I've never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of independent thinking over conforming to pre-existing ideas.
In this quote, Jane Rule expresses her disdain for accepting ideas that are not personally constructed or thought through, much like how one might reject ready-made clothes that don't fit. She highlights the difference between simply going along with societal norms and the value of engaging in original thought and critical analysis, suggesting that thinking is an essential skill that should be cultivated.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the importance of originality, one might use this quote to encourage students to develop their own ideas.
It's not the length but the quality of life that matters to me. It has always been important to me to write one sentence at a time, to live every day as if it were my last and judge it in those terms, often badly, not because it lacked grand gesture or grand passion but because it failed in the daily virtues of self-discipline, kindness, and laughter. It is love, very ordinary, human love, and not fear, which is the good teacher and the wisest judge.
I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.
Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression.
For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks.
A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.
But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little, and who talk too much.
I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.
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