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Quote by Eleanor Henderson

“You don't have to have shared a placenta with someone to sense their pain. Some would say that empathy is what makes us human. But I think empathy was here, an intuition. The thrumming awareness that we are all connected to the smallest speck, the most distant stars, by the great umbilicus of the solar system, the orbits tossing and tearing us with the force of the tides. When we pay attention to things like parasites and the moon, we are paying attention to the fact that we are citizens of the universe. Most of being human is an effort to forget.”

Quote by Eleanor Henderson

Book:Everything I Have Is Yours: A Marriage
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Everything I Have Is Yours: A Marriage

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Eleanor Henderson

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“Nature is cruel and vicious and that that is why man was given dominion over the natural world, because man was the only creature that God could trust to bring justice to it.” Idalina frowned at this, but nonetheless she returned her arm to her granddaughter’s shoulders and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “Nature is certainly cruel,” she said, in a voice which sounded strangely cold and detached. “But make no mistake; man is crueller. And the gods: the gods are cruellest of all.”

HumanityCrueltyGodsMan And Nature
Book:From Whence The Rivers Run
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“They say the world will end soon. They say that the nuclear weapons made, Due to fearing ‘the other’, Have become a curse, a plague, a scourge On those who made them Even more than those they were made to scare... And I wonder: Will the nuclear weapons be the cause of the world’s end? Or will the world’s end be caused by humanity’s fear, complicity, and submission? And if what they say is true, Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to drink one last cup of cardamom-flavored tea Taste one last fig, peach, or apricot, Smell a quince, Dip one last piece of bread In Palestinian thyme and olive oil… Before the world ends, I wish to smell a few pine needles, To breathe the smell of the first rain shower After a long, hot, and dry summer… Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to read one more book Out of the thousands of books that I still want to read… Before the world ends and before I die, I ask for one more spring To smell bunches of Iraqi narcissus flowers. I want to live one more autumn, To enjoy the magical colors Of the dying leaves on the trees As they challenge death with beauty Right before falling on the grounds of indifference… But my biggest wish before I die is For my death not to be the end of the world… [Original poem published in Arabic by ahewar.org on October 13, 2022]”

WarEarthHumanityEnvironmentNuclear WeaponsEnd Of The WorldArabic PoetryArabic Literature
Author:Louis Yako
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“In a weird way, to believe in our own sinful nature is comforting. It provides a kind of absolution. Because if most people are bad, then engagement and resistance aren't worth the effort. [...] When confronted with hatred or selfishness, you can tell yourself, 'Oh, well, that's just human nature.' But if you believe that people are essentially good, you have to question why evil exists at all. It implies that engagement and resistance are worthwhile, and it imposes an obligation to act.”

Humanity
Book:Humankind: A Hopeful History
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