“Denial,they say, stands for"Don't even notice I am lying." Human beings are the only animals who are happily lied to by our own minds about what is actually happening around us.”
“...Desire, a function central to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable. And at the same time this desire lies at the origin of every variety of animation. If being were only what it is, there wouldn’t even be room to talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact function of this lack.”
“What’s on my mind? I could say you, but we both know I'd be lying. Actually, I'm only pretending that you aren't on my mind. But I know that you don't mind.”
“There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.”
“A disciple: I am worried about human suffering all over the world. What is the solution?Spiritual leader: The solution to our miseries lie within central atom of our being, ‘I’. Once this central atom transcends to ‘WE’, human sufferings can be resolved.”
“Faced with an ecological crisis whose roots lie in this disengagement, in the separation of human agency and social responsibility from the sphere of our direct involvement with the non-human environment, it surely behoves us to reverse this order of priority. I began with the point that while both humans and animals have histories of their mutual relations, only humans narrate such histories. But to construct a narrative, one must already dwell in the world and, in the dwelling, enter into relationships with its constituents, both human and non-human. I am suggesting that we rewrite the history of human-animal relations, taking this condition of active engagement, of being-in-the-world, as our starting point. We might speak of it as a history of human concern with animals, insofar as this notion conveys a caring, attentive regard, a 'being with'. And I am suggesting that those of us who are 'with' animals in their day-to-day lives, most notably hunters and herdsmen, can offer us some of the best possible indications of how we might proceed.”