“Because we are so unfamiliar with the motivation of the people we are dealing with, we are more afraid of them than we need to be.”

Radio interview (November 2008)

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 "Because we are so unfamiliar with the motivation of the people we are dealing with, we are more afraid of them than we …" by John le Carré?

John le Carré42

British novelist and spy 1931

Related quotes

“Another discovery: We are not liberated until we liberate others. So long as we need to control other people, however benign our motives, we are captive to that need. Giving them freedom, we free ourselves. And they are free to grow in their own way.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Four, People Changing

“We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny.”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

Remark to personal secretary George Cortelyou (1898).
1890s

“Africa is a continent which is subject to a great deal of friction and argument and change; that's [true] of the world generally but more so Africa than anywhere else. So because of that we live in hope, we think that the people in the end will say "We've had enough."”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Ian Smith - A Bit Of A Rebel, Ian Smith

“Everyone is afraid of something. We fear things because we value them. We fear losing people because we love them. We fear dying because we value being alive. Don't wish you didn't fear anything. All that would mean is that you didn't feel anything.”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Variant: We fear things because we value them. We fear losing people because we love them. We fear dying because we value being alive. Don’t wish you didn’t fear anything. All that would mean is that you didn’t feel anything.
Source: Lord of Shadows

“It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"Markings", p. 438
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 420

“We need a bigger map because the old one is based on an old universe where not many of us live anymore. We have to understand what we are dealing with here because it is dangerous. It kills people. Art kills.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: There are books that have devastated continents, destroyed thousands. What war hasn’t been a war of fiction? All the religious wars certainly, or the fiction of communism versus the fiction of capitalism – ideas, fictions, shit that people make. They have made a vast impression on the real world. It is the real world. Are thoughts not real? I believe it was Wittgenstein who said a thought is a real event in space and time. I don’t quite agree about the space and time bit, Ludwig, but certainly a real event. It’s only science that cannot consider thought as a real event, and science is not reality. It’s a map of reality, and not a very good one. It’s good, it’s useful, but it has its limits. We have to realise that the map has its edges. One thing that is past the edge is any personal experience. That is why magic is a broader map to me, it includes science. It’s the kind of map we need if we are to survive psychologically in the age that is to come, whatever that is. We need a bigger map because the old one is based on an old universe where not many of us live anymore. We have to understand what we are dealing with here because it is dangerous. It kills people. Art kills.

“We urgently need the mechanisms to deal with differences as they emerge because we want to progress together. Today we must start to resolve to make a difference, individually, as families and communities and we cannot do this alone as we need others and more importantly the wisdom and divine intervention in our affairs.”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

Fiji Day address, 10 October 2005 (excerpts)

“… It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Source: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“We have more information now than we can use, and less knowledge and understanding than we need. Indeed, we seem to collect information because we have the ability to do so, but we are so busy collecting it that we haven’t devised a means of using it. The true measure of any society is not what it knows but what it does with what it knows.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Warren G. Bennis (1990) Why leaders can't lead: the unconscious conspiracy continues. p. 143
1990s

“Because we are so unfamiliar with the motivation of the people we are dealing with, we are more afraid of them than we need to be.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John le Carré42

Related quotes

Related topics