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You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea: you can not put an idea up against a barracks-square wall and riddle it with bullets: you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build.
Sean O'Casey
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Ideas cannot be suppressed or controlled by force; they will always find a way to emerge and thrive.

Sean O'Casey's quote emphasizes the invincibility and resilience of ideas. No matter how much one attempts to confine or destroy ideas using physical force or oppression, they will persist and find new ways to be expressed and shared. This highlights the power of thought and the inevitability of its influence on society.

Themes

IdeasFreedomExpressionResilienceOppression

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be shared in a seminar discussing freedom of expression.

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The drama's altar isn't on the stage: it is candle-sticked and flowered in the box office. There is the gold, though there be no frankincense or myrrh; and the gospel for the day always The Play will Run for a Year. The Dove of Inspiration, of the desire for inspiration, has flown away from it; and on it's roof, now, the commonplace crow caws candidly.
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Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, great as each may be, their highest comfort given to the sorrowful is a cordial introduction into another's woe. Sorrow's the great community in which all men born of woman are members at one time or another.
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Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.
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There's nothing so passionate as a vested interest disguised as an intellectual conviction.
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