J.m. Coetzee said this quote

“ No consciousness that we would recognize as consciousness. Not awareness, as far as we can make out, of a self with a history. What I mind is what tends to come next. They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends Therefore we are free to kill them? Why? What is so special about the form of consciousness that we recognize that makes killing a bearer of it a crime while killing an animal goes unpunished? ”

Famous Quotes of J.m. Coetzee

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I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.

~ J.m. Coetzee

In a world of chance is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are these blinks of an eyelid, against which the only defence is an eternal and inhuman wakefulness? Might they not be the cracks and chinks through which another voice, other voices, speak in our lives? By what right do we close our ears to them? (Susan Barton)

~ J.m. Coetzee

Schmerz ist Wahrheit, alles andere wird angezweifelt.

~ J.m. Coetzee

Die Wahrheit wird nicht im Zorn gesprochen. Die Wahrheit, wenn sie denn gesprochen wird, wird im Geist der Liebe gesprochen.

~ J.m. Coetzee