Thursday, January 12, 2012

Quote Of The Day 1/12/12

I haven't looked at this video in a couple of years, and I had forgotten this bit of marvelous wisdom from author JK Rowling:

"Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
...
"And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. 
...
"I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
"What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy."



Oh my, but I do know people who "remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience" and "live in narrow spaces" that "enable real monsters."
What a brilliant mind this woman has!

1 comment:

  1. Nothing there to disagree with. The trouble is finding people who 'do' open up their minds. People like us. ;)

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