#ali

I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end. As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books. Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their madeup tales. And so on. Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done. If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#real-life #equality

We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything. ↗

— William Golding

#nationalism #poignant #pride #english

In this world . . . It's Heaven when: The French are chefs The British are police The Germans are engineers The Swiss are bankers And the Italians are lovers It's Hell when: The English are chefs The Germans are police The French are engineers The Swiss are lovers And the Italians are bankers. ↗

— Hidekaz Himaruya

#chefs #engineers #heaven #hell #hetalia

The menu is not the meal. ↗

— Alan Wilson Watts

#metaphysics #names #nominalism #philosophy #power-of-words

The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion in the only guarantee of morality. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#animals #barbarism #compassion #cruelty #morality

And once you've been to this Center, this Truth, you'll know your way everywhere. You are never lost again. ↗

— David Housholder

#historical-fiction #spirituality #young-adult #historical

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#dangerous-world #law #legalize #marijuana #marijuana-reconsidered

[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#cruelty #dishonesty #double-standards #hell #morality

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#monogamy #morality #conscience

As the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone—though these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning than other men—so the world of Reality exists for all; and all may participate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to the strength and purity of their desire. ↗

— Evelyn Underhill

#beauty #mysticism #reality #spirituality #art