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The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct.
David Foster Wallace
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote emphasizes the importance of personal freedom in seeking one's own balance between pleasure and pain.

David Foster Wallace highlights the fundamental right of individuals to define and pursue their own vision of happiness, irrespective of societal norms. The idea that each person's quest for an optimal balance between pleasure and pain is 'utterly sacrosanct' suggests that this pursuit is sacred and paramount to the human experience, underscoring the value of personal autonomy and subjective well-being.

Themes

AutonomyPleasurePainHappinessFreedom

In practice

Example use cases

During a motivational speech about finding personal happiness.

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Quote by David Foster Wallace | QuoteProject