“He can neither read nor write and in him already there broods a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.”
Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter I
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Cormac McCarthy 270
American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter 1933Related quotes
“It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.”
"On the Ignorance of the Learned"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)
“I am neither a child, a young man, nor an ancient; nor am I of any caste.”
Guru Nanak quotes
Quoted in The Perfect Way in Diet by Anna Kingsford (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1881), p. 14 https://archive.org/stream/perfectwayindie00kinggoog#page/n36.
“A true king is neither husband nor father;
He considers his throne and nothing else.”
Un véritable roi n'est ni mari ni père;
Il regarde son trône, et rien de plus.
Nicomède, act IV, scene iii.
Nicomède (1651)
The Meaning of the Russian Revolution (1906) http://archive.org/stream/russianrevolutio00tols/russianrevolutio00tols_djvu.txt
Context: One might think that it must be quite clear to people not deprived of reason, that violence breeds violence; that the only means of deliverance from violence lies in not taking part in it. This method, one would think, is quite obvious. It is evident that a great majority of men can be enslaved by a small minority only if the enslaved themselves take part in their own enslavement. If people are enslaved, it is only because they either fight violence with violence or participate in violence for their own personal profit. Those who neither struggle against violence nor take part in it can no more be enslaved than water can be cut. They can be robbed, prevented from moving about, wounded or killed, but they cannot be enslaved: that is, made to act against their own reasonable will.