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.
God made me an Indian, but not a reservation Indian.
To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far.
If there is a knower of tongues here, fetch him; There's a stranger in the city And he has many things to say.
What you see is evidence of what you believe.
The layman always means, when he says "reality" that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality.
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
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