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  "title": "Star Maker",
  "slug": "star-maker",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker",
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  "author": {
    "name": "Olaf Stapledon",
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      "slug": "the-precept-love",
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      "text": "The precept, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” breeds in us most often the disposition to see one’s neighbor merely as a poor imitation of oneself, and to hate him if he proves different.",
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      "slug": "under-the-pressure",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker/under-the-pressure",
      "text": "Under the pressure of a war to the death, all that was best, all that was most human and gentle on each side was crushed out by military necessity. On the one side, the passion for a unified world, where every individual should live a free and full life in service of the world community, was overcome by the passion to punish spies, traitors, and heretics. On the other, vague and sadly misguided yearnings for a nobler, less materialistic life were cleverly transformed by the reactionary leaders into vindictiveness against the revolutionaries.",
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      "slug": "the-one-reasonable",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker/the-one-reasonable",
      "text": "The one reasonable goal of social life was affirmed to be the creation of a world of awakened, of sensitive, intelligent, and mutually understanding personalities, banded together for the common purpose of exploring the universe and developing the human spirit’s manifold potentialities.",
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      "page": 81,
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      "slug": "discontent-goaded-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker/discontent-goaded-the",
      "text": "Discontent goaded the spirit into fresh creation.",
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      "page": 161,
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      "id": "03879c1b-f252-4905-a6ef-59f92390c262",
      "slug": "all-this-long",
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      "text": "All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy.",
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      "page": 133,
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      "id": "f13884f5-8136-4341-a175-21a1e7f8a2d4",
      "slug": "was-man-indeed",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker/was-man-indeed",
      "text": "Was man indeed, as he sometimes desired to be, the growing point of the cosmical spirit, in its temporal aspect at least? Or was he one of many million growing points? Or was mankind of no more importance in the universal view than rats in a cathedral? And again, was man’s true function power, or wisdom, or love, or worship, or all of all these? Or was the idea of function, of purpose, meaningless in relation to the cosmos? These grave questions I would answer.",
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      "slug": "the-universe-now",
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      "text": "The universe now appeared to me as a void wherein floated rare flakes of snow, each flake a universe.",
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      "slug": "the-sheer-beauty",
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      "text": "The sheer beauty of our planet surprised me. It was a huge pearl, set in spangled ebony. It was nacreous, it was an opal. No, it was far more lovely than any jewel. Its patterned colouring was more subtle, more ethereal. '''It displayed the delicacy and brilliance, the intricacy and harmony of a live thing. Strange that in my remoteness I seemed to feel, as never before, the vital presence of Earth as of a creature alive but tranced and obscurely yearning to wake.",
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      "slug": "only-in-couples",
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      "text": "Only in couples and in little circles of companions could they support true community, the communion of mutual insight and respect and love. But in their tribes and nations they conceived all too easily the sham community of the pack, baying in unison of fear and hate.",
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      "id": "3d573d62-8c41-46d7-9880-993fef74e84e",
      "slug": "i-perceived-that",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker/i-perceived-that",
      "text": "I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars.",
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      "slug": "radio-which-formerly",
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      "text": "Radio, which formerly had been the main force making for cosmopolitanism, became suddenly in each country the main stimulus to nationalism. Morning, noon and night, every civilized people was assured that enemies, whose flavor was of course subhuman and foul, were plotting its destruction. Armament scares, spy stories, accounts of the barbarous and sadistic behavior of neighboring peoples, created in every country such uncritical suspicion and hate that war became inevitable...All thought of human brotherhood, and even of personal safety, was swept away by a savage blood-lust.",
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