Human Material

Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material.  It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.

-- Czesław Miłosz (1911 - 2004), Polish poet and essayist, 1980 Nobel laureate in Literature, The Captive Mind (1953) translated by Jane Zielonko (1990)