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Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man's face. I felt like saying: "What in God's name are you doing to yourself?

Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man's face. I felt like saying: "What in God's name are you doing to yourself?

Approximate author period: c. 1950 AD · modern

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
John Howard Griffin
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1950 AD · modern
Approximate period for the recorded attribution to John Howard Griffin, based on documented lifetime 1920 to 1980. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q260879 (checked 2026-10-08). This is not a quotation composition date or independent authentication of its attribution. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q260879 (accessed 2026-10-08).
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 67053; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.