The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)
“Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch.”
—
Scott Westerfeld
,
book
Pretties
Source: Pretties
Last update June 3, 2021.
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Scott Westerfeld 147
American science fiction writer 1963Related quotes
“It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.”
Benjamin Disraeli
(1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Book III, Chapter 2.
Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831)
Ingmar Bergman
(1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker
As quoted in Ingmar Bergman Directs (1972) by John Simon
“Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.”
Simone de Beauvoir
(1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist
Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov; this was used as an epigraph in The Blood of Others, and is sometimes attributed to de Beauvoir
Misattributed
Sören Kierkegaard
(1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
Journals VII 1A 363
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s
Context: Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. One keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there, nevertheless, and one hardly dares think of how he would feel if all this were taken away.
“We are but numbers, born to consume resources.”
Nos numerus sumus et fruges consumere nati.
Book I, epistle ii, line 27
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)
Context: There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess.
“Most of the time nowadays we human beings are referred to as consumers.”
Madeleine L'Engle
(1918–2007) American writer
Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
Context: I don't want to dump on TV, but there's no doubt that our language has been changed by television, especially by the media, which tries to manipulate us into being consumers. Most of the time nowadays we human beings are referred to as consumers. What does the consumer think? What does the consumer want? How ugly. Forest fires consume. Cancer consumes. I want us to be nourishers. To be a librarian, particularly a librarian for young adults, is to be a nourisher, to share stories, offer books full of new ideas. We live in a world which has changed radically in the last half century, and story helps us to understand and live creatively with change.
The changes are not going to stop. They are going to continue and accelerate. Like it or not.
“… good things happen to the human spirit when it is left alone.”
John Taylor Gatto
(1935–2018) American teacher, book author