 |
|
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
–Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)
August 17th, 2009 at 8:52 am
haaa. my favorite travel quote.
August 17th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Normally, I’d agree but I work for a company that has people working all over the world. Many of the Americans have a strangle-hold on their prejudices and narrow-mindedness that even travel to multiple countries doesn’t seem to even injury, much less kill. Would that it were true!
August 17th, 2009 at 11:51 am
This quote has been following me. I’ve been thinking of it for weeks, and now, suddenly, it’s appeared on my computer screen. Maybe it’s an omen of good things to come.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Great quote. When you’ve put yourself in a new environment and interacted with people, you see them as PEOPLE and not abstract ideas or concepts or preconceived prejudices.
How much different would the world be if we had mandatory travel to other countries? Not everyone, but a lot more people’s world perspective would change.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Thanks for this quote. I agree. Travel, often thought of as a journey outward, ends up being a journey inward, if you allow it to be. Travel is transformative when you allow it to break down the intergenerational or cultural inheritance of the arrogant parts of one’s self. Then, we all must hope, the experience of seeing these parts welcomes the duty to transform them into something more hospitable. I think a person accepts the growth that travel can allow, when there is an acceptance of the vulnerability that is brought to light in the face of another who is different, separate. Other people are our most powerful teachers; they are the mirrors that reveal where we need to grow. Often, our most important teachers are those who see the world through very different perspectives and experiential backgrounds, those who have lived experiences with which we are the least comfortable and familiar.
August 20th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
And evidence why not traveling to Arizona because of its loose gun laws is shortsighted.