#cement

Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced. They can think themselves into other peoples’ places. Of course, this is a power like my brand of fictional magic that is morally neutral. One might use such a power to manipulate or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or peer inside cages. They can close their hearts and minds to any suffering that does not touch them personally. They can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think that they have any fewer nightmares than I do. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#jk-rowling #experience

Many besides Angel have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements but as to their subjective experiences. ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#displacement #experience #importance #life #tess-of-the-d-urbervilles

I say: The time has come for my courageous and proud people, after decades of displacement and colonial occupation and ceaseless suffering, to live like other peoples of the earth, free in a sovereign and independent homeland. ↗

— Mahmoud Abbas

#ceaseless #colonial #come #courageous #decades

The time has come to end the suffering and the plight of millions of Palestine refugees in the homeland and the Diaspora, to end their displacement and to realize their rights, some of them forced to take refuge more than once in different places of the world. ↗

— Mahmoud Abbas

#different #different places #displacement #end #forced

In opera tradition, when opera die-hard fans, there is a replacement of singer or singer wasn't at his or hers vocal best, doing something, they boo. Especially now that they pay hundreds of dollars for the ticket. ↗

— Mikhail Baryshnikov

#boo #doing #dollars #especially #fans

Advancement only comes with habitually doing more than you are asked. ↗

— Gary Ryan Blair

#asked #comes #doing #habitually #more

One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#assembling #authority #could #done #happen

The recent fascination, I think, reflects the shift in approach by law enforcement officials to embrace technology as wholeheartedly as the rest of the world. ↗

— Jeffery Deaver

#embrace #enforcement #fascination #i #i think

I am enormously honored to be one of the spokesmen of the New Age Womens Health Campaign, so you'll be seeing me in public service announcements and public appearances supporting the campaign. ↗

— Karen Duffy

#am #announcements #appearances #campaign #enormously

I don't see politics as one or two people just making or delivering announcements - it's also about winning public support and the public enthusiasm. You've got to win public support. ↗

— Gordon Brown

#also #announcements #delivering #enthusiasm #got