Everyone has a responsibility to not only tolerate another person's point of view, but also to accept it eagerly as a challenge to your own understanding. And express those challenges in terms of serving other people.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of embracing differing viewpoints as opportunities for personal growth and understanding.
Arlo Guthrie highlights the necessity of not merely tolerating different perspectives but actively engaging with them to enhance our own understanding. By welcoming challenges to our beliefs, we can expand our horizons and contribute to the well-being of others, indicating that open dialogue and acceptance are crucial for both personal and communal growth.
In practice
In a debate about social issues, you might use this quote to encourage open-mindedness.
Idealists are people who believe in the potential of human nature for transformation. . . . The most essential attribute of human nature is its mutability and freedom from instinct . . . it is always within our power to change our nature. So it is actually the idealists who are on the mark and the realists who are off base.
"You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry."
To celebrate a festival means: to live out, for some special occasion and in an uncommon manner, the universal assent to the world as a whole.
Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.
Most cynics are really crushed romantics: they've been hurt, they're sensitive, and their cynicism is a shell that's protecting this tiny, dear part in them that's still alive.
If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.