Rajiv Chopra

“Most civilization is based on cowardice. It’s so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame. —The Stolen Journals”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“I asked you how the Germans could send Jewish children to die in the gas chambers. How, I asked, could they live with themselves after that? Was there really no judgement passed on them by man or God? And you said: Only one judgement is passed on the executioner – he ceases to be a human being. Through looking on his victim as less than human, he becomes his own executioner; he executes the human being inside himself. But the victim – no matter what the executioner does to kill him – remains a human being forever. Remember now?”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“And the truth is that I truly didn’t think of them as human beings. “They’re not human beings, they’re kulak trash!” – that’s what I heard again and again, that’s what everyone kept repeating. And when I think about it all now, I wonder who first talked about kulak trash. Lenin? Was it really Lenin? How the kulaks suffered. In order to kill them, it was necessary to declare that kulaks are not human beings. Just as the Germans said that Yids are not human beings. That’s what Lenin and Stalin said too: The kulaks are not human beings. But that’s a lie. They are people. They are human beings. I can see now that we are all human beings.60”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behaviour. All patterned behaviour tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum. —Darwi Odrade”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune