Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi
"The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
“The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.”
— Elizabeth Kostova, book The Historian
Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 9
Context: There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.
Context: My dear and unfortunate successor:
I shall conclude my account as rapidly as possible, since you must draw from it vital information if we are both to — ah, to survive, at least, and to survive in a state of goodness and mercy. There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.
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Elizabeth Kostova31
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Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist
Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter VIII, Economic Liberalism, p. 99.
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism
As quoted in The Philosophy of Bakunin (1953) edited by G. P. Maximoff, p. 158<!-- (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press) -->
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But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are. There are, for example, so many different religions — each of them claiming to have the truth, each saying that their truths are clearly superior to the truths of others — how can someone possibly take any of them seriously? I mean, that's insane. ...Though I sometimes call myself a crypto-Buddhist, Buddhism is not a religion. Of those around at the moment, Islam is the only one that has any appeal to me. But, of course, Islam has been tainted by other influences. The Muslims are behaving like Christians, I'm afraid. <br class="br"> "God, Science, and Delusion: A Chat With Arthur C. Clarke" Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 19, Number 2 (Spring 1999) http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=clarke_19_2 <br class="br">2000s and attributed from posthumous publications
Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.
p.13.
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Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations
Truman Library address (2006)
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