Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.
Saul BellowRead
Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Boredom can be used as a means to exert control over individuals, creating a state of stagnation that is accompanied by fear and despair.
In this quote, Saul Bellow explores the darker aspects of boredom, suggesting that it is not merely an absence of activity, but a tool wielded by those in power to enforce compliance and maintain social order. This deep-seated boredom intertwines with feelings of anguish and existential dread, highlighting how a lack of engagement can lead to greater issues of control, fear, and even mortality.
Themes
BoredomControlPowerSocialStagnationAnguishTedium
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about governmental authority, one might say, 'As Saul Bellow stated, boredom is an instrument of social control, showing how power can manipulate society.'
More from Saul Bellow
All quotes →When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Saul BellowRead
In 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
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