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Quote by Abai Kunanbayev

“Returning from his flocks, pleased with his ride. Again in the aul appears the bai. His horse goes on with an easy stride, He sits and smiles upon it, hat awry.”

Quote by Abai Kunanbayev

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Abai Kunanbayev

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“There was no such thing as Kazakhstan. It was just a chunk of Soviet Union. I had to build a country, to establish an army, our own police, our internal life, everything from roads to the constitution. I had to change the minds of the people 180 degrees, from totalitarian regime to freedom, from state property to private property. Nobody wanted to understand that. My comrades from the communist party were against me. I had to train myself too... I wasn't raised with democracy and freedom of speech.”

“Our understanding of who we are, where we came from, how the world works, and what matters in life depends on partaking of the vast and ever-expanding store of knowledge. Though unlettered hunters, herders, and peasants are fully human, anthropologists often comment on their orientation to the present, the local, the physical. To be aware of one's country and its history, of the diversity of customs and beliefs across the globe and through the ages, of the blunders and triumphs of past civilizations, of the microcosms of cells and atoms and the macrocosms of planets and galaxies, of the ethereal reality of number and logic and pattern—such awareness truly lifts us to a higher plane of consciousness. It is a gift of belonging to a brainy species with a long history.”

“Social democracy as we now know it underwent its moment of speciation when Eduard Bernstein began to question the orthodoxy of revolution. His essential postulate was the absence of crises. The Steven Pinker of socialism, he pointed to the empirical fact that no serious crisis had rocked the capitalist economy for the past two or three decades, which invalidated the Marxian prophecy of a system trending towards collapse. Since it was not prone to malfunctioning, the idea of seizing power, smashing decrepit capitalism and installing a completely different order had become redundant; instead social democracy could continue to grow in strength, extract piecemeal reforms and gradually lift the working class out of the mire. Rosa Luxemburg very famously objected that the crisis tendencies had merely been postponed. In the near future, they would burst forth with even more dreadful violence. Ignoring her prognosis, the social democrats in the making went ahead and presently gave their first demonstration of how they dealt with catastrophe: by expediting it through consent.”

“We are taught from girlhood to be nice and to protect other people's feelings, even at the expense of our own well-being. We learn, by example, that we are supposed to cater to everyone else around us. We cater to the men in our lives. We cater to our children. We cater to our friends. We cater to strangers. Does everyone have what they need? Is everyone feeling good and doing great? I address the concerns of others without even thinking, as automatically as a reflex, but when it comes to taking care of myself I have to pause and remember to ask myself, *Wait, do I have everything I need? Am I feeling good and doing great?*”