The End (2006)
“If we stayed home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later.”
Context: 'Of course, it is likely enough, my friends,' he said slowly, 'likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now. It was not a hasty resolve. Now at least the last march of the Ents may be worth a song.
How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)
"Wakefield" (1835) from Twice Told Tales (1837, 1851)
Speech at the Opening of the Bandung Conference
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: The world in which we live is very nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact... that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world which would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction.... in a world without spiritual or intellectual order, nothing is unbelievable; nothing is predictable, and therefore, nothing comes as a particular surprise.... The medieval world was... not without a sense of order. Ordinary men and women... had no doubt that there was such a design, and their priests were well able, by deduction from a handful of principles, to make it, if not rational, at least coherent.... The situation we are presently in is much different.... sadder and more confusing and certainly more mysterious.... There is no consistent, integrated conception of the world which serves as the foundation on which our edifice of belief rests. And therefore... we are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.
“The very young and the very old often saw what others could not. Or would not.”
Source: Valley of Silence
On the 2015 Dadri mob lynching, as quoted in " If someone insults our mother, we would rather die than tolerate it, warns BJP’s Sakshi Maharaj http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/cow-mother-country-are-alike-dont-insult-sakshi/", The Indian Express (7 October 2015)
