Category: ordinary-people
Quotes of Category: ordinary-people
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind {and it is, in fact, the merriest kind} which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. book-quotereligionordinary-peopleneighborMilitary men are capable of abominable crimes; witness, in our recent time alone, Chile, My Lai, Greece. But it is a "liberal" fallacy that equates the military mind with real evil and makes it the exclusive province of lieutenants or generals; the secondary evil of which the military is frequently capable is aggressive, romantic, melodramatic, thrilling, orgasmic. Real evil, the suffocating evil of Auschwitz-gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring-was perpetrated almost exclusively by civilians. book-quoteordinary-peoplemilitary
