QuoteProject
I should like to use another word: 'audience' or 'reader' or 'listener' seems inadequate. I suggest the old word 'witness,' which includes the act of seeing and knowing by personal experience, as well as the act of giving evidence.
Muriel Rukeyser
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The term 'witness' encapsulates deeper understanding and personal experience, surpassing the limitations of 'audience' or 'reader.'

In this quote, Muriel Rukeyser emphasizes the importance of personal experience and active participation in understanding and conveying truth. By suggesting the term 'witness,' she highlights that true engagement involves not just passive observation but also the sharing and recognition of experiences that shape our knowledge and evidence about the world.

Themes

WitnessExperienceUnderstandingKnowledgeEvidence

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about personal growth, one could invoke this quote to emphasize the value of lived experiences.

More from Muriel Rukeyser

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
Muriel RukeyserRead
A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them.
Muriel RukeyserRead
In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty.
Muriel RukeyserRead
Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.
Muriel RukeyserRead
The town of Gauley Bridge stands as a pattern for all those places where people are linked even in the middle of their suffering, where people fight against an evil condition so that other people need not go through the same fight.
Muriel RukeyserRead
Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness
Muriel RukeyserRead

Similar quotes

I have no views as to where it will be, but the one thing I can tell you is it won't do anything between now and then except look at you. Whereas, you know, Coca-Cola (KO) will be making money, and I think Wells Fargo (WFC) will be making a lot of money and there will be a lot - and it's a lot - it's a lot better to have a goose that keeps laying eggs than a goose that just sits there and eats insurance and storage and a few things like that.
Warren BuffettRead
So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women.
Harriet Beecher StoweRead
In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science.
Richard DawkinsRead
They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
With fools, there is no companionship. Rather than to live with men who are selfish, vain, quarrelsome, and obstinate, let a man walk alone.
BuddhaRead
Sometimes I get so bold and I'm so confident about what I'm doing that I actually try to be more of a dork because it's a really liberating feeling to experience what it's like to not care.
John MayerRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.