Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction.
Rebecca SolnitRead
Violence always seems to me the worst form of tyranny. It deprives people of their rights, including the right to live.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Violence undermines individual rights and freedoms, notably the fundamental right to life.
In this quote, Rebecca Solnit emphasizes the severe consequences of violence, arguing that it represents a profound oppression that strips individuals of their essential rights, with the most critical being the right to life itself. By labeling violence as the worst form of tyranny, she suggests that it not only affects the immediate victims but also impacts the social fabric, creating a climate of fear and helplessness that undermines freedom and dignity for all.
Themes
ViolenceTyrannyRightsFreedomOppression
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at a human rights conference might use this quote to highlight the importance of non-violent resistance.
More from Rebecca Solnit
All quotes βI still think the revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small.
Rebecca SolnitRead
We have a real role in how our own collective lives, our nation, and our world and society turn out. Seizing those opportunities is important, and disasters are sometimes one of those opportunities.
Rebecca SolnitRead
If sorrow and beauty are all tied up together, then perhaps maturity brings with it not what Nabhan calls abstraction, but an aesthetic sense that partially redeems the losses time brings and finds beauty in the faraway.
Rebecca SolnitRead
The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.
Rebecca SolnitRead
Cities have always offered anonymity, variety, and conjunction, qualities best basked in by walking: one does not have to go into the bakery or the fortune-teller's, only to know that one might. A city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination.
Rebecca SolnitRead
Similar quotes
Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger. We were strangers once, too.
Barack ObamaRead
A man develops a subtle power as a result of the strict observance of celibacy for twelve years. Then he can understand and grasp very subtle things which otherwise elude his intellect. Through that understanding the aspirant can have direct vision of God. That pure understanding alone enables him to realize Truth.
RamakrishnaRead
Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others.
Michel De CerteauRead
We begin from the recognition that all beings cherish happiness and do not want suffering. It then becomes both morally wrong and pragmatically unwise to pursue only one's own happiness oblivious to the feelings and aspirations of all others who surround us as members of the same human family. The wiser course is to think of others when pursuing our own happiness.
Dalai LamaRead
What do you call it when someone steals someone else's money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice.
Thomas SowellRead
In prayerful silence you must look into your own heart. No one can tell you better than yourself what comes between you and God. Ask yourself. Then listen!
Johannes TaulerRead