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Quote by Richard Osman

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The Last Devil to Die

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Richard Osman

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“Better kind than correct, Better idiot than arrogant. Better ignorant than bigoted, Better exploited than indifferent. Better broke than bent, Better naive than narcissist. Better mistaken than mindless, Better broken than a cheat. Better wrong than cruel, Better ridiculed than rigid. Better shattered than shallow, Better ignited than idjit.”

TruthHuman NatureGoodnessHumanismCrueltyIndifferenceBigotrySelflessAltruismRight And Wrong
Book:World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
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“Unbound (The Sonnet) Unbound by tradition, Unbound by biases, Unbound by belief, Unbound by loyalties, Unbound by logicality, Unbound by assumption, Unbound by selfishness, Unbound by argumentation, Unbound by intellect, Unbound by ignorance, Unbound by arrogance, Unbound by indifference. This is how we rise human, This is how we find communion.”

FreedomSocietyHuman NatureDiversityPrejudiceIndifferenceBigotryIntoleranceIndoctrinationFree Thinker
Book:Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission
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“As their conversation turned philosophical, Oppenheimer stressed the word 'responsibility'. And when Morgan suggested he was using the word almost in a religious sense Oppenheimer agreed it was a 'secular devise for using a religious notion without attaching it to a transcendent being. I like to use the word 'ethical' here. I am more explicit about ethical questions now than ever before although these were very strong with me when I was working on the bomb. Now I don't know how to describe my life without using some word like responsibility to characterize it. A word that has to do with choice and action and the tension in which choices can be resolved. I'm not talking about knowledge but about being limited by what you can do. There is no meaningful responsibility without power. It may be only power over what you do yourself but increased knowledge, increased wealth... leisure are all increasing the domain in which responsibility is conceivable. After this soliloquy Morgan wrote "Oppenheimer turned his palms up, the long slender fingers including his listener in his conclusion 'You and I' he said 'Neither of us is rich but as far as responsibility goes both of us are in a position right now to alleviate the most awful agony in people at the starvation level.' This was only a different way of saying what he had learned from reading Proust forty years earlier in Corsica... that indifference to the sufferings one causes is the terrible and permanent form of cruelty. Far from being indifferent, Robert was acutely aware of the suffering he had caused others in his life and yet he would not allow himself to succumb to guilt. He would accept responsibility. He had never tried to deny his responsibility but since the security hearing he nevertheless no longer seemed to have the capacity or motivation to fight against the cruelty of indifference. and in that sense, Robby had been right- they achieved their goal, they killed him.”

ResponsibilityGuiltCrueltyIndifferenceAtom BombOppenheimer
Book:American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
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“If Nature were kind, She would at least make the minor concession of anesthetizing caterpillars before they were eaten alive from within. But Nature is neither kind nor unkind. She is neither against suffering nor for it. Nature is not interested in suffering one way or the other unless it affects the survival of DNA. It is easy to imagine a gene that, say, tranquilizes gazelles when they are about to suffer a killing bite. Would such a gene be favored by natural selection? Not unless the act of tranquilizing a gazelle improved that gene’s chances of being propagated into future generations. It is hard to see why this should be so, and we may therefore guess that gazelles suffer horrible pain and fear when they are pursued to the death– as many of them eventually are.”

DeathSufferingNatureKindnessCrueltyIndifference
Book:River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
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