We wait till now? Now, when we're old men, we get to be brave?
Ernest GainesRead
How do people come up with a date and a time to take life from another man? Who made them God?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions the morality of deciding who lives and dies.
Ernest Gaines's quote reflects on the profound ethical implications of taking a life, challenging the authority and moral righteousness of those who decide on matters of life and death. It calls into question the human tendency to assume god-like powers over others, provoking deep thought about justice, morality, and the inherent value of life.
Themes
MoralityLifeDeathJusticeEthicalAuthority
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a debate about the ethics of capital punishment.
More from Ernest Gaines
All quotes βI was raised by a lady that was crippled all her life but she did everything for me and she raised me. She washed our clothes, cooked our food, she did everything for us. I don't think I ever heard her complain a day in her life. She taught me responsibility towards my brother and sisters and the community.
Ernest GainesRead
...my heart may have been in it but my soul was not.
Ernest GainesRead
Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.
Ernest GainesRead
Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
Ernest GainesRead
The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.
Ernest GainesRead
Similar quotes
Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.
Eckhart TolleRead
We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.
J. R. R. TolkienRead
Of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil.
PlatoRead
We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions.
Ezekiel EmanuelRead
If the Constitution is adopted (and it was) the Union will be in fact and in theory an association of States or a Confederacy.
Alexander HamiltonRead
It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.
Walter LippmannRead