Themes

""Is it not a strange drift this of men," said the curate, "to hide what is under the veil of what is not? to seek refuge in lies, as if that which is not, could be an armor of adamant? to run from the daylight for safety, deeper into the cave? In the cave house the creatures of the night, — the tigers and hyenas, the serpent and the old dragon of the dark; in the light are true men and women, and the clear-eyed angels. But the reason is only too plain; it is, alas! that they are themselves of the darkness and not of the light. They do not fear their own. They are more comfortable with the beasts of darkness than with the angels of light. They dread the peering of holy eyes into their hearts; they feel themselves naked and fear to be shamed, therefore cast the garment of hypocrisy about them. They have that in them so strange to the light that they feel it must be hidden from the eye of day, as a thing hideous, that is, a thing to be hidden. But the hypocrisy is worse than all it would hide. That they have to hide again, as a more hideous thing still."

"God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning is revelation, — a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing unto men of truth after truth. On and on, from fact to fact divine he advances, until at length in his Son Jesus he unveils his very face. Then begins a fresh unveiling, for the very work of the Father is the work the Son himself has to do, — to reveal. His life was the unveiling of himself, and the unveiling of the Son is still going on, and is that for the sake of which the world exists. When he is unveiled, that is, when we know the Son, we shall know the Father also. The whole of creation, its growth, its history, the gathering total of human existence, is an unveiling of the Father. He is the life, the eternal life, the Only. I see it — ah! believe me — I see it as I cannot say it. From month to month it grows upon me. The lovely home-light, the one essence of peaceful being, is God himself. He loves light and not darkness, therefore shines, therefore reveals. True, there are infinite gulfs in him, into which our small vision cannot pierce, but they are gulfs of light, and the truths there are invisible only through excess of their own clarity. There is a darkness that comes of effulgence, and the most veiling of all veils is the light. That for which the eye exists is light, but through light no human eye can pierce. — I find myself beyond my depth. I am ever beyond my depth, afloat in an infinite sea; but the depth of the sea knows me, for the ocean of my being is God. — What I would say is this, that the light is not blinding because God would hide, but because the truth is too glorious for our vision. The effulgence of himself God veiled that he might unveil it — in his Son. Inter-universal spaces, icons, eternities — what word of vastness you can find or choose — take unfathomable darkness itself, if you will, to express the infinitude of God, that original splendor existing only to the consciousness of God himself — I say he hides it not, but is revealing it ever, for ever, at all cost of labor, yea of pain to himself. His whole creation is a sacrificing of himself to the being and well-being of his little ones, that, being wrought out at last into partakers of his divine nature, that nature may be revealed in them to their divinest bliss. He brings hidden things out of the light of his own being into the light of ours. But see how different we are, — until we learn of him! See the tendency of man to conceal his treasures, to claim even truth as his own by discovery, to hide it and be proud of it, gloating over that which he thinks he has in himself, instead of groaning after the infinite of God! We would be forever heaping together possessions, dragging things into the cave of our finitude, our individual self, not perceiving that the things which pass that dreariest of doors, whatever they may have been, are thenceforth "but straws, small sticks, and dust of the floor." When a man would have a truth in thither as if it were of private interpretation, he drags in only the bag which the truth, remaining outside, has burst and left."

"The tale is there, not to hide, but to show."

"Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last with shame derides."

"We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?"

"He was an instance that a complete genius and a complete rogue can be formed before a man is of age."

"I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the Police as it is an old saying it takes a rogue to catch a rogue."

"You know, the Cathars believed that the world was not created by God but by a demon who had stolen a few technological secrets from Him and made this world — which is why it doesn’t work. I don’t share this heresy. I’m too afraid! But I put it in a play called This Extraordinary Brothel, in which the protagonist doesn’t talk at all. There is a revolution, everybody kills everybody else, and he doesn’t understand. But at the very end, he speaks for the first time. He points his finger towards the sky and shakes it at God, saying, “You rogue! You little rogue!” and he bursts out laughing. He understands that the world is an enormous farce, a canular played by God against man, and that he has to play God’s game and laugh about it."

"What a frosty-spirited rogue is this!"

"Demosthenes: A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue."

"A more praeternotorious rogue than himself."

"Through all the Employments of Life Each Neighbour abuses his Brother; Whore and Rogue they call Husband and Wife: All Professions be-rogue one another: The Priest calls the Lawyer a Cheat, The Lawyer be-knaves the Divine: And the Statesman, because he's so great, Thinks his Trade as honest as mine."

"When I invited a Dalit girl to place a Kumbh at my residence on the occasion of ‘Vijay Dashami’, it is not because someone asked me to do so. It is because I believe it is the collective responsibility of all of us to change this mindset. This disease is so deep rooted in our society that the mindset of even those who are well-educated, smart, and converse in English has not really changed on this issue."

