“The instructor-Na has observed in the Na 14 tendencies toward an archaic and dangerous quality to which the ancients gave the name personal ambition.”
Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 2 (p. 30)
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Avram Davidson 41
novelist 1923–1993Related quotes

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Prerequisite to Dignity of Labour (1957), p. 245
Context: It is not in a person's nature to desire what he already has. Desire is a tendency, the start of a movement toward something, toward a point from which one is absent. If, at the very outset, this movement doubles back on itself toward its point of departure, a person turns round and round like a squirrel in a cage or a prisoner in a condemned cell. Constant turning soon produces revulsion. All workers, especially though not exclusively those who work under inhumane conditions, are easily the victims of revulsion, exhaustion and disgust and the strongest are often the worst affected.

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

On the government's proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, 24 July, 2005
"A Republic, If You Can Keep It" https://web.archive.org/web/20140327090001/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/articles/12321 (2013) (original emphasis)

Games for Actors and non-Actors (1992)
Context: In its most archaic sense, theatre is the capacity possessed by human beings—and not by animals—to observe themselves in action. Humans are capable of seeing themselves in the act of seeing, of thinking their emotions, of being moved by their thoughts. They can see themselves here and imagine themselves there; they can see themselves today and imagine themselves tomorrow. This is why humans are able to identify (themselves and others) and not merely to recognise.

As quoted in Rodric Braithwaite (2010) Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89, page 65.