Michel

“Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul
and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those
depths we again found only human qualities which in
their very nature were a mixture of good and evil? The
rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all
human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes
apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is
laid open by the concentration camp.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Trying to answer the question “What happened to us?” led me to the fateful year of 1979. Three major events took place in that same year, almost independent of one another: the Iranian Revolution; the siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca by Saudi zealots; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the first battleground for jihad in modern times, an effort supported by the United States. The combination of all three was toxic, and nothing was ever the same again.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East

“silence, simplicity and humility . . . the only proper state for the artist as for the human being,”
― Patrick White, The Vivisector

“Every past, however, is worth condemning—for that is how matters happen to stand with human affairs: human violence and weakness have always contributed strongly to shaping them.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life