If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John UpdikeRead
Think binary. When matter meets antimatter, both vanish, into pure energy. But both existed; I mean, there was a condition we'll call "existence." Think of one and minus one. Together they add up to zero, nothing, nada, niente, right? Picture them together, then picture them separating-peeling apart. ... Now you have something, you have two somethings, where once you had nothing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores the relationship between existence and non-existence through the lens of binary concepts.
In this quote, John Updike uses the metaphor of matter and antimatter to illustrate the principle that existence and non-existence are intertwined. He suggests that from a state of nothingness, when two opposites come into play, they create existence, emphasizing the idea that oppositional concepts can coalesce to form reality and meaning.
Themes
ExistenceNon-ExistenceBinaryOppositesEnergy
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about the nature of reality in a philosophy class.
More from John Updike
All quotes →Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. _x000D_ _x000D_ Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John UpdikeRead
Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
John UpdikeRead
But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.
John UpdikeRead
The reader knows the writer better than he knows himself; but the writer's physical presence is light from a star that has moved on.
John UpdikeRead
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
John UpdikeRead
Similar quotes
There is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
Edward GibbonRead
If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.
Karl JaspersRead
Tawwakul is not an act of the limbs-it is an act of the heart. And so while the limbs are striving hard, the heart is completely reliant on Allah. This means whatever the outcome of the limbs' striving, the heart will be completely satisfied, knowing that it is the flawless decision of Allah. But in order to reach this level, one must hold on to hope, strive with the limbs, and let go with the heart.
Yasmin MogahedRead
There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and dificult thing which is the aim of our endeavour, a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a supreme Grace from above that answers.
Sri AurobindoRead
Truth has beauty, power, and necessity.
Sylvia Townsend WarnerRead