Since then I have searched for my heroes among small-t truths. I always find them among people learning the art of acceptance: not acceptance of defeat or acceptance of some inability to influence their own futures, but rather acceptance of life on the planet, acceptance of the grays rather than the black-and-whites, acceptance of the astonishing range of human emotion and human behavior.
Therefore it seemed a dreadful injustice that these wise races should perish at the hands of creatures who were still little more than animals. It was as if vultures feasted on and squabbled over the paralyzed body of the youthful poet who could only stare at them with puzzled eyes as they slowly robbed him of an exquisite existence they would never appreciate, never know they were taking.
...He had few illusions, for here are some of the things that life had taught him: "Men hate those whom they have injured; men love those whom they have benefited; men naturally avoid their benefactors; men are universally actuated by self-interest; gratitude is a lovely sense of expected benefits; promises are never forgotten by those to whom they are made, usually by those who make them.
Pride,’ observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, ‘is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.
Chava," he said, "it's a cruel irony that you have the most difficulty precisely when those around you are on their best behavior. I suspect you would find it much easier if we all cast politeness aside, and took whatever we pleased." She considered. "It would be easier, at first. But then you might hurt each other to gain your wishes, and grow afraid of each other, and still go on wanting.
I find it odd- the greed of mankind. People only like you for as long as they perceive they can get what they want from you. Or for as long as they perceive you are who they want you to be. But I like people for all of their changing surprises, the thoughts in their heads, the warmth that changes to cold and the cold that changes to warmth... for being human. The rawness of being human delights me.
If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism — at least in the sense of this work — is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.
A sad truth of human nature is that it is hard to care for people when they are abstractions, hard to care when it is not you or somebody close to you. Unless the world community can stop finding ways to dither in the face of this monstrous threat to humanity those words Never Again will persist in being one of the most abused phrases in the English language and one of the greatest lies of our time.
as Schulz himself has pointed out, Snoopy is capable of being 'one of the meanest' members of the entire Peanuts cast ... he is lazy, he is a 'chow-hound' without parallel, he is bitingly sarcastic, he is frequently a coward, and he often becomes quite weary of being what he is basically -- a dog. He is, in other words, a fairly drawn caricature for what is probably the typical Christian.
Through creativity, we are seamlessly connected and sustained as we pullback the veil, revealing beneath our differences and distinctive characteristics,human expression and the human experience are universal. It is the greatnessof this experience that connects us together by infinite invisible threads strewnacross the globe. This is my responsibility, passion and desire as an artist—mysoul purpose.
Rather than there being two distinct and unambiguous categories ofconstrained and unconstrained (or tragic and utopian) visions of humannature, I think there is just one vision with a sliding scale. Let’s call this theRealistic Vision. If you believe that human nature is partly constrained inall respects—morally, physically, and intellectually—then you hold aRealistic Vision of human nature.
For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads, ‘We came in peace for all Mankind.’ As the United States was dropping seven and a half megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.
It is fundamental to both Taoist and Confucian thought that the natural man is to be trusted, and from their standpoint it appears that the Western mistrust of human nature-whether theological or technological-is a kind of schizophrenia. It would be impossible, in their view, to believe oneself innately evil without discrediting the very belief, since all the notions of a perverted mind would be perverted notions.
Strange combination, isn't it--gratitude and resentment? But this is the way I think. Actually, I think everybody thinks that way. Even the children of the humans who died long ago, I think they lived their lives holding similar contradictory thoughts about their parents. They were raised to learn about love and death, and they lived out their lives passing from the sunny spots to the shady spots of this world.
So, that was Nature's way. The mosquito felt pain and panic but the dragonfly knew nothing of cruelty. Humans would call it evil, the big dragonfly destroying the mosquito and ignoring the little insects suffering. Yet humans hated mosquitoes too, calling them vicious and bloodthirsty. All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.
