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Quote by Ocean Vuong

“I remember studying my father's letter and seeing a scatter of tiny black dots: the periods left untouched. A vernacular of silence. I remember thinking everyone I ever loved was a single black dot on a bright page.”

Quote by Ocean Vuong

Book:On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

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Ocean Vuong

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“Sometimes in the winter in the dark I'd wake and everything that smacked of dread would have lifted up and stolen away in the night and I would just be lying there with the snow blowing against the glass. I'd think that maybe I should turn on the lamp but then I'd just lie there and listen to the quiet. The wind in the quiet. There are times now when I see those patients in their soiled nightshirts lying on gurneys in the hallway with their faces to the wall that I ask myself what humanity means. I would ask does it include me.”

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Book:Stella Maris
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“We have long known that in closed societies, the the arrival of democracy, with its clashing voices and differing opinions, can be "complex and frightening," as [Karen] Stenner puts it, for people unaccustomed to public dissent. The noise of argument, the constant hum of disagreement--these can irritate people who prefer to live in a society tied together by a single narrative. The strong preference for unity, at least among a portion of the population, helps explain why numerous liberal or democratic revolutions, from 1789 onward, ended in dictatorships that enjoyed wide support. Isaiah Berlin once wrote of the human need to believe that "somewhere, in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science... there is a final solution." Berlin observed that not all of the things that human beings think are good or desirable are compatible. Efficiency, liberty, justice, equality, the demands of the individual, and the demands of the group--all these things push us in different directions. And this, Berlin wrote, is unacceptable to many people: "to admit that the fulfilment of some of our ideals may in principle make the fulfilment of others impossible is to say that the notion of total human fulfilment is a formal contradiction, a metaphysical chimera." Nevertheless, unity is a chimera that some will always pursue.”

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Book:Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
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“A whole stack of them, lined with the stories of others, all with their own memories and regrets, all their failings and love, all things they wished they could tell the children they might never see again. Maybe, she thinks, this is simply what living is: an infinite list of transgressions that did not weigh against the joys but that simply overlaid them, the two lists mingling and merging, all the small moments that made up the mosaic of a person, a relationship, a life.”

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Book:Our Missing Hearts
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“Every Religion says humanity can’t live, share, create and evolve meaningfully without their beliefs and creeds. I say it is a very big LIE. The foundation of the lie is religion saying humanity is nothing without their respective beliefs, doctrines, and creeds. This lie has disrupted the development of humans for so many years now, that is why humanity is yet to understand how powerful they are. We have tried developing religion; can we try developing HUMANITY? When we focus and what brings us together; Humanity and understand that we don’t have any problem with Hausa, Igbo, or Yoruba, then we see our diversity and differences become one of our greatest catalysts to growth. I ask again, can we still be humans? Your Humanity is enough and my humanity is enough. Let us embrace it to the fullest.”

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Author:Chidi Ejeagba
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“Do you know that judging a person does not define who they are. It defines who you are. This is something we all should watch out for. What we see when watching others depends on the clarity of the window through which we look. It's like wearing a yellow tinted spectacle and looking at a white paper. You will definitely see yellow, and you are right. However, you are "rightly wrong". The problem is not what you are looking at, but your tinted spectacle. We all need to take off our spectacles, if you must wear one ....let it be plain. We need to see our humanity and how connected we are without all these limiting beliefs that create labels and divisions around us.”

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Author:Chidi Ejeagba
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