Jordan has a strange, haunting beauty and a sense of timelessness. Dotted with the ruins of empires once great, it is the last resort of yesterday in the world of tomorrow. I love every inch of it.
King Hussein IRead
God help us from those who believe that they are the sole possessors of truth. How we manage at times to agree willingly to become prisoners within our own minds and souls of beliefs and ideas on which we can never be flexible.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote warns against the danger of dogmatism and rigid beliefs that prevent open-mindedness.
King Hussein I highlights the peril of people who are convinced that their perspective is the only truth. This rigid adherence to beliefs creates mental and spiritual prisons, limiting personal growth and understanding. It suggests that flexibility in our thinking is essential for a more enlightened and collaborative existence.
Themes
TruthBeliefsOpen-MindednessDogmatismFlexibility
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about political ideologies, one might quote this to emphasize the need for open-mindedness.
More from King Hussein I
All quotes →I want to say a simple thing, that the dividing line exists not between Jordan and Israel, but between the proponents of peace and the opponents of peace.
King Hussein IRead
The link between peace and stability on the one hand, and social and economic growth on the other, is dialectic. Peace, poverty, and backwardness cannot mix in one region.
King Hussein IRead
Without peace and without the overwhelming majority of people that believe in peace defending it, working for it, believing in it, security can never really be a reality.
King Hussein IRead
In this life struggle, here I am among you fully cognizant that a true believer has no fear of what God has ordained for him. Those who are visited by fear live only for their present, under the illusion that the world began with them and will end with their departure.
King Hussein IRead
For our part, we shall continue to work for the new dawn when all the Children of Abraham and their descendants are living together in the birthplace of their three great monotheistic religions, a life free from fear, a life free from want - a life in peace.
King Hussein IRead
Similar quotes
Your self image is so powerful it unwittingly becomes your destiny.
Oscar MicheauxRead
It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra PoundRead
You can't make a direct comparison between middle-class African Americans and middle-class white Americans, affluent African Americans and affluent white Americans. The amount of wealth tends to be less.
Ta-Nehisi CoatesRead
I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.
Charles BaudelaireRead
But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that if you have the guillotine in the forefront, and with such glee, it's for the sole reason that cutting heads off is the easiest thing, and having an idea is difficult!
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
The age of nations has passed. Now, unless we wish to perish, we must shake off our old prejudices and build the Earth. The more scientifically I regard the world, the less can I see any possible biological future for it except in the active consciousness of its unity.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead