5 years ago in Quotes
Making your complaint as sarcastic and cruel as you can doesn't add to its visibility.
8 years ago in Quotes
To them, violence, power, cruelty, were the supreme capacities of men who had definitely lost their place in the universe and were much too proud to long for a power theory that would safely bring them back and reintegrate them into the world. They were satisfied with blind partisanship in anything that respectable society had banned, regardless of theory or content, and they elevated cruelty to a major virtue because it contradicted societyās humanitarian and liberal hypocrisy."The Origins of Totalitarianism"
9 years ago in Quotes
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacriļ¬ce, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places ā and there are so many ā where people have behaved magniļ¬cently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we donāt have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an inļ¬nite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in deļ¬ance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
1 decade ago in Quotes
[Humans] have been genetically programmed through hunting behavior: cooperation and sharing. Cooperation between members of the same band was a practical necessity for most hunting societies; so was the sharing of food. Since meat is perishable in most climates except that of the Arctic, it could not be preserved. Luck in hunting was not equally divided among all hunters; hence the practical outcome was that those who had luck today would share their food with those who would be lucky tomorrow. Assuming hunting behavior led to genetic changes, the conclusion would be that modern man has an innate impulse for cooperation and sharing, rather than for killing and cruelty."The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness"
1 decade ago in Quotes
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.