VBV

“The word “evil” contains nothing pathetic, nothing horrible, nothing sublime, it is objective and dry, it precisely indicates what it is actually about, it is ordinary, it is the same as the word “stone” or the word “cloud”; it's accurate matched to the subject, unmistakably falls into its reality, [...] Evil is a thing, it is as simple as a thing.

But you don’t want to hear about it. While facing the destruction you will keep repeating with manic persistence: it is so, it became so, it just became so, but it could have been different: evil is an event that happens by chance and anywhere, but if someone can stand with resolve on its way — it can be prevented. The end of the world will find you in full confidence that the end of the world is an accident. After all, you don't believe in the devil.

Seeing unnecessary cruelty, seeing joyless and aimless destruction, you don't even think about the devil. You have so many explanations and so many names at hand to explain away every aspect of the problem. You have your Freud to talk about the aggressive drive and death instinct, you have your Jaspers who tells you about the “passion for the night,” [...] you have yours Nietzsche, you have your psychologists with their “will to power”. You know how to hide a case behind words under the pretext of revealing it.”
― Leszek Kołakowski, Rozmowy z Diablem

“What has been made all but impossible by the industrial system is that men and women can attain a livelihood by doing what is both aesthetically and morally sound and economically and practically valid, by a means that allows them both intellectual and spiritual responsibility.”
― Brian Keeble, Art For Whom and For What?

“For the more we think of ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient, the harder it is to learn gratitude and humility. And without these sentiments, it is hard to care for the common good.”
― Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

“If Tolkien has a message, it is simple. Modern life tends to blind us to the true value of things - call it enchantment, if you will. Fantasy is a way to 'clean our windows' so we can see things as they are, he said, 'freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity - from possessiveness'.”
― John Garth, The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien: The Places That Inspired Middle-earth