{
  "type": "quote",
  "site": {
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    "language": "en",
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  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/we-had-never",
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  "text": "We had never developed a sense of history as such; all we knew, if we ever thought about it, was that there had been others before us and that we were better than they. But no one was ever encouraged to think about anything outside of himself. “Don’t ask; relax.”",
  "language": "en",
  "author": {
    "name": "Walter Tevis",
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  "book": {
    "title": "Mockingbird",
    "slug": "mockingbird",
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  "page": 142,
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    {
      "name": "history",
      "slug": "history",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history"
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    {
      "name": "selfishness",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/selfishness"
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    "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_Tevis#Mockingbird_(1980)",
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  "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:02:26",
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      "id": "f69bb90f-78ce-4b77-afb4-109984b5f0f7",
      "slug": "noticing-and-thinking",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/noticing-and-thinking",
      "text": "Noticing and thinking are sometimes a strain and a bafflement and I wonder if the Designers were aware of that when they made it almost impossible for the ordinary citizen to make use of a recorder. Or when they had us all taught that earliest learned wisdom: “When in doubt, forget it.”",
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      "page": 22,
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        {
          "name": "memory",
          "slug": "memory",
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      "slug": "i-feel-free",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/i-feel-free",
      "text": "I feel free and strong. If I were not a reader of books I could not feel this way. Whatever may happen to me, thank God that I can read, that I have truly touched the minds of other men.",
      "language": "en",
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      "page": 248,
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        {
          "name": "reading",
          "slug": "reading",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/reading"
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      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_Tevis#Mockingbird_(1980)",
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    {
      "id": "e8bebc55-4b53-416e-94b1-47bff3a72c76",
      "slug": "when-literacy-died",
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      "text": "When literacy died, so had history.",
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      "page": 161,
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