Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.
Interpretation
Human perception of truth is influenced by personal biases rather than objective reasoning.
This quote by Remy De Gourmont highlights the idea that individuals often form associations between ideas based on their subjective preferences and interests, rather than through logical reasoning or factual accuracy. As a result, many beliefs we hold to be true may merely reflect our biases or societal prejudices, rather than an objective understanding of reality.
In practice
In a discussion about societal norms, one might use this quote to illustrate how personal biases shape collective beliefs.
Science is the only truth and it is the great lie. It knows nothing, and people think it knows everything. It is misrepresented. People think that science is electricity, automobilism, and dirigible balloons. It is something very different. It is life devouring itself. It is the sensibility transformed into intelligence. It is the need to know stifling the need to live. It is the genius of knowledge vivisecting the vital genius.
When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'
The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
Is it not strange, that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies!
If you look at the developments in the international scene over the past many years, we haven't been able to resolve many problems and many crises, because we have approached them from a zero-sum perspective. My gain has always been defined as somebody else's loss, and through that, we never resolve problems.
This is what I know. I look like my father. My father disappeared when he was seventeen years old. Hannah once told me that there is something unnatural about being older than your father ever got to be. When you can say that at the age of seventeen, it's a different kind of devastating.
Christians will want to be in the vanguard in favoring ways of life that decisively break with the exhausting and joyless frenzy of consumerism.
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