Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.
Alan AldaRead
I used to be a Catholic. I left because I object to conversion by concussion. If you don't agree with what they teach, you get clobbered over the head until you do. All that does is change the shape of the head.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses dissent against forced beliefs and highlights the ineffectiveness of coercion in changing one’s thoughts.
Alan Alda critiques the approach of using forceful means to impose beliefs, specifically through the metaphor of 'conversion by concussion', indicating that such tactics only alter superficial aspects of a person's thinking rather than fostering genuine understanding or belief. He argues that true belief should come from personal conviction and understanding rather than coercion, which merely changes the outward appearance of dissent without altering the internal beliefs.
Themes
BeliefCoercionUnderstandingConvictionPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of personal beliefs, this quote can emphasize the need for understanding rather than force.
More from Alan Alda
All quotes →Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.
Alan AldaRead
Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.
Alan AldaRead
Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.
Alan AldaRead
If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.
Alan AldaRead
I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.
Alan AldaRead
Similar quotes
I know there is a Supreme Being who rules the affairs of men and whose goodness and mercy have always followed the American people, and I know He will not turn from us now if we humbly and reverently seek His powerful aid.
Grover ClevelandRead
I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
Albert CamusRead
How loved, how honored once, avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot A heap of dust alone remains of thee 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Alexander PopeRead
An intellectual inferiority of the masses would manifest itself most evidently in their aiming at the abolition of the system in which they themselves are supreme and are served by the elite of the most talented men.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
I am a black American, I say, and thus announce my atavistic connection to all others who live as black Americans, to all who ever lived as black Americans. Religion, caste, class, gender and race can all be atavisms, and they are inherently anti-democratic because they exclude all outside the atavism.
Shelby SteeleRead
The bulls are my best friends." I translated to Brett. "You kill your friends?" she asked. "Always," he said in English, and laughed. "So they don't kill me.
Ernest HemingwayRead