“Any time people are displaced, you lose a lot of institutional history and institutional leadership and we hear that many of those people may not return because they fear they will not be able to experience the same level of life. Once you lose that level of institutional leadership and institutional knowledge, it's not going to be replaced immediately and especially when you look at the fact that Katrina altered the demographics of New Orleans overnight.”
Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of "inspiration." It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge -- that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized.
But it was Aldo’s pen that became his most forceful tool. He started a newsletter for rangers called the Carson Pine Cone. Aldo used it to “scatter seeds of knowledge, encouragement, and enthusiasm.” Most of the Pine Cone’s articles, poems, jokes, editorials, and drawings were Aldo’s own. His readers soon realized that the forest animals were as important to him as the trees. His goal was to bring back the “flavor of the wilds.
But of all the deadly theories by means of which you are now being destroyed, I would like to warn you about one of the deadliest and most crucial: the alleged dichotomy of science and ethics. It is the doctrine that man's science and ethics - or his knowledge and values, or his body and soul - are two separate, antagonistic aspects of his existence, and that man is caught between them, as a precarious, permanent traitor to their conflicting demands.
The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest, but if it is judged worthy by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.In fine I have written my work not as an essay with which to win the applause of the moment but as a possession for all time.
They can take our homes, our possessions. Our families. Our lives. They can drive us out, like they've driven us out before. They can humiliate us and dehumanize us. But they cannot take our thoughts. They cannot take our talents. They cannot take our knowledge, or our memories, or our minds. In music there is no bondage. Music is a door, and the soul escapes through the melody.
For years I wondered what was her curious power, her ability to attract all kinds of people to her and to use them for her own ends, often with their knowledge. i think it was that people liked watching and being with someone who enjoyed life as much as Sylvia seemed to enjoy it. She squeezed all the juice from the orange, or, to change the figure, drained the cup to the leaves, the very dregs.
Disturbing encounters in life spur reflective thinking that jars a person from his or her exhausted ideologies and way of living. A person who lives passionately will develop a philosophic outlook because the road of excess leads to knowledge. Enthusiasm will frequently make a person look foolish, and result in intermittent periods of despondency and self-questioning, yet only exuberance and a degree of risk-taking leads us to wisdom.
These studies are the result of my attempt to extract the essence of literature. Literature is either the essential or nothing. I believe that the Evil—an acute form of Evil—which it expresses, has a sovereign value for us. But this concept does not exclude morality: on the contrary, it demands a 'hypermorality.'Literature is communication. Communication requires loyalty. A rigorous morality results from complicity in the knowledge of Evil, which is the basis of intense communication.—Literature and Evil
Because despite the undeniable knowledge that I wasn't human—or mostly human, anyway—despite the proof the computer screen had show in the repair room, I still picture my interior just the same as any other sixteen-year-old girl's. Blood and guts and bones. A brain, and a functioning heart. Hopes and dreams, fears and sorrow. They could tell me the truth, but they couldn't force me to accept it.