QuoteProject
People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more.
John Fowles
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote reflects on the balance between individual freedom and communication in society.

John Fowles suggests that while people may have less knowledge about each other, this lack of familiarity allows for greater individuality and freedom. The excitement in the unfamiliarity of strangers adds vitality to life, yet the quote also contemplates the implications of communication's increasing prevalence, hinting at the potential benefits it may bring to humanity by bridging these gaps.

Themes

FreedomIndividualityCommunicationStrangersHumanity

In practice

Example use cases

This quote would be perfect for a discussion on the importance of individuality at a philosophy seminar.

More from John Fowles

All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
John FowlesRead
There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
John FowlesRead
I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.
John FowlesRead
Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?
John FowlesRead
The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.
John FowlesRead
It came to me…that I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencing…a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice.
John FowlesRead

Similar quotes

I am quite ready to acknowledge . . . that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded that I am going to other gods who are wise and good (of this I am as certain as I can be of any such matters), and to men departed who are better than those whom I leave behind. And therefore I do not grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead.
SocratesRead
Let the voice of the people be heard!
Albert ParsonsRead
All descriptions of reality are temporary hypotheses.
Gautama BuddhaRead
When we respect everybody around us, we are in peace with everybody around us.
Don Miguel RuizRead
Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.
Marcus AureliusRead
I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.
Lena HorneRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.