I always say that my favorite people to interview are the people who are at the beginning and the ends of their lives because they have two alternate perspectives of the world, and neither of them are less profound.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the unique insights gained from individuals at the beginning and end of life, emphasizing the value of their perspectives.
Brandon Stanton highlights the richness of experiences and views held by people at the extremes of life - childhood and old age. By interviewing these individuals, we can access two distinctly profound outlooks that can offer deep understanding and wisdom about existence, society, and the human experience. This perspective suggests that wisdom is not confined to age or experience, but can be found in all stages of life.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech about the importance of listening to diverse life stories.
When you are interviewing refugees, each person you talk to has a different story that could come from a horror movie. So many people talk about seeing their families get murdered before their eyes. Then I go to Central Park, and people are talking about their third divorce and paying tuition.
Wherever I go, I just try to show normal life. If the work helps to dispel stereotypes, it's because I seek not to portray the extremities of a place, but the vast majority of people who are quite normal and are having normal life experiences.
I think that even though some of the things on 'Humans of New York' are kind of very personal and very revealing, I think the discomfort with sharing that tends to be overwritten by the appreciation of being able to distill the experience of your life into a story and share it with other people.
It's a very immersive and intense form of travel to walk around with an interpreter and stop random people on the street and ask them about their lives.
Somebody's willingness to let me photograph them, and willingness to tell me a story, has nothing to do with the words I say. It all has to do with the energy I'm giving off, which hopefully is very genuine, very interested energy. It's just two people having a conversation in the street. I think that's where genuine content comes from.
Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
Each of us has a responsibility for being alive: one responsibility to creation, of which we are a part, another to the creator a debt we repay by trying to extend our areas of comprehension.
Stay at the center and let all things take their course.
What countries must do to join the World Trade Organization is precisely what they must do to become productive and democratic: accept the rule of law, reduce corruption, and become open, accountable, and transparent.
The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home.
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