“He really was a demon. I didn’t want to believe it at first. I told myself it could be a delusion, a twisted fantasy of my sick mind. But no… he had been telling the truth. And to my own shock, I realized I wasn’t afraid anymore. If a demon had fallen in love with me… then I had already given him my body. The only question left was… would I give him my soul?”
Source: Where the Dark Knelt
“Amantes Assemble Sonnet 51
Education alone won't change anything,
First we gotta rid education of all archaism.
Rather than being a tool of indoctrination,
Education oughta be a force of undoctrination.
Education ought to be secular,
Education ought to be nonsectarian.
Sectarianism that passes as education,
Is the very antithesis of education.
Scriptures can be a part of education,
But they mustn't be the basis of education.
Cultures can be a part of education,
But they mustn't be the basis of education.
Any force that claims to liberate the mind,
Must first liberate itself from all divide.”
Source: Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans
“All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother; here is the war of Mary and Musa, and the polarities of knees and nose ... but I found, very early in my life, that the game lacked one crucial dimension, that of ambiguity - because, as events are about to show, it is also possible to slither down a ladder and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake ...”
“What fate?”
The three were on their feet atop the pedestals, and he could not tell which shrieked which answer.
“To marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons!”
“To die and live again, and live once more a part of what was!”
“To give up half the light of the world to save the world!”
Together they howled like steam escaping under pressure. “Go to Rhuidean, son of battles! Go to Rhuidean, trickster! Go, gambler! Go!”
Source: The Shadow Rising
“Although I am a political liberal, I believe that conservatives have a better understanding of moral development (although not of moral psychology in general—they are too committed to the myth of pure evil). Conservatives want schools to teach lessons that will create a positive and uniquely American identity, including a heavy dose of American history and civics, using English as the only national language. Liberals are justifiably wary of jingoism, nationalism, and the focus on books by “dead white males,” but I think everyone who cares about education should remember that the American motto of e pluribus, unum (from many, one) has two parts. The celebration of pluribus should be balanced by policies that strengthen the unum.”
Source: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
“The great mistake of contemporary life is that we have made such a virtue of intellectual growth while almost totally ignoring the necessity of conscience growth. We have failed to understand that individual evolution can take place not only in mental but in moral power. The earth tragically today is full of people who remain fixated on a childish level of conscience. What an illusion has blinded the human race: that our conscience is given to us once and for all at birth and we ourselves have to do little or nothing about it…The truth is that our moral capacity is purely potential and needs strenuous training, education and development. It is certainly not an organic power that comes to us at birth, like breathing, which demands little attention from us as long as we live…A revolution has to take place in our thinking about morality. We have to become as sensitive about being moral morons as we are now anxious about being intellectual idiots.”
Source: Hope for Man: an optimistic philosophy and guide to self-fulfillment
“The bottom line, as Raul Hilberg put it, was that most people thought that, even if Jews shouldn't be killed, they weren't worth saving.”
Source: Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust
“There's something here, my dear boy, that you don't understand yet. A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman's body, or even a part of a woman's body (a sensualist can understand that) and he'll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's humane, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.”
Source: The Brothers Karamazov
“Etchings endure,
But not in Sand
Meanings Collide
To Unresolved Fragments
Codes fizzle to Static
They are not lost
But Unheard
Never lost
Fading slowly to Silence
By infinite degrees”
Source: Sinew of the Social Species
“The closest to perfection people ever come is when they write their resumes .”
Source: The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization