The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
Simone WeilRelated topics
certainty cut ear fact impotence language move sink sound tongue use someone lipsRelated quotes
The intellectual is called on the carpet... Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.
Herbert Marcuse
Never seek to tell thy love Love that never told can be For the gentle wind does move Silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears Ah, she doth depart. Soon as she was gone from me A traveler came by Silently, invisibly He took her with a sigh.
William Blake
I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought.
Erich Fromm
