“We become sphynxes, though fake, up to the point we no longer know who we are.”
Ibid., p. 52
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Tornamo-nos esfinges, ainda que falsas, até chegarmos ao ponto de não sabermos quem somos.
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Fernando Pessoa 288
Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publi… 1888–1935Related quotes
Source: Culture and Imperialism
Book 2, Chapter 4 (p. 564)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)
Source: Unless You Become Like This Child
Essay in North Star (November 1858); as quoted in Faces at the Bottom of the Well : The Permanence of Racism (1992) by Derrick Bell, p. 40
1850s
Context: We deem it a settled point that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with that of the white people of this country. … We are here, and here we are likely to be. To imagine that we shall ever be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We can be remodified, changed, assimilated, but never extinguished. We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country; and the question for the philosophers and statesmen of the land ought to be, What principles should dictate the policy of the action toward us? We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go with this people, either as a testimony against them, or as an evidence in their favor throughout their generations.
Quoted in "Twenty Angels Over Rome: The Story of Fascist Italy's Fall" - Page 72 - by Richard McMillan - 1945
Source: I am a mathematician, the later life of a prodigy (1953), p. 266
Context: We mathematicians who operate with nothing more expensive than paper and possibly printers' ink are quite reconciled to the fact that, if we are working in an active field, our discoveries will commence to be obsolete at the moment that they are written down or even at the moment they are conceived. We know that for a long time everything we do will be nothing more than the jumping off point for those who have the advantage of already being aware of our ultimate results. This is the meaning of the famous apothegm of Newton, when he said, "If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants".
Source: Think Big (1996), p. 244