A Quote by V. S. Naipaul
It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'.
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To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter.'
And thus flowed the current of life. The seeds of the silverbell were converted into squirrel; and squirrels were converted into foxes. Everything edible, from mice and chipmunks to roots and berries and apples was converted into bear. And bear and his tracks are converted into wonder and adventure for man.
Cultural survival is not about preservation, sequestering indigenous peoples in enclaves like some sort of zoological specimens. Change itself does note destroy a culture. All societies are constantly evolving. Indeed a culture survives when it has enough confidence in its past and enough say in its future to maintain its spirit and essence through all the changes it will inevitably undergo.
No matter what the past has dealt you, don't let it destroy your future.
I suppose being the kind of creatures we [people] are, we like to censor the past, and are selective, or want to be selective about the things that we remember. If you want to destroy people, destroy their memory, destroy their history.
If you can keep something very personal, like a song, like a color, like a story, deep in your heart, then nobody can destroy that. Nobody can destroy your imagination; nobody can destroy your love.
Just because somebody happens to disagree with you about something doesn't mean that they become your mortal enemy and that you should try to destroy them and destroy their life and destroy their family.
I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.
The audience usually has to be with you, I'm afraid. I always regarded myself as not even preaching to the converted, I was titillating the converted.
Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.
Kindness has converted more sinners than either zeal, eloquence, or learning; and these three last have never converted any.
Many teachers of the Sixties generation said "We will steal your children", and they did. A significant part of America has converted to the ideas of the 1960s - hedonism, self-indulgence and consumerism. For half of all Americans today, the Woodstock culture of the Sixties is the culture they grew up with - their traditional culture. For them, Judeo-Christian culture is outside the mainstream now. The counter-culture has become the dominant culture, and the former culture a dissident culture - something that is far out, and 'extreme'.
I am not against marriage -- I am for love. If love becomes your marriage, good; but don't hope that marriage can bring love. That is not possible. Love can become a marriage. You have to work very consciously to transform your love into a marriage. Ordinarily, people destroy their love. They do EVERYTHING to destroy it and then they suffer. And they go on saying, 'What went wrong?' They destroy -- they do everything to destroy it.
My mother converted, my mom converted to Judaism.
Even like as St. Paul was converted, just so are all others converted; for we all resist God, but the Holy Ghost draws the will of mankind, when he pleases, through preaching.
As man sows, so shall he reap. In works of fiction, such men are sometimes converted. More often, in real life, they do not change their natures until they are converted into dust.
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