There is no point asserting and reasserting what the heart cannot believe.
Interpretation
One should not insist on beliefs that the heart does not accept.
This quote emphasizes the futility of insisting on beliefs or ideas that one cannot truly embrace emotionally. It suggests that understanding and acceptance at a deeper emotional level are essential for true belief, making the act of asserting those beliefs without genuine conviction meaningless.
In practice
In a discussion about personal beliefs, this quote could be used to illustrate the importance of genuine conviction.
At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.
Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.
Like a bicycle, like a wheel that, once rolling, is stable only so long as it keeps moving but falls when its momentum stops, so the game between a man and woman, once begun, can exist only so long as it progresses. If the forward movement today is no more than it was yesterday, the game is over.
It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.
I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig--or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery.
My faceless neighbor spoke up: βDonβt be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.β I exploded: βWhat do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet? His cold eyes stared at me. At last he said, wearily: βI have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.
Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
To a large extent, whether you suffer depends on how you respond to a given situation.
Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance.
We do not work for men. We work for the land and the people. We do not even work for money.
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