"The practice of untouchability is a sin, a blot on humanity, and nothing can justify it. Consider only that untouchable which is injurious to one’s health, not fellow human beings. Unshackling this one foolish fetter would bring crores of our Hindu brethren into the mainstream. They would serve the country in various capacities and defend her honour."

"Abolition of untouchability should be enforced by a very ruthless law... to refuse to give treatment of equality to members of the Scheduled Castes should be declared by Parliament a cognizable offence. If they did so, then all the states would be bound by it. The police would then be authorized to take legal action against the offenders and bring them to book. Police protection should be given to members of the Scheduled Castes... the Scheduled Castes should abolish untouchability among themselves, as between Mahars and Mangs and others... the backward classes should be given assistance on the basis of their poverty and illiteracy."

"No one in the twentieth century has done as much to rid us of untouchability as Gandhiji. He attached more importance to ridding Hinduism of this accretion than to attaining swaraj. He brought upon himself the hostility of orthodox opinion all over India by his uncompromising stand on the matter. But the other day, speaking during the commemorative session of Parliament, Kanshi Ram asserted that abolishing untouchability was never on Gandhiji’s agenda. Not one person stood up to contradict him, not one stood up to point to the record of forty years of our country’s recent history."

"On a more personal note, I see many similarities between India's Dalit problems and the African-American problems that have rocked the US since its beginnings. For this reason, I personally take Dr. Ambedkar as one of my heroes."

"Before the coming of the Aryans […] the Tamils believed that any taking of life was dangerous, as it released the spirits of the things that were killed. Likewise, all who dealt with the dead or with dead substances from the body were considered to be charged with the power of death and were thought to be dangerous. Thus, long before the coming of the Aryans with their notion of varna, the Tamils had groups that were considered low and dangerous and with whom contact was closely regulated."

"It is useless to talk of a democracy as long as this kind of prejudice (untouchability) sways our mind and influences our conduct towards those from whom we differ in religion or whose forms of occupation we dislike. … The process of building a nation is a moral process. You cannot engage in work of this kind with success by practicing duplicity. … It is sufficiently humiliating that we should have to mention untouchability at all in our programme; but to have avoided it for fear of offending the sensibilities of some classes of our countrymen would have been even worse. It would have been immoral."

"Reformers like Swami Vivekananda, like Gandhiji, like Narayan Guru had had no difficulty in showing that Untouchability had no sanction in our scriptures, that, on the contrary, the conclusive doctrinal argument lay in the central proposition of the scriptures themselves: namely, that all was Brahman, that the same soul inhered in all. There was also the historical fact that whatever might have been the excrescences which had grown around or in the name of Hinduism, the entire and long history of the religion showed that it was uniquely receptive to new ideas, that it was uniquely responsive to reformers, that it was adaptable as no other religion was, and therefore there was no reason to believe that it would not reform itself out of this evil also."

"The first example of untouchability is seen after Islam came. It is seen when at Raja Dahir's household his queens were on the way to commit Johar. They mentioned the word 'Malechcha' and said they need to hurry for the Johar, else the 'Malechcha' would touch them and they will become impure. This is the first example of untouchability in Indian text."

"If God is put up with untouchability, I will not call him God."

"Let me just direct your attention once more upon these untouchables, fifty or sixty millions of them, that is to say more than the whole population of the British Isles; all living their lives in acceptance of the validity of the awful curse pronounced upon them by the Brahmins. A multitude as big as a nation, men, women and children deprived of hope and of the status of humanity. Their plight is worse than that of slaves, because they have been taught to consent not only to a physical but to a psychic servitude and prostration. I have asked myself whether if Christ came again into this world, it would not be to the untouchables of India that he would first go, to give them the tidings that not only are all men equal in the sight of God, but that for the weak and poor and downtrodden a double blessing is reserved."

"Another illustration would be the attitude of the Muslims towards the problem of the Untouchables. The Muslims have always been looking at the Depressed Classes with a sense of longing, and much of the jealousy between Hindus and Muslims arises out of the fear of the latter that the former might become stronger by assimilating the Depressed Classes. In 1909 the Muslims took the bold step of suggesting that the Depressed Classes should not be enrolled in the census as Hindus."

"It was well after the Vedic period, after even the period of the Mauryan empire, that the notion of untouchability came into being. In Satapatha Brahmana, the chief is advised to eat from the same vessel as the commoner. In the Rg Veda there is no mention of untouchable either. It was only around second century ad that the stratum of untouchables and the notion of untouchability became evident for instance in Apasthambha Dharmasutra."

"The term Dalit as a social category was introduced by the Hindu reform movement Arya Samaj in the late 19th century in its campaign for dalitoddhara, “upliftment of the oppressed”. Its English counterpart “depressed classes” was used by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar as a more precise alternative to Mahatma Gandhi’s religious term Harijan, “people of God”, a term which has recently given way to Dalit or to the legal term scheduled Caste in ordinary usage."

