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.
It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we don't have enough personal power the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and it won't make a damn bit of difference.
We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction.
Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
Be sceptical, ask questions, demand proof. Demand evidence. Don't take anything for granted. But here's the thing: When you get proof, you need to accept the proof. And we're not that good at doing that.
Each daughter of God is of infinite worth because of her divine mission.
It taught him how to listen -- how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting soul, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.