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Quote by Christa Wolf

“Every system of power in the world has a vested interest in weakening the individuality of its subjects and tries to weaken or it possible completely extinguish it.”

Book:City of Angels or Overcoat of Dr. Freud

Work

City of Angels or Overcoat of Dr. Freud

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Author

Christa Wolf

Christa Wolf was a German literary critic and author, renowned for her profound psychological portraits and reflections on the social changes in East Germany. Her works often explore the relationship between the individual and the collective, history and memory. more

“This world, in which reason is more and more at home, is not habitable. It is hard and cold like those depots in which are piled up goods that cannot satisfy: neither clothe those who are naked, nor feed those who are hungry; it is as impersonal as factory hangars and industrial cities in which manufactured things remain abstract, true with statistical truth and borne on the anonymous circuit of the economy, resulting from skilful planning decisions which cannot prevent, but prepare disasters. There it is, the mind in its masculine essence, living on the outside, exposed to the violent, blinding sun, to the trade winds that beat against it and beat it down, on a land without folds, rootless, solitary and wandering and thus already alienated by the very things which it caused to be produced and which remain untameable and hostile.”

Philosophy

Author:Emmanuel Lévinas

“Every plant is an individual. Wrong again. We are not individuals at all, we are all connected. We are individuals the way each blossom on an apple tree is an individual.”

Individuality Existential Plants Botany Connectivity

Book:Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft

Source: Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft

“Each imagining himself to be the first last and only alone, whereas he is neither first last nor last nor only not alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.”

Individuality Joyce Ulysses

Book:Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

“Well, to tell you the truth, I've thought of it often and often before, but he's such devilish good company is Huntingdon, after all - you can't imagine what a jovial good fellow he is when he's not fairly drunk, only just primed or half-seas-over - we all have a bit of a liking for him at the bottom of our hearts, though we can't respect him.' 'But should you wish yourself to be like him?' 'No, I'd rather be like myself, bad as I am.”