More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is the plight of every child to have depth their parents can scarcely imagine. But, oh, how I long to be understood.
In the mortal age, death could not be bargained with. It had to be the same for scythes.
They were so focused on the act of killing, they couldn’t comprehend what went into the act of dying.
You may laugh when I tell you this, but I resent my own perfection. Humans learn from their mistakes. I cannot. I make no mistakes.
Tyger might have thought of himself as a free spirit, but he wasn’t at all. He just defined the dimensions of his own cage.
Simply put, humanity had a need to be bad. Not everyone, of course—but I calculated that 3 percent of the population could only find meaning in life through defiance. Even if there was no injustice in the world left to defy, they had an innate need to defy something. Anything.
Of course, very few of the jobs are necessary, since they could all be accomplished by machines—but the illusion of purpose is critical to a well-adjusted population.
They conformed so closely to their culture of nonconformity that there was a uniformity to them, defeating the whole purpose.
While freedom gives rise to growth and enlightenment, permission allows evil to flourish in a light of day that would otherwise destroy it.
An arrogant head of state gives permission to all nature of hate as long as it feeds his ambition. And the unfortunate truth is, people devour it. Society gorges itself, and rots. Permission is the bloated corpse of freedom.
