When you once see something as false which you have accepted as true, as natural, as human, then you can never go back to it.
Interpretation
Recognizing a false belief changes your perspective permanently.
This quote emphasizes the profound impact of enlightenment and awareness on one's understanding of reality. Once a person sees through a previously accepted notion or belief, they cannot revert to their former ignorance; this transformation shapes their worldview and decisions moving forward.
In practice
In a lecture on critical thinking, one might quote this to illustrate the importance of questioning assumptions.
The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.
If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.
If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it.
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.
I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space.
Free press is not absolute. In this country, we say clearly if you start stirring up racial hatred, then we will put a stop to it. We might even close down your paper, because these things can only lead to a lot of riots and bloodshed.
If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.
Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
While violence is part of what it means to be part of the black diaspora in the United States, that is not all it means to be black.
If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.
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