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"The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people."
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"In the legal respect, after the execution of the supposed incendiaries, the other half of Moscow burned down."

"Up to 90% of all inventions of the world comes from the Protestant world."

"And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history-money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery-the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."

"If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation."

"In the parlor was a huge camera on wheels like the ones used in public parks, and the backdrop of a marine twilight, painted with homemade paints, and the walls papered with pictures of children at memorable moments: the first Communion, the bunny costume, the happy birthday. Year after year, during contemplative pauses on afternoons of chess, Dr. Urbino had seen the gradual covering over of the walls, and he had often thought with a shudder of sorrow that in the gallery of casual portraits lay the germ of the future of the city, governed and corrupted by those unknown children, where note even the ashes of his glory would remain."

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."

"Our aadivasi sisters and brothers have played a paramount role in the freedom struggle. For hundreds of years, people across villages of the country kept alive the flame of sacrifices for attaining independence. They left no stone unturned in helping India attain freedom."
Explore more quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

"The demon blood inside me burned my soul to ashes long ago.I am a monster who once dreamed he was a man. Never mistakeme again."

"There are some secrets so toxic you can't share. Especially if you love who it is you'd have to share with."

"You never give such relationships a thought, To give a thought, to take a thought is a function of dissociation, distance. You can't exercise memory until you've removed yourself from memory's source."

"The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable."

"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul."

"Nowhere in a hospital can you walk without blundering into the memory pools of strangers-their dread of what was imminent in their lives, their false hopes, the wild elation of their hopes, their sudden terrible and irrefutable knowledge; you would not wish to hear echoes of their whispered exchanges-But he was looking so well yesterday, what has happened to him overnight."

"This is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning of my life, I might still find small treasured things among the spilled and pilfered trash."

"It is utterly naive, futile, uninformed-to think that our species is exceptional. So designated to master the beasts of the Earth, as in the Book of Genesis!"

"The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in any rational way."

"For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power."
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