The human condition

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For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph—a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning, that all glory is fleeting.

Patton

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Patton. Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. 20th Century Fox, 1969.

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We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Tennessee Williams

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Williams, Tennessee. Camino Real. New Directions, 1953, block 12.

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Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also—if this isn't too grand a word—our tragedy.

Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending

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Barnes, Julian. The Sense of an Ending. Jonathan Cape/Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, ch. 2.

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I long ago come to the conclusions that all life is 6 to 5 against.

Damon Runyon

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Runyon, Alfred Damon. "A Nice Price." Money From Home. Frederick A. Stokes, 1935.

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I always figured girls knew exactly what they wanted. They knew-they had a plan. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were just as confused as we were. Isn’t that great? It's-it’s horrible. They don’t know either. That means nobody knows.

The Wonder Years

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"Just Between Me and You and Kirk and Paul and Carla and Becky." The Wonder Years, written by Neal Marlens and Carol Black and Matthew Carlson, directed by Peter Baldwin, season 2, episode 5, The Black/Marlens Company and New World Television, 1989.

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Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure-wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.

Sinclair Lewis

Main Street

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Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street. Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920, ch. 13.

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Lewis, Sinclair. "Main Street." Sinclair Lewis: Main Street and Babbitt, edited by John Hersey. Library of America, 1992, ch. 13.

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And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

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Kundera, Milan. L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être [The Unbearable Lightness of Being]. Gallimard, 1984.

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Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by Michael Henry Heim. Harper Perennial, 2009.

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And crawling on the planet's face, some insects called the human race. Lost in time, and lost in space and meaning.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

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The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Directed by Jim Sharman, Michael White Productions, 1975.

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Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.

Oliver Sacks

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Sacks, Oliver. The Mind's Eye. Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

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We come out of the dark and go into the dark again, and in between lie the experiences of our life. But the beginning and end, birth and death, we do not experience; they have no subjective character, they fall entirely in the category of objective events, and that's that.

Thomas Mann

The Magic Mountain

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Mann, Thomas. Der Zauberberg [The Magic Mountain]. S. Fischer Verlag, 1924, ch. 6.

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Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain. Everyman's Library, 2005, ch. 6.

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The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't to search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead.

Bojack Horseman

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"Later." BoJack Horseman, written by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, directed by Martin Cendreda, season 1, episode 12, ShadowMachine and Tornante Company, 2014.

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We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry-dock and to reconstruct it there out of the best materials.

Otto Neurath

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Neurath, Otto. Anti-Spengler. G.D.W. Callwey, 1921.

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Neurath, Otto. Quoted in Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics, written by Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck and Thomas E. Uebel. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

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Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering.

Gautama Buddha

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Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta [The First Turning of the Wheel]. c. 510 BC.

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Of all human ills, greatest is fortune's wayward tyranny.

Sophocles

Ajax

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Sophocles. Αἴας [Ajax]. c. 441 BCE, Athens, Greece.

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Sophocles. "Ajax." Electra and Other Plays, translated by David Raeburn. Penguin Classics, 2008.

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We are a mere number and born to consume the fruits of the earth.

Horace

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Horace. Epistularum liber primus [First Book of Letters]. 20 BC, bk. 1, epistle 2.

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Horace. "Epistles." Satires and Epistles, translated by John Davie. Oxford University Press, 2011, bk. 1, epistle 2.

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Men should be bewailed at their birth and not at their death.

Montesquieu

Persian Letters

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Montesquieu. Uzbek to Ibben. 20th of the moon of Rhegeb, 1713.

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These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Public and Private Education." 27 Nov. 1864, Boston, MA, USA.

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Man lives like a robot: mechanically efficient, but with no awareness.

Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)

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Osho, aka Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree. "Why Should I Grieve Over Him?" A Sudden Clash of Thunder, 13 Aug. 1976, Chuang Tzu Auditorium, Pune, India.

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As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods;
They kill us for their sport.

William Shakespeare

King Lear

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Shakespeare, William. King Lear. King's Men, 26 Dec. 1606, Palace of Whitehall, Westminster, England, UK, act 4, sc. 1.

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Shakespeare, William. "The Tragedy of King Lear." The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, et al., 3rd ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, act 4, sc. 1.

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