I think that certainty is a closed door, It's the end of the conversation. Doubt is an open door.
Interpretation
Certainty limits discussion while doubt encourages exploration and conversation.
In this quote, John Patrick Shanley suggests that certainty represents a complacent state where no further questioning is welcome, effectively closing off dialogue. In contrast, doubt is seen as a catalyst for inquiry and understanding, allowing for more opportunities for exploration and deeper engagement in discussions.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate to emphasize the importance of questioning assumptions.
I am not a courageous person by nature. I have simply discovered that, at certain key moments in this life, you must find courage in yourself, in order to move forward and live. It is like a muscle and it must be exercised, first a little, and then more and more. All the really exciting things possible during the course of a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have. A deep breath and a leap.
Playwriting is the last great bastion of the individual writer. It's exciting precisely because it's where the money isn't. Money goes to safety, to consensus. It's not individualism.
When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others - that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.
You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
Outsiders tend to be the first to recognize the inadequacies of our social institutions. But, precisely because they are outsiders, they are usually in a poor position to fix them.
It is not alone that property, in all its forms, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its forms, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of socialism.
Here, then, is what I wanted to tell you of my architecture. I created it with courage and idealism, but also with an awareness of the fact that what is important is life, friends and attempting to make this unjust world a better place in which to live.
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