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“ ”I saw a stop sign, and it occurred to me that just as no one expects a stop sign to stop a car, I shouldn’t expect words to substitute for experience. That’s not their job, although words certainly can be misused in that way. The job of words is to direct us toward experience, to round out experience, to facilitate experience, and to give us ways to share at least pale shadows of that experience with those we love. And the job of words is to help us learn to be — and act — human.
About Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensen (born 19 December 1960) is an American author and environmental activist who lives in Northern California.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Additional quotes by Derrick Jensen
In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It’s not necessary that the lies be particularly believable, but merely that they be erected as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must at all costs be avoided.
Our lawns manifest our cultural desire: they are static, they are artificial, and they are kept sexually immature.
ISOLATION DOES STRANGE THINGS to a person’s mind. This is true for any social creature, human or otherwise. Monkeys taken from their mothers at birth, placed alone in stainless-steel chambers, and deprived of contact with other animals (“human and subhuman” alike, according to the researchers), develop irreversible mental illnesses. As one of the experts in this field, Harry Harlow, put it: “sufficiently severe and enduring social isolation reduces these animals to a social-emotional level in which the primary social responsiveness is fear.