Zendegi

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“When people are committed to a belief and a course of action, clear disconfirming evidence may simply result in deepened conviction and increased proselyting. But there does seem to be a point at which the disconfirming evidence has mounted sufficiently to cause the belief to be rejected.”
― Leon Festinger, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World

“No book has ever been able to redress a single historical injustice. Neither will this one. It wasn't meant to in the first place. Nevertheless, it is a small, personal effort so people don't forget [[Sarajevo]] and what it was. It aims to bring the story of Sarajevo to the point where it was conceived and where it will end. To try-without being pretentious-to salvage, from under the often artificially construed and maintained myth about the city, the People of Sarajevo, those that never wanted to be mythologized or immortalized. Those that only wished to remain normal, people going about their business, in their own city, people whose simple wish wasn't granted. Those that never, not even at the end, managed to understand ordinary and simple things and kept asking questions like "Why are they doing this to us?" The last people on this planet to understand that life and death are not controlled by the heart and reason, kindness and happiness, but machinations and greed, force and barbarity”
― Zlatko Dizdarević, Portraits of Sarajevo

“The principal function of racist ideas in American history has been the suppression of resistance to racial discrimination and its resulting racial disparities. The beneficiaries of slavery, segregation, and mass incarceration have produced racist ideas of Black people being best suited for or deserving of the confines of slavery, segregation, or the jail cell. Consumers of these racist ideas have been led to believe there is something wrong with Black people, and not the policies that have enslaved, oppressed, and confined so many Black people.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America