If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John UpdikeRead
Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic un-interestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the author's disdain for atheism as a dull perspective on life and existence.
John Updike criticizes atheism for its perceived lack of depth and excitement in exploring the mysteries of life and the universe. He suggests that the idea of a random universe without purpose or afterlife is uninteresting and devoid of the very human qualities of creativity and wonder that make existence meaningful.
Themes
AtheismExistenceMeaningUniverseIntellectualHumanity
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about existentialism, this quote could highlight the importance of finding deeper meaning in life.
More from John Updike
All quotes →Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. _x000D_ _x000D_ Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John UpdikeRead
Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
John UpdikeRead
But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.
John UpdikeRead
The reader knows the writer better than he knows himself; but the writer's physical presence is light from a star that has moved on.
John UpdikeRead
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
John UpdikeRead
Similar quotes
If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.
EpictetusRead
I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world.
Jean GenetRead
When a man is proud because he can understand and explain the writings of Chrysippus, say to yourself, 'if Chrysippus had not written obscurely, this man would have had nothing to be proud of.'
EpictetusRead
The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own.
Barack ObamaRead
You ask what my conclusions are, rereading my journals and looking back on World War II from the vantage point of quarter century in time? We won the war in a military sense; but in a broader sense, it seems to me we lost it, for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before.
Charles LindberghRead
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
Milan KunderaRead