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Then he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it; with a logic of his own he inferred that to forsee a circumstantial detail is to prevent its happening. Trusting in this weak magic, he invented, so that they would not happen, the most gruesome details.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote reflects on the dissonance between reality and our expectations, suggesting that anticipating outcomes can paradoxically influence their occurrence.

Jorge Luis Borges highlights the complexities of human perception and expectation. He suggests that our anticipation of reality can create a self-fulfilling prophecy where imagining possible scenarios, especially negative ones, can alter their actual occurrence. By contemplating these grim possibilities, one might believe they are exerting control over outcomes, even though such a belief is paradoxical and rooted in a flawed understanding of causality.

Themes

RealityAnticipationExpectationOutcomeCircumstantialControl

In practice

Example use cases

Use this quote in a discussion about the unpredictability of life during a team meeting.

More from Jorge Luis Borges

You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
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To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
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The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
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This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
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A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead

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