Beware: Ignorance Protects itself. Ignorance Promotes suspicion. Suspicion Engenders fear. Fear quails, Irrational and blind, Or fear looms, Defiant and closed. Blind, closed, Suspicious, afraid, Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.
Interpretation
Ignorance breeds fear and suspicion, which can lead to a cycle of closed-mindedness and growth of ignorance.
In this quote, Octavia Butler highlights the dangerous cycle that ignorance can create. When individuals remain uninformed, they become suspicious of the unknown, which in turn fosters fear. This fear can either manifest as withdrawal from understanding or as hostility towards those who appear different or threatening. Ultimately, this cycle perpetuates ignorance, leading to a society that is increasingly resistant to knowledge and understanding.
In practice
During a community meeting, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of education and understanding to overcome prejudice.
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
I am a person who believes in asking questions, in not conforming for the sake of conforming. I am deeply dissatisfied - about so many things, about injustice, about the way the world works - and in some ways, my dissatisfaction drives my storytelling.
It is better to be looked over than overlooked.
There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.
Even the most powerful human being has a limited sphere of strength. Draw him outside of that sphere and into your own, and his strength will dissipate.
There is an unseen sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness. We are lutes. When the sound box is filled, no music can come forth. When the brain and the belly burn from fasting, every moment a new song rises out of the fire. The mists clear, and a new vitality makes you spring up the steps before you . . .
You cannot lift another soul until you are standing on higher ground than he is. You cannot light a fire in another soul unless it is burning in your own soul.
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