We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. ("X")
Interpretation
The quote reflects on humanity's desensitization to violence and suffering.
Yevgeny Zamyatin's quote suggests that society has become so numb to the brutality and loss of life around us that we have developed emotional calluses. This desensitization signifies a disturbing acceptance of violence, indicating a need for deep reflection on our values and consciousness.
In practice
Discussing the importance of empathy in a community meeting.
The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.
Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most important thing is - to bloom. (βA Story About The Most Important Thingβ)
A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth reading.
Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.
The passing of time and all of its crimes is making me sad again. The passing of time and all of its sickening crimes is making me sad again. But don't forget the songs that made you cry and the songs that saved your life.. Yes, you're older now and you're a clever swine. But they were the only ones who ever stood by you
Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.
We twentieth-century Mexicans, even those of pure Indian descent, look on the pre-Columbian world as a world on the other side, not only distant in time but across the cultural divide.
I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating.
To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.
America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity - the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
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