We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.
Interpretation
Embracing diverse perspectives, even from those deemed undesirable, fosters mental growth and prevents stagnation.
This quote by Thomas Bernhard suggests that engaging with individuals who challenge our views or have different characteristics can stimulate our minds and promote intellectual vitality. In contrast, surrounding ourselves solely with those who conform to conventional standards of 'good character' may lead to predictable conversations that dull our curiosity and creativity, ultimately resulting in a stagnant mindset.
In practice
During a panel discussion on creative thinking, you might use this quote to emphasize the importance of listening to unconventional ideas.
In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.
Only when I am by seawater can I truly breathe, to say nothing of my ability to think.
Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony.
I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I avoided this punishment by destroying them, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word destroying.
Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.
Women were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned.
We can neither heal nor build if, on the one hand the rich in our society see the poor as hordes of irritants or if on the other hand the poor sit back, expecting charity. All of us must take responsibility for the upliftment of our conditions, prepared to give our best to the benefit of all
There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on.
There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
The test of Ahimsa is absence of jealousy.
I was suffering from a peculiar and persistent sense that I was being pursued, and also the conviction that under the political order of the times, our lives had no meaning.
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