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Quote by Abhijit Naskar

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Citizens of Peace: Beyond the Savagery of Sovereignty

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Abhijit Naskar

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“People are kept unaware of the reality, with the sweet and illusive candy of nationalism. They are made to believe in their bones that killing people in the name of sovereignty is the most glorious act of all - they are made to believe that the citizens of the neighboring country are their arch-enemies - they are made to believe that nationality is far greater than humanity. They are made to believe that surgical strikes against the nation across the border is a great patriotic deed - they are made to believe that raising wall and separating children from their parents are deeds of great glory. In short, politicians (not all) in the government keep doing whatever they desire, and the citizens choose to keep their mouth silent in obedience because that to them is the greatest act of patriotism. In short, to these spineless citizens, their country is always right and the neighboring country is always wrong - their country is always good and the neighboring country is always evil - their country is always on the side of ethics and morality, and the neighboring country is always on the side of moral degradation. And this has been going on since the rise of human civilization across the world. When will this change, one wonders! And the answer is now. You change - just you - you the individual - you the one human - and slowly but surely, little by little, the entire society will change.”

WarPoliticsDemocracyHuman NatureBordersNationalismPolitical ScienceInternational RelationsSocial PsychologyPeace Politics
Book:Citizens of Peace: Beyond the Savagery of Sovereignty
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“কঠিন ধাঁচের মানুষদের যে কোমল অনুভূতি নেই, তা না। বেশিরভাগ কঠিন মানুষের সমস্যা হচ্ছে, তারা সেই কোমল অনুভূতিগুলো ঠিকঠাক প্রকাশ করতে পারেন না। কারো প্রতি প্রবল মায়া,স্নেহ, ভালবাসা থাকলে সেটি প্রকাশ করতে গিয়ে তারা সবকিছু এলোমেলো করে ফেলেন। ভালোবাসার বদলে শাসন দেখিয়ে ফেলেন। আনন্দের বদলে রাগ দেখিয়ে ফেলেন। ক্রমাগত এই বিব্রতকর অভিজ্ঞতা তাদের তখন আরো বেশি খোলসবন্দি করে ফেলে। তারা তখন তাদের জীবন কাটিয়ে দেন কঠিন মানুষের চেহারা নিয়ে।”

Human Nature
Book:নির্বাসন
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“I admired my father not only for his kindness and intelligence, but also for his memory. He could quote long passages of the Talmud and Plato, the Zohar and the Upanishads. He could recall in rich detail his visit to the ghetto in Stanislav, his first skirmish as a partisan, his arrival in Palestine. He envied the character of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, who remembered what he had done in his mother's womb and even in his father's desire. Immersed in his own past and the world’s, my father was nevertheless a man of his times, reacting to all its convulsions. Politics stimulated him, and so did the international situation. Famine in Africa, racial persecution in Indonesia, religious conflict in Ireland and India: What men did to other men they did to him. When someone said that as a Jew he was wrong to care about anything but Israel, he answered angrily, “God did not create other people so we could turn our backs on them.” And yet he loved Israel with all his heart and soul. Why didn't he go back there to end his days? He did not know, and admitted that to me. “Maybe it's cowardice on my part. Maybe in Jerusalem every stone and every cloud would remind me of your mother; I'd be too unhappy.” Another time he told me, “I know it's convenient to love Israel from a distance. It's even a contradiction, but I'm not afraid of contradictions. In creating man in his own image, didn't God contradict Himself? Except that God is alone and free while man, still alone, is never free.”

GodSocial JusticeMemoryIsraelManContradictionJewishDiaspora
Book:The Forgotten
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“There are some who write for human praise, by means of the noble qualities of the heart that their imagination invents, or that they may have. Me, I use my genius to portray the delights of cruelty! Not momentary, artificial delights; but ones that started with man, and will finish with him. Cannot genius ally itself with cruelty in the secret resolutions of Providence? Or, because one is cruel, can't one have genius? The proof is in my words; all you have to do is listen to me, if you want to... Excuse me, it seemed that my hair was standing upright on my head.”

Human NatureCrueltyPsychopathy
Book:Les Chants de Maldoror
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“how easily a man who has never been in any great distress, may pass through life without knowing, in his own person at least, anything of the possible goodness of the human heart - or, as I must add with a sigh, of its possible vileness. So a thick curtain of manners is drawn over the features and expression of men's natures, that to the ordinary observer, the two extremities, and the infinite field of varieties which lie between them, are all confounded - the vast and multitudinous line of differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of elementary sounds.”

PhilosophyHuman NatureMannersDisguiseStrength Of CharacterSocial Norms
Book:Confessions of an English Opium Eater
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