Will > Will's Quotes

“Justice without compassion isn't justice; it's an abattoir.”
― Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness

“Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party – though they are quite numerous – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of justice, but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.”
― Rosa Luxemburg

“I love a lot of people, understand none of them...”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“白鳥は
哀しからずや
空の青
海のあをにも
染まずただよふ

Shiratori wa
kanashikarazu ya
Sora no ao
umi no ao ni mo
somazu tadayou

Does not a white bird
Feel within her heart forlorn?
The blue of the sky
The blue of the sea. Neither
Stains her, between them she floats.”
― Bokusui Wakayama

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”
― Wole Soyinka

“Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“The State became the master. The national element moved from the realm of form to the realm of content; it became what was most central and essential, turning the socialist element into a mere wrapping, a verbal husk, an empty shell. Thus was made manifest, with tragic clarity, a sacred law of life: Human freedom stands above everything. There is no end in the world for the sake of which it is permissible to sacrifice human freedom.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows