“My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.”
– Alfred Nobel
“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’”
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”
– T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
– James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“No one is willing to acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances.”
– Mark Twain
“This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.”
– Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
“Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.”
– Abigail Adams
“I was told love should be unconditional. That’s the rule, everyone says so. But if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge?”
– Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
“What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?”
– Buddha
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
– Nelson Mandela
“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”
– Ian McEwan, Atonement
“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin
“One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship!”
– Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father; prepare to die!”
– Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride