If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John UpdikeRead
The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote explores the relationship between self and the divine, suggesting that religion helps connect our inner selves to the outer world.
In this quote, John Updike reflects on the role of religion in shaping our perception of reality. He suggests that the essence of religion lies in its ability to affirm our self-concept and provide a link to the external world. By personifying God as the 'not-me', he illustrates the projection of our innate optimism onto a higher power, reinforcing a sense of connection and fulfillment in our lives through faith.
Themes
SelfReligionOptimismIdentityOuter WorldFaith
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about finding purpose, one could reference this quote to illustrate how faith shapes our self-identity.
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
We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions.
Ezekiel EmanuelRead
In Genoa, the word, libertas can be read on the front of prisons and on the fetters of galley-slaves. The application of this motto is fine and just.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
If we hold tightly to anything given to us unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used we stunt the growth of the soul. What God gives us is not necessarily "ours" but only ours to offer back to him, ours to relinguish, ours to lose, ours to let go of, if we want to be our true selves. Many deaths must go into reaching our maturity in Christ, many letting goes.
Elisabeth ElliotRead
I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it--it, the physical act. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.
James A. BaldwinRead
Everything happens kind of the way it's supposed to happen, and we just watch it unfold. And you can't control it. Looking back, you can't say, "I should've..." You didn't, and had you, the outcome would have been different.
Rick RubinRead
Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish.
Christopher HitchensRead