Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.
Interpretation
Stories shape our beliefs and values, and changing them can transform individuals and societies.
In this quote, Ben Okri emphasizes the profound impact that stories hold in our lives and cultures. He suggests that narratives, whether personal or collective, are fundamental to shaping our values and identities. By altering the stories that people and nations tell themselves, one can initiate significant change, revealing the power of storytelling in influencing human thoughts, behaviors, and societal structures.
In practice
In a speech about social change, one could use this quote to underline the importance of narrative in shaping public perception.
One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.
Our time here is magic! It's the only space you have to realize whatever it is that is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is great, whatever is potential, whatever is rare, whatever is unique, in. It's the only space.
Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.
I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.
The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.
We can still astonish the gods in humanity_x000D_ _x000D_ And be the stuff of future legends,_x000D_ _x000D_ If we but dare to be real,_x000D_ _x000D_ And have the courage to see_x000D_ _x000D_ That this is the time to dream_x000D_ _x000D_ The best dream of them all.
Be careful, therefore, to take part only in the one Eucharist; for there is only one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup to unite us with His Blood.
The reality of the Eucharistic sacrifice has always been at the heart of Catholic faith; called into question in the 16th century, it was solemnly reaffirmed at the Council of Trent against the backdrop of our justification in Christ.
As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.
Rich Mullins was the uneasy conscience of Christian music. He didn't live like a star. He'd taken a vow of poverty so that what he earned could be used to help others.
We live in an age of reproduction. Most of what makes up our personal picture of the world we have never seen with our own eyes--or rather, we've seen it with our own eyes, but not on the spot: our knowledge comes to us from a distance, we are televiewers, telehearers, teleknowers.
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
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