Radiah > Radiah's Quotes

“The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system--whether political, religious or economic--that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain "indicator species" of plants and birds, torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections.”
― Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

“protected businesses never, never become competitive ... Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, Blackwater and all other U.S. corporations that were in Iraq to take advantage of the reconstruction were part of a vast protectionist racket whereby the U.S. government had created their markets with war, barred their competitors from even entering the race, then paid them to do the work, while guaranteeing them a profit to boot - all at taxpayer expense.”
― Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

“Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves.”
― Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

“Life is worth living and no matter what it throws at you it is important to keep your eyes on the prize of the happiness that will come. Even when the Death Railway reduced us to little more than animals, humanity in the shape of our saintly medical officers triumphed over barbarism.

Remember, while it always seems darkest before the dawn, perseverance pays off and the good times will return.”
― Alistair Urquhart, The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East

“I knew people were dying around me on the railway but I didn't really want to know. It was too dispiriting. It was difficult to judge the full toll of casualties and by this stage I had become so self-obsessed, in a true mental battle just to get through each day. I had very few friends at Hellfire Pass and most of us were the same. We all worked so hard that, just trying to survive, each person became more and more insular as it became more difficult. It required a superhuman effort to make it to the end of each day.”
― Alistair Urquhart, The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East

“I could soon see outlines of people in the water in the distance, all of them covered in oil. I had no way to know who they were, whether Japanese or POWs. It was easy to mistake a Japanese for one of my own. I made up my mind that if it came down to me or a Japanese, he would be going to meet his ancestors.”
― Alistair Urquhart, The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific

“I was so burned and emaciated and ill that I staggered through the streets like a drunk. Some of the locals turned their backs on this terrible procession but others jeered and spat at us. I was past caring. There must have been at least a hundred of us, and then came an incredible and inspiring episode. As we stumbled along in the pouring rain someone started singing. It was ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, and slowly we all took up the song and joined in, singing a very rude version of the hit – complete with altered lyrics crudely deriding our Japanese captors. Even in this terrible condition and after all we had been through, my comrades, ravaged by exposure, naked and in slavery, were defiant, their spirits unbroken.”
― Alistair Urquhart, The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East

“How does one describe the feelings of a person who has been through something like we had, something no one could ever have envisaged? They could never comprehend the depths of man's inhumanity to man or the awfulness of an existence that consisted of surviving one day at a time.”
― Alistair Urquhart, The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“War always reaches the depths of horror because of idiots who perpetuate terror from generation to generation under the pretext of vengeance.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“A day came when I should have died,
and after than nothing seemed very important,
so I stayed as I am, without regret
separated from the normal human condition.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.”
― Rumi

“I had learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which derives from abstinence; the contentment of a full belly; the richness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecstasy of surrender when the craving of sleep becomes a torment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn.”
― Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands

“Bedu notice everything and forget nothing. Garrulous by nature, they reminisce endlessly, whiling away with the chatter the long marching hours, and talking late into the night round their camp fires. Their life is at all times desperately hard, and they are merciless critics of those who fall short in patience, good humour, generosity, loyalty, or courage. They make no allowance for the stranger. Whoever lives with the Bedu must accept Bedu conventions, and conform to Bedu standards. Only those who have journeyed with them them can appreciate the strain of such a life.”
― Wilfred Thesiger

“In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. I had found too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquility was to be found there.”
― Wilfred Thesiger

“Many Englishmen have written about camels. When I open a book and see the familiar disparagement, the well-worn humour, I realize that the author's knowledge of them is slight, that he has never lived among the Bedu, who know the camel's worth: 'Ata Allah', or 'God's gift', they call her, and it is her patience that wins the Arab's heart. I have never seen a Bedu strike or ill-treat a camel. Always the camel's needs come first. It is not only that the Bedu's existence depends upon the welfare of his animals, but that he has a real affection for them.”
― Wilfred Thesiger

“Yet I wondered fancifully if he had seen more clearly than they did, had sensed the threat which my presence implied – the approaching disintegration of his society and the destruction of ‘his beliefs. Here especially it seemed that the evil that comes with sudden change would far outweigh the good. While I was with the Arabs I wished only to live as they lived and, now that I have left them, I would gladly think that nothing in their lives was altered by my coming. Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame.”
― wilfred thesiger, Arabian Sands

“As I listened I thought once again how precarious was the existence of the Bedu. Their way of life naturally made them fatalists; so much was beyond their control. It was impossible for them to provide for a morrow when everything depended on a chance fall of rain or when raiders, sickness, or any one of a hundred chance happenings might at any time leave them destitute, or end their lives. They did what they could, and no people were more self-reliant, but if things went wrong they accepted their fate without bitterness, and with dignity as the will of God.”
― Wilfred Thesiger

“I pondered on this desert hospitality and, compared it with our own. I remembered other encampments where I had slept, small tents on which I had happened in the Syrian desert and where I had spent the night. Gaunt men in rags and hungry-looking children had greeted me, and bade me welcome with the sonorous phrases of the desert. Later they had set a great dish before me, rice heaped round a sheep which they had slaughtered, over which my host poured liquid golden butter until it flowed down on to the sand; and when I protested, saying 'Enough! Enough!', had answered that I was a hundred times welcome. Their lavish hospitality had always made me uncomfortable, for I had known that as a result of it they would go hungry for days. Yet when I left them they had almost convinced me that I had done them a kindness by staying with them”
― Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands

“For me, exploration was a personal venture. I did not go to the Arabian desert to collect plants nor to make a map; such things were incidental. At heart I knew that to write or even to talk of my travels was to tarnish the achievement. I went there to find peace in the hardship of desert travel and the company of desert peoples. I set myself a goal on these journeys, and, although the goal itself was unimportant, its attainment had to be worth every effort and sacrifice... No, it is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worth while the journey.”
― Wilfred Thesiger

“I knew that I had made my last journey in the Empty Quarter and that a phase in my life was ended. Here in the desert I found all that I asked; I knew that I should never find it again. But it was not only this personal sorrow that distressed me. I realized that the Bedu with whom I had lived and traveled, and in whose company I had found contentment, were doomed. Some people maintain that they will be better off when they have exchanged the hardship and poverty of the desert for the security of a materialistic world. This I do not believe. I shall always remember how often I was humbled by those illiterate herdsmen who possessed, in so much greater measure than I, generosity and courage, endurance, patience and lighthearted gallantry. Among no other people have I ever felt the same sense of personal inferiority.”
― Wilfred Thesiger

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
― Voltaire

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning. But fear is your best friend. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you. Like a snowball on a hill, you can pick it up and throw it or do anything you want with it before it starts rolling down, but once it rolls down and gets so big, it’ll crush you to death. So one must never allow fear to develop and build up without having control over it, because if you don’t you won’t be able to achieve your objective or save your life.”
― Mike Tyson, Undisputed Truth

“Everyone that you fight is not your enemy and everyone who helps you is not your friend.”
― Mike Tyson

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“These slightly older men in their thirties and forties seemed to survive in much greater numbers. Surprisingly it was the young men who died first on the railway. Perhaps the older ones were stronger emotionally. Perhaps with families they had more to live for.”
― Alistair Urquhart, The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific

“The long two-thousand-year record of Chinese history clearly shows that China is fundamentally unlike America as it is reluctant to use the military option first. It is also fundamentally different from America in another regard. It does not believe that it has a “universal” mission to promote Chinese civilization and encourage everyone else in humanity to emulate it.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy

“China has no such economic necessity. Its economy can grow well, even without American investments.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy