How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory, like an old toy in a cupboard, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered?
Amitav GhoshRead
What would it be like if I had something to defend - a home, a country, a family - and I found myself attacked by these ghostly men, these trusting boys? How do you fight an enemy who fights with neither enmity nor anger but in submission to orders from superiors, without protest and without conscience?
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the moral complexities of confronting an enemy who lacks personal animosity or conscience.
Amitav Ghosh's quote delves into the ethical dilemmas faced when opposing forces that are devoid of personal hatred and instead act out of obligation. It raises profound questions about the nature of conflict and the psychological detachment of individuals who carry out orders without espousing their own beliefs or feelings, highlighting the challenges in dealing with such a faceless adversary.
In practice
A speaker addressing a peace rally might use this quote to highlight the complexities of modern warfare.
How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory, like an old toy in a cupboard, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered?
If the charter of your liberties entails death and despair for untold multitudes, then it is nothing but a license for slaughter.
I know nothing of this silence except that it lies outside the reach of my intelligence, beyond words - that is why this silence must win, must inevitably defeat me, because it is not a presence at all.
It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.
His chains chinked softly. I seldom fling children from towers to improve their health. Yes, I meant for him to die.
We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. . . . The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.
Unless we believe and see Jesus in the appearance of bread on the altar, we will not be able to see him in the distressing disguise of the poor.
I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say.
Being an occupier is not good for anybody's global standing. It is a catalyst for terrorist recruitment.
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