John Updike Quote - Liberty Quotes Blog

"The essential support and encouragement comes from within,
arising out of the mad notion that your society
needs to know what only you can tell it."

by:	John Updike (1932- ) American writer
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Categories:	Conscience, Free Thought, Individualism, Integrity, Reason, Responsibility, Society, Wisdom
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Reader comments about this quote:

Wow! Very deep. -- E Archer, NYC
Essential support and encouragement of what? Society! The statement appears to intend to be a universal one thus we could restate it thusly "OUR society needs to know what only WE can tell it". Thusly we all must be "mad". I agree with this statement. This is the essence of democracy and a free market, where what each of us tell society and the market what we want. The compilation of the individual inputs creates the whole. -- Waffler, Smith, Arkansas
I'm not quite sure what he's getting at... -- RobertSRQ
I agree that essential support and encouragement comes from within. To begin with anyway. The rest of this quote after those words makes no sense to me. -- Me Again
Hello, bloggers! Don't understand the meaning of the quote? It's about you! Cheers! -- Editor, Liberty Quotes
I like it -- Mike, Norwalk
I think this is a very poor selection of quotations. It has NO meaning as it is. We need to know what thought preceded it. -- Dick, Fort Worth
Considering all of the billions of human beings that are or ever have been, it is rather conceited (or mad) to believe that our thoughts are entirely original. There are occasional innovations that individuals often make and very rarely, an epiphany, but most of what we think is a synthesis of all of those thinkers that have gone before us. If we are wise, we'll consider their thoughts so that we won't have to reinvent the wheel every generation. -- Ken, Allyn, WA