Nonpanglossian

“That which we do is what we are. That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tall tale told by inattentive idealists.”
― Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act

“Any control we exert is illusory and brief. Eventually, the pine forest builds up enough fuel and fire is far bigger than it would've been if we had allowed natural fire; the levee gives out in a hurricane, the plutonium builds up in someone's bones, the bacteria outsmart the antibiotics, and the soil becomes exhausted. Even the science of conservation, in its efforts to "manage" land, operates under an assumption that people control nature.”
― Trevor Herriot, Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds

“We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be –the mythologized epitome of a savage ruthless killer – which is, in reality, no more than a reflected image of ourself.”
― Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves

“Naturally, now that I look back on it, this is only death: death will overtake us before heaven. The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road