naiveté Quotes

“And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”

“In my teens I saw the world in only black and white. Now I know that most things exist in a certain gray area. Though it took a while to get here, I now call this gray area home. I once believed that participating in a capitalist economy would be the death of me, but now realize that agonizing over the political implications of every move I make isn’t exactly living.”

“You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared. You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.”

“Prior to the conflict, Europe had enjoyed decades of relative peace and stability. This stability resulted from a series of mutual defense pacts that deterred nations from seeking military solutions to disagreements with their neighbors. Additionally, the experience of so many years of peace led to a citizenry across Europe that became naive about warfare.”

“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).”

“To tell you the truth, boss, I don’t know much of anything.”

“The death of my childhood naivety had come to pass. I trusted no one and I feared nothing, not even death itself, for everything I loved in this world had already been taken away from me. Ripped from my heart like a bandage. There was nothing left inside but darkness... darkness breeding darkness, and I was at one with it now.”

“Actually, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who actually believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.”

“The assignment of purpose to everything is called teleology. Children are native teleologists, and many never grow out of it.”

″‘Class, I’d like us all to give a warm Mayflower welcome to your new friend and classmate Jing Jang!’ ‘Jin Wang.’ ‘Jin Wang! He and his family moved to our neighborhood all the way from China!’ ‘San Francisco.’ ‘San Francisco!‘”