Writing can be taken up at any point. But you need to remember that the arts are fundamentally unfair. Hard work and diligence won't necessarily take you all the way. Talent, nepotism, influence, and pure luck play a huge part.
David BrinRead
Human beings are inherently misled into subjective fantasies, but there's a saving grace. We all have different delusions. Other people don't necessarily share yours, and hence they will help you penetrate yours through the miracle of criticism!
Interpretation
What this quote means
Human perceptions are subjective, but receiving criticism from others can help clarify our misconceptions.
This quote by David Brin highlights the idea that while humans naturally fall into subjective ways of thinking and often believe in their own delusions, there is a benefit in our interactions with others. The key point is that others' perspectives can provide critical insights that help us recognize and overcome our own false beliefs. This collective critique can be seen as a form of enlightenment that leads to personal growth and understanding.
Themes
CriticismDelusionSubjectivePerspectiveGrowth
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about personal growth, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of seeking feedback.
More from David Brin
All quotes βThere's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.
David BrinRead
Competition, by itself, always leads to cheating by the powerful, who try to establish pyramids of power, like feudalism. Yet, competition is the great creative force! So how do we save it from its own contradictions? By cooperation! By cooperating with each other, via politics, to make rules and prevent cheating, so that competition can thrive!
David BrinRead
Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.
David BrinRead
It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.
David BrinRead
When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.
David BrinRead
Similar quotes
We live in a globalising world. That means that all of us, consciously or not, depend on each other. Whatever we do or refrain from doing affects the lives of people who live in places we'll never visit.
Zygmunt BaumanRead
Every day, we at the United Nations see the human toll of an absence of regulations or lax controls on the arms trade. We see it in the suffering of civilian populations trapped by armed conflict or pervasive crime. We see it in the killing and wounding of civilians - including children, the most vulnerable of all.
Ban Ki-MoonRead
No intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated.
PlatoRead
What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.
Arthur RimbaudRead
We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.
Blaise PascalRead
Rather than understand the original cause-a thought-we try to change the stressful feelings by looking outside ourselves.
Byron KatieRead