Pradipa P. Rasidi

“United States represents the hegemonic "culture of terrorism," providing the central model and leading example emulated by every other nation involved in state terror around the world ... The structures, tactics, and technology of state terror have been diffused, in fact aggressively marketed and exported as a form of "military aid" to developing countries. A focus on state terror at the level of individual countries tends to obscure the fact that it is a global phenomenon supported by an international structure or network, and local cases are only comprehensible within this encapsulating context.”
― Jeffrey A. Sluka, Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror

“They had him. Far down the platform we heard the sudden fifing shrill of the engine whistle. The guard cried warning; all up and down the platform doors were slammed. Slowly the train moved from the station. We rolled right past him, very slowly. They had him. They surrounded him. He stood among them, protesting volubly, talking with his hands now, insisting all could be explained. And they said nothing. They had him.”
― Thomas Wolfe, I Have a Thing to Tell You

“He clicked his heels together and bowed formally; and then closed the door. And I stood there for a moment, with that nameless feeling of affection and regret, knowing that I should never see him again.”
― Thomas Wolfe, I Have a Thing to Tell You

“Apparently, the highest evolution will not be permitted to creatures capable of what human moral experience has in all eras condemned. Apparently, the highest possible strength is the strength of unselfishness; and power supreme never will be accorded to cruelty or to lust. There may be no gods; but the forces that shape and dissolve all forms of being would seem to be much more exacting than gods. To prove a "dramatic tendency" in the ways of the stars is not possible; but the cosmic process seems nevertheless to affirm the worth of every human system of ethics fundamentally opposed to human egoism.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things