#si

We have warned and continue to warn against calls for the division of Iraq, which come up now and then, calling for sectarian rights or minority freedoms. ↗

— Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud

#calling #calls #come #continue #division

The citizen's job is to be rude - to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt. ↗

— John Ralston Saul

#comfort #doubt #expressions #intercourse #job

Only when God was said to have died did various leaders, professions and sectors risk pushing themselves forward as successors. ↗

— John Ralston Saul

#died #forward #god #leaders #only

But as an amateur, the highest level you can box at is the Olympics. I did that at 18 and felt it was time to move on to other challenges as a professional. ↗

— Billy Joe Saunders

#box #challenges #did #felt #highest

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth. ↗

— George Saunders

#developing #earth #here #only #our

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them. ↗

— George Saunders

#believe #briefly #center #delusion #else

I think fiction isn't so good at being for or against things in general - the rhetorical argument a short story can make is only actualized by the accretion of particular details, and the specificity of these details renders whatever conclusions the story reaches invalid for wider application. ↗

— George Saunders

#against #application #argument #being #conclusions

What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers; that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other. ↗

— George Saunders

#desires #finds #found #know #most

I think in our time, you know, so much of the information we get is pre-polarized. Fiction has a way of reminding us that we actually are very similar in our emotions and our neurology and our desires and our fears, so I think it's a nice way to neutralize that polarization. ↗

— George Saunders

#desires #emotions #fears #fiction #get

I turned 54 this year and I find myself feeling like I'm in a bit of a race to get down on paper the way I really feel about life - or the way it has presented to me. And because it has presented to me very beautifully, this is hard. It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations. ↗

— George Saunders

#beautifully #because #bit #down #feel