story of resurrection.
If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?