Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction.
Rebecca SolnitRead
Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production - oriented society and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Thinking is undervalued in a society focused on productivity, and true reflection often requires a subtle disguise.
Rebecca Solnit's quote emphasizes the importance of thinking and reflection in a world that often prioritizes tangible productivity. She suggests that in a society that equates value with visible action, the act of thinking is misinterpreted as idleness; therefore, it can be cleverly disguised as simple activities like walking, which allow for deeper contemplation without the pressure of productive output.
Themes
ThinkingReflectionProductivitySocietyWalking
In practice
Example use cases
During a seminar about work-life balance, this quote can remind participants of the value of contemplation.
More from Rebecca Solnit
All quotes →I still think the revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small.
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We have a real role in how our own collective lives, our nation, and our world and society turn out. Seizing those opportunities is important, and disasters are sometimes one of those opportunities.
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If sorrow and beauty are all tied up together, then perhaps maturity brings with it not what Nabhan calls abstraction, but an aesthetic sense that partially redeems the losses time brings and finds beauty in the faraway.
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The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.
Rebecca SolnitRead
Cities have always offered anonymity, variety, and conjunction, qualities best basked in by walking: one does not have to go into the bakery or the fortune-teller's, only to know that one might. A city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination.
Rebecca SolnitRead
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