Ptara > Ptara's Quotes

“Grades are a problem. On the most general level, they're an explicit acknowledgment that what you're doing is insufficiently interesting or rewarding for you to do it on your own. Nobody ever gave you a grade for learning how to play, how to ride a bicycle, or how to kiss. One of the best ways to destroy love for any of these activities would be through the use of grades, and the coercion and judgment they represent. Grades are a cudgel to bludgeon the unwilling into doing what they don't want to do, an important instrument in inculcating children into a lifelong subservience to whatever authority happens to be thrust over them.”
― Derrick Jensen

“Those in power have made it so we have to pay simply to exist on the planet. We have to pay for a place to sleep, and we have to pay for food. If we don't, people with guns come and force us to pay. That's violent.”
― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

“Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens.”
― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

“To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation.”
― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

“Within this culture wealth is measured by one's ability to consume and destroy.”
― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman

“Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.”
― Albert Camus

“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
― Albert Camus, Neither Victims Nor Executioners

“Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942

“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, L'Étranger

“For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”
― Albert Camus, Summer in Algiers

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
― Albert Camus

“There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.”
― Albert Camus

“After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.”
― Albert Camus

“She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the long anguish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole belly against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth.”
― Albert Camus

“A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art or love or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.”
― Albert Camus

“We are all special cases.”
― Albert Camus

“I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.”
― Albert Camus

“The need to be right - the sign of a vulgar mind.”
― Albert Camus

“The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”
― Albert Camus

“We must learn how to lend ourselves to dreaming when dreams lend themselves to us.”
― Albert Camus

“It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many, the world over, feel the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.”
― Albert Camus

“Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.”
― Albert Camus

“He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.”
― Albert Camus

“I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“We have to live and let live in order to create what we are.”
― Albert Camus

“What if the point of life has nothing to do with the creation of an ever-expanding region of control? What if the point is not to keep at bay all those people, beings, objects and emotions that we so needlessly fear? What if the point instead is to let go of that control? What if the point of life, the primary reason for existence, is to lie naked with your lover in a shady grove of trees? What if the point is to taste each other's sweat and feel the delicate pressure of finger on chest, thigh on thigh, lip on cheek? What if the point is to stop, then, in your slow movements together, and listen to the birdsong, to watch the dragonflies hover, to look at your lover's face, then up at the undersides of leaves moving together in the breeze? What if the point is to invite these others into your movement, to bring trees, wind, grass, dragonflies into your family and in so doing abandon any attempt to control them? What if the point all along has been to get along, to relate, to experience things on their own terms? What if the point is to feel joy when joyous, love when loving, anger when angry, thoughtful when full of thought? What if the point from the beginning has been to simply be?”
― Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

“So long as we only believe in the justice of the state, of the law-made by those in power, to serve those in power-so long will we continue to be exploited by those in power.”
― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization