I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, although she is of course almost incredibly pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong...I shall never forget the almost overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness.
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Written of her experience with actress Marilyn Monroe in a letter to the American author, Fleur Cowles Meyer, in 1961. As quoted in Fragments, by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment (2010)
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"The Deluge at Norderney"Karen Blixen
Africa must ask of the world what is good for Africa; but more importantly, Africans must have the courage to do what is right and necessary for Africa. We must dream the African dreams, if we must be able to tell the African stories in a way that would make other people want to come to us with respect and pride, and not with pity and shame. We have wasted so many years and did many things wrong. But we must not continue to dwell in the past and we must resolve to do the right and march along with the rest of the world.
Bukola Saraki
It this terrible simplification that there is one Africa, and things go on in one way in Africa. We have to stop that, it is not respectful, and it's not very clever to think that way. I had the fortune to live and work for a time in the United States. I found out that Salt Lake City and San Francisco were different. And so it is in Africa, it's a lot of difference.
Hans Rosling
I had the feeling that another kind of life – perhaps in a transcendental area – would give me a better possibility to influence, or to work, ot to act within this contradiction.. ..This was my general feeling: on the one side, this beautiful undamaged nature form which I took al lot and had a lot of possibilities for contemplation, meditation, research, collecting things, making a kind of system; and on the other side, this social debacle that I felt already as a coming dilemma. Yes, as a child I was aware of it, but later I could analyse the debacle.. ..But I saw the relationship between people, I saw their thoughts, I saw their kind of expressionistic behaviour in every difficult situation. I saw all the time the unclearness in the psychological condition of the people. You know, that was the time of the Roaring Twenties and I felt that this expressionistic behaviour, this unformed quality of soul power and emotion of life.. ..I saw it, that it would lead to a kind of catastrophe. That was my general feeling (during his youth, fh)
Joseph Beuys
Well, what if I'm wrong, I mean — anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot. You happen to have been brought up, I would presume, in a Christian faith. You know what it's like to not believe in a particular faith because you're not a Muslim. You're not a Hindu. Why aren't you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in America, not in India. If you had been brought up in India, you'd be a Hindu. If you had been brought up in Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you'd be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece, you'd be believing in Zeus. If you were brought up in central Africa, you'd be believing in the great Juju up the mountain. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian god, in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up and ask me the question, "What if I'm wrong?" What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea?
Richard Dawkins
Blixen, Karen
Blobel, Paul
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