What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
We have in England a curious belief in first-rate people, meaning all the people we do not know; and this consoles us for the undeniable second-rateness of the people we do know.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the tendency to idealize unfamiliar people while undervaluing those we know personally.
George Bernard Shaw's quote reflects a common human behavior where we tend to hold a positive, often unrealistic perception of those we donβt know, while being critical or dismissive of the qualities of those in our immediate circle. This belief serves as a consolation, allowing us to overlook the shortcomings of familiar individuals by projecting an idealized image onto strangers, thereby emphasizing our inherent biases in perception and judgment.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about social perceptions, one might say, 'As George Bernard Shaw noted, we often idealize strangers.'
More from George Bernard Shaw
All quotes βMarriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
Similar quotes
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One of the deepest motives (as you are aware) in the human beast (so deep that many have failed to detect it) is Alliteration.
I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it. What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine β and before we know it our lives are gone.
Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.
You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough.
History does nothing, possesses no enormous wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, the real, living man, who does everything, possesses, fights. It is not History, as if she were a person apart, who uses men as a means to work out her purposes, but history itself is nothing but the activity of men pursuing their purposes.