Kurt Vonnegut - "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
About this episode
This episode discusses Kurt Vonnegut's quote about identity and the implications of pretending to be someone else.
Welcome to the Daily Quote , the podcast designed to kickstart your day in a positive way. I'm your host Andrew McGivern and this episode is brought to you by the Great News podcast . Link is in the show notes. Today's quote comes from Kurt Vonnegut , American novelist, satirist, and one of the most singular literary voices of the 20th century. He wrote it as the moral of his novel Mother Night and introduced it with characteristic Vonnegut honesty: "This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral; I simply happen to know what it is." The moral is this: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Most people encounter this quote as a piece of motivational wisdom, an encouragement to act as if you're already the person you want to become. And that reading is valid. There's real truth in it. The research on identity-based behaviour, the psychology of role adoption, James Clear's voting metaphor, all of it points in the same direction. Pretend long enough, consistently enough, and the pretending becomes the being. But Vonnegut wasn't writing a motivational quote. He was writing a…
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