"[Dr. Ghurye’s anthropometric study of the different castes establishes] “that the Brahmin and the Untouchable belong to the same race. From this it follows that if the Brahmins are Aryans, the Untouchables are also Aryans. If the Brahmins are Dravidians, the Untouchables are also Dravidians. If the Brahmins are Nagas, the Untouchables are also Nagas.”"

"Risley then decided to solve the problem by applying a racial theory. He started distinguishing ‘tracts’ according to their supposed racial composition and within which some greater uniformity might be expected. The North-West, today divided between India and Pakistan, he declared ‘the Indo-Aryan Tract’, consisting of the two Rajasthan census divisions, together with Punjab and Kashmir. Though the report for Punjab gave him no support and that for Kashmir rather little, he took his cue from the two Rajasthan reports and, on this slight basis, he set up for that tract a unified classification which included a ‘Class VII: Castes untouchable’. No such term could be worked into any of his other tracts. From this unpropitious start, representing as it did more of a rebuff than a successful initiative, the career of a key term in modern India was launched."

"Given the Hindu-tribal continuity, Guru Golwalkar proposed that for the integration of tribals and untouchables, one and the same formula applies: 'They can be given yajñopavîta (...) They should be given equal rights and footings in the matter of religious rights, in temple worship, in the study of Vedas, and in general, in all our social and religious affairs. This is the only right solution for all the problems of casteism found nowadays in our Hindu society.'"

"In short, the avalanche of Turco- Mughal invaders, and the policy of their Government turned many settled agriculturists into tribals of the jungles....For example, many Parihars and Parmars, once upon a time belonging to the proud Rajput castes, are now included in lower castes. So are the “Rajputs” counted in Backward Classes in South India. ... in course of time many of these Jats and Khokhars were pushed into belonging to low castes of to-day. For the later times is the example of the Satnamis. This sect was an offshoot of the Raidasis.....At last Aurangzeb crushed them by sending 10,000 troops (March, 1672) and facing a most obstinate battle in which two thousand Satnamis fell on the field and many more were slain during the pursuit. Those who escaped spread out into small units so that today there are about 15 million Satnami Harijans...."

"“Untouchability”, however, not only imposes a hiatus upon the various social, cultural and economic links and continua but … has the effect of hiding everything positive to be found below the division created. … “Untouchable” refers to nothing those labelled do or are, merely to what others, negatively, do to them: they are excluded. … They are not to be viewed as artisans, farmers or traders, nor in terms of their ritual contributions, but in terms of the undefined, unclear but certainly devaluing quality of Untouchability."

"“Untouchability” thus suppressed diversity and variation, and set up a uniform and highly simplified structure in terms of which Indian society was to be understood. The positive practical importance of this conceptual development was great, but the negativity of the characterization needs to be firmly understood before considering the positive. It is this negativity which has become increasingly relevant to current developments as the twentieth century ends.20"

"Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread."

"A difference of opinion exists only as to the question to which of the two classes anything belongs; whether to the class of the impossible, or to that of the possible. Note it."

"Possibility is neither forever nor instant. It is not easy to sustain belief in its efficacy. We can sometimes work long and hard to establish one beachhead of real resistance to the deaths we are expected to live, only to have that beachhead assaulted or threatened by those canards we have been socialized to fear, or by the withdrawal of those approvals that we have been warned to seek for safety."

"Anxiety arises where possibility and actuality come into contact and the present touches the future."

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label."

"A beautiful world we live in, when it IS possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done—done, see you!—under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on."

"What is possible may never actualize and one may lose the present by tending to an imagined future."

"There must be absolutely acceptance of the possibility that everything material in us should be destroyed. But we must simultaneously accept and repudiate the possibility that the supernatural part of the soul should disappear."

"In order to realise his possibilities, man must believe in an open future; he must have a vision of something worth doing."

"The impossible attracts me because everything possible has been done and the world didn't change."

"Hattı müdafaa yoktur, sathı müdafaa vardır. O satıh bütün vatandır."

"Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere."

"Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only."

"Difesa miglior, ch'usbergo e scudo, È la santa innocenza al petto ignudo."

"The only thing that I’ve ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it’s time for Negroes to defend themselves."

"is also known as offensive defense, or defense by decisive battles. Passive defense is also known as purely defensive defense or pure defense. Passive defense is actually a sham defense; active defense is the only real defense, the only defense for the purpose of counter-attacking and taking the offensive. As far as I known, there is no military manual of any value, nor is there any reasonably intelligent military expert, ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, that does not oppose passive defense, wether strategically or tactically. Only the greatest fool or madman would hold up passive defense as a magic weapon."

"Shampoo is produced for people with oily hair, dry hair, and (even) normal hair; for particular pH balances; for "environmentally aware" customers; for those who want conditioner added; and so on."

"How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice? First, recognize that it's not a choice. It's not a lifestyle. It's an orientation. Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don't say "What's the matter?" or "Are you all right?" Third, don't say anything else, either."