We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.

In the process of creating what we want, in pursuit of our happiness, we are just destroying the very source of our life, this planet; we are making a bonfire out of it. But still we are not satisfied, nor are we any more joyful than what people were five hundred years ago.

But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.

Their lusts had known no limit until now. They had gorged themselves, surpassed their own imaginings again and again, recklessly squandering what they had supposed to be inexhaustible; they had been like children in a house filled with sweetmeats, destroying what they could not consume. Until now.
Now it was as though the planet itself was sick of their arrogance.

We might have destroyed ourselves, but at least it would have been our own fault."
"Would it, though? Whose fault exactly? Yours? Mine? No, it would have been the result of several billion human beings making relatively innocuous choices: to have kids, drive a car to work, keep their job, solve the short-term problems first. When you reach the point at which even the most trivial acts are punishable by the death of the species, then obviously, obviously, you're at a critical juncture, a different kind of point of no return.

In fact, I was shit-scared that we were going to make fools of ourselves.

We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?

To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!

When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.

It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive!

We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.

They lost their humanity, in our eyes, because of a certain willed ignorance on their part.

What more our folly shows,
Than while we others seek, ourselves to lose?

So easily can we destroy those things we love. Had his moment of wounded pride, his stupid frenzy, snuffed out that fragile courage? Would the strong spirit that survived so much anguish be ended as easily as this?