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Quotes About Alienation

Humans act as though we were the creators and masters of language, while in fact language remains the master of us. Perhaps it is, before all else, humankind's distortion of this relation of dominance that drives our nature into alienation.
~ Martin Heidegger
The hardhearted person never sees people as a people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever-turning wheel. In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands. In the massive wheel of big city life, he sees men as digits in a multitude. In the deadly wheel of army life, he sees men as numbers in a regiment. He depersonalizes life.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
The hardhearted individual never sees people as people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever-turning wheel. In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands … He depersonalizes life.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Eve took the bite. But instead of the promised benefits, she found herself with a mouthful of distasteful consequences—guilt, fear, and alienation. The fellowship she had enjoyed with God and her husband was broken. Paradise had been lost.
~ Mary A. Kassian
which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
With you, thought Rubashov and looked at the whitewashed wall behind which the other stood—in the meantime he had probably lit a cigarette and was blowing the smoke against the wall — with you I have no accounts to settle. To you I owe no fare. Between you and us there is no common currency and no common language. ... Well, what do you want now?
~ Arthur Koestler
Because most people ain't people.
~ Arthur Miller
In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me . - Bad Blood
~ Arthur Rimbaud
Our dreams have been doctored.We belong no where. We sail unanchored on troubled seas.We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter..
~ Arundhati Roy
Perverted quality; Moral perversion; The innate corruption of human nature due to original sin; Both the elect and the non-elect came into the world in a state of total d. and alienation from God, and can, of themselves do nothing but sin. J.H. Blunt.
~ Arundhati Roy
So on the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, people avoided her, made little loops around her, because everybody agreed that it was best to just Let Her Be.
~ Arundhati Roy
This place where half of us will typically spend a year or more of our lives was never truly made for us.
~ Atul Gawande
I feel trapped on a lonely star.
~ Audre Lorde
All I know for sure is that I have accidentally fallen through a wormhole in the universe and stumbled into someone else's grim life.
~ Augusten Burroughs
There was nothing she could say to them--nothing would be heard or answered. What were the weapons, she thought, in a realm where reason was not a weapon any longer? It was a realm she could not enter.
~ Ayn Rand
now, be happy. But I'm not. I feel nothing. When I 'm honest with myself, I know that the only emotion I've felt in years is being tired. Not physically tired. Just tired. It's as if…as if there were nobody there to feel any more. But that's not all. There's something much worse. It's doing something horrible to me. I'm beginning to hate people…
~ Ayn Rand
Disdain is a natural condition of the mind in exile;
~ Stacy Schiff
Ale on jest przecie? rozstrojony. Elektryczny wariat... - ?adny wariat. ByÅ'eÅ› w sterowni? - Nie. Tu byÅ'em. - No. A ja byÅ'em. Szkoda, ?e nie widziaÅ'eÅ›, jak rozwalaÅ' nasze sondy. - To znaczy, ?e jak? Å»e oni go przestroili? Å»e jest ju? pod ich kontrolÄ…? Wszyscy mówiÄ… oni - pomyÅ›laÅ' Rohan. Jakby to naprawdÄ™ byÅ'y ?ywe, rozumne istoty... - A proton go wie. Podobno tylko siÄ™ rozstroiÅ'a Å'Ä…czno??.
~ Stanis?aw Lem
A blurred region, in the heart of vastness, far from earth and heaven, with no ground underfoot, no vault of sky overhead, nothing. I am the prisoner of an alien matter and my body is clothed in a dead, formless substance - or rather I have no body, I am that alien matter.
~ Stanis?aw Lem
Anxiety, alienation, loneliness, emptiness, and meaninglessness are the fruits of living as an isolated subject admist a multitude of lifeless objects. Although our scope of involvement may extend to numerous and diverse fields of interest and concern, as long as the notion of having predominates, our being remains empty and superficial.
~ Stephen Batchelor
she hated everything her parents loved
~ Stephen Chbosky
I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. Little kids who looked tired. Fathers in nice coats who looked even more tired. Kids working behind counters of the food places who looked like they hadn't had the will to live for hours. The machines kept opening and closing. The people kept giving money and getting their change. And it all felt very unsettlingly to me.
~ Stephen Chbosky
I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. Little kids who looked tired. Fathers in nice coats who looked even more tired. Kids working behind the counters of the food places who looked like they hadn't had the will to live for hours. The machines kept opening and closing. The people kept giving money and getting their change. And it all felt very unsettling to me.
~ Stephen Chbosky
Is that how you feel, my friend? That the air dislikes you and your lungs feel half-empty?
~ Stephen Dobyns