Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
Like and equal are not the same thing at all. -- Meg Murray
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the distinction between liking someone and treating them as an equal.
In this quote by Madeleine L'Engle, the author highlights the difference between the concepts of liking and equality. While we may have positive feelings towards someone or something, it does not inherently mean we view them as equals. This thought provokes deeper reflection on how relationships and interactions in society can often conflate these two ideas, urging us to recognize that true equality involves respect and acknowledgment of each other's worth beyond mere affection.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about friendships and social dynamics, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of respect in relationships.
More from Madeleine L'Engle
All quotes βGeorge MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
Similar quotes
If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.
There is no better way to give comfort to an enemy than to divide the people of a nation over the issue of foreign war. There is no shorter road to defeat than by entering a war with inadequate preparation.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.
Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.
The modern view of criminal justice, broadly, is that public concern with morality or expediency decrees expiation for the violation of a norm; this concern finds expression in the infliction of punishment on the evil doer by agents of the state, the evil doer, however, enjoying the protection of a regular procedure.
The majority represent a mass of cowards, willing to accept him who mirror its own soul and mind poverty.