Kenneth Williams (1926–1988) English actor and comedian
Letter, quoted in The Observer, Sunday 10 October 2010.
Source: Gift from the Sea
Kenneth Williams (1926–1988) English actor and comedian
Letter, quoted in The Observer, Sunday 10 October 2010.
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author
"Man, Androids and Machine" (1975), reprinted in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995) Lawrence Sutin, ed.
Context: These creatures are among us, although morphologically they do not differ from us; we must not posit a difference of essence, but a difference of behavior. In my science fiction I write about about them constantly. Sometimes they themselves do not know they are androids. Like Rachel Rosen, they can be pretty but somehow lack something; or, like Pris in We Can Build You, they can be absolutely born of a human womb and even design androids — the Abraham Lincoln one in that book — and themselves be without warmth; they then fall within the clinical entity "schizoid," which means lacking proper feeling. I am sure we mean the same thing here, with the emphasis on the word "thing." A human being without the proper empathy or feeling is the same as an android built so as to lack it, either by design or mistake. We mean, basically, someone who does not care about the fate which his fellow living creatures fall victim to; he stands detached, a spectator, acting out by his indifference John Donne's theorem that "No man is an island," but giving that theorem a twist: that which is a mental and a moral island is not a man.
“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
“I am a rock.
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain.
And an island never cries.”
Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer
I Am a Rock
Song lyrics, Sounds of Silence (1966)
Source: Lyrics 1964-2008
Context: I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock.
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain.
And an island never cries.
“We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”
Rudyard Kipling book The Light That Failed
Source: The Light That Failed
Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician
Song lyrics, Amarantine (2005)
“We are islands, but never too far
We are islands, and I need your light tonight…”
Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist
Song lyrics, Islands (1987)
H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu
Variant: We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
Source: The Call of Cthulhu