We wait till now? Now, when we're old men, we get to be brave?
Ernest GainesRead
How do people come up with a date and a time to take life from another man? Who made them God?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions the morality of deciding who lives and dies.
Ernest Gaines's quote reflects on the profound ethical implications of taking a life, challenging the authority and moral righteousness of those who decide on matters of life and death. It calls into question the human tendency to assume god-like powers over others, provoking deep thought about justice, morality, and the inherent value of life.
Themes
MoralityLifeDeathJusticeEthicalAuthority
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a debate about the ethics of capital punishment.
More from Ernest Gaines
All quotes βI was raised by a lady that was crippled all her life but she did everything for me and she raised me. She washed our clothes, cooked our food, she did everything for us. I don't think I ever heard her complain a day in her life. She taught me responsibility towards my brother and sisters and the community.
Ernest GainesRead
...my heart may have been in it but my soul was not.
Ernest GainesRead
Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.
Ernest GainesRead
Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.
Ernest GainesRead
The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write.
Ernest GainesRead
Similar quotes
The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.
Parker J. PalmerRead
I decided to be what crime made of me.
Jean GenetRead
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Oscar WildeRead
When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something--anything--before it is all gone.
John SteinbeckRead
Words are coin. Words alienate. Language is no medium for desire. Desire is rapture, not exchange.
J. M. CoetzeeRead
The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory.
John GreenRead