Complicity Quotes

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others”
― Iain M. Banks, Complicity

“A thousand times, people may have touched each other, but never ever sensed a single vein of oneness or complicity in the wilderness of their inner world, since obdurate mental impediments have been barricading the road to understanding and propinquity. (“A thousand times”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“A dog can be a ‘significant other’ as it infuses a magic fluid stream of oxytocin, trust, ease, and patience; and transforms a man’s life into a paradise of complicity and mutual sympathy, arousing at the same time an instinct of playfulness that many people have lost since their young age and that puts things in new perspectives.( "I am young and have no dog")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“It is complicated,’ they say. I am so sick of this response. Many people use it repeatedly to escape depth and confronting reality. They use it to take solace in the fact that they don’t know (or don’t wish to know) the ugly truth of what is happening right in front of their eyes. They reduce crimes, injustice, war, pain, hunger, rape, and everything that must be unpacked, dissected, and confronted to this: ‘It is complicated.’ They say this about COVID-19, too. Oh, how I have grown to hate this response. Every time I hear this statement from someone, it sounds like ‘I am a loser’ to my ears. ‘It is complicated’ is the favorite response of lazy brains that refuse to think and do. Oh, my friends, I insist it is not complicated. If you really want to know, it is not so complicated. However, if you are really looking for reasons and excuses to justify your silence, complicity, and to protect your self-interest, then you are absolutely right – it is complicated!”
― Louis Yako

“Elwood said, "It's against the law." State law, but also Elwood's. If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“В Германии практически каждый знал о Холокосте — ведь он начался с массовых убийств в Восточной Европе, в которых приняли непосредственное участие десятки тысяч немцев. Сотни тысяч, если не миллионы, знали об этом; вероятно, чуть ли не каждый немецкий солдат на Восточном фронте. И мы знаем, что они писали об этом домой. Я полагаю, что Холокост как факт был широко известен задолго до того, как был устроен Освенцим. А после войны пришли американцы и британцы и обнаружили лагеря смерти. И они спросили у немцев: "Вы знали об этом?" И получили вполне правдивый ответ: "Нет, мы не знали точно, что там происходило". Так лагеря заслонили собой Холокост. И по сегодняшний день Холокост у немцев ассоциируется прежде всего с лагерями смерти, хотя на самом деле он был сравнительно мало связан с ними [161].”
― Timothy Snyder, Украинская история, российская политика, европейское будущее

“as for those of you who are complicit, it is not you that I want to destroy, but your shackles”
― Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady

“[Long Life]
This famous writer has died at 92
And that legend journalist,
The darling of authorities and mainstream media,
Has died at 95.
This pious religious man
Has died at 96,
And that billionaire,
Known for his countless charities and charitable deeds
Has died at 96 also…
The veteran and shrewd politician,
The former president of that country,
Has died at 95 as well…
And the same questions that dawned on me
Ever since I understood the oppression & filthiness
Of what the elites, authorities, and those in power are capable of,
Begin ringing in my ears once again:
Can anyone aware of the ugliness of what is going on live a long life?
Is it a coincidence that most people, writers, and artists
Who enriched my awareness and world died prematurely
Or died, literally or metaphorically, by suicide, assassination, or in prison?
Can a shred of awareness fell upon us without defeating the body and the soul
Cell by cell and one organ after another causing a premature death?
I also wonder have the writers, journalists, religious men, and politicians
Who lived long lives enriched truth and justness,
Or have they gotten rich at the expense of the above
to live long lives up to 92, 93, 94, 95, & 96?
And by biggest questions of all:
Is there somewhere, in some world, in some place,
a dagger of awareness that stabs without the killing the stabbed prematurely?

[Original poem published in Arabic on December 31, 2022, at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“Nothing in this world scares me
More than applause!
Yes, I suffer from what can be called
‘Acute Applause Syndrome’!
Applause the bread of the hypocrites
The talent of the frauds
The compliments of liars
For other liars…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Nothing in this world scares me
More than applause!
Yes, I suffer from what can be called
‘Acute Applause Syndrome’!
Applause the bread of the hypocrites
The talent of the frauds
The compliments of liars
For other liars…
…
Each time I hear an applause,
I’m reminded of all the dirty hands
That applauded
Wars
Genocide
And massacres…
I’m reminded of all the hands that applauded
Political parties
Ideologies
And religions
That kills humanity and humans every day…
I feel the clappers holding my breath
And raping me in daylight…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“With all our eyes, we don't see.
With all our ears, we don't hear.
With all our tongues, we don't speak.
With all our limbs, we still disappear.

We turn our eyes where we need to see,
We shut our ears where we need to listen.
We chain our tongue where we need a voice,
We freeze our feet where we need movement.

It's time to thaw the freeze,
It's time to break the silence.
It's time we hearken to cries,
It's time we walk as guardians.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“What is the point of you? What is your worth? And by worth I am not talking about your financial value, I am talking about something much more significant than that. So, I ask again - what is your worth? And you won't find the answer in any scripture or church - you won't find it even in this book. Because no external power can give you the answer to something so incredibly existential in nature.

If you want to know your worth, ask yourself, what are you without your bank account. The worth of a person lies in character. The same goes for a nation and the same goes for a world. Therefore, a nation's worth lies not in the value of its currency, but in the character of its people. And it all begins with the individual - it all begins with you. Your character holds not just the worth of your own life, but that of the lives of your people as well. So, feel like it's the feeling of your society and act like it's the action of your society.

But mark you, here I do not mean, feeling and acting like the society, rather, I am asking you to feel, think and act as an original, brave and conscientious human being, so that you become the very emblem of humanhood in front of others, for them to draw their life’s inspiration from. Doing what the society wants, makes you a second hand human - wanting the society to do what you want, makes you a narcissistic bigot - but being an embodiment of humanhood without any expectation from others, is what makes you a sentient human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Every Generation Needs Caretakers: The Gospel of Patriotism

“Silent Messages 4

Nobody wants to change the world…
Everyone wants to ensure
Receiving just one more paycheck
Just one more…

[Original poem published in Arabic on May 16, 2023 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako”
― Louis Yako

“The Silence Game"
Many have understood the game
and chose to remain silent…
They chose silence thinking
that their silence will save them…
Yet silence killed them through heart attacks,
without even giving them a chance
to scream at least one last time
to inform the world that
silence is much more costly
than resistance…

[Original poem published in Arabic on December 11, 2023 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“Women and children were not afforded the rights of citizenship, of subjecthood, of being. They lived under threat of being erased, hidden, buried. This is why my mother tells me - halting, hesitating - that in her day it was the worst thing in the world for a girl to find herself pregnant, but worse still was for her to talk about it.”
― Carmel Mc Mahon, In Ordinary Time: Fragments of a Family History

“Departure"
Everyone wants to leave
Those here want to go there,
and many there are eager to return here…
There are those who understood that living is not possible
neither here nor there,
so, you see them, in vain, searching for alternatives…
Few have understood that the impossibility of living
is a result of complicity not geography,
that most of those who stay or depart
never part ways with their complicity and tendency to surrender,
thus, they recreate the circumstances and the causes of departure
everywhere they go…
Few have understood that all places will remain unlivable
so long as the causes to depart are a result
of a complicit and defeated Self…


[Original poem published in Arabic on June 20, 2024 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“Either you succumb to the world, or expand so vast that the world succumbs to you.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“Even today in western countries, among women who have not had in their work an apprenticeship of freedom, there are still many who take shelter in the shadow of men; they adopt without discussion the opinions and values recognized by their husband or their lover, and that allows them to develop childish qualities which are forbidden to adults because they are based on a feeling of irresponsibility”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

“Losers"
Losers are closer to my heart,
because they were right...
Because integrity doesn’t win
as depicted in superficial Hollywood movies...
Integrity always loses,
for many are those who fear
those who sell,
and those whose interests don’t align
with its harsh conditions…
I love losers
because they were right...
I, too, who once bet on humanity,
I lost!


[Original poem published in Arabic on December 12, at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“I spoke of my own guilt by assimilation. I stressed that until we owned the problems at our most senior ranks, nothing real or meaningful would change.”
― Bonnie Wan, The Life Brief: A Playbook for No-Regrets Living

“If evil gets a parade, silence is the marching band.”
― pierre lagrenat

“Book dedication: "To all who refused every form of complicity, even after learning, in bitter hindsight, that their wager on humanity was a losing bet.”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“It is one of the defining features of any bureaucracy that those who staff it are selected by formal, impersonal criteria. Most often, some kind of test. That is, bureaucrats are not, say, elected like politicians. But neither should they get the job just because they are someone's cousin.

In theory, they are meritocracies. In fact, everyone knows that the system is compromised in a thousand different ways. Many of the staff are, in fact, there just because they are someone's cousin. And everybody knows it.”
― David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

“They Say the World Will End Soon"
They say the nuclear weapons—born of fear of the other— have become a curse, a plague, a scourge upon those who built them, even more than those they were meant to threaten…

And I wonder: Will nuclear weapons bring about the end of the world? Or will it be humanity’s fear, complicity, and quiet submission?

If what they say is true, before the world ends—and before I die— I wish to drink one last cup of cardamom-flavored tea, to taste one final fig, peach, or apricot, to inhale the scent of a quince, to dip one last piece of bread into Palestinian thyme and olive oil…

Before the world ends, I want to smell pine needles, and breathe the scent of the season’s first rain after a long, dry summer.

Before the world ends—and before I die— I long to read one more book from the thousands still waiting for me.

I ask for one more spring to inhale bunches of Iraqi narcissus. And one more autumn to marvel at the dying leaves— defying death with beauty just before falling upon the indifferent ground.

But most of all, my final wish before I die is that my death not be the end of the world…”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“Departure"
Everyone wants to leave— those here long to be there, and many there ache to return here…

There are some who’ve grasped that living is impossible neither here nor there— so they search, in vain, for alternatives.

Few have come to understand that this impossibility of living stems not from geography, but from complicity.

Most who stay or go never part ways with their surrender and quiet compliance— and so they recreate, everywhere they settle, the same conditions and reasons for departure.

Few have realized that all places will remain unlivable as long as the urge to leave is born from a complicit, defeated self…”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“Losers"
Losers are closer to my heart, because they were right...

Because integrity doesn’t win the way it does in shallow Hollywood scripts. Integrity always loses— too many fear it, too many sell out, and too many find its demands too heavy to carry.

I love losers because they were right.

I, too, once placed my bet on humanity— and I lost.”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“There’s no neutrality in a burning house. Silence may feel safe, but it still smells of smoke.”
― Lawrence Nault

“Wardenclyffe Human (Sonnet)

Give the monkeys cinema and sports,
they'll sleep through armageddon;
cinema is a great propaganda device,
sports are an opiate of distraction.

Good filmmaking elevates the mind,
but fanatic fans only carry manure;
playing sports elevates the body,
but backseat players are raving boar.

The average monkey may not know,
that the earth spins around the sun,
but ask about their favorite celebrity,
and they become wikipedia in person.

Vegetable, you are not, so don't go soggy;
nothing more sad than brain becoming bacon!
You are Wardenclyffe, you are Nalanda,
you're the source and sink of civilization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop