If we don't stop somewhere, if we don't accept an unhappy compromise, unhappy for both sides, if we don't learn how to unhappily coexist and contain our burned sense of injustice - if we don't learn how to do that, we end up in a doomed state.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of accepting compromises to avoid a detrimental state of conflict.
Amos Oz emphasizes the necessity of navigating conflicts through acceptance and compromise. He suggests that failing to find a way to coexist amid disagreements leads to a deteriorating situation for all parties involved. By learning to accept and manage our sense of injustice, we can avoid the doom that comes from unresolved tensions.
In practice
During a team meeting to resolve issues, I quoted Amos Oz to emphasize the need for compromise.
When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf-life in some corner on an out-of-the-way library somehwere in Reykjavik, Valladolid or Vancouver.
Two children of same cruel parent look at one another and see in each other the image of the cruel parent or the image of their past oppressor. This is very much the case between Jew and Arab: It's a conflict between two victims.
Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.
Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.
I have seen for the first time in 100 years of conflict, the two peoples - the Israeli people and the Palestinian people - are ahead of their leaderships.
She had not wanted him to but had let him have his way because ever since she was a child she had generally yielded before anyone with strong willpower, especially if it was a man, not because she was naturally submissive, but because strong male willpower gave her a feeling of safety and trust, together with acceptance and a desire to give in.
Where both reason and experience fall short, there occurs a vacuum that can be filled by faith.
I hate the word homophobia. It's not a phobia. You are not scared. You are an asshole.
The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government
Bras are a ludicrous invention; but if you make bralessness a rule, you're just subjecting yourself to yet another repression.
If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
There is an ultimate wildness in all this, for the universe, as existence itself, is a terrifying as well as a benign mode of being. If it grants us amazing powers over much of its functioning we must always remember that any arrogance on our part will ultimately be called to account. The beginning of wisdom in any human activity is a certain reverence before the primordial mystery of existence, for the world about us is a fearsome mode of being. We do not judge the universe.
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