Predicament Quotes - page 2
The danger that hung over Moscow in the winter of 1941 struck [Hitler] as similar to his present predicament. In a brief access of confidence, he might remark with a jesting tone of voice that it would be best, after victory over Russia, to entrust the administration of the country to Stalin, under German hegemony, of course, since he was the best imaginable man to handle the Russians. In general he regarded Stalin as a kind of colleague. When Stalin's son was taken prisoner it was out of this respect, perhaps, that Hitler ordered him to be given especially good treatment.
Albert Speer
The Enlightenment worldview held by Du Bois is ultimately inadequate, and, in many ways, antiquated, for our time. The tragic plight and absurd predicament of Africans here and abroad requires a more profound interpretation of the human condition - one that goes beyond the false dichotomies of expert knowledge vs. mass ignorance, individual autonomy vs. dogmatic authority, and self-mastery vs. intolerant tradition.
Cornel West
The cross is not random suffering, but necessary suffering. The cross is not suffering that stems from natural existence; it is the suffering that comes from being Christian. ... A Christianity that no longer took discipleship seriously remade the gospel into only the solace of cheap grace. Moreover, it drew no line between natural and Christian existence. Such a Christianity had to understand the cross as one's daily misfortune, as the predicament and anxiety of our daily life. Here it has been forgotten that the cross also means being rejected, that the cross includes the shame of suffering. Being shunned, despised, and deserted by people, as in the psalmists unending lament, is an essential feature of the suffering of the cross, which cannot be comprehended by a Christianity that is unable to differentiate between a citizen's ordinary existence and a Christian existence. The cross is suffering with Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and-without even knowing it-we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.
Pema Chodron
For the Muslim, religion traditionally was not only universal but also central in the sense that it constituted the essential basis and focus of identity and loyalty. It was religion which distinguished those who belonged to the group and marked them off from those outside the group. A Muslim Iraqi would feel far closer bonds with a non-Iraqi Muslim than with a non-Muslim Iraqi. Muslims of different countries, speaking different languages, share the same memories of a common and sacred past, the same awareness of corporate identity, the same sense of a common predicament and destiny. It is not nation or country which, as in the West, forms the historic basis of identity, but the religio-political community, and the imported Western idea of ethnic and territorial nationhood remains, like secularism, alien and incompletely assimilated.
Bernard Lewis
The bible is a collective attempt by humanity to solve the deepest problems that we have. The deepest of all problems that we have is the problem of self-consciousness. The unique predicament of human beings is that we are self-conscious. Not only is it true that we are mortal and that we die, but most crucial is the reality that we know we will die. That's the unique predicament of human beings. And that's laid out in the story of Adam and Eve.
Jordan Peterson
Likewise, gleefully describing the Hindu predicament under the Sultanate, Amir Khusrau puts this statement into the mouth of a subdued Raja; ‘Thanks to the perennial, well established convention of the world, the Hindu has all along been a game of the Turks. The relationship between the Turk and the Hindu cannot be described better than that the Turk is like a tiger and the Hindu, a deer. It has been a long established rule of the whirling sky that the Hindus exist for the sake of the Turk. Being triumphant over them, whenever the Turk chooses to make an inroad upon them, he catches them, buys them, and sells them at will. Since the Hindu happens to be a (wretched) slave in all respects, none need exercise force on his slave. It does not become one to scowl at a goat which is being reared for one's meals. Why should one wield a sharp sword for one who will die by (just) a fierce look?
Amir Khusrow
Are we innately aggressive?” asked Aquinas. "Was the nuclear predicament symptomatic of a more profound depravity? Nobody knows. But if this is so-and I suspect that it is-then the responsibility for what we are pleased to call our inhumanity still rests squarely in our blood-soaked hands. The killer-ape hypothesis does not specify a fate-it lays out an agenda. Beware, the fable warns. Caution. Trouble ahead. Genocidal weapons in the hands of creatures who are bored by peace.”
"I think I'm going to throw up,” said Brat.
"But the fable went unheeded. And the weapons, unchecked. And then, one cold Christmas season, death came to an admirable species-a species that wrote symphonies and sired Leonardo da Vinci and would have gone to the stars. It did not have to be this way. Three virtues only were needed-creative diplomacy, technical ingenuity, and moral outrage. But the greatest of these is moral outrage.
James K. Morrow
Futurity should cease to be a predicament and should become a program: we should radicalize it to empower ourselves. That is the reason to take an interest in ways of organizing thought and society in ways that diminish the influence of what happened before on what can happen next. Such intellectual and institutional innovations make change in thought less dependent on the pressure of unmastered anomalies and change in society less dependent on the blows of unexpected trauma.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger
There is a predicament of ‘the girl child'. From Life expectancy to literary rates, from school enrollment ratios, from employment to inheritance, there is hardly any society in the world where women are treated at par with men. This wrong and unfortunate discrimination is extended to the girl child.
Shankar Dayal Sharma
If one benefits tangibly from the exploitation of others who are weak, is one morally implicated in their predicament Or are basic rights of human existence confined to the civilized societies that are wealthy enough to afford them Our values are defined by what we will tolerate when it is done to others.
William Greider
So you know how it all works. How first you confess and then are given absolution. You have to admit your sins before you can be forgiven." Jason nodded, wondering what being a Catholic and going to confession had to do with his situation here, his sudden predicament. "Well, there is something you have to do before we can take steps to protect you." A dim warning sounded somewhere in Jason's mind, his body, his spirit- he wasn't sure which or where but he was suddenly jolted thoroughly. Confession. A different word from confess. He suddenly saw where this man was going. He wanted Jason to confess. To confess to killing Alicia Bartlett. Jason almost giggled his disbelief, a reaction that was as unpremeditated and unexpected as a belch. "You want me to say I killed Alicia Bartlett?
Robert Cormier