Ahmed

“إن خوف المستبدِ من نقمة رعيته أكثرُ من خوفهم بأسَهُ, لأن خوفه ينشأ عن علمه بما يستحقه منهم؛ و خوفهم ناشئ عن جهل؛ و خوفه عن عجز حقيقي فيه, و خوفهم عن توهم التخاذل فقط؛ و خوفه على فقد حياته و سلطانه, و خوفهم على لقيمات من النبات على وطن يألفون غيرَه في أيام؛ و خوفه على كل شئ تحت سماء ملكه, و خوفهم على حياة تعيسة فقط.”
― عبدالرحمن الكواكبي, طبائع الاستبداد ومصارع الاستعباد

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

“This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again