We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.
Interpretation
Cynicism fades in the presence of genuine purity and innocence.
This quote by Federico Fellini suggests that while individuals may adopt a facade of cynicism and scheming thoughts, true encounters with purity and innocence reveal the vulnerabilities of their true selves. It highlights the transformative power of authenticity and the profound impact that genuine qualities can have on one's perspective and demeanor.
In practice
During a discussion on human nature, this quote can remind attendees of the importance of authenticity.
I’m just a storyteller, and the cinema happens to be my medium. I like it because it recreates life in movement, enlarges it, enhances it, distills it. For me, it’s far closer to the miraculous creation of life than, say, a painting or music or even literature. It’s not just an art form; it’s actually a new form of life, with its own rhythms, cadences, perspectives and transparencies. It’s my way of telling a story.
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second, and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.
No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.
A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.
What's important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It's not what we say but how we say it that matters.
What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one... It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one - which is really the realm of the artist.
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
Psychology is ultimately mythology, the study of the stories of the soul.
From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare.
There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes.
Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.
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