For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of listening and understanding the world through sound rather than merely observing it.
Jacques Attali's quote reflects a deep philosophical viewpoint that challenges traditional notions of knowledge and perception. It suggests that Western thought has often been focused on visual observation, ignoring the vital role that sound and listening play in our understanding of the world. By stating that the world is 'not for the beholding, but for hearing,' Attali invites us to consider a more holistic approach to knowledge that encompasses auditory experiences and the complexities they bring.
In practice
In a discussion on the role of different senses in learning, this quote can highlight the significance of auditory experience.
What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector.
We tend to think of age only in time, but I don't think it has much to do with time at all there's a whole load of other things. I've met 16-year-olds who are old and 90-year-olds who are young.
Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.
You cannot attain to charity except through humility.
Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.
There is but one freedom, To put oneself right with death. After that everything is possible. I cannot force you to believe in God. Believing in God amounts to coming to terms with death. When you have accepted death, the problem of God will be solved, and not the reverse.
God does not have a fixed plan that he must carry out; on the contrary, he has many different ways of finding man and even of turning his wrong ways into right ways...The feast of Christ the King is therefore not a feast of those who are subjugated, but a feast of those who know that they are in the hands of the one who writes straight on crooked lines.
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