I came across the same observation from two separate books, Ender’s Game, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Both child main characters are told, “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt a bit” by adults. And the MCs, immediately after, think that that is a lie, that the only times adults tell you not to worry or that something won’t hurt is exactly when you should worry or when it will hurt.
I thought it was amusing and was wondering what other interesting observations you have read. It doesn’t have to be from a wise child MC talking about adults, but it could be.
Martin Fierro, by José Hernandez. Its an epic poem about the life of gauchos in 19th century Argentina and contains a lot of aforisms, witty verses and popular sayings that have made it into popular culture
I love this one from Kerry Greenwood, from the thoughts of Phryne Fisher referring to sexual / romantic relationships…
“Inadvisable doesn’t mean undesirable.”
The giver, is a children’s example of how society is trying to program u and lies thinking it’s helpful but then u realize it’s fucked for example. They don’t know war, love, colors, or death. They murdered a twin baby and called it going elsewhere. The givers daughter elsewheres herself
There is an aphorist, Francois Rouchefoucauld, whose book of maxims (free online) is almost gold from beginning to end.
I was very affected by Thucydides’ comment that the first effect of civil war is that your language is redefined… to oppose acts previously thought imprudent is now evidence of cowardice and unfitness for leadership
There’s another section of “The Peloponnesian War” where Dioditus and Cleon are debating whether to put to death a town that was loyal, switched sides, and now wanted back in the Athenian League.
Cleon argued they needed to be made an example of so other towns wouldn’t be tempted to do the same.
Dioditus countered that they needed allies, and that deterrence rarely works. Paraphrasing a bit, but he basically said “As long as wealth breeds arrogance and poverty necessity, men will always be willing to risk danger”
Yes, that’s a good one
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut is an excellent exploration of human evil as a concept. I think it has some deeply interesting ideas on what makes a person “evil” and what that concept even means
My favorite is when John Irving (by way of one of his characters) talks about how we remember things we don’t want to remember and can’t remember things we do want to remember. How it’s not so much that we have memory, but rather that memory has us. I can’t remember if that was from “The World According to Garp” or “A Prayer for Owen Meany”, which is kinda ironic.
Small Gods has a lot to say on belief.
Not sure if this counts but Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk.
One of the characters compares television to God. Basically saying that when you flick through all the channels and see all of the peoples lives (Real or otherwise) you’re like God watching over everyone.
Isn’t this a basic structure of all novels? A side pretension, B side revelation. A book that congruently does both would be more like a report or collection of facts.
An intro to social psych class has some terrifying insights into how our brains work, but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for.
Hello my friend. Have you met Thomas Pynchon?
All of Robert Sheckley’s books
Kafka, or Camus. Both illustrate very well the inconsistencies of humans.
The Culture series of Iain Banks. Consider Phlebas is the first entry in which the protagonist slowly begins to realize he’s on the wrong side of an interstellar war. He’s actually fighting against the values he believes in. One of the entries deals with hell and how the concept of hell is used to control people. Banks’ hells are computer generated to accept the consciousness of people who have resisted the system. I can’t recommend this series enough.