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Incomprehension Quotes

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Incomprehension Quotes

“The risibility of our altruistic 'understanding' is rivalled only by the profound contempt it is designed to conceal. For 'We respect the fact that you are different' read: 'You people who are underdeveloped would do well to hang on to this distinction because it is all you have left' . (The signs of folklore and poverty are excellent markers of difference.) Nothing could be more contemptuous - or more contemptible - than this attitude, which exemplifies the most radical form of incomprehension that exists. It has nothing to do, however, with what Segalen calls 'eternal incomprehensibility' . Rather, it is a product of eternal stupidity - of that stupidity which endures for ever in its essential arrogance, feeding on the differentness of other people. Other cultures, meanwhile, have never laid claim to universality. Nor did they ever claim to be different - until difference was forcibly injected into them as part of a sort of cultural opium war. They live on the basis of their own singularity, their own exceptionality, on the irreducibility of their own rites and values. They find no comfort in the lethal illusion that all differences can be reconciled - an illusion that for them spells only annihilation. To master the universal symbols of otherness and difference is to master the world. Those who conceptualize difference are anthropologically superior - naturally, because it is they who invented anthropology. And they have all the rights, because rights, too, are their invention. Those who do not conceptualize difference, who do not play the game of difference, must be exterminated. The Indians of America, when the Spanish landed, are a case in point. They understood nothing about difference; they inhabited radical otherness. (The Spaniards were not different in their eyes: they were simply gods, and that was that.) This is the reason for the fury with which the Spaniards set about destroying these peoples, a fury for which there was no religious justification, nor economic justification, nor any other kind of justification, except for the fact that the Indians were guilty of an absolute crime: their failure to understand difference. When they found themselves obliged to become part of an otherness no longer radical, but negotiable under the aegis of the universal concept, they preferred mass self-immolation - whence the fervour with which they, for their part, allowed themselves to die: a counterpart to the Spaniards' mad urge to kill. The Indians' strange collusion in their own extermination represented their only way of keeping the secret of otherness.”

RespectContemptAltruismDifferenceOthernessIncomprehension
Book:The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena
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“Shaw does not merely decorate a proposition, but makes his way from point to point through new and difficult territory. This explains why Shaw must either be taken whole or left alone. He must be disassembled and put together again with nothing left out, under pain of incomprehension; for his politics, his art, and his religion - to say nothing of the shape of his sentences - are unique expressions of this enormously enlarged and yet concentrated consciousness.”

WayDoeArtWholePainTogetherLeftDifficultConsciousnessTakenExpressionShapesUniqueSentencesTerritoryPropositionsLeft AloneLeft OutTogether AgainIncomprehension
Author:Jacques Barzun
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“Twentieth century music is like paedophilia. No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance.”

MatterCausesCenturyMusic IsRegardAcceptedChampionUrgesTwentieth CenturyOutrageIncomprehension
Book:The Amis collection: selected non-fiction, 1954-1990
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“Most ignorances are vincible, and in the greater number of cases stupidity is what the Buddha pronounced it to be, a sin. For, consciously, or subconsciously, it is with deliberation that we do not know or fail to understand-because incomprehension allows us, with a good conscience, to evade unpleasant obligations and responsibilities, because ignorance is the best excuse for going on doing what one likes, but ought not, to do.”

KnowsSinNumbersResponsibilityCasesGreaterFailingIgnoranceOughtConscienceExcuseStupidityLikesObligationDeliberationIncomprehension
Book:Complete Essays: 1936-1938
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“There's been real hostility toward political poetry in the U.S., hostility or, at best, incomprehension. I'm speaking of those who have institutional power over what gets published, over grants andprizes and reviewing. Most of them, though not all, arewhite and male. But even as American society is unravelling, becoming more violent and punitive, wonderful political poetshave been emerging.”

RealPoliticalWonderfulBecomingMalesViolentGrantsHostilityEmergingBecoming MoreAmerican SocietyIncomprehensionBeen Real
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.”

StillsTogetherCoursesMoralVictoryGloryConsciousHatredOvercomingAdversityGratefulIncrediblesTrialsShoreExcessConspiracyFlashFabulousReciprocalCholeraInstantaneousIncomprehensionNastinessConjugal
Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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“Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.”

IfsThinkingWorldLooksChildrenLittlesOrderSpeakDeserveStandingSacredChaosCornersInnocentBridgesPrecisePower Of WordsDescribingNudgeIncomprehension
Book:Arcadia
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“The irresistible proliferation of graphomania shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: we are all writers! for everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words. one morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived.”

WantHumansStillsReasonShowsAgeTurnsUniverseMorningStreetsBearsUniversalWake UpSpeciesDisappearExceptionIndifferentShow MeUnseenIrresistibleHuman SpeciesUnheardProliferationDeafnessIncomprehension
Author:Milan Kundera
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“We are not utopians, we do not “dream” of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to Marxism, and, as a matter of fact, serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control, and "foremen and accountants".”

PeopleWantDifferentMatterFactsDreamRevolutionTasksAliensAdministrationDictatorshipSocialistMarxismAnarchistMatter Of FactAccountantsSubordinationIncomprehension
Author:Vladimir Lenin
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“Everyone was at Martin Freeman’s house, and Martin was there and his wife was sat at his feet and Amanda [Abbington, Freeman’s wife] was crying and so was I and I tried to laugh it off but that turned into this enormous sob in front of everyone and I just thought, oh brilliant. I just found it terribly moving. Martin is just amazing in that last bit, it’s beautiful, that kind of incomprehension and devastation, it’s fantastic, with his sort of military shuffle at the grave. Fantastic.”

KindLastsBeautifulMovingFoundHouseBitsLaughingWifeFeetMilitaryFrontsCryBrilliantGravesEnormousFantasticSatDevastationFreemanAmandaShuffleIncomprehension
Author:Louise Brealey
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“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”

WorldLoveLifeInspirationalGodWisdomEarthScienceFaithUnderstandingImaginationPhysicsAviationComprehensiveComprehensionRelativityScientific DiscoveryGreat ScientistComprehendingMind OpeningIncomprehensionOpening Your MindUnderstanding And LoveUnderstanding The WorldUnderstanding ThingsMysterious World
Book:Some strangeness in the proportion: a centennial symposium to celebrate the achievements of Albert Einstein
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“It is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity - the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension - can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion.”

FormLife IsNamesEasyWalksTalkingOpinionDareStupidityNosesMarchDisguiseSimplestFormidableWalks Of LifePopular OpinionIncomprehension
Book:The Merry Heart: Selections 1980-1995
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