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"I don't know why-it's just that-I don't know-they're not kin.'-Surprising word, I think to myself never used it before. Not of kin-sounds like hillbilly talk-not of a kind-same root-kindness, too-they can't have real kindness toward him, they're not his kin -- . That's exactly the feeling. Old word, so ancient it's almost drowned out. What a change through the centuries. Now anybody can be 'kind.' And everybody's supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn't help. Now it's just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class. But what do they really know about kindness who are not kin."
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"Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home."
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Explore more quotes by Robert M. Pirsig
"He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working. His (Korean) friends nod and smile and eat the food they've taken from tins and say no pleasantly."
"The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely between them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him."
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