David Van Reybrouck · 656 pages
Rating: (3.4K votes)
“The fact that they did not ask for political power, however, did not mean that they were happy as ever. The native’s political apathy was more an indicator of a lack of education than of any surplus of satisfaction. In”
“But it was definitely a hecatomb, a slaughter on a staggering scale that was not intentional, but that could have been recognized much earlier as the collateral damage of a perfidious, rapacious policy of exploitation, a living sacrifice on the altar of the pathological pursuit of profit.”
“Early anthropology was not at all seen as art for art’s sake; it was intended to facilitate the colonizer’s work.”
“Scientists were the embodiment of this new-fangled sobriety—impartial, businesslike, colorless, and reliable. Or so people assumed. For in actual practice, it was their supposed impartiality that allowed them to gain so much influence. One”
“Mission schools were factories for tribal prejudice. Children who were not allowed to leave their villages were suddenly told that the Bakongo lived on the other side of their vast country and what they were to think of them.”
“came from the mines in Kivu.42 The area around the”
“I’m your Jake,” he smiles. “And you’re my Kayla.”
“When something is Festering on your memory or in your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant...”
“Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.”
“Rosemary, in his heart your brother is a lover. The shrewd businessman, the adventurer, the dandy are but costumes the lover wears. ”
“Death is my beat. I make my living from it. I forge my professional reputation on it. I treat it with the passion and precision of an undertaker--somber and sympathetic about it when I'm with the bereaved, a skilled craftsman with it when I'm alone.”
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