WIST Quotations

Gibson, William -- Count Zero, ch. 2 (1986)

Dave — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:18:53 +0000

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

William Gibson (b. 1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and essayist
Count Zero, ch. 2 (1986)
(Source)

Watterson, Bill -- Calvin and Hobbes (1995-07-07)

Dave — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 19:49:51 +0000

CALVIN: I’m writing a fund-raising letter. The secret to getting donations is to depict everyone who disagrees with you as the enemy. Then you explain how they’re systematically working to destroy everything you hold dear. It’s a War of Values! Rational discussion is hopeless! Compromise is unthinkable! Our only hope is well-funded antagonism, so we need your money to keep up the fight!

HOBBES: How cynically unconstructive.

CALVIN: Enmity sells.

Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1995-07-07)
(Source)

Rogers, Will -- Column (1925-03-29), “Weekly Article”

Dave — Fri, 02 May 2025 18:57:15 +0000

All you would have to do to make some men Atheists is just to tell them that the Lord belonged to the opposition Political Party. After that they could never see any good in Him.

Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Column (1925-03-29), “Weekly Article”
(Source)

Todorov, Tzvetan -- Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century, ch. 5 “The Past in the Present” (2003)

Dave — Fri, 13 May 2022 16:33:32 +0000

A maxim for the twenty-first century might well be to start not by fighting evil in the name of good, but by attacking the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. We should struggle not against the devil himself but what allows the devil to live — Manichaean thinking itself.

Tzvetan Todorov (1939-2017) Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, literary critic, sociologist
Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century, ch. 5 “The Past in the Present” (2003)
(Source)

Paraphrased variant:

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.

Butcher, Jim -- White Night (2007)

Dave — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 15:54:39 +0000

Life’s easier when you can write off others as monsters, as demons, as horrible threats that must be hated and feared. The thing is, you can’t do that without becoming them, just a little.

Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
White Night (2007)
(Source)

Snyder, Timothy -- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, “Conclusion” (2010)

Dave — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 14:48:50 +0000

It is tempting to say that a Nazi murderer is beyond the pale of understanding. […] Yet to deny a human being his human character is to render ethics impossible. To yield to this temptation, to find other people inhuman, is to take a step toward, not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history.

Timothy Snyder (b. 1969) American historian, author
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, “Conclusion” (2010)
(Source)

Gilligan, James -- Preventing Violence (2001)

Dave — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 18:38:04 +0000

Once we have labeled someone as “evil” there is often no limit to the cruelty and violence we can feel justified in administering to him ….

James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
Preventing Violence (2001)
(Source)

Pratchett, Terry -- Discworld No. 21, Jingo (1997)

Dave — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 20:03:39 +0000

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 21, Jingo (1997)
(Source)

Vimes pondering.

Francis I (Pope) -- Homily (22 May 2013)

Dave — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 14:28:16 +0000

The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. “But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.” Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this “closing off” that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.

Francis I (1936-2025) Argentinian Catholic Pope (2013–2025) [b. Jorge Mario Bergoglio]
Homily (22 May 2013)
(Source)

Hoffer, Eric -- True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 3, ch. 15, § 65 (1951)

Dave — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:58:09 +0000

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 3, ch. 15, § 65 (1951)
(Source)

Huxley, Aldous -- Essay (1936), “Words and Behaviour,” The Olive Tree, and Other Essays

Dave — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:10:47 +0000

All propaganda directed against an opposing group has but one aim: to substitute diabolical abstractions for concrete persons. The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. By robbing them of their personality, he puts them outside the pale of moral obligation. Mere symbols can have no rights — particularly when that of which they are symbolical is, by definition, evil.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Essay (1936), “Words and Behaviour,” The Olive Tree, and Other Essays
(Source)

Hoffer, Eric -- True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 3, ch. 14, § 71 (1951)

Dave — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:09:42 +0000

The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 3, ch. 14, § 71 (1951)
(Source)

Sontag, Susan -- “Regarding the Torture of Others,” New York Times (23 May 2004)

Dave — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:56:00 +0000

People do these things to other people. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, do them when they have permission. When they are told or made to feel that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be mistreated, humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior, despicable race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
“Regarding the Torture of Others,” New York Times (23 May 2004)

On the photos of Iraqi prisoners tortured by Americans in Abu Ghraib.

Parker, Robert -- Crimson Joy (1988)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

The thing about monsters is, you want to kill them until you meet them, and when you meet them they don’t seem monstrous, and killing them begins to seem unkind.

Robert B. Parker (1932-2010) American writer
Crimson Joy (1988)