“That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best — make it all up — but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.”

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (28 May 1934); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

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 "That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best — make it all up — but make it up so truly that later it wil…" by Ernest Hemingway?
Ernest Hemingway photo
Ernest Hemingway 501
American author and journalist 1899–1961

Related quotes

Fred Rogers photo

“I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what's best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

Commencement Address at Middlebury College May, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20030906163501/http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/pubaff/general_info/addresses/Fred_Rogers_2001.htm

“In the cases of nearly all of us, what our fathers were, we are, and we make up our reasons afterwards.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.29

Richard Stallman photo

“Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

2000s, Thus Spake Stallman (2000)
Context: Religious people often say that religion offers absolute certainty about right and wrong; "god tells them" what it is. Even supposing that the aforementioned gods exist, and that the believers really know what the gods think, that still does not provide certainty, because any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong. Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.

Saul Bellow photo

“We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Great Jewish Short Stories, introduction to the Dell paperback edition (1963)
General sources
Context: We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it — the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead photo
George Eliot photo
Rene Balcer photo

“See? That's what happens when you keep people from doing what they do best: It makes them insane.”

Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director

Det. Robert Goren in Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Ernest Bevin photo

“Reality is what we want it to be or what we do not want it to be, but it is not our wanting or our not wanting that makes it so.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Malraux and the Statues at Bamberg”, p. 191
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Related topics