It isn't what people think that is important, but the reason they think what they think.
Interpretation
The underlying reasons behind people's thoughts matter more than the thoughts themselves.
Eugene Ionesco's quote suggests that understanding the motivations and contexts behind a person's beliefs is more crucial than the beliefs themselves. This perspective invites deeper inquiry into human thought processes and encourages us to look beyond surface-level judgments, recognizing that personal experiences and societal influences shape opinions.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about psychology and how people's backgrounds influence their opinions.
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
Language should almost break up or explode in its fruitless effort to contain so many meanings.
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
After the horse dance was over, it seemed that I was above the ground and did not touch it when I walked.
Reality TV is sleazy, it is manipulative. It is as momentary as anything in popular culture.
Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer or maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?
We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus!
The unvarnished truth is that we have spent the last decade funding the machinery of war, and our children have been sacrificed.
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