Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.
Desmond TutuRead
It was both odd and unjust, a real example of pitiful arbitrariness of existance, that you were born into a particular time & held prisoner there whether you wanted it or not. It gave you an indecent advantage over the past and made you a clown vis-a-vis the future.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the arbitrary nature of time and existence, highlighting how our place in time affects our perspective.
The quote by Daniel Kehlmann expresses the idea that being born into a specific era is both fortunate and limiting. It emphasizes the randomness and unfairness of existence, suggesting that our time and environment shape our advantages and limitations in relation to both the past and the future. We are prisoners of our own time, and this confinement can make us feel either privileged or foolish when considering what has come before and what is yet to come.
Themes
TimeExistenceArbitrarinessPerspectiveAdvantage
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on philosophy, this quote can illustrate the complexities of existence and temporal perception.
Similar quotes
When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do.
Jaron LanierRead
I have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don't have regular anything. I have a timetable, but no routine.
Lucian FreudRead
The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence--but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
The common element in all the special forms of contemplation is the loving, yearning, affirming bent toward that happiness which is the same as God Himself, and which is the aim and purpose of all that happens in the world.
Josef PieperRead
Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.
AristotleRead