Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Kōbō Abe

Quote by Kōbō Abe

“When you take all these voices together, the dimensions of the jail are no trifling matter. But that is to be expected. The crimes with which they are charged—the crime of having lost one’s face, the crime of shutting off the roadway to others, the crime of having lost understanding of others’ agonies and joys, the crime of having lost the fear and joy of discovering unknown things in others, the crime of having forgotten one’s duty to create for others, the crime of having lost a music heard together—these are crimes which express contemporary human relations, and thus the whole world assumes the form of a single penal colony. Even so, the anguish at my being a prisoner remains unchanged.”

Quote by Kōbō Abe

Book:The Face of Another
Create image

Work

The Face of Another

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Kōbō Abe

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Kōbō Abe. more

You May Also Like

“A society that lives by organized greed or by systemic terrorism and oppression (they come too much the same thing in the end) will always tend to be violent because it is in a state of persistent disorder and moral confusion. The first principle of valid political action in such a society then becomes non-cooperation with its disorder, its injustices, and more particularly with its deep commitment to untruth." (from Thomas Merton's introduction to Gandhi on Non-Violence, pg 9. Italics original.)”

PoliticsViolenceSocietyCommunicationResistanceNon Cooperation
Book:Gandhi on Non-violence
Create image

“When science moves faster than moral understanding, as it does today, men and women struggle to articulate their unease. In liberal societies, they reach first for the language of autonomy, fairness, and individual rights. But this part of our moral vocabulary does not equip us to address the hardest questions posed by cloning, designer children, and genetic engineering.”

ScienceSocietyMorality
Book:The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering
Create image

“Those who argue that bioengineering is similar in spirit to other ways ambitious parents shape and mold their children have a point. But this similarity does not give us reason to embrace the genetic manipulation of children. Instead, it gives us reason to question the low-tech, high-pressure child-rearing practices we commonly accept.”

ScienceSocietyMoralityEugenics
Book:The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering
Create image

“Whatever its effect on the autonomy of the child, the drive to banish contingency and to master the mystery of birth diminishes the designing parent and corrupts parenting as a social practice governed by norms of unconditional love. . . . Even if it does not harm the child or impair its autonomy, eugenic parenting is objectionable because it expresses and entrenches a certain stance toward the world—a stance of mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements, and misses the part of freedom that consists in a persisting negotiation with the given.”

ScienceSocietyMorality
Book:What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
Create image