#mental

Our inability to think beyond our own species, or to be able to co-habit with other life forms in what is patently a massive collaborative quest for survival, is surely a malady that pervades the human soul. ↗

— Lawrence Anthony

#environmental #environmentalism #species #wilderness #life

If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world is contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature. Anything becomes permissible. We return once more to the nightmare cultures of Hitler, Stalin, King Philip II, Montezuma, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Herod, the Pharaohs; Christ sacrificed himself in vain. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#life

Every morning, in his extreme loneliness, The Laughing Man [whose face had been disfigured in a tragic circumstance], stole off to the dense forest surrounding the bandits' hideout. There he befriended any number and species of animals: dogs, white mice, eagles, lions, boa constrictors, wolves. Moreover, he removed his mask and spoke to them, softly, melodiously, in their own tongues. They did not think him ugly. ↗

— J.D Salinger

#judgmental-hearts #the-laughing-man #love

But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud. ↗

— Marya Hornbacher

#crashing #falling #love #mental-illness #new-love

An ant can't define shape of an elephant solely from its' point of view. They have to unify all views. It's a way for ant to understand elephant. In order to understand true realities, men need to do mental blending. ↗

— Toba Beta

#mental-blending #point-of-view #truth #men

It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth. ↗

— David Cecil

#evil #faith #fanaticism #fundamentalism #good-intentions

...men are much softer than women, more sentimental. They cry at the movies and pretend not to. The male of the species is weak. He doesn’t tolerate pain well. ↗

— Will Christopher Baer

#men #pain #sentimentality #men

Darwinists are right to say that selection favours the organisms that leave alive the most progeny, but vigorous growth takes place within a constrained space where feedback from the environment allows the emergence of natural self-regulation. ↗

— James Lovelock

#nature

More and more, paddling the Yellowstone feels like that bedside visit, like we are attending to a friend in dire straits, a friend whom we have seen in the full bloom of health, but with whom, now, there is little to say and only our companionship to offer. ↗

— Alan S. Kesselheim

#nature #rivers #nature

How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#fundamentalism #religion #secularism #separation-of-church-and-state #united-states