Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
The land is so much more than its analysis.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of experiencing the essence of a place beyond mere data or analysis.
John Steinbeck suggests that the true value of land cannot be fully understood through analysis alone; it requires personal experience and connection. The essence of a place encompasses its beauty, history, and the emotions it evokes, which statistics and data cannot capture.
In practice
During a documentary about environmental conservation, this quote can emphasize the importance of understanding nature beyond statistics.
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
At one point, as Samuel urges Adam to raise his boys well regardless of the blood that might be in them, Adam tells him, "You can't make a race horse of a pig." Samuel replies, "No, but you can make a very fast pig.
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
I am a socialist; of course I am a socialist. To hold a vision that society can be fundamentally different, to believe that all people can be equal - that is not a new idea.
Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.
It is important also to consider, that the surest means of avoiding war is to be prepared for it in peace.
There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.
I don't think we should stop emphasizing race because I think, you know, race is still very, very important, and we have to recognize that and continue to introduce programs to address racial inequities. But we have to widen our vision and also address the growing problems of economic class.
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