Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.
Saul BellowRead
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Interpretation
What this quote means
People often seek advice not for genuine guidance, but to confirm what they already want to do.
This quote by Saul Bellow highlights a common human tendency to seek validation for our decisions rather than objective advice. When we ask for advice, we often have a preconceived notion or desire, and we look for support from others to align with our viewpoint instead of truly considering alternative perspectives or wisdom that might challenge our desires.
Themes
AdviceValidationDecisionGuidanceConfirmation
In practice
Example use cases
During a team meeting, I could use this quote to illustrate how we sometimes seek advice to support our ideas rather than considering all options.
More from Saul Bellow
All quotes βIn here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me?
Saul BellowRead
I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'
Saul BellowRead
I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the "warehouse of good intentions": "Can't do it now." "Then put it on hold." This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death--because one can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.
Saul BellowRead
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Saul BellowRead
Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
Saul BellowRead
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That distrust which intrudes so often on your mind is a mode of melancholy, which, if it be the business of a wise man to be happy, it is foolish to indulge; and if it be a duty to preserve our faculties entire for their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often an useless pain.
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In studying the history of the human mind one is impressed again and again by the fact that its growth keeps pace with a widening range of consciousness, and that each step forward is an extremely painful and laborious achievement. One could almost say that nothing is more hateful to man than to give up the smallest particle of unconsciousness. He has a profound fear of the unknown. Ask anybody who has ever tried to introduce new ideas!
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