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1 " Men would no longer be victims of nature or of their own largely irrational societies: reason would triumph; universal harmonious cooperation, true history, would at last begin. For if this was not so, do the ideas of progress, of history, have any meaning? Is there not a movement, however tortuous, from ignorance to knowledge, from mythical thought and childish fantasies to perception of reality face to face, to knowledge of true goals, true values as well as truths of fact? Can history be a mere purposeless succession of events, caused by a mixture of material factors and the play of random selection, a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing? This was unthinkable. The day would dawn when men and women would take their lives in their own hands and not be self-seeking beings or the playthings of blind forces that they did not understand. It was, at the very least, not impossible to conceive that such an earthly paradise could be; and if conceivable we could, at any rate, try to march towards it. That has been at the centre of ethical thought from the Greeks to the Christian visionaries of the Middle Ages, from the Renaissance to progressive thought in the last century; and indeed, is believed by many to this day. "
― Isaiah Berlin , The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas
2 " I -- I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.' But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday -- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time -- his death and her sorrow -- I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together -- I heard them together. "
― Joseph Conrad , Heart of Darkness
3 " If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains. "
― Alain de Botton , The Art of Travel
4 " life is a battle. it is a struggle renting us time against darkness. It's a fight it will never win. And still in fights. the Universe has no morality. It has no love, no patience. Those are the playthings of Humans..... the seeds of the end are in each beginning. "
5 " Most men have no purpose but to exist, Abraham; to pass quietly through history as minor characters upon a stage they cannot even see. To be the playthings of tyrants. But you...you were born to fight tyranny. "
― Seth Grahame-Smith , Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, #1)
6 " We are largely the playthings of our fears. To one fear of the dark to another of physical pain to a third of public ridicule to a fourth of poverty to a fifth of loneliness ... for all of us our particular creature waits in ambush. "
7 " It is unjust to claim the privileges of age and retain the playthings of childhood. "
