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All I Quotes

“It is doubtful whether our present system of popular education does not retard independent or self thinking as much as it promotes it. All genuine education is self-education. It will incite the individual to think for himself, by rethinking what the race's great thinkers have already thought for him, thus enabling him to go ahead under his own mental steam.”

“It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute. My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.”

“It is due to justice; due to humanity; due to truth; due to the sympathies of our nature; in fine, to our character as a people, both abroad and at home, that they should be considered, as much as possible, in the light of human beings, and not as mere property. As such, they are acted on by our laws, and have an interest in our laws. They may be considered as making a part, though a degraded part, of the families to which they belong.”

“It is due to neither impotence nor ignorance on God’s part that evils occur in the world, but it is owing to the order of his wisdom and to the greatness of his goodness, whence come the many and divers grades of goodness in things, many of which would be lacking were he to allow no evil to exist. Thus there would be no good of patience without the evil of persecution, nor the good of the preservation of its life in a lion, without the evil of the destruction of the animals on which it lives.”

“It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”

“It is early Christmas morning. As I write, the sun has yet to rise. The world remains drowsy, only now beginning the process of shaking itself awake. But as the world rises from its slumber, will it awaken? Will it come to understand the utter immensity of this day? That in a single yet brilliant moment in time, God inserted the whole of Himself into time and effortlessly broke the back of history in that single act? Will we begin to comprehend the fact that in that singular act, God altered the entire trajectory of time itself, thereby sending the future careening toward hope instead of descending into darkness? And are we able to even remotely fathom what the world would have been like had time not been altered in this exact manner? On any morning, will we awaken to all of that, or will we do nothing more than arise from slumber but never find ourselves awakened in the arising?”

“IT IS EARLY Sunday morning when Briar is finally able to extricate herself from the apartment, having showered and dressed herself in something that did not remind her of him. Her hair is still wet when she makes it out into the pouring rain outside of their building. The taxi driver is waiting for her at the end of the lane, but she pretends that it is an old friend who has come to rescue her from her darkness, so that any neighbours who might catch a glimpse of her will be unaware of her loneliness.”

“It is easier and much more satisfying to rail against the Right than to suggest that we go back to Genesis 1 and study together. Liberals can be just as intolerant as fundamentalists, and we have arrived at a moment in human history when intolerance and hope are mutually exclusive.”

“It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.”

“It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than his planet; the by-laws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members. A club, moreover, or a nation, offers the right to be exclusive. There are not many of us who are physically constituted to resist this strange delight, this nourishing privilege. It is at the bottom of all fraternities, societies, orders. It is at the bottom of most trouble. The planet holds out no such inducement. The planet is everybody's. All it offers is the grass, the sky, the water, and the ineluctable dream of peace and fruition.”