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Quote by Jonathan Swift

Work

Guiliver's Travels

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Author

Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift, born on November 30, 1667, and died on October 19, 1745, was an Irish writer, satirist, and politician, renowned for his satirical works. more

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“They say that only humans can contemplate death. Cats don’t fear it the same way that we do. It doesn’t cause them the same level of anxiety that it does us humans. And then, despite our angst over mortality, we end up keeping cats as pets, even though we know that they will die long before we do, causing the owner immense grief.”

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“Wars between people cannot be reduced or eliminated as long as the war with nature proceeds quite unconsciously. Both situations of war may ultimately be seen as externalizations of the conflicts and wars within human consciousness. If this is so, then our task becomes one of recognizing and confronting the 'inner enemy,' the inner antagonist. We need to recognize and withdraw the projections of this inner enemy onto external agents or forces—whether this be other human beings or the world of wild nature.”

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“We were all wild humans before we became civilized in that peculiar process of self-domestication known as the Neolithic agricultural revolution. The word 'wild' is related to the word 'will'; the wild creature is self-willed, autonomous, not domesticated, living by nature's ways, not the laws of human beings.”

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“I finally understood why it is that we humans keep cats as pets. There’s a limit to how well we know ourselves. For example, we don’t know what we look like to others; we can’t predict our own future or what our own death will be like. So that’s why we need cats, to help us understand ourselves better. It’s just like my mother said: Cats don’t need us. It’s us who needs them.”

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