QuoteProject
History, mythology, and folktales are filled with stories of people punished for saying the truth. Only the Fool, exempt from society's rules, is allowed to speak with complete freedom.
Jane Hirshfield
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote highlights how truth-tellers often face consequences, while a Fool can express truths freely.

Jane Hirshfield's quote reflects the tension between societal norms and the expression of truth. In many cultures, those who speak the truth can be marginalized or punished, whereas the character of the Fool sits outside these societal constraints, allowing them to voice candid observations without fear of repercussion. This dynamic reveals the complexities of honesty in human interactions and the courage required to confront uncomfortable truths.

Themes

TruthFreedomFoolSocietyWisdom

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of speaking out against injustice.

More from Jane Hirshfield

A studio, like a poem, is an intimacy and a freedom you can look out from, into each part of your life and a little beyond.
Jane HirshfieldRead
What we want from art is whatever is missing from the lives we are already living and making. Something is always missing, and so art-making is endless.
Jane HirshfieldRead
as some strings, untouched, sound when no one is speaking. So it was when love slipped inside us.
Jane HirshfieldRead
Tree It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books-- Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
Jane HirshfieldRead
I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being.
Jane HirshfieldRead
Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.
Jane HirshfieldRead

Similar quotes

The most important 6 inches on the battlefield is between your ears.
Jim MattisRead
I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.
Paulo CoelhoRead
No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
Erica JongRead
Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It's a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we're telling ourselves is what we see on TV.
David GogginsRead
Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.