Profession Quotes - page 11
What were they saying?” Daly asked.
"They disapprove of your profession,” Doro told him.
"Heathen savages,” Daly muttered. "They're like animals. They're all cannibals.”
"These aren't,” Doro said, "though some of the their neighbors are.”
"All of them,” Daly insisted. "Just give them the chance.”
Doro smiled. "Well, no doubt the missionaries will reach them eventually and teach them to practice only symbolic cannibalism.”
Daly jumped. He considered himself a pious man in spite of his work. "You shouldn't say such things,” he whispered. "Not even you are beyond the reach of God.”
"Spare me your mythology,” Doro said, "and your righteous indignation.” Daly had been Doro's man too long to be pampered in such matters. "At least we cannibals are honest about what we do,” Doro continued. "We don't pretend as your slavers do to be acting for the benefit of our victims' souls. We don't tell ourselves we've caught them to teach them civilized religion.
Octavia Butler
Let us say that the freedom exists, but it is limited to the one unique act of choosing the profession. Afterward all freedom is over. When he begins his studies at the university, the doctor, lawyer, or engineer is forced into an extremely rigid curriculum which ends with a series of examinations. If he passes them, he receives his license and can thereafter pursue his profession in seeming freedom. But in doing so he becomes the slave of base powers; he is dependent on success, on money, on his ambition, his hunger for fame, on whether or not people like him. He must submit to elections, must earn money, must take part in the ruthless competition of castes, families, political parties, newspapers. In return he has the freedom to become successful and well-to-do, and to be hated by the unsuccessful, or vice versa.
Hermann Hesse