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"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
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"Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?"

"Just because they disagree, doesn't mean you ain't right."

"The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter."

"None are more unjust in their judgments of others than those who have a high opinion of themselves."

"There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?"

"Much like humans, opinions come in all shapes and forms, but in the end, they are just what they are; and may yet still be categorized in nature. The first you might say is the Indoctrinal, which is, of course, dictated by community and necessity, by the human need for acceptance; secondly, there is the Personal, and this is often dictated by individuality, by the yearning to seem interesting and intelligent, or free, or special; and lastly comes the Emotional. This is most commonly dictated by circumstance and bitterness and excitement. However, rarely do we find the case in which any of these are dictated by reason in the pure state: it is by this we see that at the core of a number of false opinions lies not always misinformation but quite often some issue of the human self."

"Also, differences of opinion can be creatively stimulating as well as frustrating."

"We never waste space saying, "On the one hand." We just state an opinion in a Godlike voice."
Explore more quotes by Flannery O'Connor

"I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow."

"We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge."

"What one has as a born Catholic is something given and accepted before it is experienced. I am only slowly coming to experience things that I have all along accepted. I suppose the fullest writing comes from what has been accepted and experienced both and that I have just not got that far yet all the time. Conviction without experience makes for harshness."

"The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location."

"She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything."

"When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty."

"He has the mistaken notion that a concern with grace is a concern with exalted human behavior, that it is a pretentious concern. It is, however, simply a concern with the human reaction to that which, instant by instant, gives life to the soul. It is a concern with a realization that breeds charity and with the charity that breeds action. Often the nature of grace can be made plain only by describing its absence."
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