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Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.
Wallace Stevens
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Disrespect for others' art is worse than disrespect for their religion.

Wallace Stevens highlights the severity of intolerance towards artistic expressions compared to religious beliefs. While both are forms of personal truth and identity, undermining someone's art reveals a deeper form of intolerance, as art often reflects the essence of human experience and emotional depth, making it arguably more fundamental to individual expression and culture.

Themes

IntoleranceArtReligionExpressionCulture

In practice

Example use cases

During an art critique session, I shared this quote to emphasize the importance of respecting diverse artistic perspectives.

More from Wallace Stevens

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
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Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.
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After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.
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Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.
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