When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day β but by the minute.
Iris ChangRead
The spoken word vanished with the wind. Likewise, the unrecorded life disappears as if it never existed.
Interpretation
Our spoken words and unrecorded lives fade away, leaving little trace behind.
Iris Chang's quote emphasizes the impermanence of spoken communication and lived experiences that are not documented. It highlights the importance of recording our lives and words, suggesting that without preservation, our existence may ultimately be forgotten, much like whispers carried away by the wind.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a speech about the importance of writing and documenting personal stories.
When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day β but by the minute.
Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.
For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.
Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it's hard to find out when one slides into another.
Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.
The mind of man is continuously unfolding into a greater recognition of its real plan in the creative order of the Universe.
Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
I believe that a guarantee of public access to government information is indispensable in the long run for any democratic society.... if officials make public only what they want citizens to know, then publicity becomes a sham and accountability meaningless.
There's a very good reason for why economics developed the way it did, and that is that in many situations, the assumption that people will exploit the opportunities available to them is very plausible, and it simplifies the analysis of how markets will behave.
Are you acquainted with the mood of mind in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat licking its kitten on the rug before you, you would watch the operation so intently that puss's neglect of one ear would put you seriously out of temper?
If we are not represented, we are slaves.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.