“We only become beasts—we become worse than beasts—when we torment others.”
Source: Culture series, Inversions (1998), Chapter 11 (p. 197)
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Iain Banks 139
Scottish writer 1954–2013Related quotes
New Year's Address 2010/2011 http://kongehuset.dk/english/Menu/news/her-majesty-the-queens-new-year-address-2010 (01 January 2011).
Society
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Great Beast (1947), p. 123; it should be noted that in this comment she is referring to the intolerant traditions of ancient Rome and ancient Isreal, and not the modern entities, one of which did not yet exist at the time of her writing.
François Fénelon, in Selections from the Writings of Fenelon: With an appendix, containing a Memoir of his Life (1829) as translated by A Lady (Eliza Lee Cabot Follen) http://books.google.com/books?id=qJ4rAAAAYAAJ, Letter 37, p. 189.
Misattributed
“Through others, we become ourselves.”
Vygotskij, L. S. (1987). The genesis of higher mental functions. In R. Reiber (Ed.), The history of the development of higher mental functions (Vol. 4, pp. 97-120). New York: Plennum.
“The less we depend on each other, the less connected we become.”
“How many a thing which we cast to the ground,
When others pick it up, becomes a gem!”
St. 41.
Compare: "Once in a golden hour / I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower, The people said, a weed", Alfred Tennyson, The Flower.
Modern Love http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/Meredith/modern_love.htm (1862)
