Abeselom Nega Quotes & Sayings

Two boys who looked to be seven years old had been picked up while sweeping floors in a cheap hotel. They reminded Abdul of his little brothers, and he felt emotional being around them. He couldn't see why the state had taken them from their parents. Being so poor that you had to work so young seemed like punishment enough.

Abdul had kept to himself in his first days at Dongri, aware of his inadequacy in the conversational arts, but the incarceration of the seven-year-olds inflamed him. "What's the use, keeping them here?" he blurted out one day. "You see their faces? So much enthusiasm for life, they are going to break the walls of this jail. The government people should let them work, let them be free. — Katherine Boo

We who have the luxury of living in the West have an obligation to stand up for liberal principles. Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture's intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women's rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity. And we need to say unambiguously to Muslims living in the West: if you want to live in our societies, to share in their material benefits, then you need to accept that our freedoms are not optional. They are the foundations of our way of life; of our civilization - a civilization that learned, slowly and painfully, not to burn heretics, but to honor them. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Historically, unfortunately, race seems to be the major division that humanity has imposed on itself, a way of subdividing into smaller groups. — David Mitchell

Of all the bitter and heavy things in this sorry old world, the not being necessary is the bitterest and heaviest. — Margaret Deland

And from the height of this perception all that had previously tormented and preoccupied him suddenly became illumined by a cold white light without shadows, without perspective, without distinction of outline. All life appeared to him like magic-lantern pictures at which he had long been gazing by artificial light through a glass. Now he suddenly saw those badly daubed pictures in clear daylight and without a glass. — Leo Tolstoy

The thing I worry about for myself is I spend a lot of time alone, and another person comes around and you're like, 'What are you doing here? Get out of here.' — Sarah Paulson

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. — Winston Churchill

What is a Person? is a clear and comprehensive reconsideration of the meaning of human personhood as the central core of social structures. With breadth of intellect and balance of wisdom, Smith resets the frame of reflection for the most important discussions of the twenty-first century. — William B. Hurlbut

There isn't a Zen zone on this side of the planet that could calm me down. — Summer Lane

For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead ... — Thomas Jefferson

Imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all - but the certain knowledge that in an hour, - then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now - this very instant - your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man - and that this is certain, certain! That's the point - the certainty of it. Just that instant when you place your head on the block and hear the iron grate over your head - then - that quarter of a second is the most awful of all. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Don't ask me when I first mastered the obvious. — John Burdett