We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. ("X")
Interpretation
The quote reflects on humanity's desensitization to violence and suffering.
Yevgeny Zamyatin's quote suggests that society has become so numb to the brutality and loss of life around us that we have developed emotional calluses. This desensitization signifies a disturbing acceptance of violence, indicating a need for deep reflection on our values and consciousness.
In practice
Discussing the importance of empathy in a community meeting.
The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.
Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most important thing is - to bloom. (βA Story About The Most Important Thingβ)
A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth reading.
Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.
Veganism has given me a higher level of awareness and spirituality, primary because the energy associated with eating has shifted to other areas. If youβre violent to yourself by putting [harmful] things into your body that violate its spirit, it will be difficult not to perpetuate that [violence] onto someone else.
Isn't it the sweetest mockery to mock our enemies?
I think the O.J. Simpson trial was a revelation about the ongoing patterns of racial difference in American society.
It's impossible to be ethnically pure.
To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight
Sometimes I am convinced there is nothing wrong with this country that couldn't be cured by the magical implantation of ethical standards on us all - leaders and followers. Until that becomes doable, the Center for Public Integrity is just about the best thing we have going for us.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.