1005 – Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan on Humans and Animals

“Humans – who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals – have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them – without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.”

-Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

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864 – “The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday, and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”

–Neil deGrasse Tyson

475 – “When suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”

–Estella Havisham in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

394 – “Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”

–Albus Dumbledore in J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

392 – “Violent conflicts create zones of silence in a society. The deeds and responsibility of the perpetrators are concealed. Thus also the suffering of the victims, the role of the spectators… The silence is often passed on to the next generation.”

–Dan Bar-On [Attributed]

386 – “[Man] cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor. In order to uncover his true visage he must shatter his own substance with heavy blows of his hammer.”

–Alexis Carrel

248 – “In times of loneliness, I howl at the moon and hear the echo of my pain tremble through the fractures of my broken soul.”

–anonymous

241 – “I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

–Khaled Hosseini

227 – “The people that are there for you on your darkest nights are the ones worth spending your brightest days with.”

–anonymous

192 – “Behind every beautiful thing, there’s been some kind of pain.”

–Bob Dylan