“The real problem is, people think life is a ladder, and it’s really a wheel.”

—  Charles de Lint

“The Forest is Crying”, p. 44 (quoting Pat Cadigan)
The Ivory and the Horn (1996)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The real problem is, people think life is a ladder, and it’s really a wheel." by Charles de Lint?
Charles de Lint photo
Charles de Lint53
author 1951

Related quotes

“Eventually you will see that the real cause of problem is not life itself. It's the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems.”

Michael Singer (1945) American landscape architect

Source: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Michelle Gomez photo

“I was trying to explain that this is actually a proper job but just feeling terribly ridiculous as real doctors and real patients were wheeled past," Gomez says, "There are moments when you think: what am I doing with my life?”

Michelle Gomez (1966) Scottish actress

An interview with Foxtel magazine.

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“some soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Bjarne Stroustrup photo

“I do not think that safety should be bought at the cost of complicating the expression of good solutions to real-life problems.”

Bjarne Stroustrup (1950) Danish computer scientist, creator of C++

Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, 2011-02-07 http://www.eptacom.net/pubblicazioni/pub_eng/stroustr.html,

Elizabeth Loftus photo

“In real life, as well as in experiments, people can come to believe things that never really happened.”

Elizabeth Loftus (1944) American cognitive psychologist

Source: Eyewitness Testimony (1979), p. 62

“Pain is not the real problem; the real problem is our thinking about pain, our resistance to it, our attempt to escape it and get to an (imaginary) future.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/writings/shockingly-simple-principles-of-spiritual-awakening/

B.F. Skinner photo

“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

Stanislav Pozdniakov photo

“So, life is like, again, an icy ladder. So, when you climb up, you have to be really, really energetic or you won’t be able to climb up ‘cause you slip and fall down.”

Stanislav Pozdniakov (1973) Russian fencer

Pozdniakov – Climb the Icy Ladder http://www.fencing.net/news/world/pozdniakov-%11-climb-the-icy-ladder.html

“Life is a ramifying bush with millions of branches, not a ladder.”

Stephen Jay Gould book An Urchin in the Storm

Source: An Urchin in the Storm (1987) "The Perils of Hope", p. 211
Context: Darwinism is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments, not a tale of inevitable progress. “After long reflection,” Darwin wrote, “I cannot avoid the conviction that no innate tendency to progressive development exists.”
Jastrow might argue that he is only considering the single pathway through the immense labyrinth of life’s bush that happened to lead to us. Even here I might reply that while we have a personal motive for special interest in (and affection for) this particular pathway, we have no right to regard it (or any other) as the essential direction of life. The pathways leading to aardvarks, anchovies, or artichokes are just as long, intricate, and biologically informative.

Related topics