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Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but ... hypotheses may not.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Reality does not have to be captivating, but our ideas about it should be.

In this quote, Borges suggests that while reality itself can often be mundane and unremarkable, the interpretations or hypotheses we create about that reality should strive to be engaging and thought-provoking. This reflects the importance of imagination and creativity in understanding and conveying the essence of our experiences.

Themes

RealityHypothesesImaginationInterpretationPhilosophy

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a lecture about the importance of creativity in scientific theories.

More from Jorge Luis Borges

You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
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To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
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The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
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This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
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A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
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Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
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