Salla Tuomivaara > Salla's Quotes

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.”
― Wisława Szymborska

“The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.”
― Jane Goodall

“Are we open-minded enough to assume that other species have a mental life? Are we creative enough to investigate it? Can we tease apart the roles of attention, motivation, and cognition? Those three are involved in everything animals do; hence poor performance can be explained by any one of them.”
― Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
― Jane Goodall

“Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?”
― Jane Goodall

“By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology

“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“As Darwin pointed out in The Origin of Species (opening pages of chapter three), the 'struggle for existence' can often be described just as well as a mutual dependence. And harmless coexistence as parts of the same eco-sphere is also a very common relation. . . . Among social creatures, positive gregariousness, a liking for each other's company, is the steady, unnoticed background for the conflicts.”
― Mary Midgley, Evolution as a Religion

“The world in which the kestrel moves, the world that it sees, is, and always will be, entirely beyond us. That there are such worlds all around us is an essential feature of our world.”
― Mary Midgley, Beast and Man

“Sitä paitsi rakastan kettutyttöä, koska kukaan muu ei rakasta häntä. Hän on kokonaan minun. Ja rakastan kettutyttöä siksi, että hän on tyttö, vaikka hän olisi poika.”
― Antti Nylén, Vihan ja katkeruuden esseet

“Kissa ja nainen esiintyvät samassa merkityskentässä. Kissalla on "emäntä" ja koiralla "isäntä". Koiran ja miehen suhde perustuu valtaan, kissan ja naisen suhde kumppanuuteen. Kun kissa yhdistetään naimattomaan naiseen, syntyy pelottava liitto, jossa yhdistyvät mykkä animaalinen kauneus ja kahlitsematon feminiininen seksuaalisuus. Saduissa nainen muuttuu tällaisessa liitossa noidaksi.
Nykyajan noitia ovat "kissatantat" eli yksin elävät naiset, joilla on kissa tai mielellään monta. Kissatantta on sosiaalisista karikatyyreista halveksituimpia. Hän on ärsyttävämpi kuin esimerkiksi pultsari tai nörtti (tai sukulaishahmonsa moraalitantta), sillä kissatantta investoi tunteensa eläimiin. Kissatantta jos kuka on "eläinrakas", siis eräänlainen sodomiitti, eläimiinsekaantuja. Mitä hänen ihmisyydelleen ja seksuaalisuudelleen on tapahtunut?”
― Antti Nylén, Vihan ja katkeruuden esseet

“If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different country, a different race, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one's very own.”
― Yu Hua, 十個詞彙裡的中國

“If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee's eyes, an intelligent self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?”
― Frans de Waal

“Perhaps it's just me, but I am wary of any persons whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“We would much rather blame nature for what we don’t like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like.”
― Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are

“So, don’t believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing. This applies most definitely to pack hunters, such as wolves or killer whales, but also to our closest relatives, the primates.”
― Frans de Waal, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society

“The key point is that anthropomorphism is not always as problematic as people think. To rail against it for the sake of scientific objectivity often hides a pre-Darwinian mindset, one uncomfortable with the notion of humans as animals. When we are considering species like the apes, which are aptly known as “anthropoids” (humanlike), however, anthropomorphism is in fact a logical choice. Dubbing an ape’s kiss “mouth-to-mouth contact” so as to avoid anthropomorphism deliberately obfuscates the meaning of the behavior. It would be like assigning Earth’s gravity a different name than the moon’s, just because we think Earth is special.”
― Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

“One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Mä oon lukenu jotai satatuhat selfhelp-opasta ja jokases niist sanotaan et jos ihminen haluu päästä elämäs eteenpäin pitää kuunnella sydämen ääntä, pitää tehä niinku se sydän halajaa mut missään ei koskaan sanota et mitä sit jos se sydän haluu tappaa.”
― Iida Rauma, Hävitys : tapauskertomus

“Mä oon kuuden lapsen yksinhuoltaja, Anna-Maija toisti, ikään kuin he olisivat jotenkin osavastuussa Anna-Maijan panoksesta liikakansoitukseen, ja A:n vatsaa väänsi.”
― Iida Rauma, Hävitys : tapauskertomus

“[E]ikä kukaan myöskään haluu myöntää että ahdistus ja masennus on niinku kolera, molemmista päästään ku ihmiset ei joudu elään keskel paskaa.”
― Iida Rauma, Hävitys : tapauskertomus

“Keskiajalla kaksi tärkeintä kaupunkiin johtavaa tietä kulkivat molemmat hyvän näköyhteyden päässä Mätäjärvestä ja sen takana kohoavasta hirsipuumäestä, A sanoi, ja niinpä jokaisen Turkuun saapuvan toivottivat tervetulleiksi hirsipuussa kiikkuvat kuolleet ja ympäristörikosten lemu.”
― Iida Rauma, Hävitys : tapauskertomus

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
― Arundhati Roy

“Some people can't see softness without wanting to hurt it”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“He didn't belong to you...You keep talking as if he belonged to you, just because you were his mother, but he didn't.

He didn't belong to anybody but himself.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“Maybe we were all pretending to be fine because the world gave us no other option.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“I often wonder if I died in the best possible way - in the arms of the one who loved me the most, wearing a skin that was true.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji