Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.
Saul BellowRead
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Intelligent people may choose to embrace ignorance when faced with uncomfortable truths.
Saul Bellow's quote suggests that even the most intelligent individuals can become deeply entrenched in ignorance, particularly when confronting harsh realities. The allure of illusion offers a comforting escape, prompting people to invest their intellect in maintaining false beliefs rather than accepting difficult truths. This perspective indicates that the human tendency to cling to illusions can overshadow rational thought when faced with emotional or psychological discomfort.
Themes
IntelligenceIgnoranceIllusionTruthWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about mental health awareness, one could use this quote to highlight how people often choose to ignore their struggles.
More from Saul Bellow
All quotes βWhen we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Saul BellowRead
In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me?
Saul BellowRead
I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'
Saul BellowRead
I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the "warehouse of good intentions": "Can't do it now." "Then put it on hold." This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death--because one can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.
Saul BellowRead
Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
Saul BellowRead
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A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter: you can find a hole in your opponent's argument through which you could drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out from a bloody dialogue - which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling paralogist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands.
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Youthfulness is connected to the ability to see things new for the first time. So if your eyes still look at life with wonder, then you will seem young, even though you may not be chronologically young.
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