Joe Hill quote: “Was there any human urge more pitiful-or more intense- than wanting another chance at something?”

“It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 2 “Cheers in the Wirehouse” (p. 52)

“The evolutionary urge drives man to seek for intenser forms of fulfillment, since his basic urge is for more life, more consciousness, and this contentment has an air of stagnation that the healthy mind rejects.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

This recognition lies at the centre of my own 'outsider theory': that there are human beings to whom comfort means nothing, but whose happiness consists in following an obscure inner-drive, an 'appetite for reality'.
Source: Tree By Tolkien (1974), p. 32

“More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

“The thing we must do intensely is be human together. People are more important than things.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

"Introduction" to New World or No World (1970)
General sources
Context: The thing we must do intensely is be human together. People are more important than things. We must get together. The best thing humans can have going for them is each other. We have each other. We must reject everything which humiliates us. Humans are not objects of consumption. We must develop an absolute priority of humans ahead of profit — any humans ahead of any profit. Then we will survive. … Together.

“There are more than two chances– many more. I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? (2011), p.38
Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power, and such people get more of a chance under a democracy than elsewhere.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

What I Believe (1938)
Context: Democracy is not a beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent it deserves our support. It does start from the assumption that the individual is important, and that all types are needed to make a civilization. It does not divide its citizens into the bossers and the bossed — as an efficiency-regime tends to do. The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power, and such people get more of a chance under a democracy than elsewhere. They found religions, great or small, or they produce literature and art, or they do disinterested scientific research, or they may be what is called "ordinary people", who are creative in their private lives, bring up their children decently, for instance, or help their neighbours. All these people need to express themselves; they cannot do so unless society allows them liberty to do so, and the society which allows them most liberty is a democracy.

“Political nationalism has become, for the European of our age the most important thing in the world, more important than civilization, humanity, decency, kindness, pity, more important than life itself.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

The Unseen Assassins https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216538/page/n49 (1932), p. 48; in later variants, "pity" was misquoted as "piety" in the Naval War College Review, Vol. 10 (1957), p. 27, and some internet citations have compressed "has become, for the European of our age" to read "has become for our age".

“You give me the feeling that the universe
Was made by something more than human
For something less than human.
But I identify myself, as always,
With something that there's something wrong with,
With something human.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"The One Who Was Different"
The Lost World (1965)

“The evolutionary urge drives man to seek for intenser forms of fulfillment, since his basic urge is for more life, more consciousness, and this contentment has an air of stagnation that the healthy mind rejects. (This recognition lies at the centre of my own 'outsider theory': that there are human beings to whom comfort means nothing, but whose happiness consists in following an obscure inner-drive, an 'appetite for reality'.)”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Tree By Tolkien (1974), p. 32

“… perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

“Was there any human urge more pitiful-or more intense- than wanting another chance at something?”

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