I perceive a necessary gap between seeing and being. I would not be able to have said certain things if I had been under the obligation to unify the word and the deed. As it is I can let my words reach out and net impossible things - things that are impossible for me to do. And this is a way to pay the price for saying or seeing things.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the distinction between thought and action, suggesting that one can envision possibilities beyond their current capabilities.
Norman O. Brown discusses the inherent separation between what we perceive and what we are able to accomplish in life. He argues that the ability to express ideas freely, even those beyond our grasp, allows for a richer imagination and a broader understanding of potential realities. This 'gap' permits us to explore thoughts and concepts that may never translate into action, thus enabling a creative freedom in our expressions that can inspire change or provoke thought.
In practice
In a speech about creativity, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of envisioning new ideas.
Mankind today is still making history without having any conscious idea of what it really wants or under what conditions it would stop being unhappy; in fact what it is doing seems to be making itself more unhappy and calling that unhappiness progress.
Resisting madness is the maddest way of being mad.
The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system which is never a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new.
Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.
How can I make difference so that I may bring peace to this world that I love and cherish so much? A name flickers instantly in my mind.
A civilization, a culture, cannot survive without passion, cannot be saved without passion.
In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.
I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth.
The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.