Kaltra > Kaltra's Quotes

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these: a) Anything can happen to anyone. and b) It is best to be prepared.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”
― Carl Sagan

“The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”
― Albert Camus, La peste

“The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?"

"You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Tholukuthi with what she now knew of her mother's past, of April 18, 1983, Destiny finally understood, and with a gutting clarity, that all that time, her mother wasn't really ironing clothes or material but was rather ironing some parts of herself.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“The Savage nodded, frowning. "You got rid of them. Yes, that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether 'tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows or outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them...But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy."

..."What you need," the Savage went on, "is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Everyone's way of life was tied to the viewpoint of others. A general tone of acceptance was needed to navigate the world as a permissible citizen.”
― P.B. Flower, i$UBSCRIBE

“Tholukuthi through these tales we learned there were in fact many untold narratives that were left out of the Seat of Power's tales of the nation, that were excluded from Jidada's great books of history. That the nation's stories of glory were far from being the whole truth, and that sometimes the Seat of Power's truths were actually half-truths and mistruths as well as deliberate erasures. Which in turn made us understand the importance not only of narrating our own stories, our own truths, but of writing them down as well so they were not taken from us, never altered, tholukuthi never erased, never forgotten.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“These animals represented some of Jidada’s Chosen Ones, and were indeed proof of the Father of the Nation’s benevolence, for most of them had been made rich by His Excellency, if not directly, then through some kind of connection to him. They were proud recipients of gifts of land, businesses, tenders, government loans that didn’t need repaying, inheritors of confiscated farms, grantees of mines, industries, and all kinds of riches.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“And I’ll tell you all right now that the one thing, if I’ve learned one useful thing in ruling and ruling and ruling, is that nowhere else does the power of any regime, no matter how tyrannical, lie than in the fear of the multitudes! I promise you once the governed lose their fear, then it’s absolutely game over for the regime!”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“She’d learn too that not only were they breathing fiascoes with no love or respect whatsoever for the nation they purported to serve, yes, tholukuthi toads with no leadership, no ethics, no principles, no sense of justice, no compassion, no discipline, no honesty, no idea of what real service to the nation looked like, but they were also no better than the very oppressors they’d replaced. Still, knowing all these things about the Old Horse and the Seat of Power, was the First Femal worried? Disappointed? Heartbroken? Tholukuthi no.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“Yes, so I’m told by those who know about things that you give degrees over there and I’m surprised you haven’t thought to give me one yet like you don’t know who I am when everybody else is busy giving me all sorts of things—land, mines, businesses, whatever I want, I get.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“I mean the terrible roads that kill people, the potholes, the broken sewer systems, the decrepit hospitals, the decrepit schools, the decrepit industrial sector, the decrepit rail system, or should I say a generally decrepit infrastructure.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“All my life I’d heard said this thing about tears—that they are a language, that they do indeed speak.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“A guy needs somebody―to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray