Anshuman

“Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the greatest figure of the 19th century. Certainly of the five masters - Napoleon, Bismarck, Victoria, Browning and Lincoln, Lincoln is to me the most human and lovable. And I love him not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet triumphed. The world is full of illegitimate children. The world is full of folk whose taste was educated in the gutter. The world is full of people born hating and despising their fellows. To these I love to say: See this man. He was one of you and yet he became Abraham Lincoln.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois, Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays and Articles

“If the history of British rule in India were to be condensed into a single fact, it is this: there was no increase in India’s per capita income from 1757 to 1947.”
― Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

“It is especially in the faubourgs, we must insist, that the Parisian race appears. This is where the thoroughbred is; this is where the true features of the breed are to be found; this is where the people work and suffer, and this suffering and work are the two faces of the man. The place is teeming with heaps of unknown beings, the strangest specimens from the stevedore of La Rapée to the knacker of Montfaucon. Fex Urbis, cries Cicero; mob, adds Burke, indignant. Riffraff, mob, rabble- those words are easily said. But so be it. What does it matter? What do I care if they go about barefoot? Too bad if they can't read. Are you going to abandon them for that? Are you going to turn their distress into a curse? Can't the light penetrate the teeming masses? Let's get back to that cry: Let there be light! And let's stick to it! Light! Light! Who knows if these opaque walls won't become transparent? Aren't revolutions transfigurations? Off you go, philosophers- teach, enlighten, fire up, think out loud, speak out loud, go on joyful romps in broad daylight, fraternize in public places, bring glad tidings, spray alphabets lavishly all over the place, proclaim rights, since the Marseillaises, sow enthusiasm, rip green branches off the oaks. Whip up ideas into a whirlwind. The hordes can be made sublime. Let's learn how to use this vast blaze of principles and virtues that crackles and flames out and occasionally sputters. These bare feet, these bare arms, these rags, this ignorance, this abjectness, this darkness, can be put to work in the conquest of the ideal. Look through the people and you will see truth. This vile sand that you trample beneath your feet, throw it in the furnace, and if it melts there and boils, it will become sparkling crystal. And it is thanks to this that Galileo and Newton will discover the stars.”
― Victor Hugo

“The silence was more profound than that of midnight: and to me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence, because, the light being broad and strong, as that of noon-day at other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect day, chiefly because man is not yet abroad: and thus, the peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures of God, seems to be secure and deep, only so long as the presence of man, and his restless and unquiet spirit, are not there to trouble its sanctity.”
― Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater