Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?
Octavia E. ButlerRead
I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Children can exhibit intolerance from a very young age, as they learn behaviors from their surroundings.
In this quote, Octavia E. Butler reflects on the early development of prejudiced attitudes among young children. She suggests that intolerance is not a trait that develops solely through experience, but is often absorbed from societal influences, indicating the need for conscious guidance and education to foster tolerance from a young age.
Themes
IntoleranceChildrenEducationSocietyBehavior
In practice
Example use cases
During a workshop on diversity, this quote can highlight the importance of teaching children about tolerance.
More from Octavia E. Butler
All quotes βI don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do.
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My characters hope for better lives.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.
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When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
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The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.
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