Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?
Octavia E. ButlerRead
Most of us, if we're not careful, tend to dehumanize the enemy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote warns against losing our humanity by viewing opponents as mere objects rather than individuals.
Octavia E. Butler highlights a common psychological tendency to dehumanize those we consider as enemies. This behavior can lead to justification of actions against them and a loss of empathy, ultimately eroding our moral compass and understanding of the shared humanity that exists even in adversarial relationships.
Themes
DehumanizationEnemyEmpathyHumanityUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about promoting peace and understanding in conflict zones.
More from Octavia E. Butler
All quotes βI don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
My characters hope for better lives.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.
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When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
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It's not that humans and non-humans are identical... but the lack of understanding that led to the slave trade is the same lack of understanding many people have about animals today. When slaves were brought over from Africa, many people believed they were not humans, that they didn't have feelings. Many people believe that primates and other animals don't have feelings, too, but they do.
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Every morning you put on your clothes to cover your nakedness and protect your body from inclement weather. Why don't you also clothe your soul with the garment of faith? Remember each morning the truths of your creed, and look at yourself in the mirror of your faith. Otherwise, your soul will soon be naked with the nakedness of oblivion.
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The State is the curse of the individual... The State must go! That will be a revolution which will find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing.
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We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.
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I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.
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Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.
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